[Global Issue+] Why China Insists on the 'Kimchi Gongjeong' Controversy

Northeast Project Started After Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
Strengthening Effective Control Over Manchuria Amid Concerns of North Korea's Collapse

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Recently, Baidu, the largest internet encyclopedia in China, sparked international controversy by making the baseless claim that China is the origin country of kimchi and that China's pao cai, a vegetable pickling dish, was transmitted to Korea and became kimchi. The issue escalated to the point where even the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) refuted China's unfounded claims. This is interpreted as part of the Northeast Project, a policy initiative by the Chinese government, leading to the term "Kimchi Project." Despite international rebuttals, it is expected that China will continue to make such unfounded claims, raising concerns about diplomatic friction.

At the end of last month, the British BBC addressed the controversy over the origin of kimchi between Korea and China in a special edition of BBC Travel. Kimchi is already widely recognized internationally as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage of Korea and a food representing Korean identity, yet China is making unreasonable claims. Earlier last month, Chinese state-run media outlets Global Times and Huanqiu Shibao registered China's vegetable pickled food pao cai with the ISO and claimed that kimchi is a type of pao cai and, since it originated from China, Chinese kimchi should be registered as the standard. However, the ISO dismissed China's claims.

China's insistence on such baseless claims is seen as an extension of the Northeast Project controversy that arose in the early 2000s. The Northeast Project, officially named "Northeast Borderland History and Current Situation Series Research Project" by the Chinese government, is a national project that asserts all history that occurred within current Chinese territory belongs to China. It adopts a territorialist perspective, attributing the origins of historical and cultural phenomena passed down since ancient times to China.

Although it is commonly known as a project to reclassify Goguryeo history as Chinese history, it covers various fields. According to the Northeast Asian History Foundation, the project deals with a wide range of issues including ancient Korean history, Korea-China relations, Manchurian regional history, China-Russia relations, Korean Peninsula issues, and other cultural matters. It is presumed that the Chinese government is promoting this project to strengthen effective control over the Northeast region.

Started After Suffering from Japanese Manchuria Historiography in the 1930s

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Chinese government began focusing on this historical project as early as the 1930s. After Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and expanded into Inner Mongolia and across China, it asserted the so-called Manchurian historiography, claiming that Korea and Manchuria, then under Japanese colonial rule, originally shared a single history and culture. Japan used this Manchurian historiography along with the ideology of Naesen Ilche (Japan-Korea unity) to justify its invasion of Manchuria.

In 1935, Japan mobilized government-affiliated scholars such as Hamada Kosaku and Mizuno Seiichi to argue that the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region was a cultural area distinct from China and that it was historically connected to Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. This was directly used to justify Japan's invasion of Inner Mongolia. The League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations (UN), accepted this as consistent with the principle of self-determination of peoples, thereby recognizing the territory of the puppet state Manchukuo established by Japan. Chinese scholars were deeply shocked by this and subsequently conducted various studies to incorporate Manchurian regional history into Chinese history.

Concerns Over Repetition of the 2014 Crimea Incident After Future Korean Unification

[Image source=Yonhap News]

This effort intensified from the 1980s, and the aggressive historical project was publicly launched in the early 2000s. The Chinese government applies this historical project not only to the Northeast region but also to all ethnic minorities within its borders, claiming that the histories of all ethnic minorities originated in China and that separatist movements by these minorities cannot escalate into international issues.

Among ethnic minorities within China, only Korea and Mongolia have established independent states outside China, which is why China is particularly attentive to the Northeast Project. It is presumed that this is due to concerns that if Korea unifies in the near future, the Korean-Chinese Autonomous Prefecture (Joseonjok) might, through a referendum similar to the 2014 Crimea incident, be incorporated into unified Korea.

Accordingly, concerns are growing that China's baseless claims will intensify. China is expected to assert not only the Kimchi Project but also the Hanbok Project, claiming that hanbok originated from China, and to make similar claims over nearly all Korean tangible and intangible cultural heritages as being of Chinese origin.