| Chapter : | Introduction |
|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
but by the Chinese. Even today, the Chinese government does not allow people to take a picture of the Kogury
relics without a permit. Even in the 21st century, people in North China have heard that the Chinese government destroyed ancient Korean relics. China seems to be afraid of the Koreans' discovery of their own history. Chinese scholarly distortions have been an influence all over the world. One of the possible distortions of Asian history is that Confucianism originated in China. However, this is probably a misconception. In ancient times, Chinese culture was Korean culture, and Confucianism may have originated in Korea. This argument is a very controversial one. I would like to discuss this matter in relation to Tonghak millenarianism and Confucianism briefly.
Shirayanagi Shugo, one of the most prominent Japanese scholars of ancient Japanese history, argues that Chinese culture, including Confucianism and Taoism, was clearly Korean culture. The Chinese could not completely overcome Korean culture until the end of the Han Dynasty (A.D. 220).8 It is true that the ancient Chosn Korea ruled over China's midland. In reality, Sima Qian's Shiji was a difficult distortion of history written to hide the fact that Koreans ruled over the silk road and the Chinese midlands. Therefore, the name of Han, 
(Chinese) was borrowed by the Chinese from Han, 
(Korean). The prominent Japanese scholar Kashima Noboru argues in his book, Wai to Shin'goku (
), that ancient Koreans were connected to the Xia, Yin, Zhou dynasties in China and to the Japanese royal court. Some prominent Japanese intellectuals and scholars like Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is the most famous nationalistic intellectual of Meiji Japan, recognized that the Japanese learned a lot from Korea:
The original pronunciation of China was Chi-na in Korean, Qi-na in Chinese, and Ji-na in Japanese. Chi-na means a branch. Chi-na