SPEAKING
FREELY Another (Asian) look at China-Korea ties
By Yu Shiyu
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Recent reports about Sino-Korean relations and political developments on the
Korean Peninsula have often contained views that can be termed Eurocentric
regarding the history of that part of Asia. For example, both the Chinese
academic establishment and the South Koreans from their government on down have
been criticized for having engaged in "historical revisionism", a tendency
that, according to these reports, reflects some myopic visions if not something
even worse on the part of the "historical revisionists". In addition, both
Beijing and the entire South Korean society, including the once arch
anti-communist military, have been accused of turning a blind eye to North
Korea's "crimes against humanity" in their respective efforts to appease
Pyongyang.
Enormous changes are indeed happening in and around the Korean Peninsula that
will fundamentally alter the geopolitical balance of the region. Many of these
changes are in general rather damaging to the United States' interests, hence
perhaps the aforementioned alarming criticism of both China and South Korea.
However, this author ventures to opine that a more Asiacentric perspective on
the long history of that part of Asia, especially that of Sino-Korean
relations, is called for before one addresses what are frankly mostly
Eurocentric concerns quoted above.
Sino-Korea relations - the past
One of the most important current trends in Northeast Asia is the rapid
Sino-South Korean rapprochement, despite several real or made-up difficulties
such as the North Korean refugees and the recent controversy concerning the
history of the ancient kingdom of Koguryo. This trend has led some Western
observers to conclude that China has never been as important to Koreans as it
is today.
Such an observation could not be more fallacious from an Asiatic perspective.
The fact of the matter is that in the past China has, on occasion, been a lot
more important to Koreans than it is today - and not just once, but a few
times. Furthermore, these experiences still influence, much more heavily than
the history of the hapless kingdom of Koguryo does, current and future events
in Northeast Asia.
To start with, there was the devastating invasion of Korea (1592-98) by the
Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. This author has had the opportunity to
read in their entirety all the "veritable records" of the Yi dynasty (Yijo
silrok) related to this invasion, written in elegant classical Chinese.
These first-hand Korean documents, whose reading is a prerequisite in my
opinion for any discussion of past Sino-Korean relations, demonstrate beyond
any doubt China's then critical importance vis-a-vis the very existence of the
Korean state, from which the current nuclear crisis in North Korea is a far
cry.
One also begins to realize after reading these records why the Hideyoshi
invasion is still central to Korean people's collective consciousness today,
second only to their even more traumatic experience under the more recent
Japanese colonial rule.
At least one Western author, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times,
understands the historical relevance of this experience. In a cover story
published several years ago in the all-too-authoritative Foreign Affairs
journal, Kristof mentioned the famous "Ear Mound" in Kyoto, in which the ears
and noses of tens of thousands of the Korean victims of the Hideyoshi invasion
were buried. Such a macabre monument of historical atrocity would no doubt play
a much more important future role than whatever controversy surrounds the
kingdom of Koguryo, Eurocentric wishes notwithstanding.
The Hideyoshi invasion was also one of the critical factors leading to the Ming
Dynasty's demise just a few decades later, as China's help to the Koreans
greatly exhausted the Ming regime, weakening its ability to fend off the
imminent threat of the Manchus. The Yi Dynasty's staunch loyalty to the Ming
during this period, often at great risk to its Korean subjects themselves, led
to many interesting stories and is also an active area of historical research.
This chain of events was to repeat itself near the end of the Qing Dynasty -
except a weakened China was unable to help defend and maintain the existence of
Korea as a state, whose disappearance on the world map demonstrated again
China's then much greater importance than that of today.
Japan colonization more interesting than Koguryo
Incidentally, this history of the brutal colonization of Korea by Japan is
apparently attracting a lot more interest than that of the ancient Koguryo, as
evinced by the recent South Korean legislation to investigate the history of
Korean collaborators in this process. And a palpable "Anglo-Saxon" role in
supporting Japan's conquest of Korea may turn out an even bigger issue, hence
probably the Koguryo distraction we are witnessing today.
It is well known that the rise of Japan concurred with a growing Anglo-Japanese
alliance officially sealed in 1902 after long percolation. It is reported that
the late US president Theodore Roosevelt, a politician famously known "to speak
softly but carry a big stick", was once a "secret member" of this alliance. At
least one Korean-American historian has studied possible "Anglo-assistance" in
the navy battles during the First Sino-Japanese War triggered by the Japanese
encroachment of Korea.
This "Anglo-Saxon role" became all too apparent when Japan's annexation of
Korea accelerated during and after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05),
culminating in Roosevelt dispatching his secretary of war (later the 27th
president of the US) William Howard Taft (1857-1930) to conclude the famous (or
infamous, depending on one's perspective) Taft-Katsura Agreement, with Japanese
prime minister Katsura Taro (1847-1913), acknowledging the two countries'
respective annexation of the Philippines and Korea. One will no doubt hear more
about these Anglo-Saxon "historical sins" in Japan's colonization of Korea, as
once hinted by the French daily Le Monde, and to the even greater dismay of
some Eurocentric observers.
On the other hand, despite the reversed fortunes of both Koreans and Chinese,
their leaders never stopped striving to restore the state of Korea. This
started with Yuan Shikai (1859-1916), the commander of the Chinese forces in
Korea during the First Sino-Japanese War, who had married a Korean woman. Yuan
later became the first formal president of the Republic of China after the Qing
Dynasty collapsed not long after losing that war, and earned the unflattering
epithet "the grand thief who stole the Republic". Yuan enthusiastically
supported the restoration of the Korean state nonetheless.
This was followed by all Chinese Republic leaders, Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) and
Chiang Kai-shek (1886-1975) in particular. Chiang became a staunch supporter
and financier of the provisional government of the Republic of Korea,
mobilizing, for instance, all Chinese resources in sheltering and protecting
its leader Kim Koo (1876-1949) after the attack (or one may say "terrorist
act") in 1932, by the Korean activists including the famous Korean independence
martyr Yoon Bong-kil, against the top Japanese military leaders in the colonial
concession in Shanghai. During the darkest days of the Second Sino-Japanese
War, Chiang made sure that Kim Koo received ample funding from the Chinese
government. Small wonder that the entire generation of Korean independence
leaders on both the left and the right had close relations with China.
Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek vigorously and in fact single-handedly promoted the
establishment of an independent and unified Korea during the Cairo Conference
(November 1943) and other international preparations for the post-World War II
world order, whereas all other major powers, the Soviet Union and the United
States in particular, were only interested in some sort of the United Nations'
trusteeship and de facto partition of the Korean Peninsula. This partition
later became a sorry reality, especially after the assassination of Korea's
greatest son in modern history, Kim Koo, in 1949, "by pro-American elements" as
many claim.
Closer to unification, this unsavory part of history and the US role therein
will undoubtedly be attracting a lot of attention, Koguryo controversy or no
Koguryo controversy.
The mutual importance of China and Korea to each other continued after the
partition of the Korean Peninsula. It is universally agreed that the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) lost its historical chance to "liberate Taiwan" due to
Josef Stalin's order to Mao Zedong to rescue the Kim Il-sung regime during the
Korean War. Otherwise, Chiang Kai-shek would have lived out his years much the
same way as did Rhee Syngman (1875-1965) in a foreign country.
Sino-Korean relations - the future
Nobody in his or her right mind today still questions the gradual implosion of
the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Not even the CCP has any illusions on the
long-term survival of its erstwhile "lips and teeth" little-brother regime.
Everybody is juggling and maneuvering for the eventual and inevitable
unification or rather absorption of North Korea by South Korea. The only
question is when - and how.
Meanwhile, a much bigger geopolitical game is being staged in the broader Asian
theater. In the words of David Shambaugh, noted China expert at George
Washington University, "China [is] rapidly returning to its traditional role as
the central actor in Asia." The International Herald Tribune this year
described this as "two fundamental trends - a new security environment that
resembles the ancient Chinese tributary system, and the rise of China's soft
power". In other words, back to the "bad old days" when the Son of Heaven in
Beijing called the shots in Asia.
However, this time "China's soft power" is no longer Confucianism, but the even
more influential economic and trading power in this rapidly globalizing world
economy. And Koreans, befitting their ancient proud self-appellation of being a
"mini-China", have certainly caught the tide early on. The world has just
witnessed the epochal event in 2003 when two-way Sino-South Korea trade
exceeded that between South Korea and the No 1 economy on earth, the US, barely
10 years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two Cold
War ideological and battlefield enemies. According to Chosen Ilbo, more and
more unemployed young South Koreans are swarming to China, regrettably not to
help their famished Northern brethren, but to seek their personal fortunes in
the booming Chinese economy and the ever-expanding Sino-Korean trade.
It is of course not only the South Koreans who have jumped on this "back to
traditional Asia" bandwagon, the Korean diaspora in the rest of world has
sensed it too. One of its members, Soon Bum-ahn, a lieutenant-colonel in the US
Army and a research fellow at US RAND, the mother of all think-tanks, published
an insightful article in Current History magazine in 2001, properly titled
"China as number one", prophesying "the return to Sinocentrism" in East Asia, a
future that will leave the US armed forces few prospects for remaining in the
Korean Peninsula.
It is therefore quite understandable that some outside observers start to worry
about "South Korea's perilous historical revisionism" in its many efforts to
reconcile with North Korea. Worse still, the so-called historical revisionism
now pervades the entire political spectrum from left to right in South Korea,
including even the military, all allegedly turning a blind eye to the North's
"crimes against humanity".
N Korea is odious, but Koreans should decide future
This author has no intention whatsoever to defend the North Korean regime. I
agree that it is one of the most odious regimes on Earth, and wish for its
quick and peaceful demise. But I also have high confidence that the Korean
people themselves in both South and North have the best knowledge and ability
in navigating through this difficult time.
While acknowledging the current dreadful living conditions of most North
Koreans in their communist utopia, let us not forget that, according to the US
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) country books, as late as 1976, the year of
Mao's death, North Koreans still enjoyed a higher per capita income than that
of the South Koreans. On the other hand, even the current "trickle" of North
Korean political and economic refugees reaching South Korea has already created
major financial and societal burdens in the form of settlement costs and the
reported high crime rate among the refugees, according to the rather
conservative Chosen Ilbo.
And talking about "crimes against humanity", in addition to what was committed
in Kwangju in 1980 under the watch of the US, should one conveniently forget
the massacre of the unarmed and innocent villagers at No Gun Ri, or the US Air
Force's saturation bombing of North Korean cities, the use of napalm, the
attacks on irrigation dams to cause flooding, to list just a few, during the
Korean War, as bravely raised in the New York Times by an American professor
working in South Korea. This list will surely get longer as the "historical
revisionism" progresses in Korea.
War, preemptive or otherwise, is always hell. It is thus interesting to see the
reference to the 1961 Treaty of Mutual Assistance between China and North Korea
as a basis for China's possible military intervention in the Korean Peninsula.
Not by coincidence, it is widely reported in Chinese media that North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il constantly reminds China of the treaty obligations when
Beijing is trying very hard not to "remember" them, so to shirk all the
obligations therein. The current Chinese government may still be authoritarian
and politically strong-armed, but it is not brainless. With China's
exponentially growing trading power and its huge geopolitical returns in East
and Southeast Asia, much less a pending military crisis in the Taiwan Strait,
who in Beijing would be stupid enough to open an Iraq-type quagmire in the
Korean Peninsula?
Finally let us turn to the current nuclear crisis in the Korean Peninsula. If
we follow Samuel Huntington of Harvard University, then this is no more than a
crisis for the US and Japan only, as Huntington described in Chapter 8 of his
famous book, The Clash of Civilizations: many in South Korea would only
love to inherit the "Korean bomb" after the inevitable unification of the two
Koreas.
Therefore, why should the South Koreans, from ordinary folks to the military,
not engage in "historical revisionism" to reduce the enmity and to build up
reconciliation between the two Koreas? Or as summarized alarmingly by a recent
report, "Most South Koreans no longer view the North as the primary threat to
their security. That designation is increasingly reserved for the United
States." This is because Koreans know full well that, once a "preemptive" war
starts to relieve the US (and to a lesser extent Japan) of this nuclear threat,
the blood spilled would be mostly that of the Koreans.
This author for one would never call such "historical revisionism" South
Koreans' myopia.
Yu Shiyu has been appointed visiting scholar in East Asian Studies by a
major university in North America. He is writing a book on Asian history to be
published by a US Ivy League university. He is a regular columnist for
Singapore's United Morning News (Lianhe Zaobao).
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers
to have their say. Please
click here if you are interested in contributing.
