WAS PRESIDENT TRUMP CORRECT? WAS KOREA ONCE PART OF CHINA?

…The three original kingdoms of Korea under China’s protection

 

China & Korea have a centuries old relationship

 

I had improperly repeated what President Trump had said when I wrote that at one time, Kores had once been part of mainland China.  I also had said that many of those in North Korea had long-time relatives in northern China, just across the border.

 

But my curiosity and basic desire to confirm the details of that statement directed me to research the real history between China and Korea.  In that effort, I learned that the second statement about the Chinese and North Korean relatives living on both sides of the border is very true.  As to the president’s statement as to whether Korea was once a part of China, well that was only a “somewhat true” statement.

 

It is true that Korea has long been intertwined culturally and historically with mainland China.  But Korea was never actually “part” of or under direct and official territorial control of China, despite the fact that for centuries, China had repeatedly invaded Korea.  Koreans have always been ferocious fighters, and even though the Chinese would win their invasions by their sheer vast numbers, the Koreans were always allowed to remain independent.  In fact, they eventually came under the protection of China.  The Korean’s would pay “tributes,” or “gifts” for this “protection”, and these gifts would define them as a subordinate, but still independent region while under Chinese “protection”.

 

Needless to say, over the centuries, many Chinese and Korean families inter-married and they had very large families,  This therefore developed a sometimes difficult position of tension between the changing situations when the Emperors or the governments would experience internal changes.

 

When the Chinese President Xi had his recent discussions for explaining the China /Korea situation to President Trump, the American president mistook the Chinese president’s explanation and assumed that Korea has in fact, once been part of China.  But President Xi, through his interpreter, was only trying to explain the unique Chinese “tributary system” that had lasted for many centuries.

 

The reality is that the birth of what is today’s modern Korean Peninsula can be traced back to the mid-seventh century. 

 

At that time, the three peninsula kingdoms of Goguryeo, Silla and Baekjae were unified into one region. The name “Korea” is said to be derived from the name “Goguryeo,” as the original kingdom that is believed to have been formed as a political entity as early as the first century BC. The original Goguryeo kingdom encompassed what is now Manchuria and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.

 

This “tributary system” began after the three kingdoms had united.  This happened with the help of China, and it lasted 12 centuries, from roughly the seventh century to the 19th century.

 

This system worked in preventing the Chinese from taking further military action against Korea, but it did not always work in stopping other outside peoples who wanted to rule China.  They would threaten and invade Korea in hopes of eventually getting to the capital Beijing, (then referred to as Peking), and those invaders even included the ancient Japanese invasions.

 

In fact, there were two points in history when the Korean Peninsula came close to being absorbed into the China.  One period was during the ancient Han dynasty, (206 BC–220 AD) through a system called “commanderies” of northern parts of the Korean Peninsula. This was more of a colonial type system, and Chinese researchers have tried to argue that this places Korea within the Chinese history.

 

The other time was much later in the 13th century during what’s called the Goryeo era.  This was when Mongolia ruled both China and Korea.  According to the history books: “For nearly a century Mongol-controlled China treated Goryeo somewhat like a colony, directly controlling its northern territories and constantly interfering in Goryeo’s internal affairs.  In fact, the Mongol emperor in Beijing even determined who was Goryeo’s monarch.”

 

Trump’s description from President Xi echoes a Chinese nationalist version of history and ignores the competing interpretations of the relations between Korea, China and even Japan.

 

Tensions between Koreans and Chinese over whether China exerted territorial control over the Goguryeo era, it became a big issue a decade ago.  At that time, a Chinese government-backed group sought to rewrite the history of the ancient Chinese influence in northeast Asia, particularly their influence in ancient Korea.

 

Koreans saw this as an effort to recast them as political subjects of ancient China and South Korea started its own competing government-backed project for researching the history of Goguryeo. In the face of the growing controversy, China finally promised South Korea it would not revise its history textbooks.

 

The point of all this is that there are centuries of history between these two close regions and nations, and trying to separate them is virtually impossible, especially since today, 80% of North Korean trade is between North Korea and China.

Yes, as per President Trump’s wishes, China could cut off their support for north Korea.  But with their centuries of such an intertwined state of living, it makes that kind of reaction by China very complicated and highly difficult.

 

Even our president is now saying this is not as easy as someone with as little political and cultural curiosity and as simple thinking as our current resident of the White House had originally wanted us to believe.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017