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Gries 3
EAST ASIA, Winter 2005, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 3–17.
The Koguryo Controversy,
National Identity, and Sino-Korean
Relations Today
Peter Hays Gries
In July 2004, a Chinese claim that the ancient Kingdom of Koguryo (37 BC–AD
668) was China’s vassal state ignited a firestorm of protest in South Korea. The
decade-long South Korean love affair with China appears to have ended, as increas-
ing numbers of South Koreans have begun to view their colossal neighbor with new
suspicion. What were the causes and consequences of this controversy? Rather than
forwarding the usual political, economic, and security explanations, this paper
interrogates the deeper identity politics at stake, arguing that the Koguryo contro-
versy implicates the very meaning of being Korean or Chinese in the 21st century.
Keywords: Koguryo Kingdom, Sino-Korean relations, national identity, existential
conflict
“China’s Koguryo”?
In 2001, Pyongyang applied to UNESCO to have tombs from the ancient
kingdom of Koguryo (37 BC–668 AD) registered as North Korea’s first “world
heritage” site. The next year, the Chinese government launched its own high
profile “Northeast Asia History Project,” which later included a 2003 applica-
tion to declare Koguryo tombs in China’s northeast China’s own world heri-
tage site. At issue: was Koguryo, the root of the word “Korea,” Korean or
Chinese?
In the end, UNESCO skirted the issue: both Beijing’s and Pyongyang’s
applications for world heritage status were granted on July 1, 2004. China’s
site, labeled “Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom” on
the UNESCO website,
1
was consistently referred to as “China’s Koguryo”
(Zhongguo Gaogouli) in the Chinese media.
2
Wei Cuncheng, a professor at
Jilin University, was quoted declaring that “Koguryo was a regime established
by ethnic groups in northern China some 2,000 years ago, representing an
important part of Chinese culture.”
3
To add insult to injury, South Koreans
soon discovered that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had deleted
Koguryo from a summary of Korean history on its website.
4
4 East Asia / Winter 2005
South Koreans were outraged. Newspapers were full of editorials and op-
eds denouncing China’s actions. Cyber-nationalists constructed “Defend
Koguryo” websites, and there were demands for economic sanctions against
China and a boycott of Chinese imports.
5
Demonstrators dressed in Koguryo-
era costumes protested outside the Chinese embassy in Seoul. China responded
by blocking access to the Chinese language websites of the Chosom Ilbo and
other South Korean websites protesting China’s Koguryo activities. South
Korean Prime Minister Lee Hai-chan was compelled to take a tough stand,
setting up a working-level state committee on Koguryo history.
6
Perhaps seeking to diffuse the controversy, the next month China again
revised its Foreign Ministry website, this time deleting reference to all of South
Korea’s (and Japan’s) pre-World War II history, including Koguryo. South
Koreans took it as a further insult: China was literally erasing Korea’s past! A
group of South Korean lawmakers were then forced to postpone a trip to visit
the Koguryo tombs in China’s northeast because the Chinese Embassy de-
layed issuing them visas. An August 16 Korea Herald poll revealed that only
6% of South Korea’s National Assembly lawmakers viewed China as their
most important diplomatic partner; this represented a dramatic drop from the
63% that saw China that way just four months earlier in an April poll.
7
A week later, PRC Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei visited Seoul and nego-
tiated a five-point verbal accord to help resolve the Koguryo controversy. But
in December 2004, the PRC issued stamps to commemorate “China’s
Koguryo” being placed on the world heritage list.
8
Given that South Koreans
and Japanese both issued Tokdo/Takeshima stamps earlier in 2004 to buttress
their respective claims to the disputed islands
9
, the political meaning of Beijing’s
Koguryo stamps was not lost on Seoul. Indeed, in March 2005 scholars from
North and South Korea initiated a joint research project on Koguryo burial
mounds outside of Pyongyang. It is the first such collaborative research project
since the division of the peninsula.
10
The Koguryo controversy, in short, does
not appear to want to fade away.
Explaining the Koguryo Controversy
China-South Korea relations have clearly hit a snag. By raising the Koguryo
issue, the Chinese, intentionally or not, have rocked the boat of an extremely
beneficial economic and political relationship. The decade-long South Ko-
rean love affair with China appears to have ended. Infatuation has shifted to
suspicion, and South Koreans are groping for a new framework within which
to understand their relationship with their giant neighbor.
This abrupt shift begs explanation. The economic complementarily between
South Korea’s newly industrialized economy and China’s developing economy
has led to double-digit growth in bilateral trade and investment since diplo-
matic relations were formalized in 1992. Trade has exploded from $3 billion
in 1991 to $30 billion per year in 2001.
11
China is now South Korea’s largest
trading partner and its largest destination for overseas direct investment.
This dramatic growth in economic ties, furthermore, has been accompa-
nied by an equally striking growth in cultural ties. South Korean popular cul-
Gries 5
ture has been a huge hit in China, and Korea has experienced a China fever of
its own. Two million Koreans traveled to China in 2003 and 30,000 Korean
students studied Chinese at Chinese universities.
12
Cultural affinity—a com-
mon Confucian tradition—appeared to further ensure harmonious bilateral
relations.
So how can this recent Koguryo controversy be explained? The pundits
have largely focused on Chinese political and security concerns. Some have
argued that the Koguryo controversy is evidence of a deep-rooted Chinese
expansionism. Writing in the South China Morning Post, Donald Kirk depicts
China as motivated by a “drive for power and influence over Korea.” Indeed,
“the people who make policy in China see Beijing as exercising control, some-
times firm, sometimes benevolent, throughout the Korean peninsula.”
13
Brahma
Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies in New Delhi, goes even further,
arguing in The Japan Times that Beijing sought “to dig into the past to prepare
for the future.… China’s use of legends to pursue irredentist claims is renowned.…
As the fairy-tale Middle Kingdom, China has for long presented itself as the
mother of all civilizations, weaving legends with history to foster an ultra-
nationalistic political culture centered on the regaining of supposedly lost glory
… publicly enunciating its ambition to be a ‘world power second to none’.”
14
Koguryo, in this view, is just another manifestation of the “China threat.”
Most pundits, however, focused on legitimate Chinese concerns about fu-
ture instability in the Korean peninsula and its implications for China’s bor-
dering northeastern provinces. Professor Ahn Byung Woo of South Korea’s
Hanshin University expressed the consensus view that “China’s Northeast
Asia Project is not just about Koguryo, but aims at asserting its historical claims
to Manchuria and even part of the Korean peninsula in case the region turns
unstable.”
15
Where analysts tend to differ is on whether China’s motives are
largely defensive or offensive in nature. The defensive position ties the Koguryo
controversy to Chinese concerns about North Korean refugees flooding into
China’s northeast or even the secession of the two million ethnic Koreans in
China’s northeast into a newly reunified Korean nation. Park Sang-seek of
Kyung Hee University’s Graduate Institute of Peace Studies claims that China
is worried about losing sovereignty over the eastern part of Manchuria: ‘‘A
reunified Korea may claim that area in the long-term—that is China’s fear.’’
16
Mark Byington concurs: “It’s possible that a unified Korea could make a claim
to some of that territory.”
17
The more sinister offensive variant of this argu-
ment holds that China has ambitions to control the whole area. Kim Woo Jun,
a diplomatic history professor at Yonsei University, claimed in an interview
that, ‘‘Fundamentally, China wants to have complete control over the areas
where ethnic Koreans reside. They are getting ready for the future.”
18
Either
way, Beijing is seen as attempting to preempt any future irredentist claims that
the territory should be returned to Korea.
There is significant evidence to support this view. Following a meeting with
Chinese authorities, for example, South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki Moon
said, “China showed acute reactions to claims by some Korean politicians and
scholars that the Chinese far-eastern provinces should be returned to Korea.…
China called for the [South Korean] government to restrain them.”
19
Beijing
6 East Asia / Winter 2005
clearly appears concerned about the security of its sovereignty over its north-
east. But these economic and security issues cannot explain why so many
South Koreans responded so passionately to Beijing’s claims to Koguryo—or
how Beijing could have failed to realize that its Koguryo gambit would back-
fire so dramatically.
In this essay I interrogate the deeper identity politics at stake in the Koguryo
controversy, arguing that it implicates the very meaning of being Korean or
Chinese in the 21st century. I begin with a brief discussion of the political
psychology of international relations: specifically, how national identity is
constituted through significant diplomatic encounters and contested stories
about the national past. I then apply these ideas first to Korean and then to
Chinese understandings of Koguryo and Sino-Korean relations. I conclude
with some thoughts on existential conflict in northeast Asia, suggesting that if
the Koguryo controversy is allowed to simmer, Chinese and Korean identities
could become locked in a negative interdependence that will undermine mu-
tual trust and destabilize northeast Asia.
National Identity Today and Yesterday
Why do ordinary Chinese and Koreans care so much about a kingdom that
collapsed over a millennia ago? Isn’t this a purely academic issue that should
be left to historians to settle? I argue that Chinese and Koreans care greatly
about Koguryo not because of Koguryo itself, but because of what Koguryo
means for Chinese and Korean identity today. It is not the past itself that is
important, but the implications that contending histories or stories of that past
have for Chinese and Korean national identity in the 21st century. These na-
tional identities are no mere emotional matter: they have highly instrumental
implications for Sino-Korean relations in the evolving East Asian security or-
der. China and South Korea are contesting their relative places in the emerg-
ing East Asian hierarchy.
Following in the social identity theory (SIT) tradition of social psychology,
I define “national identity” as that aspect of an individual’s self-concept that
derives from his or her perceived membership in a national group.
20
National
identities, I argue, are constituted in two ways: through international relations
today and through the stories that we tell about our national pasts.
21
No man is an island. In the post-Enlightenment West, and especially in the
United States, a fierce individualism often maintains the fiction of an autono-
mous “self.” America, it often seems, is a nation of Lone Rangers and John
Waynes who sing to their own tune—regardless of what “society” thinks. The
truth, however, is that as social beings, our personal identities are intersubjective,
constituted through our interpersonal encounters. Thus most “autobiographies”
are in fact stories about the author’s relationships with influential others, such
as parents, siblings, and friends. It is through these personal relationships that
the author explains how s/he came to be who s/he is today.
Our social identities are no different: they do not exist in isolation but evolve
through intergroup relations. National identities, for example, are not autono-
mous, but instead evolve through international encounters. What it means to
Gries 7
be an American, for instance, emerges through the interactions of individual
Americans with foreign nationals. “Freedom fries” are a great example of this
process. Americans may say that they do not care what others think of US
foreign policy decisions (in this case on the Iraq War). They loudly declare
that the US will “go it alone” if others will not confirm their decisions. But the
truth is that Americans, like all peoples, care greatly about what others think
of them. We all need to maintain positive valuations of our cherished in-
groups—such as our nations. So many Americans responded to France’s chal-
lenge to their self-esteem as Americans by denigrating the French—an easy
way to restore threatened self-esteem.
22
By reclaiming “French fries” as “free-
dom fries” and seeking to belittle the “frogs,” American nationalists ironically
revealed that they do indeed care greatly about what international society
thinks of Americans.
Our national identities thus evolve through contemporary international en-
counters; they also evolve through the stories that we tell about our national
pasts. The liberalism at the heart of American national identity today, for in-
stance, is constituted in part by the histories that Americans have written about
their past, stories that highlight the theme of the fight for liberty. The story
thus invariably begins with the Declaration of Independence and the War of
Independence, a fight for freedom against the tyranny of King George. Ameri-
cans celebrate the Boston Tea Party not because they hate tea or the event’s
intrinsic importance to the War’s outcome, but because it symbolizes Ameri-
can defiance in the face of the tyranny. We tell the story of the past that best
fits our current understandings of ourselves.
Over the past quarter century, the constructivist and rational choice revolu-
tions that have swept the social sciences have synergized in studies of nation-
alism. Nationalist elites, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm have taught
us, construct nations and their traditions.
23
By focusing on the writing of na-
tionalist histories, this new approach has successfully combated the “pastism”
of earlier scholarship that held that deep-rooted animosities from the past pre-
determine present-day nationalist conflicts. But the over-correction of the prob-
lem of “pastism” has generated a new problem: “presentism,” an extreme
constructivism that leaves readers with the impression that the past is a blank
slate that nationalist historians can rewrite at will. In “presentist” scholarship,
the weight of the past is lost.
Both “presentism” and “pastism” thus hobble our capacity to understand
the complex interplay of past and present in nationalist practice today. The
concept of “national narratives” can help us overcome this dualism to better
understand the role of the past in nationalist politics. Narratives are the stories
that we tell about our pasts. These stories, personality psychologists have ar-
gued, infuse our identities with unity, meaning, and purpose.
24
We cannot,
therefore, radically change them at will. Sociologists Anthony Giddens and
Margaret Somers maintain that narratives infuse identities with meaning.
Giddens argues that narratives provide the individual with “ontological secu-
rity”: “The reflexive project of the self … consists in the sustaining of coherent,
yet continually revised, biographical narratives.”
25
Somers contrasts “repre-
sentational narratives” (selective descriptions of events) with more founda-
8 East Asia / Winter 2005
tional “ontological narratives”: “the stories that social actors use to make sense
of—indeed, to act in—their lives. [They] define who we are.”
26
The storied
nature of social life, in short, infuses our identities with meaning. “Identities,”
Stuart Hall notes, “are the names we give to the different ways we are posi-
tioned by, and position ourselves in, the narratives of the past.”
27
National identity, in sum, is both dependent upon interactions with other
nations, and constituted through the stories that we tell about our national
pasts. The rub, of course, is that it takes at least two parties to have an interac-
tion, and others may tell different stories about our shared or overlapping
pasts. Identity politics thus involves contestation over the terms of intergroup
interactions today as well as competition over the stories that different groups
tell about their shared pasts.
Koguryo and Korean Sovereignty
Chinese claims that Koguryo is Chinese or was a Chinese vassal state strike
at the very heart of what it means to be Korean today. As Chua Sok Peng
wrote in The Straits Times (Singapore), “Koguryo is the root of the word Ko-
rea, and also an essential part of Korean history.”
28
The Korea Herald went
further, maintaining that China’s claim to Koguryo is a “preposterous scheme
to destroy our historical roots and national identity.”
29
In this view, the very
idea of “China’s Koguryo” represents a threat to Korean identity. John B.
Duncan, director of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of Califor-
nia, Los Angeles, put it well: “Any effort by an outside power, such as China,
to deny that Koguryo is part of Korean history is bound to be seen as a denial
of Korean nationhood, as an act of aggression that threatens the very exist-
ence of Korea as a human collectivity.”
30
Koreans, in other words, perceive
“China’s Koguryo” as an existential threat—a threat to their very existence as
“Koreans.”
Historiographical issues have long been central to inter-state relations in
East Asia. Alexander Woodside has noted that in premodern Vietnam and
Korea, “history writing became a major form of oppositional ‘boundary main-
tenance’ by Vietnamese and Korean state centers and their elites against Chi-
nese hegemony.”
31
21st-century Korean concerns about Chinese claims to
Koguryo fit into this long political tradition.
But why do Koreans feel so strongly about Koguryo in particular? First,
Koguryo is central to the stories that Koreans today tell about their relation-
ship with China, and China is the first and arguably foremost Other against
whom Koreans define who they are. Second, Koguryo is a symbol of heroic
Korean resistance against foreign invaders. It is central to a virile and mascu-
line Korean nationalism; robbing Korea of Koguryo, therefore, is like robbing
Korean nationalists of their manhood. “China’s Koguryo,” in other words,
translates into an emasculated, feminized Korea.
Identity involves both similarity and difference, and Korean identity is in-
variably constructed through a dialectic of similarity to and difference from
first, imperial China, second, colonial Japan, and most recently, post-war com-
munist North Korea and capitalist America. This essay examines the former:
Gries 9
the continuing role that China plays in Korean understandings of themselves
today. In his 1986 The Fracture of Meaning, David Pollack explores the cen-
trality of China to Japanese identity for the millennia starting in the 7th cen-
tury with the arrival of Chinese culture in Japan. Drawing on Mencius’ metaphor
of a frog at the bottom of a well, Pollack argues that “the fundamental mean-
ing of life itself could be expressed only in terms of walls.… China was Japan’s
walls, the very terms by which Japan defined its own existence.”
32
I wish to
advance a similar argument about China and Korean identity. For well over a
millennia, China has been Korea’s walls; Korean identity cannot be under-
stood apart from Korea’s relations with China.
Korea has a long history of both resistance against and subordination to the
Chinese empire. The Three Kingdoms period (57 BC–AD 676) and especially
the Koguryo kingdom (37 BC–668 AD) are symbols of resistance, while the
later Yi/Chosun Dynasty (1392–1910) is a symbol of Korean submission to
Chinese hegemony. As Michael Robinson has noted, the China-Korea rela-
tionship after 1392 was structured by the ritual of the Ming tributary system:
“By acknowledging Korea’s ritual subordination and accepting Chinese cen-
trality in a universal world order, the [Yi] founder solved, for the most part,
the problem of Chinese military threat while legitimating his own rule.”
33
The
tribute system, in other words, served both foreign and domestic goals of the
Korean elite.
The Yi/Chosun subordination to China later created a psychological prob-
lem for 20th-century Korean nationalists, however. With the arrival of West-
ern imperialism and the end of the Sino-centric Asian order in the 19th century,
Koreans were first colonized by the Japanese, and then divided by the two
superpowers during the Cold War. Korean nationalists needed heroes, and the
Yi/Chosun, seen as shamefully subservient to China and corrupted by Confu-
cianism, did not fit the bill. Instead, 20th-century Korean nationalists sought
to recover the virility of the pre-Chinese Korea of the Three Kingdoms. Such
accounts generally construct a virile Korean nationalism by juxtaposing Korea’s
yin (male) against China’s (and Confucian Yi/Chosun’s) yang (female). Here I
briefly examine three prominent sets of Korean nationalist texts from the be-
ginning, middle, and end of the 20th century: 1) Sin Ch’aeho’s nationalist
writings of the ’10s and ’20s, 2) President Park Chung Hee’s 1962 Our Nation’s
Path, and 3) the War Memorial, opened in Seoul in 1994.
Sin Ch’aeho (1880–1936) fled Korea to China when the Japanese invaded
the Korean peninsula in 1910. Living in exile in Manchuria, Beijing, and
Shanghai, Sin sought to find and create in the Korean past the martial spirit
that the Korean people needed for their fight against the Japanese. Borrowing
from the Japanese notion of minzoku (nation), Sin located the martial roots of
the Korean minjok in the ancient Kingdom of Koguryo, which he depicted as
militarist and even expansionist. As Andre Schmid has noted, Sin wrote a Korean
history of victorious struggle against foreign imperialism that began with Koguryo.
34
Sin’s heroic history sought to create the pride in the past that Koreans would
need to inspire confidence in their resistance against the Japanese.
Soon after leading a successful military coup in 1961, and just before win-
ning the presidential election in 1963, Park Chung Hee (1917–1979) penned
10 East Asia / Winter 2005
Our Nation’s Path (1962), a plea for national revival in the face of the North
Korean threat. Park sought to create a usable past that would serve his goal of
defeating the communists and reunifying the Korean peninsula. Like Sin be-
fore him, Park viewed the Yi Dynasty as the problem and Koguryo as the
answer. The Yi, in Park’s view, left two pernicious legacies: a “factional con-
sciousness” and “mandarin bureaucracy” stemming from Zhu Xi Confucian-
ism, and a “historical vassalism” leading to “reliance upon others” and “blind
obedience.”
35
The “vassalage” of the Yi and their “blind admiration for any-
thing Chinese” created a passive and “servile” mentality that obstructed South
Korea’s political, military, and economic development in the 20th century.
36
Like Sin, Park found hope in Koguryo, which was “aggressive in war” and
“martial in temperament”: “Before the Yi Dynasty the Korean people had by
no means been the subservient nation. The Kingdom of Koguryo was an Ori-
ental power of the first rank with wide territories in what is now Manchuria.”
And although Yi vassalage and subservience to China threatened this virile
tradition, it reemerged whenever the nation’s fate was threatened, such as
when Admiral Yi upheld “lofty national dignity” during the 16th-century Japa-
nese invasions of Korea.
37
The War Memorial that opened in Seoul in 1994, like Sin’s articles and
Park’s book, can be read as a text that tells a particular story about the Korean
past—a heroic story remarkably similar to the one that Sin and Park told. As
Sheila Miyoshi Jager notes, the Memorial constructs a narrative of an unbro-
ken Korean warrior tradition that begins with the Three Kingdoms period
(especially Koguryo) and runs to the ROK military today. It is a story of vic-
tory that refuses to dwell on Korean suffering under Japanese colonialism.
These silences, Jager notes, speak volumes: the museum’s creators sought to
construct a heroic narrative. Admiral Yi’s Turtle Ship and his defeat of the
Japanese Hideyoshi invasions in 1592 and 1597 is given pride of place in the
center of the museum, and a large memorial stele to King Kwang-gaet’o the
Great, Koguryo’s most celebrated king, is given a prominent position outside.
Both powerfully symbolize Korea’s heroic national past.
38
Sin, Park, and the War Memorial, in sum, all turn to Koguryo to create a
past that Koreans can be proud of. Pride and confidence are both positive
self-evaluations, differing only in their time frame: pride is directed towards
the past, while confidence is directed at the future.
39
For Sin and early 20th-
century Korean nationalists, confidence was needed for resistance against the
Japanese colonizers. For Park and other Cold War nationalists, confidence was
needed for the ongoing civil war with the North Korean communists. For War
Memorial creators and other post-Cold War Korean nationalists, pride in Koguryo
is needed for the confidence to confront an uncertain and rapidly evolving East
Asian regional order. The nature of Koguryo is thus no mere academic matter:
it has direct implications for Korean confidence and self-esteem.
In short, independence from and resistance against China is a central theme
in 20th-century Korean narratives of their past and understandings of their
current identity. As the Korea Times declared in a July 17, 2004 editorial,
“The Korean people, both Southern and Northern, take pride in the legacy of
the ancient regime that straddled the Chinese borderlands, especially its inde-
Gries 11
pendent spirit, military might and cultural achievements.”
40
The Korea Times
is right: independence from China is also central to North Korean national
identity. While we typically think of North Korea as a last bastion of commu-
nism and thus an ideological ally of the People’s Republic of China, indepen-
dence from China is also central to North Korean identity. Nationalism
apparently trumped communist ideology when the North Korean media pub-
lished a series of broadsides in 2004 against Chinese claims that Koguryo was
a vassal state that maintained a tributary relationship with China.
41
‘‘Koguryo
firmly maintained its national independence in external relations while crush-
ing any attempts to trespass on its sovereignty,’’ the (North) Korean Central
Broadcasting Station (KCBS) pronounced. “Koguryo was a sovereign state
without doubt, far from an ethnic minority or a provincial government or a
tributary of any state power.”
42
North and South Koreans clearly share a strong
pride in their past resistance against Chinese aggression—and that pride hinges
upon memories of Koguryo.
Koguryo and Sinic Civilization
China’s Koguryo gambit failed miserably. If Beijing’s goal was to shore up
the security of China’s northeast, its efforts have clearly proven counterpro-
ductive, generating anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea and possibly con-
tributing to a shift in South Korean security strategy. ‘‘The anti-U.S., pro-China
atmosphere has changed recently as we saw the hegemonic side of China,’’
Kim Woo Jun, a diplomatic history professor at Yonsei University told the
New York Times in August 2004. ‘‘Anti-China sentiments could quickly lead
Korea to take a pro-U.S. stance and cooperate more with Japan.’’
43
South
Korean balancing behavior would clearly not be in China’s interest.
How could Beijing fail to anticipate this South Korean reaction? The failure
is particularly puzzling because Beijing committed the same mistake with its
Southeast Asian neighbors in the mid-1990s. Provocative Chinese behavior in
the Spratly Islands and Mischief Reef led to clashes with Vietnam and the
Philippines, and contributed to “China threat” discourse throughout Southeast
Asia.
44
China quickly learned its lesson, however, seeking to reassure its South-
east Asian neighbors of its benign intentions through an active embrace of a
wide variety of confidence building measures (CBMs). It also countered “China
threat” discourse by touting China’s “peaceful rise.” China appeared to have
awoken to the security dilemma: how China’s neighbors could view China’s
rise as threatening, leading them to seek to balance against China, thus in the
end undermining China’s security.
So how could China’s elite forget this lesson just a few years later in its
Korea policy? I suggest that in Chinese eyes, Korea has long been part of
Sinic civilization and a Sino-centric East Asian regional order. Confidence in
China’s ability to reconstruct a hierarchical regional order in the 21st century
is tied in part to proud stories about a past tributary system in which vassals
like Chosun (Korea) paid humble tribute to the Chinese center. Because Chi-
nese, like all peoples, view the groups to which they belong as inherently
good, they simply did not imagine that Koreans would object to being part of
12 East Asia / Winter 2005
a past and future Pax Sinica. Korean rejection of “China’s Koguryo,” further-
more, was likely met by the anger of those who feel their cherished in-group
identities are being challenged.
I can only “suggest” and not “prove” this argument because of a lack of
direct evidence: due to state censorship, there was almost no open discussion
of the Koguryo (Gaogouli) controversy in the Chinese press.
45
Instead, I will
lay out a broader framework within which we can explore this hypothesis
about Chinese views of Koguryo and Sino-Korean relations today.
Pride in the superiority of China’s “5,000 years of Civilization” is central to
much nationalism in China today. Soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre,
Xiao Gongqing, an outspoken neoconservative intellectual, began advocat-
ing the use of a nationalism derived from Confucianism to fill the ideological
void opened by the collapse of communism.
46
The mid-1990s, indeed, wit-
nessed a revival of interest in Confucianism. The Chinese Communist Party,
which only twenty years earlier in 1974 had launched a campaign to “Criti-
cize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius,” ironically became an active sponsor of
Confucian studies. President Jiang Zemin himself attended the 1994 celebra-
tion of Confucius’ 2,545th birthday.
47
The “5,000 years” are central to the dream of a “prosperous country and a
strong army,” which still inspires Chinese nationalists over a century after it
was first promoted by late-Qing Dynasty reformers. People’s Liberation Army
writer Jin Hui writes that “For over one hundred years, generation after gen-
eration of Chinese have been dreaming that since we were once strong, al-
though we are now backwards we will certainly become strong again.” The
“unlimited cherishing of past greatness,” Jin laments, is tied to overconfi-
dence that “in the future, we will certainly be ‘first under heaven’.” Such
“illusions,” Jin Hui warns, are “even worse than spiritual opiates.”
48
Such
“illusions” about China’s past glory are nonetheless tied to a confidence that a
Sino-centric order will reemerge in 21st-century East Asia. Beijing Normal
University’s Lu Benlong wrote in 2004 that “In East Asia, a distinctive empire
system emerged and centered on China. This single territory constituted the
so-called Chinese-barbarian order and tribute system, which formed the con-
centric and hierarchic world system of East Asia. Even today, this great-power
psychology characterized with ‘China at the center and barbarians in the four
directions’ still remains in the subconscious of many Chinese.”
49
This nationalist story about “China at the center” requires foreign confir-
mation. In 1996, popular nationalist Li Fang wrote, “Our ancient neighbors
found glory in drawing close to Chinese civilization.”
50
Note that Li does not
simply assert that Sinic civilization was glorious; instead, he attributes that
view to others. China’s “ancient neighbors” like Korea thus serve to confirm
Li’s claim to in-group positivity.
This Sinocentric order was not just glorious for all involved, but benefited
all as well. Beijing University’s Ye Zicheng has recently written, “unipolarity
is not necessarily bad; for instance, the Sinocentric East Asian system was in
the interest of both China and the other nations within the system.”
51
If the
tribute system benefited everyone in the past, this argument suggests, a 21st-
century China-led East Asia will be in everyone’s interest as well.
Gries 13
We are thus presented with another puzzle: Chinese security discourse re-
sists hegemony and promotes equality at the global (anti-American) level, but
often appears to embrace hegemony and promote hierarchy at the regional
East Asian level. The “new security concept” (xin anchuanguan) first put
forward in 1996, then reiterated by Jiang Zemin in 2002, is at the heart of
China’s public discourse on global security. In addition to mutual trust, mu-
tual benefit, and coordination, “equality” and the “democratization of inter-
national relations” (guoji guanxi de minzhuhua) lie at the heart of the new
security concept.
52
This Chinese advocacy of equality in global politics, in
my view, should be understood in the context of China’s opposition to US
unipolarity. Put another way, advocating multipolarity is part of China’s strat-
egy of soft counterhegemony.
Chinese security analysts do not appear, however, to advocate “equality”
and the “democratization of international relations” in the context of East Asian
regional security. In the domain of Sinic civilization in particular, Chinese
analysts tend to view the relations among states less in terms of Westphalian
sovereignty and equality and more in terms of the Confucian father-son or
elder brother-younger brother relations. Hierarchy, not equality, is seen to
structure relations in Sinic East Asia.
53
Conflict in Sino-Korean relations today revolves around issues of hierar-
chy and identity. In general, Chinese claim superiority (“big brother” status)
on the basis of history (the ancient tributary system) and culture (common
Confucianism), while South Koreans resist those claims on the basis of poli-
tics (democracy) and economics (capitalism). Chinese advance a politics of
similarity; Koreans deploy a politics of difference. Because these claims are
made in different realms, however, conflict is generally avoided.
The case of Koguryo, however, is different. Koreans cannot respond to
Chinese claims to Koguryo by changing the issue to politics or economics.
They have to respond in the domain of history. This gives the Sino-Korean
Koguryo dispute, and specifically its implications for relative status and iden-
tity—”Is China Korea’s older brother?”—more of a zero-sum character. Con-
flict over Koguryo, therefore, is harder to avoid.
Existential Conflict in 21st-Century Sino-Korean Relations
Western pundits have tended to downplay the Koguryo controversy on the
basis of an assumption about the primacy of economics. “As long as South
Korea needs China so much, ancient history will take second place,” Richard
Lloyd Parry has argued in The Times of London.
54
Hank Morris, a consultant
for Seoul-based Industrial Research and Consulting, concurs: “The economic
ties are too important for either side to sacrifice.”
55
In this liberal view, grow-
ing economic interdependence raises the costs of conflict and thus makes it
virtually unthinkable.
In this essay I have argued that attention to a less studied variable in inter-
national politics—identity—should introduce a healthy dose of skepticism to
such rosy forecasts about 21st-century Sino-Korean relations. Because iden-
tity conflict can often become existential, threatening the very meaning of
14 East Asia / Winter 2005
being Chinese or Korean, it is not easily amenable to rational solution or even
compromise.
The Chinese and Korean positions on Koguryo already appear to be alarm-
ingly rigid. Koreans overwhelmingly view Koguryo as Korea’s, and many
view China’s claim to Koguryo as evidence of Chinese arrogance and
hegemonism. In an editorial entitled “China looks down on Korea,” the Chosun
Ilbo asks, “Why does China behave so arrogantly toward us?” They cite inter-
ference in South Korea’s domestic politics as evidence of China’s hegemonic
behavior: the Chinese Embassy in Seoul made “threatening” telephone calls
to South Korean lawmakers who were to attend the inauguration of Taiwan
president (and Beijing nemesis) Chen Shui-bian in March 2004, saying, “Aren’t
you coming to China in the future?” Later, to those lawmakers who had re-
turned from the inauguration, the Chinese embassy made “outrageous utter-
ances,” like “We’ll remember your visit.”
56
Many Chinese, meanwhile, appear to hold equally rigid views about
Koguryo. For instance, Sun Hong of the Center for East Asian Studies in Shenyang
was adamant to Yonhap that Koguryo was a Chinese vassal state: “Koguryo used
the Chinese language throughout its existence.… Almost all Chinese scholars agree
that Koguryo is part of Chinese history.”
57
Proud Chinese narratives about an
ancient tributary system that affirmed the glory of the “5,000 years” of Sinic
civilization are frequently central to Chinese confidence in China’s 21st-cen-
tury rise. These Chinese stories, therefore, will not be easily revised.
Existential conflict is passionate and explosive by its very nature. Psychologist
Herbert Kelman has written extensively about identity competition in Israeli-
Palestinian relations. The two national identities, he argues, have become
locked into a state of “negative interdependence”: “Each perceives the very
existence of the other … to be a threat to its own existence and status as a
nation.” Israelis and Palestinians, in Kelman’s view, do not just compete over
material goods like territory and resources, but they also engage in a zero-
sum conflict over identity and existence. Such “existential combat” involves a
systematic effort to delegitimize the Other by defining “it” in morally unac-
ceptable ways. Palestinians, for instance, depict Zionism as “racism,” while
Israelis label the PLO as “terrorist.”
58
This leads to further polarization. The
dehumanization and demonization of each other serves to exclude “them”
from the moral community of humanity, laying the psychological foundation
for violent conflict.
I do not wish to suggest that Sino-Korean relations today are comparable to
Israeli-Palestinian relations. I do, however, wish to conclude on a sober note:
should the Koguryo controversy be allowed to fester and come to play a more
central role in Sino-Korean relations, a dangerous cycle of existential conflict
is likely to ensue—and it is likely to have a major impact on Chinese and
Korean security policies.
Acknowledgements
The research and writing of this paper was supported by a POSCO Visiting
Fellowship at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. My thanks to Kim
Gries 15
Choong Nam and the EAIQ editors and reviewers for their comments and
support.
Notes
1. See http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31. Accessed 1 March 2005.
2. See “World Heritage Site: Capital Cities and Tombs of China’s Ancient Koguryo Kingdom,”
Xinhua, July 3, 2004; and “Koguryo Sites Put Onto Heritage List,” China Daily, July 2, 2004.
3. “China’s ancient Koguryo Kingdom site added to World Heritage List,” People’s Daily, July 2,
2004.
4. For the Korea page on the MFA website, see http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/chn/wjb/zzjg/yzs/gjlb/1236/
1236x0/default.htm.
5. Richard Lloyd Parry, “South Korea and China argue over Camelot kingdom,” The Times (London),
August 24, 2004.
6. “Seoul Gets Tough Over Koguryo Dispute,” Korea Times, July 17, 2004.
7. Scott Snyder, “A Turning Point for China-Korea Relations?” Comparative Connections, Fall
2004, p. 115.
8. “China Issues Postage Stamps on Koguryo Relics,” Korea Times, December 6, 2004.
9. See Justin McCurry, “Stamps stir dispute over islands,” The Guardian, January 17, 2004; Kim
Tae-gyu, “Seoul Rebuffs Tokyo’s Tokdo Stamp Issuance,” Korea Times, 5 March 2004.
10. “Two Koreas in Joint Response to China’s Koguryo Distortions,” Chosun Ilbo, 7 March 2005.
11. Scott Snyder, “Happy Tenth for PRC-ROK Relations! Celebrate while you can, Because Tough
Times are Ahead,” Comparative Connections, Fall 2002, p. 86.
12. Scott Snyder, “A Turning Point for China-Korea Relations?” Comparative Connections, Fall
2004, p. 114.
13. Donald Kirk, “Chinese history—a cause that unites the two Koreas,” South China Morning Post,
February 28, 2004, p. 15.
14. Brahma Chellaney, “China reconstructs past to chart future,” The Japan Times, October 25, 2004.
15. Chua Sok Peng, “Tussle over ancient kingdom; Beijing removes mention of Koguryo in Korean
history, sparking protests by Seoul,” The Straits Times (Singapore), August 7, 2004.
16. “History Dispute Over Koguryo Deepens,” Korea Times, August 7, 2004.
17. Austin Ramzy, “Rewriting History: China and the Koreas feud over the ancient kingdom of
Koguryo,” Time Magazine, Vol. 164, No. 8 (August 23, 2004).
18. James Brooke, “Seeking Peace in a Once and Future Kingdom,” The New York Times, August 25,
2004, p. 3.
19. James Brooke, “Reviving a Korean kingdom,” The International Herald Tribune, August 25,
2004, p. 1.
20. In 1981 Henri Tajfel defined social identity as “that part of an individual’s self-concept which
derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group … together with the value and
emotional significance attached to that membership.” See Henri Tajfel, Human groups and social
categories: Studies in social psychology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 255.
21. The following draws from chapters two and three of Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism:
Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2004).
22. Nyla R. Branscombe and Daniel L. Wann, “Collective self-esteem consequences of outgroup
derogation when a valued social identity is on trial,” European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol.
24, No. 6 (1994): 641-657.
23. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nation-
alism (New York: Verso, 1993 [1983]); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention
of Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
24. See Dan P. McAdams, The Stories We Live by: Personal Myths and the Making of the Self (New
York: Guilford Press, 1996); Jefferson A. Singer and Peter Salovey, The Remembered Self:
Emotion and Memory in Personality (New York: Free Press, 1993).
25. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 5.
26. Margaret R. Somers, “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Ap-
proach,” Theory and Society 23 (1994), p. 618.
16 East Asia / Winter 2005
27. See Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the
Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998), p. 122.
28. Chua Sok Peng, “Tussle over ancient kingdom; Beijing removes mention of Koguryo in Korean
history, sparking protests by Seoul,” The Straits Times (Singapore), August 7, 2004.
29. “Koguryo or Goguryeo?” The Korea Herald, September 1, 2004.
30. Lee Chi-dong, “Korean, Chinese Academics Debate Claims To Koguryo Kingdom,” Yonhap,
September 16, 2004.
31. Alexander Woodside, “Territorial order and collective-identity tensions in Confucian Asia: China,
Vietnam, Korea,” Daedalus, Summer 1998.
32. David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning: Japan’s Synthesis of China from the Eighth through the
Eighteenth Centuries (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986).
33. Michael Edson Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925 (Seattle: Univer-
sity of Washington Press, 1988), p. 16.
34. Andre Schmid, “Rediscovering Manchuria: Sin Ch’aeho and the Politics of Territorial History in
Korea,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1 (1997), pp. 26-46.
35. Park Chung Hee, Our Nation’s Path: Ideology of Social Reconstruction (Seoul: Hollym Corp,
1970 [1962]), pp. viii, 28.
36. Park Chung Hee, Our Nation’s Path, p. 79.
37. Park Chung Hee, Our Nation’s Path, pp. 50, 95.
38. Sheila Miyoshi Jager, “Monumental Histories: Manliness, the Military, and the War Memorial,”
Public Culture, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2002): 387-409.
39. J. M. Barbalet, Emotion, social theory, and social structure: a macrosociological approach (Cam-
bridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 87.
40. “Seoul Gets Tough Over Koguryo Dispute,” Korea Times, July 17, 2004.
41. Khang Hyun-sung, “China’s historical bid unites Koreans,” South China Morning Post, March 2,
2004, p. 8.
42. “NK Slams China for Koguryo Distortion,” Korea Times, September 15, 2004.
43. James Brooke, “Seeking Peace in a Once and Future Kingdom,” The New York Times, August 25,
2004, p. 3.
44. See Erica Strecker Downs and Philip C. Saunders, “Legitimacy and the limits of nationalism,”
International Security, Vol. 23 Issue 3 (Winter 98/99), pp. 114-147.
45. A search of Qinghua University’s “Chinese Core Newspapers” online database revealed only five
articles even mentioning “Gaogouli,” and all were passing references. My thanks to Shen Zhijia for
her assistance with this search.
46. See Xiao Gongqing, “Cong minzuzhuyi zhong jiequ guojia ningjuli de xinziyuan” (Deriving from
Nationalism a New Resource that Congeals the State), Zhanlue yu guanli (Strategy and Manage-
ment) 1994.4.
47. Guo Yingjie, “Barking up the wrong tree: The liberal-nationalist debate on democracy and identity,”
in Nationalism, Democracy and National Integration in China, edited by Leong H. Liew and
Shaoguang Wang (London & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 35.
48. Jin Hui, Tongwen cangzang: Rijun qinHua baoxing beiwanglu (Wailing at the Heavens: the
Violence of the Japanese Invasion of China) (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe, 1995).
49. Lu Benlong, “Xin Zhongguo guoji shenfen dingwei de lishi yanjin: dui Xin Zhingguo waijiao de
yizhong xin de renshi kuangjia” (Evolution of New China’s Definition of International Identity: A
New Frame to Understand New China’s Foreign Policy), International Review (Guoji wenti
luntan) (Shanghai), Volume 35 (Summer 2004), pp. 186-87.
50. Li Fang, “Chongnianshi de Meiguo xingxiang” (Childhood images of America), Zhongguo ruhe
shuobu (How China Should Say No), special issue of Zuojia tiandi (Writer’s World), 1996, p. 23.
51. Ye Zicheng, “Dui Zhongguo duojihua zhanlue de lishi yu lilun fansi” (Rethinking the History and
Theory of China’s Multipolar Strategy), International Review (Guoji wenti luntan) (Shanghai),
Volume 34 (Spring 2004), pp. 4-23.
52. Xia Liping, “Lun Zhongguo guoji zhanlue xin linian zhong de xin anchuan guan” (The New
Security Concept in China’s New Thinking of International Strategy), International Review (Guoji
wenti luntan) (Shanghai), Volume 34 (Spring 2004), pp. 24-38.
53. For instance, such hierarchical thinking was evident in China’s late 1970s decision to invade
Vietnam. In November 1978 Vietnam signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet
Gries 17
Union. A month later they invaded Cambodia, a Chinese ally. Outraged that “little brother” Vietnam
had betrayed “big brother” China, Deng Xiaoping launched a disastrous war in February 1979 to
“teach ‘Little Brother’ a lesson.”
54. Richard Lloyd Parry, “South Korea and China argue over Camelot kingdom,” The Times (London),
August 24, 2004.
55. Andrew Ward, “Ancient history haunts new ties,” Financial Times (London, England), September
1, 2004, p. 10.
56. “China Looks Down on Korea,” Chosun Ilbo, August 6, 2004. Available at http://english.chosun.com/
w21data/html/news/200408/200408060047.html. Accessed 1 March 2005.
57. Lee Chi-dong, “Korean, Chinese Academics Debate Claims to Koguryo Kingdom,” Yonhap,
September 16, 2004.
58. Herbert C. Kelman, “The interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian national identities: The role of
the other in existential conflicts,” Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 55, No. 3 (1999), pp. 588, 591.
