The president's recent mention of the "Hwandan Gogi" has brought the question of Japanese influence on Korean history to the fore. The text purports to tell the earliest history of Korea and is generally considered to be a clumsy forgery, but those who adhere to it accuse nonbelievers of being subject to Japanese versions of Korean history. What does corruption of Korean historiography by the Japanese have to do with the text? Nothing, really. But if one questions the validity of the "Hwandan Gogi," supporters of the text accuse critics of taking a Japanese colonial point of view and distorting Korean history. Sometimes they will straight-up call others “chinilpa,” meaning pro-Japanese or a Japanese collaborator. Today, I thought I might take a look at what the “colonial” perspective on Korean history actually is. I think it will take more than one column — there’s probably a book or two to be written on the subject — but since the term is used and clearly abused, a brief examination would be a healthy start. In my view, there are two categories of historical distortion pe