Are these from the real Korean textbook?

I just showed the first map to my Korean-educated wife and asked her, “What’s this orange territory?” “Ancient Korea,” she replied in an instant.

Hahha.
People on the net may be so bored that they seem to wanna make another on-line war.
The above books are not Korean textbooks. If it’s an official textbook, it has the title “교과서”.
Anyway, it is sure to be eccentric people, including Koreans. I’m Korean and don’t know the territory images.

RE: Dano versus Duanwu

The holidays fall on the same day and thus it is possible that Dano has its origins in Duanwu, but the holidays are celebrated very differently. No reason why China cannot also petition to have UNESCO recognize Duanwu as an intangible cultural heritage.

The link to Flickr didn’t work, so I’ll try again with links to each image:

Map of Balhae and Shilla from the 2002 high school history textbook approved by the Ministry of Education: http://www.flickr.com/photos/62177820@N00/363662212/

Tang Dynasty era map of NE China and the Korean peninsula from the same textbook:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62177820@N00/363662204/

Although you cannot read Korean, you can see from the color-coding on the maps that Korean history books do not claim Siberia or eastern China as part of Korean history.

The sixth image in this series ( http://bbs.news.163.com/mil/968958,52.html )looks like it has been altered from the original. Notice how the first two Korean kingdoms, Goguryo (gaoguli) and Baekjae (baiji) are printed in Chinese characters only while the third kingdom, Shilla, is printed in Hangeul only. In the middle of the cover the publisher is identified in mixed Korean and Chinese as Korea People’s History Research Association while at the bottom is the original name all in Chinese characters, the same name that appears on most of the images. I googled the name and all of the results linked to Chinese website posts on this issue. The Korean historian author, Oh Jaesung, is alive, but the publisher appears not to exist anymore.

Regardless of what some people may argue. The opinion that China sprung from then loins of the Great Korean Empire is commonplace in Korea.

The Korean self image is that all great things sprung from the Korean penninsula and then went to China.

We koreans were and are not taught with the above maps. I was born and taught in Korea.

The Chinese commenter was observant to notice that the maps did not look official. From most of the comments I’ve read, it seems that most Chinese netizens are laughing off any Korean historical claims to China. I see that my Flickr images have gotten a few views, presumably from your blog. Please feel free to link to the images if you post on this topic at other blogs/BBSes.

BTW, are you living in China or elsewhere? I spent four happy years in beautiful Qingdao before coming back to the States. I can read and write Chinese, but my computer can only read it, not write, or I’d leave you a note in 中文. 🙂

I like the “reply to this comment” embedded comment format. It is more convenient than scrolling back to read the original comment.

Thank you for the link. It was an interesting experience for me to move to Qingdao after so many years in Korea. The large Korean presence was familiar to me. I learned some Chinese while in Korea, but since I am more fluent in Korean, I went to Korean beauty shops and other businesses at first because it was easier to communicate.

Because I was an American who had lived in Korea, both Chinese and Koreans were sometimes frank in telling their opinions of each other to me. Cultural differences and misunderstandings can arise even between neighbors. I also realized that a lot of prejudice comes from economic differences. Some Koreans, just like some Westerners, look down on China because it is less developed than Korea. Some Chinese regard both Koreans and Westerners as arrogant.

I visited Singapore several times while I was living in Korea. I really miss eating at the Hawkers’ centers!

Where is your hometown/home province in China?

Dr. Lankov and Sonagi,

As a Korean citizen who is unusually attached to his patria in this rootless age of ours, I appreciate that you two are doing a yeoman’s work in defending the sanity of the contemporary Korean historical consciousness. Nor am I surprised by your attempt to inject some perspective here, for you two are both among the most balanced and rational commenters in the Korean Blogsophere–where rationality is often an orphan. But I cannot in good conscience agree with the seeming thrust of your message.

Namely, I object to your seeming effort to simply dismiss these outrageous Korean historical claims on China as rantings of a lunatic fringe. There is a point at which a well-meaning defense transmogrifies into an unreflective apology that refuses to believe that Rome is indeed burning. May I be as bold as to even say, to reverse Burke’s elegant formula, sometimes our helper is our adversary? For instance, speaking from my own intellectual background in political philosophy, the one-sided apology of Nietzsche as purely an aesthete to counter the fascist accusations by Walter Kauffman (or the attempt to portray Leo Strauss as an ordinary “liberal” rather than the father of neoconservatism by his legion of defenders) have distorted Nietzsche as much as corrected pernicious misperceptions of him.

And likewise, the fact of the matter is this: There is a serious disconnect between the South Korean public historical consciousness and what most impartial scholars posit as Korean history. Moreover, much of that disconnect does involve the size and power of ancient Korean kingdoms of Gojoseon or Koguryo. While it is true that no textbook (as far as I know) claim that the Chinese heartland used to be Korean, such a belief is ubiquitous in the popular culture. I have certainly encountered numerous Korean students living abroad who believe it and blame Chinese chroniclers and their Korean sycophants for distorting the true Korean history.

In fact, as I have written elsewhere, such a view is the standard view among Korean television historical dramas. In “Yeon Gaesomun,” perhaps the most anticipated and costliest Korean historical drama of all-time, it is explicitly said that China was Korean land in the time of Gojoseon. And in the context of the drama, this is advanced as a historical fact, not fiction. Likewise, in an upcoming drama about Dangun, the putative mythic founder of Gojoseon, Dangun’s territory supposedly spanned from Tibet to Sakhalin. And online Korean historical fora are absolutely replete with a similar historical understanding.

So we do have a serious problem in the South Korean historical consciousness or imagination. And we don’t need Hegel nor Kojeve to tell us that, at least in East Asia, history often commingles with reality to produce an ugly brew between nations. So I propose that we talk about addressing this problem rather than intoning that it doesn’t exist.

Most of the world’s six billion inhabitants couldn’t name a single UNESCO heritage. Just because of Dan and Duanwu fall on the same day is no reason why Duanwu could not be recognized. It is a very big festival with colorful traditions. Frankly, if UNESCO recognition means so much, why doesn’t the Chinese government file a petition? You can’t succeed if you don’t try.

Sonagi,

I’ve responded to you at the Marmot (as you’ve seen), but I’d strongly encourage you to watch at least the first few episodes of “Yeon Gaesomun.” In fact, I would be very interested as to whether this drama airs in China, and if so, how the incessant claims of Gojoseon’s ownership of China will be translated in Chinese (or if it will be translated). Though it’s still early in the drama, my understanding is that, contrary to the Tang records, the drama will depict Yeon chasing Tang Taizong deep into Chinese territory, certainly past the Bejijing region.

On the same post(http://bbs.news.163.com/mil/968958,52.html), a Chinese said it was a conspiracy of Japanese to provoke Chinese and Korean. See the quoted Chinese text below.

He said, some ppl purposely posted faked maps on Chinese BBSs, and at the same time, they played the same trick on the Korean BBSs, posting maps which claimed Korea’s territory as part of China.

In this way, they got Chinese and Korean netizen fight with each other, so that Japanese could take advantage from these fights.

xyhyjun

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真是搞笑,这样的图也有人信?
这些图分明是别有用心的人伪造用来离间中韩关系的?
最近网特活动比较猖獗,他们不断离间中国和周边友好国家的关系,把中国人对倭人的愤怒转移到其他国家,这些人无非以下伎俩:
一、最近各大论坛上不断有倭国制造的假文件、假地图，称韩国要吞并ZG；
二、PS某某韩国商店有辱华文字的照片，说韩人如何瞧不起zg人；
三、在韩国论坛中依样画葫芦，伪造张贴一些中国把朝鲜划入版图的照片，或重提远征高丽的事，挑起一些韩国”愤愤”的不满,然后又把韩国论坛上韩国”愤愤”的不满的话语放到我们论坛上，说韩国人是如何骂中国人的。
韩国人支持自己民族工业，不买日车，在独岛问题和日本对着干，在历史问题上，韩国仍对日本不依不饶，我们为什么要狠韩国人，韩国人是我们的榜样，我们应当把韩国人作为最新密的朋友。
当然，中韩进入蜜月期的话，倭国就坐不住了，这就是为什么倭奸如此热衷于挑拨中韩关系的原因。
大家要紧惕，不要被倭人当枪使，对某些网奸的企图要坚决回击。不要说伤害中韩感情的话。殊不知，你们骂韩国人的话又会被网奸添油加醋放到韩国论坛，然后说中国网民如何如何反韩！！最后倭人不可告人的秘密就达到了。

“应该说差不多每个民族都会有类似“可笑的幻想“。”

Having read history books written in English, Korean, and Chinese, I agree with you.