제 10 호 Our Perception of Chinese Culture Slowly Penetrating Our Life
Kicker: ENTERTAINMENT (CULTURE)
Our Perception of Chinese Culture Slowly Penetrating Our Life
What is China’s Northeast Project?
Yeong-Jin Choi, Eun-Jae Choi, Reporter
pch39067@gmail.com, Weloveeun123@naver.com
Sinocentrism*, the “Book-Bul Theory”, and Confucianism* all share the similarities; that they are deeply connected with the relationship between China and Korea since the past. Nowadays, Koreans are worried about the fine dust problems China is triggering that can cause a severe damage to a human body, and crimes that Korean ethnic minority groups of China are committing. COVID-19, a catastrophic disease worldwide has been a serious matter all around the world. Koreans too, are still suffering with the Corona Virus. Koreans are exploding with anger over the fact that the Corona Virus originated in China, and it has ignited far more critical issues. China’s Northeast Project is what Koreans are mainly focusing on now. This matter must be perceived as even more of a serious problem because it is slowly penetrating our life without us noticing. Therefore, by understanding of the examples of China’s Northeast Project and how the Korean twenties think of China, we must learn of the attitude of what we ought to have.
*Sinocentrism: Any ethnocentric political ideology that regards to China to be central or unique relative to other countries.
*Confucianism: A philosophy based on the ideas of the Chinese philosopher Confucius.
Choseun Gumasa and China’s Northeast Project
“Choseun Gumasa”, a television program from SBS has been seriously criticized and was cancelled due to the protest viewers have made. Although 80 percent of the total shooting has been done and outrageous* financial loss is expected, the drama could not keep on broadcasting. Gae-Ok Park, a writer of the scenario of Choseun Gumasa, has been massively blamed after Chung-Neung-Dae-Gun, a great man and admired by many Koreans as a name of King Sejong has served an exorcism* priest, Gumasa, a Chinese mooncake, Chinese dumpling, and Century Egg*. Even though the background of the drama was Choseun, China’s Northeast Project has been depicted*. What is China’s Northeast Project then? China’s Northeast Project is all kinds of histories and studies China has promoted since 2002 under the purpose of making every history that happened in China’s territory into their own. China claims that ancient Korea, the history of Goguryeo is one part of China’s Northeast Project, which is continuously provoking* a conflict between Korea and China.
Chinese Product Placement of “Choseun Gumasa”
*Exorcism: The process of forcing an evil spirit to leave a person or place by using prayers or magic.
*Century Egg: A Chinese egg-based culinary dish made by preserving duck, chicken, or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months.
*Outrageous: Shocking and morally unacceptable.
*Depict: To represent or show something in a picture or story.
*Provoke: To cause a reaction, especially a negative one.
Product Placement of Goddess Descend
What is PPL? PPL is a konglish* abbreviation for Product Placement, also known as Embedded* Marketing, which is a type of advertising indirectly by exposing the product of a company continuously in the film or drama. It is effective by saying or showing the product over and over, making the viewer to unconsciously think positively of the product, and to buy it afterwards. “Goddess Descend”, a popular drama of tvN was also severely criticized for China’s product placement. At the seventh episode of Goddess Descend, an advertisement of Jingdong, a Chinese e-commerce* platform, was hung widely at the bus station. Plus, at the same episode, there were several posters attached at the convenience store advertising Zihaiguo’s instant cup ramaen. Netizens were worried that the drama may seem heterogeneous* to Koreans, and also called out that even though the drama was made by Chinese money, it has gone way too much.
Chinese Product Placement of “Goddess Descend”
*Konglish: English loanwords that have been appropriated into Korean and include many English words that are used in ways that are not readily understandable to native English speakers.
*Embedded: Fixed into the surface of something.
*e-commerce: The business of buying and selling goods and services on the internet.
*Heterogeneous: Consisting of parts or things that are very different from each other.
Positive Product Placement
In a television program “What’s the Point of Playing?”, Jae-Suk Eu, a famous MC in Korea, was complimented even though he directly did product placement. Since active product placement can ruin the whole context*, viewers usually dislike it. However, it is unusual that the netizens liked his direct product placement. Since many other TV programs are continuously placing Chinese products these days, Jae-Suk Eu eating white rice, Kimchi, Gim-Bugak*, and nurungji was a clear point-out of criticizing cultural China’s Northeast Project and the current situation. This situation emphasized that the netizens do not just hate any kinds of product placement, but only if it does not share any point of views.
Jae-Suk-Eu, Eating Korean Traditional Cuisines in “What’s the Point of Playing”
*Context: The situation within which something exists or happens, and that can help explain it.
*Gim-Bugak: Korean traditional cuisine which is fried seaweed paper coated with glutinous rice paste.
*Nurungji: Korean traditional cuisine also known as crunchy rice, which is thin crust of slightly browned rice at the bottom of the cooking pot.
Korean Culture Being Eroded
Problems related to China not only appear from the outside but also from inside. The petition appeared on the bulletin board of the presidential office ‘Cheong Wa Dae’ on March 29th. "Please withdraw the construction of Chinatown in Gangwon Province*." The petition emerged as a major social issue and closed last month with the consent of as many as 677,80 people. In response, when Gangwon Province Governor* Choi Moon-soon was found to be pushing for a project to build China Dream City in Jeongdongjin, many people argued against it and posted a message on the national petition. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-moon, head of the Chuncheon Central Line Historic Site Preservation Headquarters, expressed his critical stance* on the construction of Chinatown. He said that Chinatown construction is part of the Northeast Project as much as China's most devoted effort, adding that it is the central site that can destroy the Northeast Project, and the prehistoric* sites in Chuncheon, Hongcheon, and Gangwon Province serve as the central site. He said, "The history of the Korean people itself is rooted in China and it is entrenched* in the history that China dominated the entire Northeast Asia, including the Korean people. However, if Chinatown is built in Gangwon Province, China could complete its own Northeast Fair History invasion." Furthermore, the petitioners strongly argued that the central prehistoric site is the world's largest historical site with huge artifacts excavated* and removing such valuable places for foreigners could result in our history being buried as it is. Thanks to these petitions, many petitions are appearing for Pocheon Chinatown in addition to Chuncheon.
In addition, some argued that ‘Hongik people’ should be removed from history textbooks. Min Hyung-bae of the Democratic Party* of Korea proposed a revision to the Framework* Act on Education with 11 ruling party lawmakers. The plan is to delete the expression "under the ideology* of Hongik people" in Article 2's "Education Ideology" altogether and change the phrase "to all citizens." However, the education community protested, "Can we delete the core values that have been building the basic framework of our education since the founding of Korea just because they are abstract?" Not only the educational community but also ethnic religious groups and the people withdrew due to strong opposition. Potentially, problems are constantly occurring in Korea to promote the movement of the Northeast process.
A photo calling for the withdrawal of the Framework Act on Education to delete Hongik human education ideology
*Province : a large section of a country which has its own administration
*Governor : a person who is in charge of the political administration of a region or state
*Stance : form an opinion about something that affects society
*Prehistoric : people and things existed at a time before information was written down
*Entrench : to make it difficult to change
*Excavate : usually use it to talk about large digging projects, like when people excavate in order to construct a foundation for a large building, or when they are digging up an area to look for ancient artifacts or dinosaur bones.
*Democratic Party : the older and more liberal of the two major political parties
*Framework : particular set of rules, ideas, or beliefs which you use in order to deal with problems or to decide what to do.
*Ideology : a set of beliefs, especially the political beliefs on which people, parties, or countries base their actions.
College Students' Perceptions of China
With problems with China continuing to arise, a survey of what university students would think showed very negative results. A total of 40 people answered, 57.5% of the respondents said they were "very unlikely" when asked if there was a positive perception of China, 25% chose "unlikely" and 17.5% chose "normal". In addition, 77.5% answered "yes" when asked about the tendency to avoid buying products related to China or China. And 90% of the respondents said "yes" to whether they felt serious about the Northeast Project, the most controversial issue, indicating that the overall perception of China was very poor. Students could receive the most answers from self-centered thinking as they looted cultures such as fine dust sources, lack of copyright awareness, historical distortion*, communism, corona origin, and Sinocentrism. In addition, about 45% of the questions about "Do you think Korea's influx of immigrants and ethnic Koreans is more important than the opinions of the people?" showed that "very unlikely," indicating that college students who feel many problems not only in China but also in Korea. Finally, if we look at the students' opinions on the Northeast Project process in China, they wrote most of the concernthat, worry about making Korean culture their own, and opinions that this should be treated as important in the program like broadcasting companies. However, these surveys also showed that students tend to have a lot of fragmentary views and subjective thoughts in their opinions, therefore the environment and media that can develop education and accurate judgment on these points should also be considered important.
*Distortion : the changing of something into something that is not true or not acceptable
Cases of China's northeastern process and surveys of actual college students show that relations between Korea and China have overheated. In addition, unlike in the past, as the media developed, many people raised these problems and they have emerged as a central issue. As the Northeastern Process worsens, the phenomenon of losing the identity of Korea's history and culture continues. In this regard, the Korean people should make efforts to protect their culture. The broadcast media and social media, which have a lot of power to pay attention to and prevent China's slowly penetrating Northeastern Process, need a lot of attention when dealing with these issues. Also, people should voice various opinions and point out problems throughnational petitions and constantly argue about China's Northeast Process and history distortions that potentially occur in Korea. However, it is not right to judge China as a whole due to the problems of China's Northeast Process. Since it can cause secondary problems that can even spread to Chinese hatred, we should try to solve the problem by focusing on the problems of the Northeast Process, not on race.
