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.
Korea is considered one of very few homogenous cultures within the world. With the exception of a population of about 20,000 Chinese immigrants located mostly in the city of Seoul, people of both North and South Korea identify as ethnically Korean, all sharing a common language and culture, with a slight sense of regionalism between different parts of the peninsula. (Soh, 2006) The people of the Korean peninsula either call themselves Korean or Choson. The names used to identify themselves come from the two longest lasting dynasties in their history, the Koryo dynasty, which ran from 935 to 1392, and the Choson dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910. (Seth, 2011)
During the Koryo dynasty, Korea established itself as a country of technological advancement and innovation. In 1234 they became the first country to use moveable metal type, a full 216 years before the invention of the printing press in Europe. (Nash, 2000) Today, South Korea can be seen making great advancement in the areas of the technological industry as well as the automotive industry, with two of their main export...
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...anham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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We’ve all heard it said that Asian Americans are good at math; anything involving science, technology, and medicine. They study all the time, work really hard, and live a version of the American dream many of us never thought to dream of. And of course, we know these stereotypes are dangerous and often untrue, but perhaps we still find ourselves buying into them. Ronald Takaki”, the ethnic studies expert, writes about the idea that Asian Americans are more successful than any other American minority group in his article “The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority. Takaki refutes this idea by strategically, and somewhat effectively, using reason, statistics, and word choice to show that Asian Americans still face some of the same hardships and barriers
According to the Pew Research Center data, recent trends shows that Asian Americans are the “the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States” ("The Rise o...
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.
Several mandates made in California and Washington devastated the lives of Asian immigrants and citizens. These mandates affected their ability to work in several industries. This distressed their source of revenue, making self–sufficiency incapable. Furthermore, legislators made citizenship difficult to obtain. The Naturalization Act is an example. Barring citizenship denies the privilege of voting and bringing family members to the United States. To stop fu...
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.
North Korea is notorious as the “Hermit Kingdom”. Defensive and secretive to the point of paranoia, its history as well as its present conditions remains shrouded in mystery. What little we do know can be murky at best. The central govern...
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Steinberg, David I., and Donald N. Clark. "Review of The Kwangju Uprising: Shadows over the Regime in South Korea." The Journal of Asian Studies 47.3 (1988): 662-63. Print.
Kang Pyôngju tells the story of his grandfather, a leader of a village in Korea. His grandfather lived in what he describes as an era where “earthquakes rocked the country. The modern world knocked, pounded, and battered its way into our consciousness.” (Kang, pg. 233) His grandfather opened this door and while doing so found change standing in in front of him. He was one of the first
Before World War II Japan ruled Korea as one country from 1939-1945. After World War II Korea was split into two countries. The U.S. took the side of South Korea, which was ruled by Syngman Rhee. Syngman Rhee lived March 26, 1875- July 19, 1965. He had a traditional Confucian education then went on to Methodist school where he learned English. He became a nationalist and later a Christian. When he was 21 he joined a group that’s goal was to free Korea from Japan. The club was broken apart and he was arrested from 1898-1904. He earned a PhD from Princeton, becoming the first Korean to earn a Doctorate from an American University. He returned to Korea after it was annexed from Japan. He was elected president of the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai where he lived for a year and then moved back to Hawaii where he had been living, trying to create an international movement for his country. He remained president for 20 years before being p...
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.