After being repeatedly splashed with ink by some China media, the South Korean side finally responded. The South Korean Embassy in China sent a statement to Southern Metropolis Daily, saying that it was "deeply worried and concerned" about the so-called false reports that Korean professors claimed that "poet Li Bai was Korean", "Sun Yat-sen was Korean", "Confucius was Korean" and "Koreans invented Chinese characters". The statement pointed out that most of these reports that "China culture was taken away by South Korea" were found to have no factual basis. Some reports regard one person's opinion as the general position of Korean nationals, distorting the facts and speculating wildly.
After reading this statement, I was a little in distress situation. It seems that the farce of "the cultural dispute between China and South Korea" has attracted the attention of the Korean government. At least South Korea is worried that such news reports will affect China people's attitude towards South Korea. In the past two years, I have written two comments related to Korean culture, and I feel a certain national sentiment from some comments made by netizens on the title of "Bangzi". As long as I talk about Korea, I mostly hate and despise it. The spread of this emotion has something to do with this imaginary "cultural dispute".
I remember that "Ha-Han" was still a fashion a few years ago, but since gangneung danoje festival successfully applied for World Heritage in the United Nations in 2005, a virtual cultural dispute has started. The media has long explained that although the origin of gangneung danoje festival is related to the Dragon Boat Festival in China, it is not the same as the custom of the Dragon Boat Festival. It mainly refers to a local ritual activity, most of which are performed by the unique gods in Korea, such as the Daguanling Mountain God. It's just that the Korean people take the Dragon Boat Festival as a time point to welcome various belief activities of Saturnalia. Although there are Confucian rituals, witchcraft rituals are mostly Korean cultural content. Even if Korean people celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, they eat dwarf cakes and drink coix seed juice, which is quite different from the custom of the Dragon Boat Festival in China.
This is a common phenomenon in some homologous cultural circles. Although some customs originated in a certain place, they will be absorbed and accepted by neighboring countries or regions in the long historical and cultural exchanges, and will evolve into their own unique customs, which is a normal state of cultural inheritance and development.
This normality has become a kind of competition in the mouth of some cultural officials, experts and the media. It seems that "applying for inheritance" is regarded as applying for a patent. In fact, "applying for a legacy" and applying for a patent are completely two concepts. As long as the project you declare has its own unique historical heritage and cultural characteristics, you can also "apply for heritage". The application for World Heritage is the recognition of the protection status of traditional culture, not the official recognition of the origin of culture.
However, it is undeniable that this fake "cultural dispute" has really caused some management departments to panic. Over the years, the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China has made great progress. A closer look at the interest chain behind the "cultural dispute" will also benefit people, that is, those departments and institutions in charge of cultural heritage protection, who want to use an imaginary "cultural war" to promote the protection of domestic cultural heritage. Therefore, the sense of competition in the economic field is introduced into the identification of cultural origin.
The most important feature of culture is inclusiveness. Any great cultural form will never develop only in one region, including ancient Greek culture, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism. The value and ideological resources behind a cultural form will naturally take root everywhere if they meet the needs of history. A strong culture relies on communication and integration with other cultures to show its strength, not on competing for its origin. You have a strong and pure lineage, which has been lost in people's lives today. In the final analysis, it is a weak culture.
I think the so-called cultural dispute between China and South Korea has always been regarded as a folk farce by Korean academic circles, and few scholars have participated in this debate. No one with a little knowledge of history will take part in this argument. China and South Korea have deep historical roots. China has a history of governing Korea since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Therefore, it is a normal state of mind for some Korean scholars to want to strip off the colonial factors in culture through some cultural ways in the contemporary era. However, history cannot be changed after all. China, in particular, has a tradition of compiling history and is the country with the most continuous and complete history in the world. It is almost impossible to change people's historical cognition in such a culture.
This is an era of cultural diversity, and it is also a cultural gesture that a big country should have to treat various international cultural phenomena with an inclusive attitude. Tolerance means that society can tolerate different voices without fear of being suppressed; It also means that people no longer treat cultural phenomena that they don't understand with extreme views. Only by building this kind of tolerant cultural psychology can the national mood not appear so changeable, narrow and short-sighted. Tolerance does not mean losing vitality, but doing more rational thinking about cultural phenomena, less hatred and hostility, and more understanding and warmth. Only in this way can the media resources be used on those issues worthy of criticism, instead of fighting some boring war of words like the "cultural dispute between China and South Korea".