- An antiquity igniting the fiery debate in academic circles of history between Korea and Japan, claiming their historical supremacy over each other
I remember reading a very intriguingly written article, suggesting an anthropological viewpoint placed in the epilogue of the book 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' authored by Jared Diamond who won the Pulitzer Prize for this book.
Saving my time by rummaging the pages of this book to verify what was stated exactly, roughly speaking, his idea was Korean and Japanese people can be considered a twin when their genomes are analyzed, from the anthropological perspective.
His idea must be quite fair and objective as a guileless historian without any malicious intention towards the Korean people since he has persistently maintained a very favorable viewpoint for Korea.
I giggled. Jared is believed to be quite knowledgeable about east Asia's political situations including the one for the Korea-Japan relationship as well as its sensitive historical background, so his witty suggestion made me oddly delightful.
Isn't it already told by an ancient idiom 'Won Gyo Geun Gong (遠交近攻)?; a country should ally with a distant country and for the nearby one, it has to attack it. It has been always the case that the acutest confrontation occurs between the neighboring countries, which doesn't leave out the relationship between Korea and Japan either.
I want to think about the Sword in Seven Branches that has triggered fierce confrontations for their historical pride's sake.
Mom once talked about the Sword in Seven Branches, the Baekje Dynasty, the Japanese Imperial court, and the relationship of in-between of these three.
It might be an appallingly complicated and incomprehensible topic for blog writing. While mom studied historical articles, she didn't focus on Korean only, so she is very favorable and open-minded towards either Sinocentric or Japanesecentric historical viewpoint as well as any significant viewpoint of other countries.
The late Professor Choi who taught dad in high school and even in university accidentally researched the ancient relationship between Korea and Japan with a multitude of convincing historical pieces of evidence and facts and published lots of theses, debating the then mainstream colonial view for Korean history.
Perhaps because of that, dad is sometimes opinionated about Koreacentric historical ideas, and even Hwan Dan Go Gi (桓檀古記) unauthenticated by historians is not infeasible to his acceptance of ancient Korean history.
Of course, mom is harsh against his view of Korean history in this regard, telling him it was just wishful thinking and no more than that. As for this, I have no idea about it since I don't know about it. How I muse the historical things is just for fun, which is quite shallow; when things get deep, you won't hear anything from me.
Even within a mediocre household, the fissure exists in how one should see the ancient relationship between Korea and Japan and there is antiquity that added fuel to this fire for its debate. It is the Sword in Seven Branches.
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