Distortion of Korea's History - Lahu Is a Descendant of Goguryeo?

 This is the second article Yuri-na sent to Media Today regarding the story of Hangul export project happening in East Timor (2) Media Today media@mediatoday.co.kr East Timor. This series will last up to three films. Yoo graduated from Seoul National University's Department of German Language Education and studied phonetics at the graduate school's linguistics department, and taught Lahu Hangul at Gosan Village in northern Thailand for the production of MBC Hangul Day Special in 2001. Now I work as a copywriter for Daehong Corporation. [Editor Note] On June 22, 2001, I took a flight to Thailand. At that time, I, a graduate student in linguistics, was supposed to appear on a Hangeul Day commemorative show that was proposed by one of the linguistics professors to MBC. The content was to teach Korean characters adapted to Lahu in the Lahu village, one of the ethnic minorities scattered in the mountains of northern Thailand. Northern Thailand is a mountainous highland. In the high mountains here, several ethnic minorities called "sanjok" live with their own language and lifestyle. These ethnic groups were people who wandered through the slash-and-burn fields, most of which originated in Unnam Province, China. From the vicinity of Unnam Province in China to the northern Indochina Peninsula (myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam in the country), these ethnic groups live on a village-wide basis in the alpine region. Among them, it is said that the mountain people living in Thailand were mostly on the Myanmar side and crossed the border to avoid the conflict. They usually make a living by farming mainly on mountain rice, and some villages provide accommodation and food to tourists from all over the world to see their unique lifestyles and traditional clothes, or take pictures in traditional clothes, and live in return. The Lahu are one of those minorities. The "wrong lighting" and "camera directing" Lahu, which follow the taste of the public, are mountain tribes that often appear in Korean broadcast documentaries. The story of the Lahu people, who have heard of it, is an imagination that they are descendants of Goguryeo refugees. It suits the taste of the public so well that I get on the air once in a while when I'm about to forget it. Of course, it's actually complete nonsense. If you do a little research and meet the people of Lahu, it's easy to see that it's not true. Unlike those edited in broadcast programs, their culture, language, and appearance clearly indicate that they are from Unnam Province and are of southern descent. It can be seen from a day of language research that most of the reports on Lahu by those who claim Goguryeo origin are false. Even the text list my professor gave me didn't fit Lahua, so I had to modify it. The people who produce the broadcast know that. The producer, who has extensive experience in producing humanities documentaries, said that the ritual tools of the Lahu Xiamen match exactly those of Unnam Province. All of the production crew knew that the Goguryeo origin theory was nonsense, but when the village chief said, "We came here 30 years ago to avoid war in Burma and settled down," the production was carried out by putting on a false dubbing, "We came from a snowy place." Since it was an outsourced production company, it seemed difficult to go against the theme and production policy designated by the broadcasting company. No wonder, outsourced production is "B." No matter how "A" is in an advantageous world, I think we need a device to prevent A's tyranny when making a documentary, especially a broadcast program that needs to consider the public interest. Most people believe broadcasting documentaries at face value. As a graduate student, it was difficult to put a brake on the work related to the professor without permission, so I stayed still so that the program could be produced and broadcasted. It's the biggest regret I've ever had in my life. At that time, I was the only one who could prevent the distortion of the truth. Living a month and a half in the mountain top village, where the border between Myanmar and Thailand is said to take three hours on foot, you will see how dangerous and uncomfortable it is for them to get the wrong lighting in this way. In the first part, I described the political dangers of spreading Hangul to minorities. They live in Thailand but live in poor minorities without nationality or freedom of residence, so claiming them to be "part of the Korean people" without clear grounds can pose a similar risk. Moreover, it is not right to freely attach their history, which is not recorded in writing. This is not the main point of this article, so let's move on. Let me introduce you to a reliable reference book on this issue. This is Kang Heon's 1994 book, The Golden Triangle. Lahua, a hidden situation where you could learn Hangul in a short period of time, has Romanization, as is most minority languages. The Lahu people have a long history of Christian missionary work, and Roman notation is stably established, and the Lahu Bible, hymn book, dictionary, and Lahu textbook written in Roman letters are spread to a considerable extent. Christianity spread in the villages I went to, and many people knew Romanization. If I had known about this situation beforehand, I might not have stepped into the program. Anyway, what I heard from my teacher, the professor, wasn't like that, so I climbed to the top of the mountain with the production team, thinking that I was doing something very meaningful. Anyway, will they be able to learn Korean for about a month because they have never been to school and cannot communicate with me? People must have learned how to write from the program, right? People learned writing easier than they thought. The local missionary, who taught them Romanization, was also surprised. In my opinion, it is true that Hangul is easier to learn than other letters due to the characteristics of Hangul to be revealed in the next article. However, there were several hidden reasons why the villagers were able to learn Hangul in a short period of time. The Korean Lahu characters I took do not make and collect whole letters like the Korean letters we use. The vowels and consonants are made independent, and vowels are unconditionally written on the right side of the consonants. In addition, Lahu is a language that has no consonants, such as Japanese. There are no nasal consonants even in Japanese. Therefore, it is a Korean-based text, but it will be easier to learn than the Korean letters we use. Also, all the students I taught were people who went to church and knew Roman notation well. Due to various local circumstances, I had no choice but to teach Roman alphabet and Korean notation one-on-one to those who knew Roman alphabet. Of course, it's different from teaching people who have no concept of writing. In addition, it is also a big reason that the villagers paid for learning to write. In fact, there is no need to learn Korean characters from them. That's because, as I mentioned in the first part, the need for them to use their own language in writing is extremely limited, and when necessary, they use the Roman alphabet that they already have. Moreover, they are poor. There is no way that they would voluntarily take time to learn letters for classes that are not even necessary to earn and eat from day to day. Therefore, the production company decided to pay a certain amount of money to the person who mastered the words to them in order to complete the program. So I was able to continue the class in which an average of more than 10 people participated even when the production team returned home from the first shoot. Speaking of "ethnic" reports that precede confirmation of facts, you know why I called this program "show" rather than "documentary"? In fact, most documentary films require a little production. You can't get the scene you want just by putting the camera flat on the way people live. However, in the case of the program I appeared in, the story and background of the program itself were fictional. In addition, in order to establish that I entered the village alone and lived with hospitality from the villagers, I demolished and rebuilt a decent bamboo house. Even though I received money, I still feel like I want to go into a rat hole when I think about the villagers who laughed in front of the camera that was used for an English show and went back again and again. Anyway, on August 7th of that year, I have been wandering around since I returned home after finishing all the filming. I gave up becoming a linguist. Without that, I think I would have become a linguist with excellent ethnic passion, as is often the case with Korean scholars who took Korean as the theme. In our country, being "ethnic" is easily accepted as "good." However, we do not know who and what kind of violence we will use when we rely on the authority of academics and the media without a clear examination of the reason it has awakened. I don't think it's unusual for me to think of that time when I saw some media that wrote articles without checking the facts and even published hasty columns about Hangeul.