Confucius descendants attempt to unlock mystery
Print Edition
DESCENDANTS of ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius still cannot say for certain which generation of the family brought the bloodline from China to the Korean Peninsula.
But eight Korean descendants of the great thinker hope to change that. On behalf of all their kin living in South Korea, they presented new evidence suggesting that the first generation of the family might have migrated from China to the Korean Peninsula at least 200 years earlier than previously thought.
It is generally believed that descendants of Confucius flourished on the Korean Peninsula after the 54th-generation descendant Kong Shao arrived there at the end of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368).
The South Korean representatives presented photocopied documents to the Confucius Genealogy Constant Compilation Committee based in Qufu in east China’s Shandong Province on Thursday indicating that the time of the first descendant’s arrival might date back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279), 200 years earlier than the Yuan Dynasty.
South Korean delegation member Kong Daihick, also head of the Korean Confucius Descendants Association, said that their research showed that the first descendant to set foot in the Korean Peninsula was Kong Deshou, a 47th-generation descendent, rather than Kong Shao.
However, the committee members from the China side decided the current verification materials were inadequate.
The descendants agreed that both sides would cooperate to continue research on which generation arrived first, as it serves as a linking point for the whole Korean branch of the family tree.
There are as many as 80,000 Korean Confucius descendants, making the group the largest overseas branch of the family tree.
Kong Deping, general secretary of the Confucius Genealogy Constant Compilation Committee, said the committee began to update the Confucius family tree in 1998 and disclosed its latest version in 2009, which recorded all 83 generations of Confucius’s offspring, more than 2 million people. It was regarded as the world’s biggest family tree.
More than 40,000 overseas descendants had their names added to the 2009 edition, with more than 30,000 of them from South Korea.
However, new findings continue to appear as descendants dig deeper into historic materials collected from all over the world.
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