1. Introduction
Today East Asia finds itself in a situation of troubles both within and without: internally, it faces the crisis of an imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a trade war among Korea, China, and Japan; externally, East Asia as a whole is treated as an "economic animal," much as Japan was mocked as an "Economic Animal" in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the region surpasses Europe economically, East Asian culture has been reduced to a B-grade culture, inferior even to the third-generation Black culture of which Malcolm X spoke,[1] so that even East Asians themselves turn away from East Asian culture; in particular, youth culture is exploited by far-right movements, widening the scope of mutual hatred among East Asians.[2]
Although East Asia was for several thousand years a civilization so advanced that it could disregard Europe, its situation has grown increasingly worse even now, well over a hundred years after the beginning of Westernization.[3] Analogous to problems of the individual psyche, this essay seeks to newly locate the cause of the problem in the discovery of trauma.[4] In the case of the individual, trauma is discovered at the point where the wound of war is replaced by forgetting or numbness.[5] In the case of a community, even experiences that were not directly undergone are transmitted through transference;[6] because these are not directly experienced traumas, they manifest in the form of unconscious reaction. If so, East Asia's trauma too may be discovered at the site of a great battle where the pragmatic cultural characteristics of Korea—said to prize legitimacy above the three nations of Korea, China, and Japan—come to the fore.
A heritage of memory refers to those cultural heritages whose UNESCO inscription has been pursued—such as the Holocaust or the DMZ—that bear witness to a negative history.[7] If East Asia's foundational trauma can be identified, it too could be put to use as another precious East Asian heritage of memory.
This article draws attention to Dangjin (唐津) as a point of origin for discovering trauma in East Asia and seeks to view the background to the formation of Dangjin's culture from the perspective of trauma. From the perspective of the Korean Peninsula, Dangjin appears to have suffered no great trauma, but from an East Asian perspective several noteworthy traumas emerge. In particular, Dangjin is one of the candidate sites for the Battle of Baekchon River, which created the historical turning point for Korea, China, and Japan—now becoming the center of world history.[8] If Dangjin was the battlefield of the Battle of Baekchon River, then, just as the pragmatic culture of the many other war-trauma sites, we can grasp a clue to understanding the characteristics of Dangjin's recently recognized practical culture of statecraft for the people's welfare.[9]
In Dangjin, one of the four candidate sites identified with the Baekchon River,[10] there is an active movement to identify the Baekchon River with Dangjin.[11] As with other traumas, in Japan—whose development outpaced that of Korea—long memories have accumulated, but in Korea it was a forgotten battle, so it was only in the Japanese colonial period that the location of the Baekchon River was finally identified. The possibility that Dangjin may be the Baekchon River therefore still remains fully open.
This essay, keeping in mind the hypothesis that the background of Dangjin's culture of practical statecraft for the people's welfare (利用厚生) is connected to the Battle of Baekchon River, regards that background as a trauma and seeks to reinterpret that trauma temporally and spatially. As the author, I do not intend to examine the location of Baekchon River, over which there is sharp scholarly disagreement. Although much prior research has been done on locating Baekchon River and on the events surrounding the Battle of Baekchon River, research into why the Silla–Tang alliance and the Baekje–Wa alliance had to fight on such a massive scale still leaves many questions and requires further study.[12] Considered as the background of the battle, even if Dangjin is not Baekchon River itself, Baekchon River may nonetheless lie at the very center of Dangjin's culture. Accordingly, under the hypothesis that the background of Dangjin's pragmatic culture is the battlefield of Baekchon River, this essay examines the temporal and spatial history that appeared in Dangjin around the time of the Battle of Baekchon River and seeks to reinterpret the background of Dangjin's culture of practical statecraft for the people's welfare as a heritage of memory of the Battle of Baekchon River.