Goguryeo Controversies

The Goguryeo controversies are disputes between China and South Korea on the history of Goguryeo, an ancient kingdom located mostly in present-day Northeast China and North Korea. At the heart of the Goguryeo controversy is whether Goguryeo is a part of Chinese history exclusively, Korean history exclusively, separate from both, or shared by all. During the 1980s, Chinese scholarship was liberated from the strictures of the Maoist era, and social scientists began studying the history of Goguryeo, challenging the conventional view that Goguryeo was exclusively part of Korean history. In 2002, the Northeast Project conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), which claimed historical kingdoms of Korea as Chinese regional provinces, sparked a major academic and diplomatic controversy, as Korean and international experts on Goguryeo history accused the Chinese government of using history for political purposes. In response, in 2004 South Korea established the Goguryeo Research Foundation (renamed the Northeast Asian History Foundation in 2006), and summoned its Chinese ambassador. In 2007, the Northeast Project ended, and the study of Goguryeo history in China has dramatically declined. Nonetheless, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences continues to disseminate its much criticized historical perspective on its homepage.

Various analyses of the controversy have focused on external motivations for the reevaluation of history, including Korean irredentism towards adjacent Chinese territory, the possibility of North Korean collapse, and the challenge to China from transnational separatism. Nationalist historiography has inflamed both sides of the debate, as Korean nationalism treats the themes of a powerful Korean Goguryeo and independence from China as central, while Chinese nationalism stresses the inviolability of its territory and the unity of its ethnic groups. Some scholars have also criticized the projection of modern-day national identities onto ancient peoples.