In search of family roots

By Shim Jae-yun

Out of curiosity about my integrity, I have been longing to know about the origin of my family. Fortunately enough, along with three others who have the same family name as mine (Shim), I recently had a chance to visit a small village in Huizhou, Zhejiang Province, in China. The Zhudun village is one of many famous places in China where Shim (Shen in Chinese) families flourished for thousands of years. It was kind of tracking down the origins of my family.

A silk merchant, Shim Man-seung, immigrated to Goryo in 1110 to settle in Poongsan (currently Andong in North Gyeongsang Province) to become the progenitor of Shim families in Korea, according to chronicles published by the village and the genealogy of the Shen family.

Other data show Shim families dating back 4,000 years ago during the Zhu Dynasty whose emperor Mu sent his offspring to the Shen Dynasty. Historian Shim Baek-gang who was in the group with me said the Shen Dynasty lasted for more than 500 years and its descendants came to have Shen as their surname in honor of their ancestors.

There are some six million Shen families in China including some 500 in the village, compared to some 270,000 in South Korea. There are about 250 family names in Korea many of which originated in China including major surnames Kim, Lee, Kang, Cho, Jang, Oh and Ryu. The Hyun family, led by former prime minister Hyun Soong-jong, was also said to be exploring their roots in China. China has more than 4,000 family names.

A global annual event took place in Fuzian Sheng last year, attracting some 2,000 Shim family members from around the globe, including Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and the United States. Each nation has its own organization for Shim families.

Many foreigners came to the peninsula and became the progenitors of their own family lines. One of them is Ly Yong-sang of the Hwasan Ly family who came to Hwasanmyeon, Ongjingun, Hwanghae Province in 1226. Ly, a prince, arrived here along with his relatives to avoid a political coup in his home country which is now called Vietnam.

A sympathetic King Gojong bestowed land to them and Ly and his descendents settled in the region. According to national statistics compiled in 2000, there were some 230 households of the Hwasan Lys in South Korea numbering 1,775. When members of the Ly family association visited Vietnam in 1995, then party general secretary Do Muoi and other Vietnamese leaders welcomed them, acknowledging them as the descendents of the Vietnamese royal family.

Since then, it has become customary for any Vietnamese leaders to visit the Ly families when visiting here, enabling them to play a bridging role between the two countries.

There was a risk in our recent visit to China as it could have been used as propaganda by the Chinese authorities in their so-called Northeast Project, asserting the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo as one of its provinces. Even the fact that the ancestor of the Shim families came from China can bolster China’s claim of territorial and racial dominance on the peninsula and the Korean people.

But what China should not forget is that the people in China’s Northeastern provinces belong to the Dongi race (eastern people), widely referring to the Korean people. The Dongi area covered Shandong, Hubei, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Some scholars like Prof. Jin Tae-ha of Inje University even claim the Chinese characters were developed by the Dongi people, not by the Han people, who are regarded as the authentic Chinese. Many Chinese history books including the Sikuquansu prove that Han refers to those people who lived in the middle part of China around Shanxi Sheng.

The history of immigration and neutralization is a common global phenomenon, and it should be used as a messenger of peace and cooperation between relevant countries, rather than being exploited with adroit political motives.