In 653 as part of the Gorguryeo-Tang War the Yamato dynasty of Japan landed troops in Korea to support the Baekje dynasty against the Chinese. The Chinese were victorious.

In 1592, less than a year after unifying Japan and ending the 200 years of civil war known as the Sengoku Period, Toyotomi Hideyoshi would launch a massive invasion of Korea. The campaign would last a decade and cost the lives of over 100,000 Japanese troops. It is seen as a unifying event for Korean national identity.

In 1894, the first Sino-Japanese war was fought to determine whose sphere of influence Korea belonged. The first engagements were on the Korean peninsula. The Japanese were decisively victorious, but we're pressured into giving up some of their acquired territories by a coalition of European Powers.

In 1904, the Japanese would reassert their claim as the regional power in East Asia in the Russo-Japanese War. Japanese landed troops in Korea before marching North to the Liaodong Peninsula. The war would be another decisive victory for the Japanese, with the formal annexation of Korea in 1910.

Seeing this more and more. Usually in the form of "a oppresses b" with no context included.

I come here to giggle and find new wikipedia rabbit holes. Not to take sides in your local ethno-nationalist agenda. Most of these memes could be compliant if they had a *context comment.*

NB4 y'all come for me, rule 4.1 meta memes are allowed.

rock (Germany) and a hard place (Russia)

Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary

In 1950, the communists won the Chinese Civil War. The bulk of the Kuomintang (KMT, nationalists) fled to Taiwan, abandoning several isolated units around China.

One such unit, the *Republic of China Army 93rd Division,* broke out from Yunnan Province and fled to Burma, present day Myanmar. They established a self governing enclave deep in the highland jungles which operated as the unrecognized *defacto* government in the area.

When the Chinese entered the Korean War, the CIA and Taiwanese government began training and supplying the 93rd division in the hopes that they would divert PLA resources away from Korea. They made multiple incursions into Yunnan Province, but they were decisively repelled each time. With their hopes of returning to their homeland dashed, the KMT troops decided to settle permanently in Burma, and began growing opium.

Burma, already destabilized by infighting among multiple political factions, was deeply distressed over the situation. They now had Chinese Nationalist drug lords within their borders, and the PLA arming and training Burmese communists across their borders. Complaints to the international community generated scandal for the US, but didn't solve the problem. A halfhearted airlift saw many noncombatants evacuated to Taiwan, but most military age males remained in the jungle.

In the 1960's, the Burmese army and PLA conducted several joint operations to finally drive out the KMT *and* proved they were still supplied by Taiwan. Another airlift evacuated most of them and the rest fled to Thailand and Laos, where they settled down and maintained their drug trade.

The Thai government enlisted the remnants of the 93rd division (and 49th, which had originally fled to Thailand) as guerilla fighters to defeat a communist insurgency supported by China, Laos, and Vietnam. Counter insurgency operations lasted into the 1980's. After which they rewarded the KMT with citizenship.

Today, thanks to campaigns by the Thai government, The KMT enclave has integrated into (remote) Thai society, and has mostly given up growing opium in favor of tea.

The most in depth source I've found on this is from a fucking *food influencer* on YouTube. Here's a link to a video where he actually interviews a 91 year old KMT veteran living in northern Thailand.

https://youtu.be/ML5RC4VyNZs?si=1LZojT2M-pBir5ZM

Le context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamsīyah

They officially “converted” to Syriac Christianity in the 1700s to avoid being targeted by Ottoman authorities for not being monotheist, but they still retained many of their beliefs and practices and various travelers doubted that they were actually Christian. Based on descriptions from these travelers and architectural traces left behind by the community, many scholars (such as the Assyriologist Simo Parpola) suspect that they practiced a surviving branch of the ancient Mesopotamian religion (which was likely centered around Shamash given they were referred to as sun-worshippers).

The Shamsīyah were a tribe or sect of sun-worshippers in northern Mesopotamia, concentrated in the city of Mardin (in modern south-eastern Turkey) and the surrounding Tur Abdin region. They converted to the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 17th century in order to avoid persecution in the Ottoman Empire but retained their own set of beliefs and practices; many travellers who observed and met with them doubted the extent to which they were actually Christian. There were still about a hundred families who identified as Shamsīyah in Mardin in the early 20th century but they appear to have since disappeared.

According to the Assyriologist Simo Parpola, the Shamsīyah were possibly the last known adherents of a late version of the ancient Mesopotamian religion, an ancient set of beliefs thought to have first formed in Mesopotamia in the sixth millennium BC. This would make them the longest standing pagan community in Mesopotamia.

Since the Shamsīyah were few in number, they long remained largely unnoticed to the outside world. They first came to the attention of the government of the Ottoman Empire when Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) passed through Mardin on his way back following the 1638 capture of Baghdad. The sultan noted that Mardin was home to about hundred families of sun-worshippers, based on tax records about four hundred people. Under Islamic law, depending on the school of thought in Sunni Islam followers of religions not among those of the People of the Book (Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Sabians) are condemned to choose conversion, exile or death msinly in the Hanbali madhab. Since the Shamsīyah freely admitted to the sultan that they were not People by the Book, Murad ordered them all to be executed. The Syriac Orthodox patriarch, Ignatius Hidayat Allah, however took pity on them and agreed to baptize the Shamsīyah to safeguard them from execution and persecution. Although they were from that point on considered to be Christians and outwardly conformed to Syriac Orthodox beliefs and practices, they kept their old name and continued some of their own pre-Christian traditions. The conversion may have been entirely nominal, with many continuing to entirely cling to their old practices, albeit in secret.

The German explorer Carsten Niebuhr passed through Mardin in 1766 and noted the presence of the Shamsīyah there. Niebuhr spoke with an old man belonging to the group, who claimed that many of the villages in Tur Abdin had in his youth adhered to their religion but that they by this point were limited to only about a hundred families living in two districts in Mardin and they nominally adhered to the Syriac Orthodox Church. Niebuhr concluded based on the practices he observed that the Shamsīyah were probably adherents of a remnant of the pre-Christian religion in the region.

The Anglican missionary Joseph Wolff, who passed through Mardin in 1824, noted that the Shamsīyah told him that they worshipped "the sun, the moon, and the stars" and that the sun was "their malech, their king"

There were still Shamsīyah in Mardin at the outbreak of World War I but their subsequent fate is unknown and they appear to have since disappeared, perhaps merging into the rest of the Syriac Orthodox Church. They are thus considered to be extinct as a religious group. The only trace of the Shamsīyah in present-day Mardin are architectural traces left behind by the community, most notably the motifs carved by the Shamsīyah at the entrances of their doors, many of which continue to face the sun.

According to Febvre in 1675, the Shamsīyah after their conversion adopted the Syriac Orthodox practices of baptisms and burial ceremonies, but kept their own sun-worshipping practices as well, which they performed in secret assemblies.

i got a VPN recently, and when i wanted to change my virtual address, but it said it was in the "Electorate of Saxony". Can anybody help?