Smoothing Out the Wrinkles

Since the formal founding of the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department in 1972, Harvard has offered a plethora of courses and workshops on various East Asian societies and their respective histories . From the basic survey courses on China, Japan, and Korea that dot the Core Curriculum to advanced seminars in various regional dialects, Harvard has almost always provided an avenue for those who wish to study even the most esoteric of topics.

For those interested in early Korean history, however, even Harvard’s seemingly unlimited academic resources have offered little in the way of a definitive curriculum—until last week, when the Northeast Asian History Foundation, a nonprofit research group based in Seoul, South Korea, announced that it would be donating $1 million to Harvard’s Korea Institute over a five-year period. The grants will be used to fund the Early Korea Project, an interdisciplinary inquiry into the premodern history of the Korean Peninsula.

The aims of the Early Korea Project are admirable, and we applaud the Northeast Asian History Foundation for its generous and much-needed financial donation. While the study of premodern Korean history has been sidelined by much larger and better-funded inquiries into Chinese and Japanese history for many years, a new focus on the early years of Korean civilization offers the potential to not only discover the rich and vibrant roots of contemporary Korean culture, but can also serve as a diplomatic salve for an increasingly embittered academic and political exchange between the two Koreas and their neighbors.

As an academic venture, the Early Korea Project stands to offer much to those interested in the nuances of Korean history. Due to repeated invasions by its neighbors, Korean culture is missing portions of its historical heritage. Even before the Mongol invasions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or the Japanese invasions of the later years, Korea had already witnessed much war with its Chinese neighbors to the north . This history of conflict had an unfortunate and devastating effect on the preservation of important national treasures—including many secrets of the legendary Korean celadon pottery, and roughly 80 percent of the Buddhist paintings produced during the Golden Age of Korea . As such, because of its unique institutional affiliation, the Early Korea Project is the academic community’s best bet for re-discovering the lost portions of Korean history on a comprehensive level.

In addition, the Early Korea Project will provide benefits to contemporary Korea and also its neighbors by providing historical clarity without becoming needlessly enmeshed in regional politics. An international “hotspot” for more than a half-century, the Korean peninsula still faces fiery territorial and historical debates. Most notably, genuine territorial disputes arose in 1986 after a Chinese researcher authored an article asserting that that Koguryo, an ancient kingdom long considered to be one of the first Korean states by both Korean and non-Korean historians alike, had actually been proto-Chinese in origin. While seemingly trivial, these territorial clashes cannot be taken lightly given the extreme sensitivity of both the Communist regimes in China and North Korea.

The Early Korea Project represents a unique opportunity to clarify the historical facts on the ground–to highlight the cultural heritage of an understudied region and provide an objective, transparent—and most importantly, academically honest—appraisal of land claims. As an academic institution of the highest caliber, Harvard owes it to itself and the Northeast Asian History Foundation to utilize this money well.