NAHF to launch early history research team

Kim Hak-joon, president of Northeast Asian History Foundation

By Park Jin-hai

The Northeast Asian History Foundation (NAHF) will launch a special research team to study ancient Korean history.

Kim Hak-joon, president of NAHF, held a press conference Monday, marking the second half of his three-year tenure, and announced that the state think tank will increase the number of its research staff and focus more on the currently underdeveloped study area.

“We will organize a grand forum in May to discuss Korea’s early history with scholars having different views on it. Afterwards, we plan to institutionalize it,” he said. “To correct the colonial view of history, we tapped intellectual Shin Chae-ho’s pre-ancient history viewpoint.”

Shin, under Japanese colonial rule, attempted to preserve Korea’s identity by setting up societies to research and promote Korean history, as well as the Korean language.

The organization will dispatch researchers to sites in northeastern China to excavate relics of Korea’s pre-ancient era, as well.

The NAHF’s English publication, “The Han Commanderies in Early Korean History,” which was done in collaboration with the Harvard University’s Korea Institute last year, was criticized for including a colonial view of history. Hong Myeon-ki, a research fellow in the department of policy planning, said, “That part was actually a description of what the Japanese claimed, not that we agreed on it.