The Northeast Asian history war is getting serious. A recent case in point is Chinese Netizen's denunciation of South Korean short-track athletes at the Winter Asian Games in Changchun, China for holding up a banner saying Mt.Baekdu belongs to Korea. As if they didn’t have enough trouble from the Japanese, they said, now the Koreans are giving them grief as well. Koreans feel much the same way about the Chinese.

Our Education Ministry's decision to re-write history textbooks to stress the historic reality of ancient Korea by advancing the start of the Bronze Age on the Korean Peninsula by about 1,000 years, meanwhile, is not unrelated to efforts to counter China's Northeast Project, which many here feel attempts to co-opt Korean history for China. China’s actions are extremely, well, Chinese. Compared with the Japanese, with their hit-and-run strategy, the Chinese care about no one. Of course, the Korean approach to the question is also very Korean.

To a history scholar, the assertion that China and Japan have distorted history and that Korea is right is narrow-minded. We, too, have distorted or hidden a lot of our unfortunate past. Nonetheless, few Koreans can suppress a sense of indignation at the recent developments. Without blindly wanting to side with Korea, we should not unconditionally denigrate the emotional Korean response. There are good reasons for it. The current history war is evidently not a simple confrontation between good and bad. But Korea, being on the defensive and asking "What have we done in the meantime?," does not look quite as objectionable as China and Japan.

What is intolerable for a people who have struggled to safeguard their national sovereignty and achieve economic independence over the past few decades is a feeling that we are again being cornered. A fear of plunder by strong neighbors, a kind of trauma, lies dormant in the collective Korean memory. When offensives from neighboring countries intensify and Koreans' sense of crisis mounts, however globalized the world may be, nationalism still runs strong here.

Why does China play on our national sensitivity, when Japan alone is quite enough? Buoyed by a sense of economic confidence, China now enjoys a resurgence of national sentiment of its own. China's theory of one country with many tribes, as exemplified in the Northeast Project, is basically hegemonistic. We need to note that the historical distortions by China are not simply unreasonable assertions but part of a project designed to complete a Chinese-style nation-state. Thus viewed, clashes between Korea and China are all but natural.

What matters after all isn’t who is right or wrong in historic fact. It misses the core of the problem for us to conduct more research into our ancient history in response. The Northeast Asia history war now underway is not a symbolic one over a sense of pride in history. What we have to confront is the ghost of hegemonism hovering over Northeast Asia. Instead, we therefore need efforts at criticism and dialogue between our civil societies along with a diplomatic offensive by the government. While the government will attempt to settle the diplomatic issue with political know-how, civilians need a principled approach. Efforts are needed to clarify that the essence of the history war is not ancient history, but current hegemonism threatening the peace in Northeast Asia.

We need the wisdom to seek mutual understanding and joint efforts. Ineffective though they may be, they are best means available. In view of the Chinese Netizens' response to the Korean TV drama "Chumong", denounced because there the Chinese are depicted as against the foundation of the Koguryo Kingdom (37BC-668AD), we have to keep in mind that any approach aimed at “righting” historical distortions results only in a vicious cycle of exciting each other's nationalism.

The column was contributed by Chun Jin-sung, a professor at Busan National University of Education.