Why Koguryo/Kori can not be Chinese history even partly !!
Koguryo/Kori is not just one of the ancient Korean states to the modern-day Koreans. The ancient state, that commanded the northern part of Korea Peninsula and the Liaodong ( East of Liao River ) part of Manchuria for most of its active period, is at the core of the Korean national identity.
[] I will use here ‘Koguryo’ in place of ‘Goguryeo’, because I note the fact the name Korea came from this ancient state. I believe the state name’s quality of being origin to the name Korea should be beyond the observance of the current Korean-English spelling guidelines.
What Koguryo means to modern-time Koreans
First of all, the very country name Korea derived from this state that had existed for more than 700 years until 668 AD. The Koguryo people called themselves Koryo and the current international country name Korea, Coree and Kaori , as widely used in Asia, all came from the name of this ancient Korean state. The name came to be revived by the middle-age dynasty Koryo (918-1392) before the last dynasty Joseon. The Joseon court maintained the ancestral service to Koguryo ( and Baekje, but not Silla ), so historically Koreans can be said to have placed more legitimacy on Koguryo for their ancestry than on Silla, despite the fact that Silla unified the Korean peninsula after the fall of Koguryo/Kori.
Secondly, Koreans love Koguryo the most for its spirit of valor and military prowess. One of the first three destroyers of South Korean navy was named after a Koguryo king to testify the pride and respect the modern Koreans have for Koguryo.+ If there takes place a poll for the most popular ancient state among the modern-day Koreans, Koguryo will be the overwhelming No.1, in both North and South.
+The other two destroyers were named after Sejong the Great, who invented the Korean alphabet Hangul in mid-15th century and Admiral Li Sun-sin, who saved the country from the Japanese invasion at the end of 16th century. The fact that the destroyer right after the first two was named after the Koguryo King shows how seriously the ancient state is taken by the modern Koreans.
Thirdly, of all the ancient Korean states, Koguryo is the state identified as the source of the most cultural DNAs of modern-day Korean society and people. ++ Almost all Korean cultural legacies that have survived until today, such as the traditional Korean wear Hanbok, the social culture of civility and respect for others, the personal attributes and behaviors of the modern Koreans, such as so-called Pali-Pali ( hurry-hurry ) expectations and social trust shown in no-worry attitude for leaving one’s personal belongs behind for short absence in public places, those traditional sports like Taekwondo and SSireum, are traceable back to Koguryo. Koguryo/Kori lineage is the cultural backbone of today’s Korean society. It is special all the more because Koguryo people and society is the evidence that the Koreans are Korean, not because of the oversold “Confucian Influence”, but because for the cultural legacies of their own. =
++ Book of Later Han, Treatise on DongYi, Koguryo Part 後漢書 東夷列傳 高句驪 describes Koguryo people as keeping high standard of ethics - “they don’t ever touch other’s belongings left on the street”, strict laws with habits of keeping clean, walking fast and bowing kneel-down to others while fond of singing into the night, men and women together, amazingly like today’s Koreans. Later records added the Koguryo people’s eagerness for the education of the children and the established schooling system, even making the today’s Korean society seem just a modern version of Koguryo/Kori.
= For the reasons I question the “Confucian Influence“ in Korean society, see my other article titled "Confucian Influence? Are you sure?"
https://www.talesofthreecountries.com/2022/05/confucian-influence-really.html
Chinese Collective Psychology over Koguryo
At no point in time of Chinese history, ancient Korean states had been considered as part of China or Chinese, not to say of Koguryo. They were regarded as foreign called DongYi as a group of people and always treated in the records in the foreign Section.
Apart from the newly-found value of Koguryo as the trove of cultural gems, Koguryo has served as a psychological weight for more than a millennium for Chinese when they had to deal with Korean states. The two colossal defeats China experienced with Koguryo in 7th century remained in the collective memory of Chinese as a source of awe and fear.+ When there was a territorial dispute between China and Koryo in 1387 right after the start of the Ming Dynasty, China enumerated the eight wars between the two countries, starting with the one between Old Joseon 古朝鮮 and Han Dynasty followed by four wars Koguryo fought with four different Chinese dynasties including Sui and Tang. Notable here is the Chinese recognition of Koryo as inheritor of Old Joseon 古朝鮮 and Koguryo 高句驪. In 1488 when a Korean bureaucrat of Joseon Dynasty met a Chinese local official on his way back to his country from a shipwreck landing in China, the first question from the Chinese was about how Koguryo had been able to defeat China, Sui and Tang, twice, in the wars fought more than eight hundred years before.++ One of Koguryo generals in the wars remained as a legendary being of devilish power among the Chinese populace and appeared as a figure of military demigod in the Beijing Opera.=
+ Sui Dynasty was born ending the period of division called Northern and Southern Dynasties ( 420-589 ) and Koguryo fought the four big wars from 598 to 614, of which the second one had arguably been the biggest war in the human history before World War I , with allegedly 2.3 million people mobilized on the Chinese side. The consumptive war with Koguryo is often said to have been one of the main causes of the demise of Sui in 618. The Tang Dynasty fought three wars during the period of 645 to 668 with the second war led by the Tang ruler Taizong 唐太宗 himself. The wars with Sui and Tang were fought by land and Sea and though Koguryo won the first six consecutive wars, but lost the 7th war with Tang, not by a specific defeat in the battle fought but more by the internal division due to the exhaustion of resources after seven decades of war of attrition. The strength of Koguryo was remembered for a thousand years after the fall of the state by the Chinese and the neighboring countries. The strength and prowess of Koguryo/Kori served as deterrent to the attempts for aggression by the neighboring powers for a period of millennium and affected the course of history by way of increased negotiation power with the opponents.[ episodes with Khitan and Mongols ] Based on the records of household registrations, Tang population at the time of wars with Koguryo is estimated at the minimum over 50 million, that of Koguryo at around three million.
++ 漂海錄 Pyohaerok, The Record of the Travel Adrift, by Choi Bu 崔溥 published 1490 in the Joseon period. While the episode of conversing with the Chinese local official reveals the awe Chinese still held about the Koguryo state 800 years after its demise, it also shows that Chinese of the time thought Joseon as natural inheritor of Koguryo.
= 獨木關 dumuguan , 淤泥河 Yunihe
* The Koguryo tomb mural shows the early form of Hanbok. The two pictures showing Hanbok below are about 1600 years apart, showing the unbroken history of the Hanbok and Korea.
Koguryo and The Chinese History Rewriting Project
The Northeast History Project 東北工程 was carried out by the CCP as a CCP orchestrated venture for the five years that ended in 2007 mainly to incorporate, or “steal” from the Korean perspective, Koguryo/Kori history and its cultural assets as Chinese.
The Chinese rationale for their first-time-ever claim on the Koguryo history is in dual mode: the territorialism (Jus Soli) and the personal principle (Jus Sanguinis). That is, all that happened in the present Chinese territory is the history of China and the cultural assets of Koguryo is Chinese because of the ethnic Korean community existing in China. But, their such assertions lack seriously in academic reasoning and support of evidence, to the total absence of the minimum integrity and dignity you should expect from any act by a governmental authority in a civilized society.
First of all, the new positions on Koguryo is a face-off denial of the two-millennia old recognition on that state as foreign entity by the Chinese themselves. The records about Koguryo were always handled in the foreign section of the history compilations in Chinese records and literature and also in the records of conversation with Chinese, with no exception absolutely. On the Korean side, the Koryo Dynasty ( 912–1392 ) was named after the Koguryo in declaration to all of their being legitimate inheritor to Koguryo, and Joseon Kings serviced the ritual to the Koguryo kings as their ancestry. To be regarded as local government of China, it should have paid tax to the Chinese authority or at least the ruler of the area should have been appointed as local governor, such as Jiedushi 節度使 in Tang’s time for example, but no such things could apply to Koguryo. The whole situation makes one wonder why this kind of silly dispute has come to be needed about Koguryo.
Secondly, Chinese claim for the cultural legacies of Koguryo for the reasons of the state having had part of its land in the current Chinese territory and the people being absorbed into the pool of Chinese society after its fall in 668 would be quite paradoxical when one remembers that it was no other than Chinese themselves who were so eager to disintegrate the Koguryo society, dispersing all its aristocrats to remote border areas such as Gansu and oppressing the people remaining in their land. The Koguryo people moved south to join the Silla or to establish the new state Balhae. Some of them went to Japan to make important roles in the newly starting Japanese society with their advanced technologies and cultural legacies with them. The Koguryo society was ancient-Korean speaking society. No two languages in the world today can be more wildly different from each other than the Korean ( or Japanese to the same degree in this comparison ) and the Chinese. The linguistic elements should be of immense importance in deciding the legitimacy of the lineage claim because it accounts for the most important features of distinction in the social cultures, still alive today, between the two blocks of civilization, the immiscibility of which was symbolized by the Great Wall in the past. The language is a vessel for cultural legacies to pass down the generations, more so with Korean and Japanese languages for their complicated honorific speech system, that carried the social tradition of mutual respect and civility, that the Chinese language is devoid of completely. The ancient Korean language disappeared in the Chinese part of their land and with it were gone the cultures of the Korean lineage.
If China can put forth one single evidence of the Koguryo cultural legacy remaining in China, then one should be persuaded just that much, but the CCP history project did not produce one single piece of cultural trace of Koguryo left. It would be more to the point to say that it was not their concern from the start to discover any legacy or trace of the Koguryo culture in their society. They were just interested in making the trove of cultural gems called Koguryo theirs. If there should be any country deserving to claim inheritor of the Koguryo legacy other than Korea, it should be Japan, not China. At least in Japan the descendants were able to preserve their Koguryo identity and pride as you can see in the picture below. Nothing in the vicinity of the Koma Shinsa, or Koguryo Temple, and the Koguryo music in the Japanese royal court happened to survive in China. What had survived in China was not the Koguryo legacies, but the fear and animosity for the ancient Korean state, which had been preserved in the Chinese mind for more than the time of millennium until resurfaced in the form of Beijing Operas in 18th Centry, which described the Koguryo/Kori general 淵蓋蘇文 or Yeongae Somun as the devilish warrior and archenemy of their Tang Taizong.
Thirdly, the assertion that the cultural legacies of Korea can be Chinese too because of the Korean ethnic community in the Manchuria area, which was under the control of the Koguryo State. But the Korean migration that made the current Korean community took place after 1870s, and they just brought their culture with them to the land that was not even Chinese at that time. They are not the direct descendants of Koguryo and the cultural trappings they brought to the border area of China had not been preserved or developed in the Chinese territory. They are not much different from the Japanese community in Brazil in nature, who began the mass-immigration with the start of 1900s. Thus, Hanbok is not Chinese as much as Kimono is not Brazilian. Arirang is not Chinese as it is not Russian for the reason of Korean community being in Russia. Korean communities are dispersed around the world. China is the only country which has claimed Korean culture as theirs on the basis of the existence of Korean community within their territory.
Back to the original Question
The Korea has an unbroken history of 4500 years. And Koguryo is the ancient state the modern Koreans, north and south, cherish the most in their heart. It is also the state the name Korea came from. Given the status that Koguryo is placed in Korean minds, it would not be that difficult to understand the indignation Koreans feel about the CCP’s playing with the legacies of Koguryo. The latest result of the survey on the China’s favorability is the performance report of the Northeast History Project by CCP.
Many reasons are talked about, such as Saad, environmental contamination issues, media bias, on and on, but all Koreans know the real reason why it came so bad in recent years. Korean youth is not angry because they are afraid Kimchi and Hanbok might be taken away, but because they came to see the Chinese differently after witnessing their shamelessness shown in the CCP cultural project and the follow-up work of propagating their project products. So, the most alarming sign is the bigger animosity for China among the younger generations in Korea, who are direct observers on what is going on in the digital space. It is a good contrast to the trend of the same young generations in Korea and Japan showing significant advance in favorability towards each other, cancelling out the negative opinions of the outgoing generations.
Thank you.
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