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Essay on korean culture
Essay on korean culture
Korean cultures and traditions
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South Korea is famous of fastest-developed nation in the world; actually South Korea was a really poor country in past era. Many Koreans struggled with starvation because of the Korean War. As a Korean, I would like to introduce the history of my motherland. To write my country, I found many sources from my high school textbook. Yunhun Kim is a professor in Seoul University; he wrote Korean history textbook, South Korea Past to Present, for high school. This book explains well about fact of South Korea in the past era; I will use this book to explain South Korea in the 1960s. Also, Sunghwan Ban writes a book, Growth Rates of Korean Agriculture, 1918-1971, to states that how Korea develops well from agriculture. I used this book as same as my textbook. Moreover, Knowledge Management and Management Learning; by Walter Beats is found in Google Website. This book accounts the meaning of infrastructure and social structure. That will be on my essay. South Korea: A Country Study by Matels Savada and Williams Shaw gives an explanation of South Korea as the viewpoint of foreign. Lastly, Okyu Kwon is also graduate student in KAIST in South Korea; he made a power point, which is called “Korea’s Infrastructure Development Experiences”. I searched in Google and found these sources. I will use those sources to support and explain South Korean in the 1960s. How South Korea formulates their base ground in the 1960s to be a powerful nation. How infrastructure, social structure and ideology were made South Korea in the 1960s.
Primarily, when people think about Asia, many people immediately think Japan, China and Korea. Have you ever noticed that South Korea was one of the poorest country in the past unlike others? Once, South Korea had been gett...
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...ng their hair makes the body that parents give hurt; thus, this is one of undutiful actions. Koreans were followed those ideas well in the past. Therefore, they kept agriculture instead of industrialization. By agriculture, they also kept a family form as a large family. Moreover, they kept patriarchal system. By the system, only men could touch political issues. And, women spend their time under quality life. They could not take pass examination and they do not have any change to learn study. Even if a woman is wiser than their little brother, only brother could take the examination. This is kind of waste talented person; however, this is the rule in the South Korea. In some ways, this idea makes Korea development late. South Korea is one of the fastest developing country in the world; and, they will develop more than now as through see the history of South Korea.
The deeply rooted history of a Confucian paradigm in Korea has for long limited women’s roles and rights. In the male-dominated and patriarchal society, women’s roles remained in the domestic sphere, where they were required to be submissive. However, with the introduction of westernization and modernity in the 1920s, modern generation was rapidly incorporated into colonial modernity. Korean women began to “redefine the Korean female identity” by displaying the “new woman” characteristics, in which some literate women initiated to “enhance their education, determine their own physical appearance, and contribute to the debate about changing gender roles and expectations”(Yoo, p.59) Fearing the threat of the emergence of the “new women” with
Civilizations that have a great deal of land and a strong military tend to have strong economies. Japan in the 1800s is a perfect example of how economic growth can change the course of a nation for the better, by increasing its land and armed forces. China in the nineteenth century is an excellent illustration of how a declining economy can destroy a civilization, by taking away its land and decreasing its military strength. These two civilizations clearly demonstrate how economic growth can influence all aspects of society.
Just how bad are pure socialist economies? North Korea is the most well known socialist nation. The government came to control all economic decisions in the country. Most of the country’s resources were sent to the military. The country also used its resources on developing a nuclear program. The military growth used up all of the country’s necessary resources. In the late 90s and early 2000s, the majority of the country was suffering from hunger and malnutrition because food was scarce. Millions ended up dead, and those who survived only did because of the aid from other countries (like South Korea and other capitalist countries). The failure to provide food foe the country was due to their flawed economy. North Korea began to produce less
Today, Japanese and Korean civilizations are advanced, wealthy, and independent with their own system of government and religious beliefs due to the influences from China. The majority of Asia experienced changes in government and dealt with inter and intra state conflicts when the countries were most susceptible to influences from alliances made with other countries. The Tang Dynasty/ Silla alliance shaped the future of Korea’s religious and government movements. Art and literature from China also greatly impacted Korea’s and Japan’s society and provided new insight into literary expression through new forms of poetry and a new system of writing. Religion was also a major influence because of popularity and acceptance of new views and beliefs. Agriculture played an important role in the development of Korean and Japanese civilizations because new tools and forms of irrigation led to more efficient harvesting. The bulk of Chinese influence impacted Japanese society through the Heian period and Korea was heavily influenced by Chinese culture during the period when Silla unified Korea. Although there were many factors of Chinese culture that influenced Korean and Japanese civilizations, religion and government legislation had the most impact.
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.
..., South Korea’s economy ranked 15 in the world which is impressive for such a small country. Also, every couple of years, North and South Korea will both agree on a family reunion day in which they allow families who were broken up to meet each other for a day. It is very sad because they are only able to see each other for a day and are not able to know whether they will be able to see their family again. Korea still remains divided and does not show great signs of reunitement being possible.
China grew to be the largest and most populous country of Asia. IT developed a unique culture by being isolated and having little contact with any other civilizations. After time, its methods of production and system of government here highly advanced for its time. China’s history is shown through the ruling of several different dynasties, their schools of thought and religion, and the vast spreading of their culture to its surrounding countries.
On June 25, 1950 North Korean forces invaded South Korea. South Korea was not prepared. They were outnumbered and outgunned. Many South Koreans stayed to fight but many fled. Within the first week 44,000 South Koreans were killed, just under half of their military forces. On June 27, American President Harry S. Truman ordered American troops to defend South Korea two days after North Korea invaded. By the 28th, United States bombers and fighters left for the Korean Peninsula. This began one of the bloodiest and most infamous wars in United States history. On the South Korean side were The United States with the United Nations and on the North Korean side were the Chinese and Soviets. The Chinese and Soviet involvement is what made the war into the violent one it was.
Hubbard, Ruth. "The Social Construction of Sexualtiy." JSTOR. Duke University Press, 1996. Web. 13 Mar. 2014. (Class Source)
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.
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.
South Korea, once a broken country filled with broken families, has transformed itself into a fine example of perseverance in a tough situation. South Korea and its neighbor to the north have developed past where they were before the Korean War, but in different ways. The two countries, while certainly dependent on each other, are vastly different. Their conflicting styles of government and their differing cultures speak for themselves in this case. South Korea has, over the years, changed dramatically from the crippled country of the Korean War into a blossoming beacon of Asian cultural and economic changes. The combination of its recent economic importance, its heavy cultural influence, and its constant danger of participating in a war makes South Korea one of the most influential countries in the world.
This country is of particular interest as it is one of the four Asian Tiger economies, whose rapid industrialisation and growth between the early 1960’s and 1990’s caused it to emerge as one of the most dynamic and fast-changing countries in Asia and the world. Much like Japan, its economic development was marked by heavy investments in foreign technology and imitation through reverse-engineering. By limiting FDI, South Korea maintained control over its industrial base and encouraged investments in R&D.
Due to the harsh differences between the peoples of Korea, and especially due to the onset of Communism, the Korean War erupted and the nation split in half, with the Communist-supported Democratic People’s Republic in the north and those who favored democracy in the Korean Republic of the south (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000). The two separate countries of North Korea and South Korea have gone their opposite ways, and each has experienced different fortunes in the past half-century. The South Koreans managed to recover from the turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s to become an economic power and a democracy supporter. On the other hand, North Korea can be viewed as a retro country, based first on a Communist ideology, laid down by leader Kim Il Sung and inherited by his son, the current dictator Kim Jong Il, then evolving into a totalitarian state (Pacific Rim: East Asia at the Dawn of a New Century). Today, North Korea holds the distinction of being one of the very few remaining countries to be truly cut off from the rest of the world.