신채호
Shin Chaeho was the first historian to focus on the Korean "minjok" (민족, 民族, "race" or ethnicity) or Kyŏre(겨레), and narrated Korean history in terms of its "minjok" history. There is no direct English language equivalent for the word "minjok", though commentators have offered "race" and "ethnicity" as being the closest analogues. For Shin, "minjok" and history were mutually defining and as he says in the preface of the" Doksa Sillon", “if one dismisses the "minjok", there is no history.” Shin emphasized the ancientness of the Korean "minjok" history, elevated the status of the semi-legendary figure, Dangun, as the primordial ancestor of the Korean people and located the host "minjok", Puyo. Shin launched a vision of the Korean nation as a historically defined "minjok" or ethnicity entity. In an attempt to counter China's controversial Northeast Project and Goguryeo controversies that ensued, the South Korean government in 2007 incorporated the founding of Gojoseon of the year 2333 BCE into its textbooks.