[Editorial] Historical Negligence

There is persuasion in the argument that the government’s tepid attitude toward the history manipulation of China has worsened the situation. The People’s Union Resisting China’s Northeast Asia Project bitterly voiced that the government’s lack of countermeasures made things worse. The academic world raises the same voice.

It is hard to understand that the government dismissed the Goguryeo Research Foundation, which was established to oppose the China’s distortion of Korean history in March 2004 and integrated it into the Northeast Asian History Foundation. The academic world pays attention to the fact that the point of time when the China Academy of Social Science (CASS) posted numerous academic articles on its website all at once is immediately after the dissolution of the Goguryeo Research Foundation. Proposing a learning exchange to solve the historical dispute, China started to mount attacks on manipulating the history of Manchuria when it found out the Korean research center faced tearing up, which is also when the absurd argumentation was raised that the land of North Korea and the northern area of Han River was Chinese territory.

In 2004, when Goguryeo Research Foundation was established, the government agreed to give ten billion won every year as a financial aid. However, the actual grant money was only 17 billion won including five billion in 2004 and six billion won each in 2005 and 2006. The Goguryeo Research Foundation had a hard time due to the lack of offices and research individuals. Despite the government’s big talk of “Effectively dealing with China’s distortion of the history by establishing a research center,” the research of Goguryeo history has always been neglected.

After the Goguryeo Research Foundation had been merged into the Northeastern Asian History Foundation, among 18 researchers in the Goguryeo Research Foundation, 4 people were sent to Japan research division and another 4 people became administrative staff. That is, Korea reduced the research while China actively supported ‘Northeast Asia Project.’

President Roh Moo-hyun expressed his regret to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Finland last week, and Wen replied to take appropriate measures, but it is hard to believe. China did not even keep to the oral agreement regarding the distortion of the history in August of 2004. Instead, China promoted numerous projects that manipulated history and produced a number of related papers. However, the Korean government has not raised any single protest.

Roh administration has poured 251.8 billion won on digging up past affairs in modern Korean history. As a result, they only have a national conflict and antagonism between people over the country. The administration has reduced the budget for Goguryeo Research Foundation, which undertakes safeguard the national history, and dismissed it in only two years. Only with this reason this administration is enough to receive the punishment of history.