{"id":82474,"date":"2026-08-21T15:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T06:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thekoreantoday.com\/haeundae\/2026\/08\/21\/history-lives-on-goguryeo-series-episode-34-china\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T01:39:11","slug":"history-lives-on-goguryeo-series-episode-34-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thekoreantoday.com\/haeundae\/2026\/08\/21\/history-lives-on-goguryeo-series-episode-34-china\/","title":{"rendered":"[History Lives On – Goguryeo Series] Episode 34: China"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u9ad8<\/span> <\/div>\n
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THE KOREAN TODAY<\/p>\n

History Lives On<\/h1>\n
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The Goguryeo Chronicle<\/h2>\n

Episode 34: China’s Northeast Project – A War Over History<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Can a nation’s history be erased by a neighboring government’s research program? In 2002, that is exactly what began to happen. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The Northeast Project (Dongbei Gongcheng), launched by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Center for China’s Borderland History and Geography Research together with the governments of China’s three northeastern provinces, was framed as an academic study. In reality, it was a state-led historical policy that sought to absorb the ancient history of Manchuria \u2014 including Goguryeo and Balhae \u2014 into the narrative of Chinese national history. <\/p>\n

How can a kingdom that survived for 705 years, used its own era names, and twice repelled massive invasions by the Sui and Tang empires be called a mere “local regime” of China? Why did the history of the kingdom that raised the Gwanggaeto Stele find itself back at the center of controversy in the 21st century? <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\ud83c\udf0d Western Historical Parallel <\/h4>\n

Imagine if, centuries later, a Western scholarly institution declared that Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire had merely been a “regional administration” of a neighboring modern state simply because parts of its former territory now lie within that state’s borders. The Northeast Project applied precisely that retroactive-territory logic to Goguryeo \u2014 treating today’s national boundaries as if they determined the political identity of a kingdom that predated them by over a millennium. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u25c6<\/span> The Ancient Landscape <\/h3>\n
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The project’s roots trace to a 2000 decision by the Chinese Communist Party’s central leadership. After preparatory work led by the Center for China’s Borderland History and Geography Research, it was formally approved in October 2001 and officially launched in February 2002, when the first expert committee convened in Beijing. Framed publicly as border-region stability research, its actual research agenda centered on reclassifying Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Balhae as histories of Chinese ethnic-minority local regimes. <\/p>\n

Tensions peaked in 2004. On July 1 that year, at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee session in Suzhou, China, both the “Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom” in Ji’an, Jilin Province, and the “Complex of Koguryo Tombs” in Pyongyang and Nampo, North Korea, were inscribed as World Heritage sites in the same session. Korean scholars and the public reacted strongly, fearing China would use this international platform to legitimize its absorption of Goguryeo history. About seven weeks later, on August 24, the two governments reached a diplomatic “Five-Point Verbal Understanding,” agreeing to resolve the Goguryeo history dispute through academic exchange rather than political confrontation. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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“The King personally led troops to subjugate Baekje, storming and capturing its royal fortress… The King of Baekje, exhausted, offered one thousand male and female captives and one thousand bolts of fine cloth, surrendering and swearing eternal servitude to the King.” <\/p>\n