It has been revealed that the government published a report last December in which it refutes distortions of Koguryo history made by the Chinese. The report also suggested that China's Northeast Asia Project, which seeks to incorporate Koguryo history into Chinese history, was a resolute attempt by the Chinese to head off potential border and territorial issues that might follow Korean re-unification.
The report, which was obtained by this newspaper on Tuesday, was composed by a group of nine theorists specializing in ancient Korean history, like Korea University's Choe Gwank-shik, Kyung Hee University's Im Gi-hwan and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies' Yeo Ho-gyu, who comprehensively evaluated response policies to China's Northeast Asia Project. It appears the government is referencing the report in formulating responses to Chinese historical distortions.
The report, which was made by the Society for Korean Ancient History at the request of the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, points out that in the case of the Northeast Asia Project, Chinese government organizations are participating in driving the historical distortions, so this matter is much more serious than the Japanese history textbook incident of 2001, in which one of the textbooks approved for school use by the Japanese Ministry of Education proved to be problematic.
After printing up 100 copies of the report, it was given to only about 40 government agencies and academic institutions.
An Education Ministry official said, "After the report was made, four professors were sent to Ji'an, China, where they took pictures and obtained about 1,500 volumes of material."
(Pak Jung-hyun, jhpark@chosun.com)
