How China’s take on the Korean war could strain ties with Seoul

The conflict took place more than six decades ago but Beijing is invoking its spirit as it faces a growing rivalry with Washington

Its view of how the war started is at odds with South Korea’s, causing friction with between the neighbours

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Bradley James, commander of the US Marine Corps in South Korea (left) attends a ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the Korean war at the Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, on 27 October 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 8:00pm, 1 Nov 2020Updated: 9:30pm, 1 Nov 2020

When Chinese President Xi Jinping marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean war late last month he was not simply paying tribute to the legions of Chinese troops who took part in the conflict.

With hostilities growing on a range of fronts with the United States, Xi invoked China’s entry into the conflict to rally the nation in its rivalry with the US today.

To do so, he underlined the official line in China that the US was the aggressor, setting off the war with an attack on the Korean peninsula that led to China’s first and only armed engagement with US forces.

“Seventy years ago, the imperialist invaders fired upon the doorstep of a new China,” Xi said on October 23 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “The Chinese people understood that you must use the language that invaders can understand – to fight war with war and to stop an invasion with force, earning peace and respect through victory.”

It is an account of the conflict told time and again throughout the country.

But it is also at odds with the consensus elsewhere in the world – including in South Korea, a US partner in the region – that the war began with an invasion by North Korean troops in June 1950, prompting Washington and its allies to intervene.