By Sunny Lee
Korea Times Correspondent
BEIJING ― In the aftermath of Chinese student protests in the Seoul leg of the Olympic torch relay, a Korean reporter in Seoul, who covers China affairs, received an urgent late-night call from a Chinese reporter working for the Beijing-based Global Times.
In that torch relay, the violence by the Chinese mob in Seoul was bad enough that the Seoul government had to take it up with Beijing officially on a diplomatic level.
The Chinese reporter at that time called the Korean reporter in Seoul to confirm the alleged ``news,'' shown on the Chinese Internet that some of the Chinese students responsible for the violence had received a heavy 10-year prison term in Korea.
The Chinese Internet cited the Korean newspaper where the reporter works as the source. The Chinese web forums, bulletin boards, blogs, were all enraged, the Chinese reporter said.
Alarmed, the Korean journalist did some quick fact checking around the news desk, thinking that someone else had written it. If so, it would have been quite shameful since he was the person in charge of China stories.
His search effort went unrewarded because there was no such article.
``Some irresponsible Chinese bloggers are hurting the Korea-China relationship,'' he later recalled.
The incident is one of the episodes that show how volatile the two neighbors' relationship is.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of it. This week while all Chinese attention is focused on the opening of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese Internet is once full of blogs taking issue with Korea. Namely, the Koreans claim that some famous Chinese historical figures such as Confucius were Korean.
``Koreans are stealing the Chinese history,'' said Yu Tianyi, a third-year student at the University of International Relations in Beijing, adding that she also heard that Koreans are claiming that the great Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who is considered in China as ``the Father of Chinese poetry'' was Korean.
``This is not the first time I have heard this,'' the law-major student said.
In China, it is widely circulated on the Internet and in some newspapers that a Korean professor claimed the great Chinese philosopher Confucius is actually Korean.
"Professors represent the view of the educated people in Korea. Their opinions carry great authority in society. So, he should have been more prudent," Yu said.
Actually, the Chinese criticism on Koreans' ``stealing history'' started when Korea successfully got the ``Dan-o'' festival registered by UNESCO as a Korean tradition. China believes it is a Chinese tradition. In Chinese it is called ``duanwujie.'' In English, it is known as ``Dragon Boat Festival.''
Chinese media also reported that Korea is planning to change the name of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to ``Korean medicine'' to be officially used in the international medical community and wants to apply for this to be recognized by UNESCO as a Korean tradition too.
During the Sichuan earthquake in May, Koreans also made the Chinese upset. A student at Peking University, who is from the earthquake-ravaged province, noted that she saw the news about some Koreans, saying ``the earthquake was a God's punishment to China.''
``That really hurt me and many Chinese people's feelings,'' she said.
Then, the Korean broadcaster SBS' leak of the rehearsal of the Olympic opening ceremony came as the latest ``Korean provocation'' against China. Although SBS subsequently offered an apology, the incident, instead of subsiding, has been continuing to draw a battery of flak in China on radio talk shows, newspaper commentaries, Internet blogs and message boards, not to mention gossip on the street.
Chen Lillian, a graduate of China Foreign Affairs University, where the Korea-born U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon recently delivered a speech, said ``I saw all of them on Chinese web site portals. So, I don't know… whether they were ever written in Korea.''
``But the fact is it is creating a whirl of strong emotions in China against Korea,'' she said.
``I think some of them are inaccurate,'' Chen said, adding ``I think that in the old days the concept of 'national territory' was more loosely defined in the minds of people in East Asia as people travelled more freely between the regions which are now the two countries.
"Today, as people have come to have a strong and clear national identity, some of the historical heritage that both China and Korea shared together before have become a point of dispute," she said.
While Chinese are upset about Koreans for what they see as misleading history, Koreans have their share of grievances on China as well what they also perceive as the Chinese "stealing" of Korean history as well.
The biggest among them is China's effort to incorporate the ancient Korean Kingdom, Goguryo, as part of Chinese history, which Koreans firmly believe is Korean.
China also angered Korea this week when it was reported that the Chinese government has been quietly making an effort to claim that the Ieodo Island, which lies in the seas between Korea and China, is part of its territory. The island is currently controlled by Korea.
``The problem in all this is that Koreans are discussing the issues among themselves on the Korean Internet, while the Chinese are discussing them on the Chinese Internet," Chen pointed out. ``They should talk to each other to solve these problems.''
"Even though Hallyu (the Korean wave) is very popular in China and people visit one other's country frequently, I think there are many things the two countries still don't know about each other.'' Chen said.