Missiles, Marathons, Memorial Stones: Figuring Out North Korea and China

BEIJING â€" There has been a frenzy of tea-leaf watching of North Korea - will it launch a ballistic missile, destroy Seoul, or, in a surprisingly relaxed note, hold an international marathon in Pyongyang on Sunday to mark the birthday on Apr. 15 of the founder of the nation, Kim Il-sung, as Japan’s NHK World reports, citing North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency

But for all the intense focus on the North, perhaps more attention should be paid to China. Attention of a different sort, that is.

Recently, speculation appears to be growing among United States officials that China is shifting its position on supporting North Korea, long the country’s only major ally and traditionally as close as “lips and teeth.”

Yet on the ground - or perhaps in the ground - here in northeast Asia, there are concerns among Koreans that China’s interest may be motivated by something very different: territorial claims. In other words, China isn’t really interested in aligning itself more closely with the U.S. on North Korea, because it has its own game plan. All it has to do is ensure that U.S.-North Korean relations remain terrible, as they are, and it increases its influence over the region, politically, economically and strategically.

As the Beijing-based journalist, Francesco Sisci, wrote in a column in the Asia Times Online: “Some Chinese believe the North Korean nuclear test was actually aimed at China, not at South Korea or the U.S. They underscored that for the first time China and the US were informed at the same time about the experiment. In the past, China was informed first.”

Mr. Sisci didn’t address the issue of territorial claims, but wrote: “Pyongyang is tired of being used as a passive pawn in China’s bigger foreign policy plans,” adding, “The ideal situation for Beijing would be a regime in Pyongyang that gives up its nuclear weapons and embraces wider economic reforms.”

For evidence of deep suspicion among Koreans about China, people need look no further than the reported discovery late last year of a memorial stone from the Koguryo, a dynasty that ruled approximately the territory of North Korea (and some of the South) and large parts of China’s northeastern provinces, flourishing for 700 years until 1,300 years ago.

“China conducting closed research into ancient Korean dynasty,” read a headline in The Hankyoreh, a South Korean newspaper. “Observers say work on the Koguryo stele is an attempt to incorporate it into Chinese history.”

The issue is not new. In 2004, China-South Korean relations soured over it. As my colleague, James Brooke, reported at the time, the tensions were prompted, among other things, by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, calling the kingdom a “subordinate state that fell under the jurisdiction of the Chinese dynasties and was under the great influence of China’s politics, culture and other areas.”

That year, too, the Chinese Foreign Ministry deleted references to Koguryo from the Korean history section on its Web site. A Chinese government study group, the Northeast Project, had been set up two years previously, in 2002, to establish the kind of history Beijing was looking for, and issued academic papers bolstering the position that the ancient kingdom was merely a Chinese vassal state.

Protests erupted in South Korea. But North Korea is no less sensitive about China’s claims to the kingdom, which Koreans of all kind see as the forerunner of their nation.

As my colleague in Seoul, Choe Sang-hun, explained back then, two-thirds of Koguryo’s historical territory lies within contemporary China, and Beijing wants to forestall any future Korean claim over its northeastern territory, which is home to large ethnic Korean communities.

At Jilin University, in Jilin province, which borders North Korea, the archaeologist Wei Cuncheng is a key researcher into the bygone dynasty and worked on the Northeast Project, according to the university’s Web site.

Today, Mr. Wei and others are engaged in a research project that began in 2011 and is due to run until 2015, on Koguryo and Bohai culture (the Bohai is the name of a sea area off China’s northeast coast.) It’s a “major project” of the national social sciences foundation, the Web site says.

So what is the newly discovered memorial stone that’s provoking interest

The stele, which appears to have been constructed around 414 A.D., was discovered last July in Maxian near Ji’an city in Jilin province, though the discovery was not announced until the beginning of January 2013, The Hankyoreh wrote.

Known as a stele, it’s the third such object to be discovered in the area, wrote The Hankyoreh. And the same people on the Northeast Project are involved: “The Hankyoreh confirmed that the research team includes a large number of scholars who took part in the Northeast Project, which was controversial for its distortions of Koguryo history,” it wrote.

“Officials in the city of Ji’an in Jilin Province, northeast China, where the new Koguryo stele was discovered, assembled a guidance team for protection and study of the gravestone. The research team, according to an announcement posted recently by Ji’an’s Cultural Administration on a local government website, includes Wei Cuncheng, professor at Jilin University.”

Concerns are being raised that China may use the results of the study of the new Koguryo stele to reinforce its argument that Koguryo belongs to China, the site wrote.

So amid all the talk of missiles and marathons, it’s worth noting the story of the memorial stone, which points to older, deeper issues at work here in Northeast Asia - and to China’s unique interests in the region.