동북아역사재단 2022년 08월호 뉴스레터
- Wee Ga-ya, Researcher at the Research Institute of Ancient and Medieval History of Korea
On June 13 (Friday) of this year, I met students through a short lecture at Seongeui Girls' High School in Gimcheon-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do.
I participated as a lecturer in the ‘Visiting Lecture on History and Dokdo in 2022’’ hosted by the foundation. The topic was 'Ancient Korea-Japan Relations.' How can I give a lecture that corresponds to the purpose of the course? What lecture topics would students be interested in and pay attention to while struggling with food coma after lunch since the lecture starts at 1 p.m.? I was thinking about this and that about the lecture.
I remembered a question that one of my juniors had posted on the bulletin board of a small club, based on a resolution he made on his own,
when I was in college decades ago.
The small club was a seminar club where undergraduate history students interested in Asian history selected a topic each week, studied it in advance, and exchanged their thoughts through discussions. My junior who raised the question seemed to be shocked to find out that the so-called “Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government,” systematized by Suematsu Yasukazu (末松保和), uses the activities of Japan recorded on the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great as its main source. “Why would the content of the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great be the basis for the Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government?” He must have thought that the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great, the primary historical source of the time, shows that Japan subjugated Baekje and Silla is clearer evidence than anything else, indicating that ancient Japan dominated the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. He must have believed that he had taken the red pill like Neo in the movie, The Matrix, and he would have thought that he could enlighten the nationalism of his seniors and colleagues based on this foresight.
The memory of the past that suddenly came to mind solved the troubles of the present. I decided to give a lecture on the theme of “Remedying Misunderstandings and Prejudices of Ancient Korea-Japan Relations – Views on the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great and Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government,” which is one of the most popular topics in ancient Korea-Japan relations, but is often misunderstood because how that insistence was developed based on which sources is not known very well.
Views on Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great and Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government
I explained that the 'Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government' is an assertion that "Japan directly controlled the Mimana (Gaya) region of the Korean Peninsula through a prefectural governing body called ‘Nihonfu, and indirectly controlled Baekje and Silla in ancient times." I went on and explained that the problem of the ‘Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government’ was used to distort ancient Korea-Japan relations and as a logic to justify modern Japanese imperialism when it colonized Korea.
For most Koreans, the claim that the 'Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government' is just a fiction will certainly be persuasive if it is based only on the Japanese source, the 『Chronicles of Japan』. However, the problem was that one of the primary sources for this claim was the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great, the primary source of the time. The question of the junior I mentioned at the beginning of this article also started from here. It also seemed to drive away some of the food comae of the students attending the lecture, listening to unfamiliar stories not found in textbooks.
In the so-called ‘Article in the Sinmyo Year’ of the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great, there is a phrase that goes "百殘新羅舊是屬民 由來朝貢 而倭以辛卯年來渡海破 百殘□□新羅以爲臣民 (□ indicates the character that was difficult to decipher)." Since 1883, when an artillery captain, Kageaki Sakou (酒景信), first brought the rubbing of the stele’s inscription to Japan, Japanese academia interpreted this passage as “Japanese crossed the sea and invaded and subjugated Baekje and Silla,” completing the theory of ancient Japan’s domination of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. To them, the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great was an ancient record of Korea-Japan relations in the 『Chronicles of Japan』, which would become an objective record that could prove Japan’s activities in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and its superiority over other countries on the peninsula. Korean academia suggested reading it by taking Goguryeo, the country of King Gwanggaeto, as the subject of the ‘Article in the Sinmyo Year’ in response to the Japanese academia's argument. Lee Jin-hee, a Korean-Japanese historian, mentioned the possibility that the general staff of the Japanese military could have falsified the inscription. However, now that the rubbing of the inscription was prepared has been revealed, the theory of falsifying the inscription seems to be no longer persuasive. In addition, there is also a view that assuming the subject of the ‘Article in the Sinmyo Year’ as “Japan” does not necessarily reinforce Japan's argument. I explained the arguments above in the lecture, moving to the final conclusion.
Japanese Academia Failed to Prove the Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government
Assuming the subject of the ‘Article in the Sinmyo Year’ as “Japan” does not reinforce Japan's argument because the current understanding of the inscription emphasizes that the reader should keep in mind the intentions of the Goguryeo people who made the inscriptions. In other words, the content of the ‘Article in the Sinmyo Year’ reflects the desires of the Goguryeo people, and it cannot be replaced with historical facts as they are. This completely destroys the attempts by Japanese academia to prove the Theory of Mimana Prefectural Government based on the content of the Stele of King Gwanggaeto the Great. After the lecture, the thought that ‘the students who took this lecture will now at least no longer misunderstand ancient Korea-Japan relations based on fragments of knowledge like my junior decades ago’ lingered in my mind on the train going back to Seoul. Perhaps it was a kind of a relief to the resentment in the memories from my school days years ago.
동북아역사재단이 창작한 '‘2022년 찾아가는 역사·독도 강좌’ 출강기 고대 한일관계의 오해와 편견 바로알기 -광개토왕비를 보는 시각들과 임나일본부설-' 저작물은 "공공누리" 출처표시-상업적이용금지-변경금지 조건에 따라 이용 할 수 있습니다.
