뉴스레터

At a time when forming an awareness of history that suits the global age has become necessary more than ever, Professor Shim Jae-hoon, a new member of the Northeast Asian History Foundation's advisory committee, discusses his idea of "truthful history" and the issues in the Korean awareness of history covered in his book "Examining Korean History Through Ancient China." He also offers advice on the future direction of historical research based on the current research trends on ancient Chinese and Korean history. _ Editor's note

Interviewer: Kim In-hee (Research fellow, NAHF Research Institute of Korea-China Relations)

Shim Jae-hoon (Professor, History Department of Dankook University & Member, NAHF Advisory Committee)

After studying history at Dankook University, Professor Shim Jae-hoon acquired his doctoral degree in the Chinese history of Western Zhou (西周史) from the University of Chicago's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Professor Shim Jae-hoon began teaching east Asian history at Dankook University since 2003 and is also serving as dean of the university's college of humanities and the director of the university library. His book "Godae jungguk e ppajeo hanguksa reul baraboda" [Examining Korean History Through Ancient China] was published in 2016 and he has translated into Korean "State Formation in Early China" (2006) and "Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius" (2011).

Q1. Since you newly joined the Northeast Asian History Foundation's advisory committee this year, we would appreciate it if you could briefly introduce yourself to the readers of the NAHF newsletter.

Shim Jae-hoon To be honest, I'm a bit worried because I joined the advisory committee without knowing much about what is expected of me, but I'm nevertheless very honored to be doing this interview. It's a pleasure to be able to communicate like this with the readers of the NAHF newsletter. To people like myself who study history as a profession, we are indeed grateful to anyone who takes an interest in history. I sincerely hope the readers will come to care more about the Northeast Asian History Foundation as well.

Q2. You described yourself as a "non-mainstream historian" in the book you published last year, so is there a particular reason behind that description?

Shim Jae-hoon Ever since my book "Examining Korean History Through Ancient China" was published in August last year, quite a few people have actually asked me how someone who studied in the United States and has become a professor at a major university consider himself as non-mainstream. However, the reason for bringing up that expression in my book was perhaps because I wanted to point out how rigid Korean academia has been, enough for even someone like myself to feel like a minority in the field of historical research. Since problems caused by a "educational caste system" have long existed in Korean society, my reaction may appear sensitive, but I do feel that sectarianism has been even more prevalent in academia. Of course, things have definitely improved over time. The fact that I'm doing an interview like this may be proof of that. I just hope criteria aside from research skills and scholarly achievements can at least be eliminated from Korean academia.

Q3. Your master's thesis "A Study on the Formation of Chinese States" from 1988 shows that you examined sources on Erlitou (二里頭) and the walled towns Yanshi shangcheng (偃師商城) and Zhengzhou shangcheng (鄭州商城). Weren't such sources difficult to get your hands on at the time in Korea?

Shim Jae-hoon At the time there were quite a few photostat copies of foreign publications on Chinese history available, but it was still difficult for me to collect sources since the topic of my study was rather rare. Luckily, Professor Yoon Nae-hyun, my advisor at the time, had been subscribing many publications through JP Books (三聯書店) in Hong Kong, even Chinese university newspapers published in the 1980s. So, his subscriptions were very helpful, but there was some material still out of my reach. A close college friend of mine was living in New York city back then, so that friend took a couple of days to find, copy, and send me all the material I'd been looking for from the Columbia University library. I was pretty lucky. And I was surprised by the fact that a university library possessed such Chinese and Japanese material.

Q4. How do researchers in the United States study ancient Chinese history? Could you please tell us about your experience of studying at an American university?

Shim Jae-hoon There are about ten or so universities in the United States that study ancient Chinese history in depth and it's difficult to generalize since they all have characteristics of their own. From my experience at the University of Chicago, studies in the west on any foreign region including China starts with the language. Courses on the Chinese language and characters are available at a variety of levels at the University of Chicago's Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and I actually began at the entry level. Once students have mastered the basics of a region's language, they move on to course work and in my case, my area of specialty and my advisors influenced me to mainly engage in studying sources themselves. For example, seminars are offered on excavated sources like oracle bone script or bronze script that start by reading the script and then develop into authoring a paper based on that script. The same method is applied to studying classics such as Shijing (詩經), Shujing (書經), or Zhouyi (周易) by training students to read such material accurately, write short papers on issues involving their content, and help them to develop such works into a research article. I was actually hoping to be introduced to fascinating theories in the United States, but I mostly ended up acquiring a meticulous research method focused on substantiation. Of course, I also did have opportunities to take other courses in Chinese studies, including the course on art history by Professor Wu Hung (巫鴻).

Q5. There must be differences between those in China and the United States in terms of why, how, and what they study about ancient Chinese history, so what do you think those differences particularly are?

Shim Jae-hoon I would say there's basically a huge difference in how they respectively recognize the object of their studies. The Chinese have immense pride over their own history and culture. And that is actually understandable considering the enormous amount of accomplishments made in archaeology. People in the West also admit that it's great, but they have no reason to take pride in such accomplishments. So, their studies on ancient Chinese history can practically be understood as being done out of pure academic passion. They start out from a point different from Chinese researchers who wish to further glorify ancient China.

When it comes to recognizing ancient literature, Chinese scholars tend to trust antiquity (信古) whereas American scholars tend to doubt antiquity (疑古) the way the Chinese scholar Gu Jiegang used to. Yet, it is important to note that even scholars in the West acknowledge the fact that ancient Chinese history is one of the most dynamic fields of study in the humanities because various new source material opens up possibilities to re-examine previous research.

Q6. What is the American academia's take on Chinese archaeological research? For instance, based on old documents, some scholars in China are attempting to project mythic figures into archaeological remains in order to broaden the spectrum of ancient Chinese history.

Shim Jae-hoon That may be possible in areas of mythology, but I doubt there are many researchers taking such an approach in historical research. The remains of Erlitou I studied for my master's thesis are now widely recognized in Chinese academia as being linked to the capital of late Xia (夏) dynasty. However, studies published in English still do not use the terms Erlitou culture or Erlitou state nor do they conclude that the remains of Erlitou of are those of the Xia dynasty. Because there is no clear proof to support such claims. For example, the book "State Formation in Early China" (2006) I translated into Korean was originally authored in English by the Chinese scholars Chen Xingcan (陳星燦) and Liu Li (劉莉). Of course, it is difficult to consider Professor Liu Li as a Chinese scholar since he now teaches at Stanford University, but in any case, although Erlitou remains is a major topic of the book, there is no mention in the book of its relation to the Xia dynasty. Yet, in a research paper authored in Chinese where the same authors covered content nearly similar to their book, the equation "Erlitou = Xia dynasty" was adopted.

Q7. We know it's not your area of expertise, but we were wondering if you could tell us what you know about how much research on ancient Korean history has been done in the United States.

Shim Jae-hoon There are very few researchers studying premodern Korean history in the United States as well as Europe, so it would be safe to say that there are almost none studying ancient Korean history. If we consider the period of the three kingdoms as part of ancient Korean history, there would be three or four specialists. Professor Pai Hyung-Il at UC Santa Barbara wrote about the Nangrang commandery in his doctoral thesis, but has since primarily focused on studying the modern and contemporary history of Korea. Also, Doctor Mark Byington who recently published a book on the history of Buyeo, Professor Jonathan Best specializing in the history of Baekje, and Professor Richard McBride II specializing in the history of Silla comes to mind. Research on ancient Korean history in the United States is pretty much unexplored territory and I believe language is the greatest barrier. That sort of study requires the acquisition of at least Chinese and Japanese in addition to Korean, which is no easy feat for people from the West to pull off. And since the field has failed to attract much interest, there are no faculty positions available for experts in ancient Korean history. That prevents graduate students from setting foot into the field in the first place and thus creates a vicious cycle. Just as the revival of Japanese studies in the United States has been largely supported by the Japanese government, Korea also needs to put policies into place to provide more scholarships and research funds so that experts in ancient Korean history can be raised in the United States.

Q8. We know you’ve archaeologically studied the state Jin, one of the five hegemons from the Spring and Autumn period. Although the state lasted for more than a century during the so-called “Age of Hegemons (覇),” ordinary readers are likely to still be unfamiliar with it. Could you please give an introduction of the state?

Shim Jae-hoon The Chinese state Jin (晉) used to be the most powerful among all others during the Spring and Autumn period. Three out of the seven warring states Han, Wei, and Zhao were, after all, successor states of Jin. However, my doctoral thesis and the studies I conducted afterwards are not focused on when Jin was at the height of its power, but more on the process of how Jin came into power. That was because plenty of new archaeological discoveries related to Jin, such as the tombs of Jin feudal lords from the Western Zhou period, were being made. So, the scope of my research ranges from political developments in the southwestern part of Shanxi (山西省) enfeoffed during the early days of Western Zhou (11th century BCE) and up to the point when the Duke Wen of Jin (晉文公) ascended to power to receive the title of hegemon in 632 BCE. Before the tombs of Jin feudal lords were discovered, Jin was generally understood as a Chinese state that developed by maintaining close relations with barbarians from the north and west referred to as rong-di (戎狄). Based on the archaeological progress made on Jin from the Western Zhou period and other inscriptions, I was able to make the argument that Jin had actually been quite close to Zhou royalty and that its friendly relations with rong-di started to be formed after entering the Spring and Autumn period. I’m now almost done wrapping up my work on a book that will encompass all the research I’ve done so far on Jin.

Q9. In your book “Examining Korean History Through Ancient China” released last year, you lamented over Korean research on its own ancient history and the narrow view of history centered around the Korean race, so could you be more specific about your concerns?

Shim Jae-hoon I was trying to express my pity toward the firmly rooted perception preoccupied with the Korean race, which tends to limit people’s idea of history to the history of Korea, although this tendency has grown much weaker than before. Words like globalization or internationalization have long become far too common to describe what is happening in our world today and at least economically, the entire world is now operating under a single system. However, it almost scares me to find that the only history education freshmen have received before entering college has been on Korean history. I’m doubtful as to whether those students will be able to become globally competent without knowing about modern Western history, let alone Oriental history, that contributed to the foundation of today’s world. The same goes for Chinese history. Wouldn’t we be able to fare better by getting to know the history of China when there are already many who depend on trading with the Chinese to make a living and our dependence on China will only grow over time? I’m even more sorry to see the hassle going on over the government-designated Korean history textbook when our country needs to pursue diversity more than ever.

Q10. As someone who’s already traveling the path, please give a word of advice to students who wish to study history or those who plan to professionally conduct research on Chinese history.

Shim Jae-hoon There’s an important fact I came to realize from teaching a variety of students at the history department. Students who only focus on getting good grades on subjects like history in high school are likely to be slower at achieving academic progress once they become a history major in college. Students proficient in Korean and other languages tend to show more excellent progress. That is because success in historical research or any other study in the humanities for that matter depends on how well you read and write. And for studying the histories of other countries like China, you would also have to be proficient in Chinese, Chinese characters, Japanese, and English. So instead of trying to become familiar with sophisticated theories or interesting research findings, I would like to encourage students to build up their basic skills in language, even though it’s difficult and takes long.