Need for new history

By Mark Peterson

When I first arrived in Korea, in November 1965, Korea was a very poor country. It had hardly begun to recover from the Korean War that had ended 12 years earlier. Per capita annual income was $125. South Korea in those days was much poorer than North Korea and was one of the absolute poorest countries in the world. Korea had been victimized by Japan and by the catastrophe of the war.

The history of Korea that I started to learn then was a story of victimization ― told in terms of the many depravations Korea had suffered at the hands, or swords, of foreign invaders. It was a poverty-stricken history of victimization of a country that was poverty-stricken and victimized.

In the 55 years since, Korea has progressed to where per capita annual income is around $30,000. The once-poor country is now one of the richest countries of the world. Yet, with all the changes in the standard of living, the history has not changed and it needs to.

Let me introduce a radically different idea about history: history is not just that which happened a long time ago; history is now! What this idea means is that today's conditions determine, largely, how history is interpreted. Point number one: history is interpreted. History is not an absolute set of facts sitting out there for us to learn. The facts must be interpreted. They tell us how we got to "now."

Let's look at it from the anthropologist's point of view. In anthropology they say "history is charter" ― meaning history is the foundation for explaining who "we" are and how we came to be the way "we" are. To put it another way, a poor country has a history that explains why it is poor. A rich country has a history that explains why it is rich. That's a simplification, but it makes the point.

Korea's history from when it was a beaten-up, poor country, is basically not taught much differently now but Korea today is a fiercely independent, wealthy country. It's time to re-examine Korean history and answer the question, not "how did Korea become so poor?" but to answer the question of "how did Korea become so rich?" What strands of values and behaviors can we find in Korean history that explain the reasons why Korea has become the success it is today?

We can't address all the issues in this short article, but we can look at a few themes, or what I like to call strands within Korean history and culture that explain the success of Korea today. The first is to reject the strands of history that support the poor country that has been invaded numerous times.

What is wrong about that perspective? Aside from supporting the wrong result, objectively, Korea has not suffered that many wars and invasions! I know that this interpretation runs straight up against the dominant interpretation in Korea today, but still, facts are facts, and Korea has suffered relatively few invasions when compared with most other countries.

The old narrative is filled with exaggeration. How many times has Korea been invaded? Somewhere around 900 times, we are told, 700 of them from Japan. To destroy this argument, let's look at the length of wars in years, and the numbers of deaths. Only three wars lasted more than a year ― the Korean War, three years; the 1592 Japanese Invasion, seven years; and the 1231 Mongol Invasion that lasted 40 years. No other border skirmish, no pirate raid from Japan lasted very long. Even the Manchu Invasions of 1627 and 1636 were short-lived.

The real problem with saying Korea has suffered hundreds, or even dozens, of invasions, is that it diminishes the catastrophe of these three massive wars. Deaths? Korean War, 1 million; Japanese Invasion, 2 million to 4 million; Mongol Invasion, 1 million to 2 million. We don't have good population data, but these three wars dwarfed all other skirmishes.

Rather than saying Korea has suffered countless wars, it would be better to say that Korea suffered three catastrophic wars, but recovered strongly from each of them. And through it all, Korea maintained its culture and integrity. By comparison, look at the Manchus ― they virtually do not exist today. Number of speakers of Manchurian languages ― a few hundred! All the rest have been assimilated into Chinese language and culture. Look at the Mongols! Not quite as annihilated as the Manchus, but the Mongols are not major players in the world economy.

But Korea has survived, and thrived. Separate from China. With its own language and script. And its own distinct culture. This is the story of Korea, not that it has been invaded and beaten up hundreds of times, by dozens of other countries.

And once we make that shift, we can see all the tremendous cultural traditions that shine through that have made Korea what it is today. The peaceful, stable strands, the "twelve pillars," that I've been writing about, that run throughout Korean history.

Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.