Pyongyang paints history in its own
image By Andrei Lankov
History is very important for Marxism,
which believes itself to be based on "scientific"
analysis of the past. That said, Marxism in power,
better known as "really existing socialism" has
proved to be remarkably contemptuous of history as
an academic discipline.
Unlike the early
Marxist - philosophers and revolutionary activists
of the 1800s and early 1900s - bureaucrats of the
ruling communist parties have not seen the study
of history as a source of supreme truth and a
foundation necessary to predict the future.
Rather, they have seen history as a useful
tool for the indoctrination of the masses.
Representation of past events had to conform to
current political needs, history could and indeed
should be rewritten every time the political
situation changed.
One must admit: all
ruling elites want to influence historical
writing and history
teaching. The mighty and powerful all strive to
use history as a vehicle for indoctrination and
manipulation. However, in communist regimes, this
proclivity has been taken to unusual extremes. In
many cases, even events of ancient and Medieval
history have not been spared from such treatment
by the party propaganda machines.
A quick
look at North Korean history textbooks immediately
demonstrates that history as presented to North
Korean audiences is dramatically different from
the history studied outside the reach of
juche (self-reliance) ideologues and their
police enforcers.
Many important facts are
omitted from the North Korean versions of national
history, while many "facts" are invented or
grossly blown out of proportion to push audiences
toward the politically proscribed conclusions.
When it comes to ancient history, all
these political manipulations and distortions are
used to drive through a relatively small number of
points.
First, North Korean ideologues
want their readers to believe that Korean history
is more "ancient" than the history of nearly all
other societies. Second, they want to play down or
deny foreign influences on Korean history and
culture or present such influences as inherently
evil. Third, they want to demonstrate that it was
the northern half of the Korean Peninsula that
always played the decisive role in shaping Korean
history.
If these goals sound openly
nationalistic, that is because they are. East Asia
is an area of competing nationalisms and in North
Korea ethnic nationalism has long become one of
the major ideological foundations of the official
ideology.
This emphasis on the primordial
glorious past means that even events of ancient
history are often seen as an object of political
manipulation.
North Korea's official
historians do not want to admit that the ancestors
of the present-day population may have come to
Korea from elsewhere. They refuse to talk about
migration at all and imply that the ancestors have
lived in Korea and adjacent areas since the
emergence of humanity.
Another important
taboo is the idea that the Korean language might
have common origins with any other language of the
world - especially Japanese. This taboo was
reinforced by Generalissimo Kim Il-sung himself,
who once explicitly stated that talk of such
connections with Japanese were reactionary by
default.
Nowadays, most linguists believe
that Korean belongs to the Altaic language family
and is thus related remotely to Mongolian and
Manchurian, but also Japanese (some prominent
scholars don't agree, and insist that Korean is
indeed an isolated language with no known
relatives, but this is a minority view).
However, it is completely unthinkable to
admit this fact for North Korean scholars, none of
whom are known to be suicidal - and dissent on
such issues might be almost as dangerous as
political dissent. They are required to believe
that Korean is a unique and ancient language that
is not related to any other.
When it comes
to the history of Korean statehood, North Korean
official historiography happily accepts the claims
of traditional Korean nationalists who insist that
the first Korean state was established by Tangun,
son of a god and a female bear, in the 24th
century BC.
North Koreans went one step
further than milder nationalists of the South.
Once Kim Il-sung suggested that it would be a good
idea to discover the tomb of the female bear's
son, as one might expect, this tomb was soon
produced. Unsurprisingly, in 1993, the requested
tomb was "discovered" in the vicinity of the North
Korean capital Pyongyang (where else?).
The Tangun tomb has become a sacred site
for Korean nationalism. North Korean official
scholars even claimed that the nationalist
historians had hitherto underestimated how ancient
the Tangun kingdom actually was - so, now its
official foundation date is "circa 3000 BC", not
2333 BC as had been stated before.
It
seems that North Korean archeologists used an
existing grave from that period and claimed it to
be that of the Korean people's progenitor. But the
message is clear: first, Korea has been centered
on Pyongyang; second, Korean statehood is one of
the world's most ancient.
To further this
claim, North Korean archeologists discovered (or
rather invented) the "Taedong River culture" that
is claimed to be one of the world's most advanced
cultures, in the third millennia BC. The Korean
Peninsula - or, to be more precise, the Pyongyang
region - has therefore become one of the world's
five cradles of civilization (the other four being
Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China).
Predictably, North Korean historiography
plays down the role of the nearby Chinese empires
that for millennia served as examples of emulation
and adoration to the Korean elite. In the late
2nd-century BC, Korea was conquered by the Han
empire and remained under Chinese control for some
150-200 years. South Korean nationalists also feel
quite uncomfortable about this episode and do
their best to downplay the significance of Chinese
rule.
It seems that the major
administrative center of Chinese-dominated Korea
was indeed located on the present site of
Pyongyang, but North Korean history books do not
mention this "shameful" fact and remain silent
about the period of Han control that actually
shaped the then emerging Korean state, its
bureaucracy and its political culture.
That said, North Korean official
historiography has a field day with the Kingdom of
Koguryo, which emerged in what is now northeastern
China at the beginning of the Christian era
(actually, North Korean history books, true to
their habit of exaggerating the ancientness of all
things Koreans, claim that the kingdom emerged in
277 BC).
Koguryo was indeed a powerful and
successful state, with an interesting culture, but
this is not the reason why it is so popular with
North Korean history textbook writers. The
southern borders of Koguryo roughly coincided with
those of the present-day demilitarized zone that
separates North and South Korea, and in later eras
its capital was located near present-day
Pyongyang.
Therefore, one should not be
surprised that Koguryo is presented as the most
authentic, and so to say, most Korean of all
ancient Korean kingdoms, far superior to the two
other states - Paekje and Silla - which in the
same era existed on the southern part of the
peninsula. North Korean official historians are
never tired of reminding that the lands of Koguryo
once extended far into the present-day China.
This emphasis on Koguryo's glories is
clearly a projection of the current political
realities into the remote past. Koguryo is
presented as the direct predecessor of the North
Korea of today. Conversely, the southern kingdoms
are seen as precursors to the South Korean
"lackeys of US imperialism".
North Korean
students are reminded that in the convoluted
political conflict that led to the eventual
unification of the Korean Peninsula under the
control of the southern state of Silla in the late
600s, the southerners for a while allied
themselves with the Tang empire of China and even
planned joint operations against the glorious
kingdom of Koguryo.
In this picture of
history, Tang is equaled with the US - a big
predatory foreign power, against whose attacks and
pressure the proud northerners stood up (being
deserted and betrayed by the southern weaklings.)
Since the 1960s, North Korean historians
have not accepted that Korea was finally unified
by Silla. Indeed, soon after the Kingdom of Silla
established control over roughly two-thirds of the
peninsula, in the remaining northern parts of the
peninsula and parts of Manchuria another kingdom
known as Bohai (Palhae in Korean pronunciation)
emerged.
It seems that the elite of this
state largely consisted of the descendants of
Koguryo aristocrats, while a majority of its
population were ancestors to the present-day
Manchu. Nonetheless, North Koreans present this
state as unequivocally Korean.
In the
North Korean official interpretation of history,
the events of the 7th century were not true
unification of Korea, since, they insist, that
after the events there were still two Korean
states.
Therefore, the North Korean
populace is required to believe that their country
was first unified in the 10th century AD under the
leadership of the Koryo dynasty. It did help that
this dynasty was established by northerners and
its capital, the city of Kaesong, was located
within present-day North Korean borders.
For a majority of our readers who are used
to the post-nationalist mindset of Europe and the
Americas, all these claims - often put forward
with much emotion - must appear strange and even
comical. It is indeed rather bizarre to see how
clashes between long extinct states are presented
as, essentially, campaigns in ongoing wars.
The application of modern ideas of
nationhood to ancient eras looks anachronistic.
And research by linguists seems to demonstrate
that the population of the Korean Peninsula was
not homogeneous - some of its inhabitants
seemingly spoke languages unrelated to present-day
Korean (an idea that would be a complete anathema
to North Korean history hacks).
However,
one should remember that once upon a time, more
extreme types of European nationalists saw the
history of the European continent in a similar
light. One should also remember that East Asia is
an area where nationalism still survives in its
more extreme forms, somewhat reminiscent of
pre-1940s Europe. Having said that, we should
still admit that North Korean scholar-officials
(or rather ideological officials disguised as
scholars) are somewhat special. Their distortions
are remarkably bold and their lies are unusually
blunt.
Unfortunately, their efforts have
not been in vain. They have managed to
indoctrinate two or three generations with a
picture of the past that is grossly distorted and
conducive to nurturing both ethnic arrogance and
ethnic hatred.
Andrei Lankov is
an associate professor at Kookmin University in
Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research
School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia.
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