Three Kingdoms of Korea

It's not so much dramas centering around the Shilla and Baekje but the dramas which are focusing on Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Barhae:  namely those about Jumong, Dae Joyeong, and Yeon Gaesomun.  I hear a Gwanggaeto one is also in the works.

There wouldn't be any strains with the Chinese government if the PRC had not made claims to Korean history in the first place.

Plus, if the history is shared, the media corporations have every right to make these dramas don't they?

For more discussion on the accuracy of the depiction of historical events in movies, go to the following thread:

The drama you watched was on Admiral Yi (I Sunsin, I Sunshin, etc)  He battled Hideyoshi's navy during the Imjin Waeran (1592 � 1598)  He served the Joseon dynasty which was from 1392-1910.  The Joseon was the last Korean monarchy (We're considering Joseon and the Daehan Empire as the same entity).

As for Korean history, wiki's done an amazingly good job of summing it up and including just about every entity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korea

Originally posted by flyingzone For more discussion on the accuracy of the depiction of historical events in movies, go to the following thread:   http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=13049   Due to the generally more limited budget for TV productions, I have a feeling that they pay even less attention to the accuracy of the depiction of historical events.   I am pretty sure dramas have been made in China that depict Sino-Korean history from a purely Chinese perpective, so they shouldn't complain about Korea doing the same thing from their own perspective. The bottom line is, no one really has any exclusive claim to "the truth" since history is always open to interpretation, which of course depends on the background of the person who does the interpretation.   If I spoke Korean, I would love to watch these dramas.

Edited by The Charioteer - 10-Jul-2006 at 03:28

Books in South Korea are published at the discretion of the publisher.  I have no idea how it works in China, but the government has no real control over what is published in South Korea.  You can find all sorts of wierd little books but just because you find it on some book shelf in some book store somewhere doesn't mean that the information inside is necessarily mainstream.  As with all things, what you read is to be taken with a grain of salt. 

The internet is even more open in this respect.  Whereas in publications content needs to pass by the eye of an editor/publisher, the internet has no such restraints (in the South Korean context) and anyone with whatever crazy theory they have can express their sentiments, hence the existence of sites like those advocating the belief in the existence of such fantastic monsters like the Chupacabra. 

It's not too hard to believe then that you would find Koreans (or Korean impersonators) inhabiting cyber space that would spout rubbish such as the out of no where idea that master Kong Zi was actually Korean.

As for the book itself, I'll give it one thing:  it's got some pretty pictures.  I've seen this particular book come up over and over and it's mostly full of garbage inspired by the extreme nationalist view on history.  Thankfully, this is not the mainstream and is quite far from it.

Not to say that Korean academia is not tainted at all.  If a scholar ever claimed that Korean industry was helped at least indirectly by previous build up during the colonial era, he or she would find themselves shunned and unread, but that kind of bias occurs in every nation.  It follows the logic that most people don't want to read bad things about themselves.  Hence claims in some Japanese textbooks that the Rape of Nanjing never happened when it so obviously did.

The same thing is apparent when I see Chinese state papers such as Xinhua give articles on Goguryeo.  The information is usually the same.  "China is proud of its Goguryeo sites and China's kingdom of Goguryeo.  Goguryeo was a local ethnic minority and local government of China that never developed its own writing but instead utilized Chinese characters. Goguryeo received Buddhism from China" etc etc.  As you can see the tactic here is totally ignoring Goguryeo's own acheivments and focusing solely on its relationship to China giving the false impression that Goguryeo did not stand on its own but was absolutely dependent on China without ever directly stating it.

The point?  Yes I agree, all nations often horribly distort their history and the histories of other nations.  Is the extreme Korean nationalism you find on this website mainstream in South Korea?  Absolutely not.

I'd like to see your Japanese website.  Keep in mind that some websites exist simply to spread lies and hate.  Like I said, take informaiton with a grain of salt.

Korean historical dramas put much emphasis on the drama part