hankyoreh

Members of China’s various ethnic groups dressed in their respective heritage attire help convey the Chinese flag during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday. The second person from the left in the closer row is a Korean Chinese woman. (Yonhap News)

Park Min-hee

By Park Min-hee, editorial writer

Indignation spread like wildfire among South Koreans when a Korean Chinese woman appeared wearing a traditional Korean hanbok dress at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

In response to accusations that China is trying to take away Korean culture and history, South Korean presidential candidates all hurried to give their own two cents, issuing comments saying they “opposed China’s ‘cultural project’” or “it’s not hanfu, it’s hanbok,” and even one saying that the ancient Korean kingdoms of Balhae and Goguryeo were “history of the Republic of Korea.”

The fiery debate over where some of these cultural customs and traditions originated has long been raging between “patriotic” keyboard warriors from both countries but has now spread from the cybersphere to the political world, where presidential hopefuls used it as another issue on which they could pick up support. China’s unilateral and biased decision to disqualify two South Korean short track speedskaters on Monday only added fuel to the flames.

But the framing of the appearance of the hanbok at the Olympics as a ploy by China to distort history and claim Korean heritage as their own misses the essence of what is really at issue.

When Han Chinese and 55 ethnic minority groups carried along the Chinese flag at this state-hosted event, the ethnic minorities were all dressed in the traditional attires of their cultures. It’s no wonder that a Korean Chinese participant would wear a hanbok at the ceremony.

The problem has less to do with the clothing than with the intention behind what some believe China is trying to portray. In fact, the most controversial part of the opening ceremony outside of Korea was not the hanbok, but the Uyghur skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, who was chosen to light the Olympic cauldron. Many believe that this was a deliberate move by China, meant to send a message to countries that chose to participate in the diplomatic boycott of the games, like the US, the UK and Japan.

Overseas Uyghur groups and international human rights groups accused China of intentionally trying to whitewash the suffering of many Uyghurs while justifying such human rights violations through the use of Uyghurs that are loyal to the regime.

Dinigeer Yilamujiang, an Olympic skier for China who is Uyghur, lights the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. (AFP/Yonhap News)

At the opening ceremony, China tried to show the world the solidarity and unity of the Chinese nation by choosing to use a Uyghur athlete in its torch-lighting ceremony and having a crowd of minority ethnic groups pass the Chinese flag to its place on the flagpole.

The essence of the problem is that China, which has been telling the US to “stop politicizing the Olympics,” is itself using minority groups to justify its oppressive policies and to emphasize the greatness of China, thereby making Xi look good and helping set the stage for another term in office.

But biased referee calls, meant to stroke the patriotic egos of the Chinese people, are actually broadcasting live to the world the narrow-mindedness of the “Chinese dream.”

In order to respond to this, however, one must be discerning. If the debate over the origin of hanbok explodes between Korea and China whenever a Korean Chinese person appears wearing the costume at a Chinese political event, then should Korean Chinese never wear hanboks?

If China decides that the debate of the origin of kimchi or hanbok is negatively impacting relations between it and Korea and as a result decides to jettison the autonomy of the Korean Chinese people within its borders, would that really be best for Koreans or Korean Chinese?

We mustn’t forget that there was once an era when Korean Chinese could not wear hanboks. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, when the anti-rightist struggle and the Cultural Revolution swept through China, ethnic minorities, including the Korean Chinese, faced immense suffering that included the annihilation of their national culture and being accused of being spies for foreign governments.

National costumes were banned, and everyone was dressed in gray Mao suits.

Sociologist Park Woo of Hansung University says, "In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, the Korean Chinese have struggled to restore their national culture through economic liberalization, thawing relations between North Korea and China, and exchanges with South Korea. So, the Korean Chinese hanbok and traditional culture should be viewed from the perspective of it being part of the Korean community.”

“Since the late 1980s, ethnic minorities wearing traditional costumes have frequently appeared at national events in China, but now we must be wary of all this diversity reverting back to a single, national uniform like the Mao suit again,” Woo continued.

The fundamental problem here exists on a far more expansive plane. After the bloody suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen protests and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chinese leadership has been preoccupied with the security concern that the US could try to pressure China or topple the party’s regime.

As measures were taken to cope with the security anxiety that minorities along the border could be separated and made independent from China, the "Northeast Project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences”— a project used to claim Goguryeo and Balhae as the history of Chinese ethnic minorities — became a diplomatic issue between South Korea and China in the early 2000s.

Now that China is a much stronger nation and the competition for hegemony between it and the US is in full swing, China is pushing more forcefully for an assimilationist policy centered on the Han ethnicity at home while trying to create a Chinese international order by leveraging its economic might abroad.

Circumstances have changed, and if South Korea continues to respond to such instances with the frame of “China claiming Korean culture” it will only miss what’s really at stake and fan the flames of a real “war of hate” between Korea and China.

What, then, should be done? Along with the international community, we must be constantly critical of China's oppression of minorities from the perspective of universal human rights. We must be unwavering in our questioning of its attempt to create a world in which China, as the “big country,” lords over all the “small countries.”

At the same time, however, we must also reflect on the discrimination and hatred that Korean society has shown toward our Korean compatriots in China, which we in South Korea refer to as the “Joseonjok.”

Politicians who set out to become the country's leader must understand that, while China's patriotism and coercive rule are serious problems that can eventually cause a major crisis in South Korea-China relations, they must also keep in mind that jumping aboard the bandwagon of feckless xenophobic hatred will not solve anything.

This is no time to compete with hate and agitation while disregarding medium to long-term diplomatic and security plans that could improve the overall situation with China.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]