No one can be sure of its origin, but there has been a rumor floating around the Korean community of scholars, which says that the Japanese colonial authorities, right after its occupation of Korea, confiscated and incinerated total of 200,000 books(of 51 types of genres), and that some material which contained evidences to the existence of Dan’gun, were included in the aftermath of that tragic event. Many people now accepts this rumor as a de-facto fact.
Since its proclamation of the Publication Law in February 1909, the Japanese colonial authorities confiscated countless books, in the name of ‘eliminating materials that would obstruct social stability and justice,’ up until the very moment they were forced to leave Korea. For an example, they confiscated more than 51 types of many, many books in November 1910 alone, and that seems to have become the origin of the above-mentioned ‘myth.’ In the mid-1960s, a person named Mun Jeong-chang argued that total of 200,000 books(including 51 different types of material) were incinerated, and in the mid-1980s another person named Yi Sang-shi arbitrarily interpreted Mun Jeong-chang’s assessments and argued himself that certain historical texts which could have been instrumental in proving Dan’gun’s existence were indeed included in the books that were incinerated. Such argument led to another kind of accusation that the Japanese authorities’ confiscation of those books was indeed part of their coordinated efforts to distort and destroy the Korean history in general. Yet in reality, any texts related to Dan’gun seem to have never been included in the collection of destroyed items, and the number of books that were destroyed was actually under 100,000. The incineration itself was a usual part of the general actions of the Japanese police.
How could such myth survived for such a long time, and why was it accepted as a truth without a doubt? People have been convinced that the Japanese rule was harsh, and their invasion of Korea had been carefully, meticulously planned for a long time. The people who accepted this myth as a fact did not bother to examine the other elements that constituted the same myth, namely the interrogation office, the police, and the authorities’s policy toward the Confucian Yu’rim elders. The scholars were determined to believe that the Japanese imperial ruling was an atrocious and hideous thing, yet there were things that did not meet the eye.