years ago with the birth of Dangun, the legendary son of a bear who was transformed into a human by the god Whanin. By combining mythology and genealogy, a common ancestry of Koreans and Manchurians was traced, effectively making them family. Shin thereby attempted to erase the geographical border between Korea and Manchuria in favour of ethnic re-unification. Distinct from the minjok was the state, the gukga (국가; 國家; or kukka). The minjok as a more basal concept than the gukga and did not substantially change between generations, whereas the gukga could change between kingdoms, government, and rules. By defining the minjok as a rich and powerful ethnic history, Shin constructed an anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism social defence. Largely, the goal was rejection of both Chinese and Japanese governmental oversight and influence. Contemporaneous Japanese historians also argued that Koreans and Manchurians were the same group, but their efforts were to prove Korea was historically indistinct from other nations and thus mitigate Korea's importance. Social Darwinism Shin is sometimes called a social Darwinist, a popular concept in the early 20th century. Within Shin's work, the Manchurian-Korean Buyeo minjok is interpreted as the standard of measure for historical progress in Korea. Shin described a racial history of conflict between the various races of East Asia, as well as a political history. Towards this progress, Shin's minjok project was laid out in terms of racial victories: specifically for the Buyeo, victory would be complete reunification of the race and then-on defending against cultural assimilation and imperialism. This "Darwinian-Spencerian" framework, which prized ethnic nationalism and purity, allowed Shin to write a race-centred history of Korea that attempted to shut down the Japanese colonial justifications by conjoining ethnic history and progress, necessarily making harmful the adulteration of Korean society with Japanese culture, not a progressive one. This is somewhat analogous to Nordicism, or progressivist ethnography, but from a Korean-centric perspective. Shin did not describe Korea as the "victor" of these racial battles. Shin described a slow fall of the minjok, primarily attributing a high point to King Muyeol of Silla, and then descent through the fall of Balhae and slow fracturing of Korean social unity through politics and war. Shin praised the Koryeo and Choseon dynasties, but insisted that the successes that they brought were only partial, lamenting that if scholars "are searching for a full unification, it cannot be found after Tangun." Juche Shin Chae-ho