Korea South Korea North Korea

1
KoreaSouth Korea North
Korea?? ????
??

• The land of the morning calm

2
Geopolitical Location
Manchuria

• Appendage to China
• Dagger pointed at the heart of Japan

3
Geography

• Overall Shape?
• What do you see?
• Size
• Roughly equal to Utah
• Population in 06
• South Korea 48,846,823
• North Korea 23,113,019
• Climate
• Temperate
• Cold winters
• Hot, wet summers
• Topography
• Mountainous

4
Divided Nation

• Japanese Occupation 1910
• Divided in 1945
• Carrot used by US to lure USSR into the Pacific
  phase of WWII
  
• 38th Parallel
• North Soviet realm ergo Communist
• South US realm ergo Capitalist
• Korean War 1950-53
• Enemies
• Divided Families
• No mail, no trade, no visits, no phone calls

5
Ethnic Homogeneity

• Racially pure, Unique Race
• East Asian or Mongoloid racial group
• Strong sense of racial identity
• Self-identification as distinct from other Asian
  nations

6
Korean Language???
???

• Altaic Language Group
• Structurally identical to Japanese
• 60 of vocabulary borrowed from Chinese
• Distinct from both
• Not a tonal language
• Regional dialects Just like U.S.

7
Korean Language???
???

• Early Literacy Chinese
• Early Writing Chinese Characters
• 1400s Hangul commissioned by King Sejong
• Phonetic system
• Simple enough for women servants

8
(No Transcript)
9
Writing System

• Mixed Writing system
• Chinese root words written in Chinese characters
  
  
• 900 characters to pass middle school
• 1800 characters to pass high school
• Korean Native words written in Hangul
• Typical until 1945
• North Korea dropped Chinese about 1950
• Hangul only newspapers in South Korea first
  published in 1988

10
National Creation Myth Tangun 2333 BC

• Hwan-ung (god figure)
• Tiger and Bear want to be human
• Live in cave 100 days eating mugwort and garlic

• Bear endures and becomes a woman
• She prays for a husband
• Hwan-ung takes her as wife and they bear a son,
  Tangun who governs over the people of Korea

See http//www.lifeinkorea.com/information/tangun.
cfm for a simple but solid version of this story
on the web.
11
Native Religious Traditions

• Animistic religious beliefs
• Shamanism
• Mudang
• Korean Shaman
• Always Female
• Kut
• Korean exorcism
• Ecstatic dance

12
Native Spiritual / Cultural Concepts

• Han
• Collective burden of historic pain
• Centuries of oppression
• Eons of suffering
• Creates a sorrow, sense of blues that is unique
  to Koreans and pervades their art, music and
  culture

13
Native Spiritual Concepts

• Nature of the Human Soul

• Similar to China spirit resides in the
  environment of its life/death.
  
• Burial practices similar to China

14
Native Spiritual Concepts

• Ancestor Veneration
• Chesa
• Enhanced formalized by Confucianism
• Major part of civil responsibility in later
  Korean history
  

15
Borrowed Religious Concepts

• Daoism
• Focus on nature
• Fengshui
• Confucianism
• Buddhism
• Christianity arrives late

16
Daoist ideasSymbolism of the South Korean Flag

• Center is the Korean version of the Yin-Yang
  symbol
  
• The four trigrams are
• ? geon (? ?) heaven ?
• ? gon (? ?) earth ?
• ? ri (? ?) sun ?
• ? gam (? ?) moon ?

17
Fengshui (Chinese)Pungsu (Korean)

• Geomancy
• Wind and Water
• Used in
• Interior decorating
• Architecture
• City planning, etc.
• 5 Frog Brothers Folk tale

18
Confucianism

• Borrowed from China
• Dominant Governing Ideology
• in later dynasties
• Major impact on Korean Culture
• Hierarchy
• Ritualism and formality
• Male dominance

19
Buddhism

• Borrowed from China
• About 50 CE
• Becomes important about 500 CE

• Adopted by early dynasties
• Political dominance early on
• Coexists with Confucianism, Daoism and native
  traditions -- usually

20
Christianity

• Catholics enter 1774
• Protestants enter 1884
• Both become politically and socially very
  important
  
• Protestants 1900 to the present
• Catholics briefly about 1800 and again since
  1970
  
• (much more to come in later history discussion)

Myongdong Cathedral Seoul