Prior to the seventeenth century, encompassing more than two and a half centuries, Korea held firm to the tradition of non-reciprocity with countries other than China due to its devastating history of being invaded by neighboring countries. Such invasions included the Japanese invasions of 1592 and 1597 and the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636. Due to their closed borders, Korea became known as the “Hermit Kingdom” (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008). It wasn’t until 1875 that Korea had no choice but to accept foreign relations and sign the Treaty of Kanghwa of 1876 with Japan, to their disadvantage (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008; Kim 1980). This treaty allowed Japan to appropriate Korea’s right to foreign trade and brought Korea’s self-imposed isolation to an end, eventually making way for other unequal international treaties with Western powers. Japan formally claimed Korea as its protectorate, to the disgruntlement of Korea’s people, after winning the two major battles of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. Both of which were fought on the Korean peninsula (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).
The beginnings of Korean relocation to America started with Horace N. Allen, a Protestant medical missionary and a diplomat from the United States, taking advantage of the socioeconomic crises of the early 1900s, brought on by massive natural disasters of famine and drought, to convince King Kojong to permit Koreans to begin immigrating to Hawaii to work on plantations. Allen, along with other recruiters, looked to farmers who had lost their main source of income and had relocated to port cities such as P’yŏngyang and Inch’ŏn in search of employment as their best recruiting opportunity with little success (Eunjung and Wolpin 20...
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...n its freedom from Japan in 1945, a standing that was continually threatened by the Cold War. Post-World War II, the contention between the Soviet Union and the US turned the Korean peninsula into a war zone from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. In Korea, the Korean war is refered to as ‘Yugio’ (literally June 25) as it marks the date upon which the North Korean army crossed the US military planners’ dividing line known as the 38th parallel (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).
Works Cited
Healey, Joseph F. 2014. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Kim, Key-Hiuk. 1980. The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Kwon, Hyeyoung, and Chanhaeng Lee. 2009. Korean American History. Los Angeles, CA: Korean Education Center.
Written by Margaret K. Pai, the Dreams of Two Yi-min narrates the story of her Korean American family with the main focus on the life journeys of her father and mother, Do In Kwon and Hee Kyung Lee. Much like the majority of the pre-World War II immigrants, the author’s family is marked and characterized by the common perception of the “typical” Asian immigrant status in the early 20th century: low class, lack of English speaking ability, lack of transferable education and skills, and lack of knowledge on the host society’s mainstream networks and institutions (Zhou and Gatewood 120, Zhou 224). Despite living in a foreign land with countless barriers and lack of capital, Kwon lead his wife and children to assimilate culturally, economically, and structurally through his growing entrepreneurship. Lee, on the other hand, devoted herself not only to her husband’s business but also to the Korean American society. By investing her time in the Korean Methodist Church and the efforts of its associated societies, such as the Methodist Ladies Aid Society and the Youngnam Puin Hoe, Lee made a worthy contribution to the emergence and existence of Hawaii’s Korean American community.
Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope” (Brainy Quotes). Even though a nation agonizes over its collapse, it must never lose its optimistic views for the future. Korea was a nation that was annexed, however the determination for liberation was never diminished. Korea became a colony of Japan in 1910 for its natural resources and also for its territory which had an advantageous position, geographically. Thousands of Koreans who resisted annexation were killed by the Japanese military. During these years under the Japanese rule, the Koreans suffered greatly as the men were forced into extreme labor while the women were bounded into prostitution. Although the majority of Koreans detested the Japanese occupation, they were impotent against the Japanese harsh reign. Developments in industrial activities also took place, partially encouraged by the Japanese government, overall however the country’s citizens were living in destitution. Only the Japanese government was gaining resources and wealth, while Koreans were forced into harsh labor. In 1945, Korea was liberated from this sadistic rule partially due to its continuous efforts for freedom.
In the book, the author goes from a Korean education to a Japanese schooling style. The Japanese required all students, no matter their nationality, to wear the same uniforms and speak only Japanese. This is even despite the fact that Japanese students and Korean students are taught separately. Speaking Korean would surely result in punishment; the author of the book learned that lesson the hard way. The overall education style of the Japanese was used, which aimed to assimilate Koreans into Japanese culture and strip them of all things Korean. No Korean history was taught during this period of time. In the book, the author was lucky enough to learn about Korean history from his father.
Pash, Melinda L. In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation: The Americans Who Fought the Korean War. New York: New York UP, 2012. Print. 141, 150, 154-5.
Korea had been united as one country for many years. Japan took control of Korea and made it part of its empire. After World War II, Japan was defeated and its empire fell. Korea was left without a leader or a system of government. This provoked the United States troops to occupy the southern half and Soviet troops to occupy the northern half. The United States and its allies favored democratic government, while the Soviet Union and China favored a communist system of government.
Cho, G (2008). “Fleshing Out the Ghost”, in Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fukuoka, Yasunori “Koreans in Japan: Past and Present,” Saitama University Review, vol. 31, no.1, 1996.
This response will focus on the key issue of fragmentation. In his book Korea’s Twentieth-Century Odyssey, Michael E. Robinson wrote “Multiple interest groups resided within the bureaucracy and even divided the royal house” (p. 16). Arguably, Korea’s sovereignty was lost in large part, due to the lack of unity among different groups and faction. It was clear from the readings that some Korean individuals and groups prioritized their self-interests above their own country’s benefit. Nowhere was this most evident then the issue of national security.
Chŏng, Sang-yong, and Si-min Yu. Memories of May 1980: A Documentary History of the Kwangju Uprising in Korea. Seoul: Korea Democracy Foundation, 2003. Print.
Koreans love everything from Japan. On café tables in Ap-Guh-Juhn-Dong, the Beverly Hills of Korea, Japanese fashion magazines lay arrogantly. Sony and PlayStation products are sold fiercely in electronics markets. Some Koreans even say that we should admire Japan for their economic success, technology, and lifestyle. Only when it comes to history do they go hysterical and anti-Japan, remembering repeated attempts at invasion until the Japanese finally succeeded in 1910.
Legend states that in 2333 BCE, Tan'gun, grandson of the Creator, established the kingdom of Choson, or “Morning Freshness”, and thus the Korean people were began. Surrounded on three sides by Russia, China, and Japan, the Korean people have had to endure hundreds of attempts at invasion and domination, including four hundred years of Chinese military rule over the kingdom of Choson, Mongol invasions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and, most recently, Japanese Colonization from 1910 to 1945. (Soh, 2006) This has caused the people of Korea to adapt parts of other cultures while still maintaining a strong cultural identity of their own.
The book I chose for this book review assignment is titled Korea Old and New: A History by author Carter J. Eckert along with other contributing authors Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson and Edward W. Wagner. The book is published at Korea Institute, Harvard University in 1990. The book consists of 418 pages and it is more of a survey of Korean history and reference type of book, rather than selected readings on modern Korean politics. I chose this book because it is a complete survey of Korean history from the ancient Choson period up to the economic boom of the 1990's, a span of over 2000 years. Each chapter covers a different period, but they all share the same organization of describing the social, cultural, political, philosophical and scholarly aspects of the period in respective subsections. This made it easier to later refer to previous chapters and compare different periods in order to learn the comprehensive history of Korea.
North and South Korea were not very different politically or culturally from one another before mid 1940’s (White, Bradshaw, Dymond, Chacko, Scheidt, 2014, p. 125). However, North Korea started the Korean War when they invaded South Korea in 1950. These two countries, which were once the same, are vastly different in the areas of politics and culture The Koreas’ continue to disagree and not be at peace with each other since the Korean War despite small steps toward progress over the
1945 marked the end of World War II and the end of Japan’s reign in Korea. Korea had been under Japanese rule since the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910. During this time, Korea had been brutally treated by Japan. The Korean language was suppressed as well as traditional Korean culture. Japan forced Korean people to take Japanese surnames and took many “comfort women” otherwise known as sex slaves for the Japanese military. As a result, the diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan were strained. Japan was determined to forget the past and deny many of the things that happened while Korea was determined to not move past it. There have been disputes between the two countries about acknowledging comfort women and territories, many sprouting up from World War II and before. While there has been improvement, the relationship between Japan and Korea is strained, mainly due to Japan’s unwillingness to remember and apologize for the past and Korea’s stubbornness to not move on from the past.
The Korean War explicitly portrayed the atrocious battle between both the North and South side which gave the United Nations its military role for the first time, thus expanding the war from a domestic to an international scale. Sometimes called “The Forgotten War”, the Korean War was mainly overshadowed in historical terms by the conflicts that occurred before and after it, World War II and the Vietnam War. The Korean War had raged for years without a true resolution and after years of battles, even the compromise that was made was not a complete one. The current situation regarding North and South Korea is quite volatile. In order to apprehend the Korean War, one has to look at events that took place before the war, how the war was conducted and the aftermath of the War.