¹ The best and most objective evaluations of the Chinese and Korean positions in this dispute over history include: Yonson Ahn, “Competing Nationalisms: the Mobilisation of History and Archaeology in the Korea-China Wars over Koguryo/Gaogouli,” Japan Focus (9 February 2006); and Mark Byington, “The War of Words Between South Korea and China Over An Ancient Kingdom: Why Both Sides Are Misguided,” History News Network (6 September 2004).

² Yonson Ahn (2006).

³ Research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Northeast Project ((东北工程), or the Northeast Borderland History and the Chain of Events Research Project (东北边疆历史与现状系列研究工程), was conducted from 2002 to 2006. Details of the project are provided in Yoon Kwy-Tak, “China's Northeast Project and Korean History,” Korea Journal (Spring 2005): 147-155. The Web site of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Research Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography (中国社会科学院中国边疆史地研究中心), which has information on the Northeast Project and other borderland projects, is no longer online, but may be retrieved through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at. A representative work of the project on Goguryeo is Huang Bin (黄斌) and Liu Housheng (刘厚生), Gaogouli shihua 高句丽史话 (Huhhot: Yuanfang chubanshe, 2005).

⁴ Park Kyeong-chul, “History of Koguryo and China's Northeast Asian Project,” International Journal of Korean History, 7 (February 2005): 19. Park's article provides a South Korean perspective on Goguryeo's centrality in Korean history: “Koguryo can be seen as the core entity that spatially links the state founded by the Yemaek tribes in Manchuria i.e. Old Choson-Puyo-Parhae, with modern Korea. Moreover Koguryo also serves as the temporal link through which the continuity of the Korean nation, from Choson-Puyo - Parhae-Koryo to modern Korea, can be perceived.” Park also provides a summary of assertions by Chinese scholars in the Northeast Asia Project and rebuttals by South Korean scholars (Park, 18-24).

Among Western scholars of Korean Studies, Mark Byington and Gari Ledyard argued against the Chinese position on the ground that it is “a direct projection of the current conception of the multiethnic PRC state backward in time … to make “tributaries “and client states appear as though they formed part of a greater Chinese nation and were, by the way, quite conscious of their role as such.” On the other hand, other scholars, including John Jamieson and Andrei Lankov, maintained that Korean claims of Goguryeo as a Korean state are no more credible: Goguryeo was less culturally related to the Han (If) peoples of Silla and Baekje in Southern Korea than being a component of the “coherent pastoral/agricultural northern continuum that inhabited what is today China's Three Northeastern Provinces … large parts of Mongolia, Southern Siberia and Russia's Maritime Region.” Finally, John B. Duncan, Edward J. Schultz and others strongly supported Korean claims: while traditional Chinese historical works treated Goguryeo as external to China, Goguryeo has been “an important part of the Korean collective historical memory for at least the past 1,000 years,” and therefore “to argue that Koguryo was not Korean is equivalent to saying Korea is not Korea …” See the discussion of this issue on the Korean Studies Discussion List in January of 2004; John B. Duncan, “Historical Memories of Koguryo in Koryo and Choson Korea,” Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 1 (2004): 117-136); Edward J. Schultz, “How English-Language Scholarship Views Koguryo,” Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies 3, no. 1 (2006): 79-94.

⁵ Khang Hyun-sung, “China's Historical Claim to the Warrior Kingdom of Koguryo Unites Koreans,” South China Morning Post (2 March 2004), reposted in History News Network. However, it should be pointed out that although both North and South Koreans opposed Chinese historical appropriation of Goguryeo as a Chinese state, North Korea emphasized the centrality of Goguryeo in Korean history to a greater degree than South Korea, because of the location of North Korea in the former territories of Goguryeo. In the official historiography of North Korea, Goguryeo was a successor state to Gojoseon founded by the mythical Dangun, the excavation of whose tomb was announced in October 1993. Moreover, Goguryeo was founded not in the commonly accepted date of 37 BCE after Silla's foundation in 57 BCE, but much earlier in 277 BCE. Finally, it was Goguryeo, not Silla, that took the initiative in the unification of the Three Kingdoms, and it was Goguryeo more than either Silla or Baekje that was central to the formation of Korean ethnic identity. “History Dispute Between North Korea and China,” Vantage Point 27, no. 3 (March 2004): 14-15; Yangjin Pak, “Contested Ethnicities and Ancient Homelands in Northeast Chinese Archaeology: the Case of Koguryo and Puyo Archaeology,” Antiquity 73 (September 1999): 615-616.

⁶ Andrei Lankov, “The Legacy of Long-Gone States: China, Korea and the Koguryo Wars,” Japan Focus (28 September 2006). An unofficial translation of the five-point ‘verbal agreement’ is available in Terence Roehrig, “History as a Strategic Weapon: The Korean and Chinese Struggle over Koguryo,” in Korean Studies In the World: Democracy, Peace, Prosperity, and Culture, ed. Seung Ham Yang, Yeon Sik Choi, and Jong Kun Choi (Seoul: Jimoondang, 2008), 106-107. Chinese officials, however, did not acknowledge that Goguryeo was part of Korea.

⁷ When North Korea applied to UNESCO to have the Goguryeo sites within its boundary designated as World Heritage sites in 2000, the Chinese followed suit with their application for World Heritage status for Goguryeo ruins within China's Northeast in 2003. A related flashpoint is the dispute over Mount Baekdu (Korean) /Mount Changbai (Chinese) on the China-North Korea border, touching on issues of national identity, historical greatness, territorial claims and economic interests for China and the two Koreas. This mountain range is the putative birthplace of both Dangun, the legendary founder of Gojoseon (Ancient Joseon), and Bukuri Yongson, ancestor of Nurhaci of the Aisin Gioro Imperial clan that ruled China from 1644 to 1911. For a detailed analysis of this dispute, see Yonson Ahn, “China and the Two Koreas Clash over Mount Paekdu/Changbai: Memory Wars Threaten Regional Accommodation,” Japan Focus (27 July 2007). See also Roehrig (2008), 95-101.

⁸ In polls taken by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the percentage of South Korean respondents who held a favorable view of China dropped from 66% in 2002 to 52% in 2007 to 38% in 2010, while the corresponding figures for respondents with an unfavorable view were 31%, 42% and 56%.

⁹ South Korea successfully applied in 2005 to have UNESCO list its Gangneung Danoje Festival as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Because the Gangneung Danoje Festival and China's Duanwu Festival or Dragon Boat Festival have the same name in Chinese characters (端午), and both take place on the 5^th day of the 5^th month of the lunar calendar, the Chinese were incensed at what they saw was an infringement of China's cultural heritage. They were further aggravated by reports that Korea has also “applied to have its ritualized Confucius memorial ceremony listed as another unique cultural heritage and is reportedly ready with an application for the listing of “Chinese traditional medicine “as “Korean traditional medicine.“” In 2009, China successfully applied for inclusion of its Dragon Boat Festival on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Antoaneta Bezlova, “The Fun's Going out of Chinese Festivals,” Asia Times (27 February 2008); Zhu Shanshan, “Dragon Boat Festival named a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage,” Global Times (2 October 2009).

¹⁰ Charles E. Morrison, “Challenges for Internationalism for International Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region,” Keynote address, 14^th National Conference of the Asian Studies Development Program (7 March 2008, Chicago). Morrison identifies ethno-nationalism as the number one challenge for the Asia-Pacific Region today.

¹¹ In Magnus Fiskesjö's view, this model is a contemporary reformulation of the imperial Chinese model, which posits Chinese civilization as the transformative force for the enlightenment of the primitive barbarians of the periphery. The Communist government carried out a large-scale ethnic classification project in the early 1950s to “classify, order, even invent where necessary, once and for all, all the non-Han minority ethnicities.” A system of “constrained autonomy for non-Han peoples” was institutionalized as a hierarchy of autonomous administrative units from the Autonomous Region on down, with legal provisions for the protection of the rights of minority nationalities, and preferential treatment for minorities in a number of areas. Magnus Fiskesjö, “Rescuing the Empire: Chinese Nation-Building in the Twentieth Century,” European Journal of East Asian Studies, V, no. 1 (2006): 15-44. Fiskesjö, however, may have underestimated the far more intrusive nature of PRC policies.

Not only was the classification of ethnic minorities itself problematic, but the lumping together of many peoples in China proper with distinct Chinese dialects or topolets, cultures, and histories into an undifferentiated Han majority may also be questioned. Moreover, as Bin Yang points out, the term minzu (民族) can refer to both the entire Chinese nation (Zhonghuaminzu 中华民族) and each of the 56 officially recognized minzu that constitute the Chinese nation. The translation of minzu as either nationality or ethnic group is thus problematic, given that minzu is “a state invention and construction” applied only to ethnic groups recognized by the Chinese government, while “ethnicity is shifting and flexible.” Bin Yang, “Central State, Local Governments, Ethnic Groups and the Minzu Identification in Yunnan (1950s-1980s),” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 3 (May 2009): 744.

¹² Yoon Hwy-Tak (2005), 145-146.

¹³ Both Peter Hays Gries and Jungmin Seo point out modern Korean nationalism requires the construction of a historical narrative emphasizing the virile masculinity of Korea's past as represented by Goguryeo's resistance to China, given the subordination of the Joseon Dynasty to Ming and Qing China and the colonization of Korea by Japan. Borrowing the Japanese neologism minzoku (民族) or nationality, the writer Shin Chae-ho (1880-1936) discovered the heroic roots of the Korean minjok in the militaristic and expansionist exploits of Goguryeo. Gries (2005), 9; Jungmin Seo, “The Politics of Historiography in China: Contextualizing the Koguryo Controversy,” Asian Perspectives 32, no. 3 (2008): 43. While the Japanese concept of minzoku, the Chinese concept of minzu, and the Korean concept of minjok may have common etymological origins and are employed for nation-building purposes, their usage differs. Minzu refers to both the entire Chinese nation and each of the 56 constituent nationalities, whereas minzoku and minjok refer exclusively to the Japanese people and the Korean people respectively. Cf. footnote 11 above.

¹⁴ For the role played by archaeology in this debate over the ownership of Goguryeo's heritage, see: Yonson Ahn, “The Contested Heritage of Koguryo/Gaogouli and China-Korea Conflict,” Japan Focus (11 January 2008); Kang Hyun Sook, “New Perspectives of Koguryo Archaeological Data,” in Early Korea: Reconsidering Early Korean History Through Archaeology, ed. Mark E. Byington (Cambridge, Mass.: Early Korea Project, Korea Institute, Harvard University, 2008), 13-63; also “History Dispute Between North Korea and China” and Yangjin Pak (1999) cited in note 5 above.

¹⁵ “Han Wu Da Di juzu jieda 汉武大帝剧组解答,” Quanzhou wanbao 泉州晚报 (20 January 2005).

¹⁶ The part of Liu Che who eventually became Emperor Wu was assumed by four actors, including top television star Chen Baoguo (陈宝国) as the adult emperor. A stellar cast included noted Taiwan actress Kuei Ya-Lei (歸亞蕾) in the role of Empress Dowager Dou (竇太后), the grandmother of Emperor Wu. “Facts and Flaws Make Up Epic TV Tales” People's Daily Online (2 February 2002).

¹⁷ Ying Zhu, “Zhongzheng Dynasty and Chinese Primetime Television Drama,” Cinema Journal 44, No. 4, (Summer 2005): 3.

¹⁸ Song Il-Kook starred in the title role, with Han Hye-Jin co-starring as his great love and political ally Soseono. Jumong was directed by Lee Ju-Hwan and Kim Geun-Hong. Jumong Reference Guide, Part II, included with Jumong DVD set (YesAsia Entertainment, 2007).

¹⁹ Its official Web site is located at www.sarft.gov.cn.

²⁰ See Joel Martinsen, “Harmonious Society vs. Popular Television,” Danwei (27 August 2006); and Joel Martinsen, “Putting a Stop to Historical Re-enactment,” Danwei (2 March 2006). In 2005, SARFT issued “The Measures for Strengthening the Administration of Import of Cultural Products,” which introduced a declaration system for such imports, and required prior examination and approval of overseas TV serials, animations and TV programs (Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), “Cultural Products Import Administration Strengthened” (1 September 2005)). The latest set of regulations regarding the contents of television dramas, effective as of May 14, 2010, may be found on SARFT's site.

²¹ Preeti Bhattacharji, Carin Zissis, and Corinne Baldwin, “Media Censorship in China,” Council on Foreign Relations (27 May 2010).

²² Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyan Bai, “Introduction,” in TV Drama in China, ed. Zhu, Keane, and Bai (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 10.

²³ Stanley Rosen, foreward to Ying Zhu, Television in Post-Reform China (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), xvii.

²⁴ Philip Kitley, Television, Regulation, and Civil Society in Asia (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003): 47-48. The KBC's introduction to its functions can be found on its Web site.

²⁵ The show was criticized by some for alleged anachronisms, factual errors, inappropriate costumes and sets, and mispronunciations, but on the whole was praised for historical veracity. “Facts and Flaws Make Up Epic TV Tales.”

²⁶ Jumong Reference Guide, Part II, 7, 20.

²⁷ The translation of an epic poem about the establishment of Goguryeo by Jumong, written by a Goryeo (Koryo) scholar in the early 13^th century on the basis of folk beliefs and legends, is found in Sun-hee Song, “The Koguryo Foundation Myth: An Integrated Analysis,” Asian Folklore Studies 33, no. 2 (1974): 41-45. Another version of this myth, based on this poem and also Goryeo period historical works on the Three Kingdoms including Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa, is “King Tongmyong, the Founder of Koguryo,” in Hwang Pae-Gang et al., Korean Myths and Folk Legends (Fremont, Calif.: Jain Publishing, 2006), 13-30. See also Ken Gardiner, “Beyond the Archer and His Son: Koguryo and Han China,” Papers on Far Eastern History 20, no. 20 (September 1979): 57-82.

²⁸ Ki-baek Lee, A New History of Korea, translated by Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Schultz (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1984), 7.

²⁹ Ying Zhu, Television in Post-Reform China (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 7.

³⁰ Although Chinese broadcasters are limited to a screening a maximum of 20% foreign programming, China has aired an increasing quantity and higher quality of imported television programs since the 1980s. The broadcasting of a popular Korean drama, Where on Earth is Love?, on CCTV in 1994 opened the door for a growing number of Korean serials imported. Korea subsequently became a leading exporter of cultural products to China, along with the United States and Japan. Park Sora, “China's Consumption of Korean Television Dramas: An Empirical Test of the “Cultural Discount “Concept,” Korea Journal (Winter 2004): 269-270.

³¹ Park (2004), 268.

³² Korea Creative Content Agency, “Main Statistics of Korea Content Market”

³³ Ying Zhu, Michael Keane, and Ruoyan Bai, “Introduction,” in TV Drama in China, ed. Zhu, Keane, and Bai (Hong Kong: Kong Kong University Press, 2008), 10.

³⁴ “Main Statistics of Korea Content Market.”

³⁵ Joel Martinsen, “Korean History Doesn't Fly on Chinese TV Screens,” Danwei (17 September 2007).

³⁶ A list of South Korean costume dramas that have been accused by the Chinese of altering history can be found at “Bada Hanju siyi cuangai Zhongguo lishi! 八大韩剧肆意篡改中国历史!” Zailushang 在路上 (9 March 2009). Most of these dramas were banned, but even those that had been approved by SARFT were criticized by Chinese netizens or subjected to state-mandated cuts. Empress Min (明成皇后) was broadcast in China with cuts for content that allegedly distorted Chinese history. There was even controversy surrounding Dae Jang Geum (大长今), also known as Jewel in the Palace, a fictionalized series about a Joseon Dynasty woman who became Korea's first female royal physician that was a huge hit with Chinese audiences. Some Chinese netizens accused this drama of appropriating Chinese acupuncture, herbal medicine and culinary methods as Korean heritage, thus guilty of cultural theft. See Lisa Leung, “Mediating Nationalism and Modernity: The Transnationalization of Korean Dramas on Chinese (Satellite) TV,” chapter 3 in East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave, ed. Chua Beng Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008), 65.

³⁷ It is indeed stated in juan 110 of Records of the Grand Historian that the Xiongnu's ancestor, Chun Wei (淳維), was a descendant of the rulers of the Xia. Sima Qian, Shi Ji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), juan 110, 2879.

³⁸ According to the script of The Great Han Emperor Wu, Emperor Jing marries off his daughter and the future Emperor Wu's older sister Princess Nangong (南宫公主) to the Xiongnu chanyu. However, Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian states that Princess Nangong was first married to Marquis Zhang Zuo (張坐) and then to Marquis Er Shen (耏申). Some Song Dynasty sources do state that Princess Nangong was married to the chanyu, but this is contradicted by Sima Qian's many mentions of the princess' presence at the Han court. Moreover, under the Han policy of marriage alliance with the Xiongnu to buy peace (和親), the highest ranking woman aristocrats sent to marry the chunyu were daughters of kings and marquises, never imperial princesses. See the “Nangggong gongzhu 南宫公主” entry in Baidu Baike (百度百科).

³⁹ Liu Che overturns a verdict on a complicated murder case involving a stepson who discovers that his stepmother has murdered his father years earlier and kills her. He argues that the stepson should not be convicted of matricide and sentenced to death by slicing since the stepmother is not his birth mother and demonstrates that she has no feelings of family affection by her act of murder. The stepson should therefore be convicted of ordinary murder. However, given the extenuating circumstances of his avenging his father's wrongful death, his death sentence should be commuted to hard labor (episode 12).

⁴⁰ Emperor Jing makes palace maid Qiuxiang (秋香) Princess Longqing (隆慶公主) and sends her to marry the Xiongnu chieftain (episode 3). However, the Xiongnu detect the deception and attack the frontier. Emperor Jing is then forced to send a real princess, his daughter Princess Nangong (南宮公主) (episode 8). As pointed out in footnote 38 above, this version contradicts Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian.

⁴¹ According to historian Ki-baik Lee, however, “China's colonial policy does not seem to have been marked by severe political repression” (Lee, 20).

⁴² Jumong conceives Gojoseon to be an empire ruling over vast territories in North Korea, and Northeast and North China. According to Ki-Baik Lee, however, Gojoseon was originally a walled-town state occupying the Daedong river basin at Pyongyang, which sometime before the 4^th century BCE formed a large confederation with other walled-town states in the region between the Daedong and Liao rivers. In this interpretation, the rulers of Gojoseon were thus kings of a confederated kingdom rather than an imperial state (Lee, 14).

⁴³ Bin Yang (2009), 743.

⁴⁴ According to Kang Hyun Sook of Dongguk University, “Gogureyo” is a compound composed of the Chinese character 高, meaning large or high, and the phonetic compound 句麗, meaning village or walled town. “Together the meaning becomes large village or large fortress.” Kang (2008), 13.

⁴⁵ When the three brothers are sent to a sacred mountain to search for the Damul Bow, Daeso and Yeongpo trick Jumong into a swamp, leaving him to die there (episode 4).

⁴⁶ See the detailed analysis by Koen de Ceuster in his “The Nation Exorcised: The Historiography of Collaboration in South Korea,” Korean Studies, 25, no. 2 (2001): 207-242. The issue of wartime collaboration applies to all countries under occupation during World War II. See Timothy Brook, Prasenjit Duara, Suk-Jung Han, Heonik Kwon, and Margherita Zanasi, “Collaboration in War and Memory in East Asia: A Symposium,” Japan Focus I (5 July 2008).

⁴⁷ Ceuster, 210-1.

⁴⁸ The South Korean government carried out numerous summary executions of civilians and political prisoners suspected of posing a threat to the Rhee regime. The ROK police and right wing youth groups arrested and executed people suspected of collaborating with North Korea. Counterinsurgency against Communist guerrilla claimed numerous innocent lives. Kim Dong-choon, “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea: Uncovering the Hidden Korean War,” The Asia-Pacific Journal (1 March 2010). The single biggest massacre of South Korean civilians committed by the U.S. military was the No Gun Ri Incident of 1950, in which hundreds were killed. Suhi Choi, “Silencing Survivors' Narratives: Why Are We Again Forgetting the No Gun Ri Story?” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 11, No. 3 (Fall 2008): 367-388.

⁴⁹ Suk-Jung Han, “On the Question of Collaboration in South Korea,” Japan Focus (4 July 2008). It was this group of generals and technocrats who had remade themselves into anti-Japanese fighters and promoted a strategy of state-led industrialization on the Manchukuo model.

⁵⁰ In-sup Han, “Kwangju and Beyond: Coping with Past State Atrocities in South Korea,” Human Rights Quarterly, 27, no. 3 (August 2005): 998-1045.

⁵¹ Ceuster, 216-7. Note that this master narrative of heroic resistance as the roots of ROK is paralleled by both the historical narrative of a heroic and masculine Korea pioneered by Shin Chae-ho, and by the narrative of Jumong.

⁵² According to Koen de Ceuster, a counter-narrative to this ROK foundation myth surfaced first in the maverick scholarship of Im Chongguk as early as 1966, although it was only in the 1980s that his publications constituted “the first integrated efforts at coming to terms with this issue of collaboration.” However, it was not until the 1990s when a critical mass of writings on collaboration by junior scholars and journalists was published, by which time the issue had become socially relevant. Ceuster, 219-222.

⁵³ Ceuster, 219.

⁵⁴ Ahn Byung-Ook, ed., Truth and Reconciliation: Activities of the Past Three Years (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea, 2009), 14.

⁵⁵ Julian Ryall, “South Korea Targets Japanese Collaborators' Descendants,” The Telegraph, 14 July 2010.

⁵⁶ Kim Dong-choon and Mark Selden, “South Korea's Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” The Asia-Pacific Journal (1 March 2010).

⁵⁷ Ryall, op.cit.

⁵⁸ Kim and Selden, op.cit.

⁵⁹ In a parallel fashion to Jumong's attribution of a vast territory to Gojoseon, North Korean historians assert that Goguryeo's boundaries between the 4^th and 5^th centuries extended to the Great Wall to the west, the Songhua River to the north, and the southern part of the Korean peninsula to the south. In addition, the state of Buyeo, of which Jumong had been a prince, is said to have been founded as early as the 7^th century BCE rather than the traditionally accepted date of around the 2^nd century BCE. Buyeo too was said to have ruled over a huge territory, including the Russian Maritime region to the east, the Amur River to the north, the upper reaches of the Liao River to the west, and the Changbai (Baekdu) Mountains to the south. Also similar to the script of Jumong, North Korean historians interpret the expansion of Goguryeo as an effort to reconstruct the homeland of Gojoseon. Yangjin Pak, “Contested Ethnicities and Ancient Homelands …,” 615-616.

⁶⁰ N. Harry Rothschild, Wu Zhao: China's Only Woman Emperor (New York: Pearson Longman, 2008), 5-6.

⁶¹ Ahn (2006).

⁶² However, Jumong was aired in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

⁶³ Joel Martinsen, “Korean History Doesn't Fly on Chinese TV Screens.”