From the Dangun Myth to Yuan Rule: Ko Bunyu on the Ancient History of the Korean Peninsula and Its Recognition in the West

2016-10-25
The following is an excerpt from Ko Bunyu’s truly monumental work, The Differences Between Japan, China, and Korea That Foreigners Have Found Astonishing for 2,000 Years, in his book Why the World Ultimately Becomes Disillusioned with China and Korea and Admires Japan.
Preamble omitted.
Present-day Koreans reject the fact that the founder of Korea was Chinese and that part of the Korean Peninsula once belonged to the territory of the Chinese Empire, dismissing these facts as “historical lies.”
Instead, they assert the “Dangun myth” described in Samguk Yusa, written in the 13th century by the Buddhist monk Iryeon of the Goryeo period, according to which Dangun, said to have been born between the Heavenly Emperor and a female bear and to have lived for more than 1,800 years, founded Korea; needless to say, there is no Chinese historical record in which this “Dangun myth” appears.
The story of Dangun’s founding of the nation is also included in South Korean elementary, middle, and high school textbooks, but the original consists of fewer than 200 Chinese characters and is an absurd tale containing no historical facts whatsoever.
Yet in South Korea, even scholars discuss this myth as though it were historical fact.
Japan’s oldest historical works, the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki, likewise contain myths such as the creation of the Japanese islands, but of course no scholar regards these as historical fact, and objective debate continues over whether Emperor Jimmu and the subsequent “eight undocumented generations” actually existed.
Be that as it may, present-day China argues, on the basis of the previously mentioned Four Commanderies of Han, that Goguryeo, which was subsequently established and existed from 37 B.C. to A.D. 668, forms part of Chinese history, and this has become the subject of an intense historical dispute with South Korea.
According to the Nihon Shoki, the Korean Peninsula at that time consisted of the three kingdoms of Silla, Goguryeo, and Baekje, together with the states known collectively as Gaya in the southern part of the peninsula.
It contains accounts of Empress Jingu’s “conquest of the Three Han,” of Baekje and Silla paying tribute to Japan, and of Japan maintaining an administrative institution in Mimana among the Gaya states.
Naturally, present-day Koreans reject these accounts as “historical lies” as well.
The Samguk Sagi contains many portions borrowed from official Chinese histories such as the Book of the Later Han, the Book of Liang, and the Book of Tang, while many of its descriptions of historical events are highly unreliable; for example, its account of Emperor Yang of Sui’s expeditions against Goguryeo presents matters in a way completely opposite to historical works written about the same period.
There is a strong suspicion that much of it was created out of the imagination and fantasy of its compiler, Kim Busik, making it closer to a novel or fantasy than to a work of history.
The original was written in classical Chinese, but anyone who reads it can see that it is a poor work that does not even constitute proper classical Chinese.
Kim Busik might even be called the progenitor of plagiarism and fantasy creation among Korean men of letters.
In any event, there can be little doubt that from ancient times the Korean Peninsula was strongly influenced by surrounding powers such as the Chinese Empire and Japan.
There are many theories concerning the origins of the Korean people, based on research in fields including archaeology, anthropology, and DNA.
From the perspectives of geopolitics, geography, and ecology, the Korean Peninsula, situated in the land historically called Dongyi, was originally a remote frontier unsuitable for human habitation.
It is therefore reasonable to regard the Korean Peninsula as having become a gathering place for displaced peoples and migrants, including Korean groups of Malayo-Polynesian origin, Wa-related groups, Han Chinese groups from the west, and Tungusic or Donghu groups from the north, and from the historical record it is reasonable to regard the “Three Kingdoms” period as the point at which the peninsula entered East Asian history.
For that reason, Japanese influence was also strong, and, as noted earlier, it would not be surprising that a king of Silla was a Wa person.
Omitted.
Koreans claim that the roots of the Japanese people lie in “outcasts” who crossed over from the Korean Peninsula, but viewed historically, the reverse is true.
Koreans also say things such as, “We taught Japan civilization through the Korean Peninsula,” but although Japan received various influences from the Chinese mainland until the abolition of the Japanese missions to Tang China in 894, it received almost none of the benefits of civilization from the Korean Peninsula.
On the contrary, the historical facts are the reverse; even in the case of rice, for example, it was traditionally said to have been transmitted from Korea to Japan, but this was mistaken, and DNA research on rice and other evidence have made it almost certain that rice was transmitted from the Chinese mainland to Japan and then crossed to the Korean Peninsula together with wet-rice cultivation technology.
Omitted.
It Was Only in the 17th Century That Korea Finally Came to Be Recognized in the West
For the West, Korea’s very existence remained vague, and there was not even an accurate map of it until the end of the 16th century.
Martín de Rada, an Augustinian missionary who stayed in Ming China in 1505, listed Goryeo as a tributary state of China, while Juan González de Mendoza’s 16th-century History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China makes no mention of Korea at all.
The Travels of Marco Polo, written at the end of the 13th century, refers to Zipangu, the land of gold, but says almost nothing about Goryeo, or Korea.
After being conquered by Kublai Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, Goryeo remained under Yuan rule for more than 100 years.
It is truly curious that Marco Polo, who was trusted by Kublai Khan and, according to the account, was even appointed to high office, says almost nothing about Korea.
From the time of its founding, Goryeo had been troubled by the question of which power to recognize as its suzerain—the Khitan Liao, the Jurchen Jin, or the Han Chinese Song—and it even sent tribute women across the deserts and the Mongolian Plateau to Genghis Khan as sexual slaves.
Despite this, was it regarded to such an extent as a “tributary state of little consequence”?
For the West, the Korean Peninsula was a remote and mysterious land about which virtually no information existed.
On early world maps, it was depicted not as a peninsula but as an “island.”
China likewise lacked an accurate conception of the world, and the previously mentioned Shanhaijing is also filled with fantastical and implausible material.
Even the Fujian region was regarded as an “island” until the Tang period, while the concept of tianyuan difang—that heaven is round and the earth square—continued into the modern era.
Westerners probably began to take a serious interest in Korea only after Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea at the end of the 16th century, known in Korea as the Imjin War.
Missionaries such as Gregorio de Céspedes, who accompanied the Christian daimyo Konishi Yukinaga, wrote about the Korean Peninsula in annual reports sent to their headquarters in Rome.
To be continued.