Website Criticizing History Distortion Not Accessible from China

The “Arirang-World Forum" website (www.arirang-world.org) has not been accessible from China since Thursday night, and it has raised suspicions that the Chinese government might have shut down the connection.

Since the same time, the Chosun Ilbo site written in Chinese (chinese.chosun.com) has also not been accessible.

These sites are accessible from any other countries including Korea but not from China, it was found.

If these shutdowns are made by the Chinese government, there will be inevitable criticisms saying that the two countries’ verbal agreement, announced on Tuesday to solve the Goguryeo history issue not politically but academically, is shamefully useless.

The Arirang-World Forum is one of the most popular forum sites where Chosun-jok (ethnic Koreans living in China) Chinese has been writing their criticisms on China’s Goguryeo history distortion intensively. The server of this site is located in Korea.

Other minority ethnic groups in China such as Mongolians and Manchurians have also been posting their criticisms in this website against China’s history distortion.

Prior to this incident, another internet site criticizing China’s Goguryeo history distortion, called the “Korean Students Center in China (www.ksc.com.cn),” was also abruptly closed to cause suspicions of the Chinese government in influencing the site’s shutdown.

Chinese local news agencies did not report at all about the verbal agreement between the two countries not to distort the Goguryeo history on the governmental level.

Yoo-Seong Hwang yshwang@donga.com