Talk:Goguryeo–Wei War

message: There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Sino-Xiongnu War - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you.  —RM bot 22:20, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move discussion in progress 

message: We all know how devious Japanese were during 1920s on Korean history and even 1960's western sources would have been heavily influenced Japanese and Taiwanese pov sources to portray Korea as less compared to others. Was Wei even Chinese is questionable and at same time was Goguryeo just Proto-Korean when the name "Korean" practically derived from Goguryeo or Koguryǒ. IMO, this Wiki article isn't well written in balance pov just very distorted since it's using highly questionable sources.--KSentry(talk) 01:21, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: All the recent western sources I've come across references Ikeuchi (1929) for this war. Please back up your claims with sources - we can't act on your opinion alone. I'm not interested in whether Goguryeo was Korean or proto-Korean: none of the sources I listed care about that status either.  _dk (talk) 15:36, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: How exactly is Cao Wei being Chinese questionable? There is no question about it. Instead of complaining about others' POV, manage your own first. Lathdrinor (talk) 03:50, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: This group characterization of deviousness and distorted-ness is beyond bold and unsubstantiated. --Cold Season (talk) 21:23, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not happy with 1929/1969 sources 

message: I thought it was Yuri who moved the capital down to Gungnae/Hwando. It says so in the Yuri of Goguryeo article as well. But this article says that Sansang was the one who did it, and this claim is not even mentioned in Sansang of Goguryeo's article. Unless it was moved back to Jolbon between the reigns of Yuri and Sansang, one of these claims is not correct.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.85.55.143 (talk) 17:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move from Jolbon to Gungnae/Hwando by Sansang? 

message: I started this in response to the discussion in the "Not happy with 1929/1969 sources" section, but that's 7 years old now, and looking at the article a bit more there are some other spots that are a bit questionable so I'm putting this as its own thing in case people have more input.
So in general, talking about leaning on colonial-era Japanese sources, in particular the source by Ikeuchi Hiroshi from 1929 and its interpretation of the battle of Liangkou:
Imperial Japan's colonial designs biasing their research at the time is pretty well established, and sources from that period need to be looked at with some skepticism. Pankaj Mohan sums it up succinctly in a general sense: 
"In modern times, historians of Japan played a seminal role in not only shaping national identity but also lending substance and specificity to the project of defining and justifying Japan’s expansionist nationalism based on the model of Western imperialism." Pankaj, Mohan. "The Controversy over the Ancient Korean State of Gaya: A Fresh Look at the Korea-Japan History War." History Wars and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea, ed. Michael Lewis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p.110) 
And you can find similar statements in a great deal of books about ancient Korean history; especially once you get towards the 1930s when Japan's military government rose to power, Japan's archaeology and history was very often conducted with a significant bias.
I can't find anything specific addressing Ikeuchi's interpretation of the sources on this battle--that is, that the account in the Samguk Sagi is fabricated. Perhaps he's even correct, despite his biases. But we need to remember he worked for, among other institutions, the South Manchuria Railway Research Division, whose stated purpose was straight up "to facilitate the actual [colonial] administration of Korea and Manchuria," Pai, H. I. (2000). Constructing "Korean" origins: A critical review of archaeology, historiography, and racial myth in Korean state-formation theories. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p.24 and a large part of this was done by denigrating Korean history. It's true that a lot of English-language authors did for many years lean on colonial-era Japanese scholarship, especially before the 1990s or so, but this is something that comes under intense criticism in more recent scholarship, and when I see names from Ikeuchi's era brought up in more recent works (I did a search through a bunch of papers when I wrote this) by and large it's for referencing their archaeology rather than their interpretations, doubly so when those interpretations are of Korean historical works. 
I'm not going to remove the passage in reference to him, and I do think it's valuable for reminding the reader to question the primary source accounts they're reading--but I think language like "Hiroshi Ikeuchi points out", as though he's undoubtedly correct, needs to be more neutral. 
The other edit I'm making is in reference to the second paragraph in the introduction: "Goguryeo was reduced to such insignificance that for half a century there was no mention of the state in Chinese historical texts."
This references a work by Mark Byington, one of the foremost English language scholars on ancient Korean history, so I was a bit shocked when it seemed to imply he was making making a value judgment like a lack of appearance in Chinese sources meaning Goguryeo was insignificant. 
Looking at the actual passage by Byington in question though, it looks like he never said this--he states, much more neutrally:
"These Wei campaigns are thus significant in that they shattered the Koguryŏ central ruling structure and removed a major source of crucial resources. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Koguryŏ does not appear in Chinese records for the next half-century," Byington, Mark E. "Control or Conquer? Koguryǒ's Relations with States and Peoples in Manchuria," Journal of Northeast Asian History volume 4, number 1 (June 2007), p.93 and even remarks after that how Goguryeo activities do continue to appear in the Samguk Sagi for that period.
So, I'm going to rephrase that part of the introduction, and the part about the battle of Liangkou by Ikeuchi. I don't have time to comb through the rest of the article right now, but it has me a bit suspicious about some of the citations in other parts, too, especially since the article leans so heavily in Ikeuchi's colonial-era writing. Since there's a dearth of English-language sources talking about battles in this period so that might be unavoidable, though, but in any case I thought it was worth calling attention to this and explaining my edit, since Goguryeo is a fairly incendiary subject.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Torneberge (talk • contribs) 22:31, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some edits for neutrality