Gary Wintz's Speech: Religions Of North And South Korea

During Gary Wintz’s speech ‘Top 10 Things Everyone should know about Korea’, he mentioned a couple of interesting topics that coincide with our book Introduction to Geography. Even though Korea is split into both North and South Korea, I will be focusing on South Korea and their religion, agriculture and food, and economy. What are the top two religions in South Korea? There are many religions in South Korea, but the top two are Buddhism and Christianity. According to Introduction to Geography, Buddhism came to be when a Hindu Prince named Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B.C), meditated and became the enlightened one, which means total removal of suffering. Then Prince Siddhartha taught there are Four Noble Truths that make up

An example of the eagerness that Buddhist’s have whenever others follow their beliefs, would be a scenario that Gary Wintz and his assistant Molly found themselves in. Whenever Gary travels around the world he delights in going to mosques, temples, etc. in order to merge into the countries atmosphere and culture. He also lives and studies with the people there to learn more about the country that he is in. While Gary and Molly were interacting and studying Buddhism in a South Korean Buddhist temple, Gary was invited to a gathering by Buddhist members. Gary and Molly attended the gathering and they heard Buddhist followers chanting and saying their names. Gary and Molly were confused by the event. They were stunned when the Buddhist leader asked them to join him on the stage. When they did the members continued to chant and Gary and Molly were publicly baptized into their religion, without their permission. Another popular religion in South Korea is Christianity. Christianity is the belief that God came down to earth, in the form of Jesus Christ, to save sinners and preach God’s word. Christianity is a fast growing religion, with the

South Korea grows many crops, but they use a majority of their agricultural land to produce rice and raise Cattle. According to our book, 5-24% of the South Korean population was working in agriculture in the year 2012. In the year 2011 both the United States and South Korea had an average yield of cereals, which is wheat rice and maize, in kilograms per hectare of 4,001 to 9,000 kilograms. In the same year, the United States had an average of 50 to 99 million cattle, while South Korea had less than 12 million cattle on their land. Many countries have different varieties of meals that they delight in. Both North and South Korea are no different in this. The speaker stated that many Koreans enjoy a delicious and extremely common side dish, called Kimchi. Kimchi is a delicious and sometimes colorful assortment of fermented