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— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

Korea

12 min listen · Ch. 1 of 8
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  • Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia, and for one boundary line it has paid an extraordinary price. Since the end of World War II in Asia in 1945, the land has been split at or near the 38th parallel. To the north sits the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. To the south sits the Republic of Korea. Both proclaimed independence in 1948. Within two years they were at war.

    Yet this division is recent against a vast backdrop. Human habitation of the Korean peninsula dates to 40,000 BC. Tradition holds that the kingdom of Gojoseon was founded in 2333 BC. Between that legendary beginning and the demilitarized zone drawn in the 20th century lie kingdoms, golden ages, invasions, and an alphabet built by a king's own hand.

    How did one people come to live under two such different states? Why does the very name Korea trace back to a dynasty most listeners have never heard of? And what holds the two halves together even now, when so much has pulled them apart? The answers run through mountains and rivers, through printing presses and turtle ships, and through a war that has never formally ended.

  • Corea appears in English as early as 1614, and that older spelling carries the whole story. The name derives from the ancient kingdom of Goryeo. In The Travels of Marco Polo, Korea was transliterated as Cauli, rendering the Chinese characters for Goryeo, the kingdom that ruled most of the peninsula during the 12th century. Korea's introduction to the West came through trade with merchants from Arabic lands, with some records dating back as far as the 9th century.

    Goryeo's name was itself a continuation of Goguryeo, the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea. That original name combined the adjectives "high" and "lofty" with the name of a local Yemaek tribe. The tribe's name is thought to have been either "Guru" or "Gauri". As British and American trade expanded after Korea opened in the late 19th century, the spelling "Korea" appeared and grew in popularity.

    The two Koreas do not even call the whole region by the same word. In South Korea it is haːnɡuk, a name that references Samhan. The Han here was a phonetic transcription of a native Korean word meaning something like "big" or "great", especially for leaders. It has been tentatively linked to the title khan used by nomads of Manchuria and Central Asia. In North Korea the region is tɕosʰʌn, the same root used for Korea in Japan, China, and Vietnam. King Taejo took that name from the earlier Gojoseon, whose capital Asadal has been reconstructed to mean "Morning Land" or "Mountain".

  • By 313, Goguryeo had annexed all of the Chinese commanderies that the Han dynasty installed after defeating Gojoseon in 108 BCE. Only the Lelang Commandery had endured, surviving for four centuries as a center of exchange with successive Chinese dynasties. With Gojoseon gone, the peninsula fractured. In the south rose the Samhan confederacies of Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan, totaling 78 states that would grow into Baekje, Silla, and Gaya.

    Goguryeo became a highly militaristic empire that reached its zenith in the 5th century. Its territory stretched across most of Manchuria, into parts of Inner Mongolia and Russia, and down to the Seoul region. Under Gwanggaeto the Great and his son Jangsu it subdued both Baekje and Silla. In the Goguryeo-Sui War it defeated a force said to number over a million men. In 642 the general Yon Kaesomun seized control in a coup, drawing the campaigns of Tang Taizong, who was defeated at the Battle of Ansi.

    Baekje, founded near modern-day Seoul by a Goguryeo prince, became the Phoenicia of East Asia. Its nautical skill helped spread Buddhism across the region and carried Chinese culture to Japan. Silla, long the smallest and weakest, won through cunning diplomacy. In 660 General Kim Yu-shin, aided by Tang forces, conquered Baekje after defeating General Gyebaek at the Battle of Hwangsanbeol. Goguryeo fell to the Tang-Silla alliance in 668. Thirty years later, a Goguryeo general named Dae Jo-yeong founded Balhae and expelled the Tang from much of the old northern lands.

  • Silla repulsed Tang China from the peninsula in 676, but it never held the far north. Those Goguryeo territories belonged to Balhae, the kingdom Dae Jo-yeong led refugees to the Jilin to build. At its height Balhae stretched from southern Manchuria down into the northern peninsula, and it earned the title "Prosperous Country in the East". This era of two powers is known as the North-South States Period.

    Later Silla inherited Baekje's maritime prowess and dominated the seas of East Asia during the 8th and 9th centuries, controlling trade between China, Korea, and Japan. The figure of Chang Pogo loomed large in this period, and Silla people built overseas communities on the Shandong Peninsula and at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The capital, Gyeongju, grew to be the fourth largest city in the world.

    Gyeongju's golden age of art survives in names like the Hwangnyongsa, the Seokguram, and the Emille Bell. Buddhism flourished, and Silla monks gained fame among Chinese Buddhists. Among them was Kim Gyo-gak, a Silla prince whose influence made Mount Jiuhua one of the Four Sacred Mountains of Chinese Buddhism. Later Silla fell apart in the late 9th century, opening the Later Three Kingdoms period that ran from 892 to 935. Balhae was destroyed by the Khitans in 926.

  • Goryeo was founded in 918 and absorbed not only the Later Three Kingdoms but also the last crown prince and much of the ruling class of Balhae. Korean historians have called this a true national unification, because it joined the two successor nations of Goguryeo. Wang Geon, the founder, was of Goguryeo descent and traced his line to a noble Goguryeo clan. He made his hometown of Kaesong the capital.

    In 993 the Khitans of the Liao dynasty invaded, demanding amity. Goryeo sent the diplomat So Hui, who persuaded the Khitans to let Goryeo expand to the banks of the Amnok River, arguing the land had once belonged to Goguryeo. The Khitan Empire invaded twice more, in 1009 and 1018, and was defeated. After that came a golden age lasting a century. By 1100 there were 12 universities producing famous scholars and scientists.

    Goryeo's cultural achievements were extraordinary. The Tripitaka Koreana was carved onto more than 80,000 wooden blocks. The world's first metal movable type was invented in the 13th century. When the Mongols invaded in seven major campaigns from the 1230s to the 1270s, Goryeo was never conquered. Its crown prince swore allegiance to Kublai Khan, who married a daughter to him, and the two nations stayed intertwined for 80 years. The last empress of the Yuan dynasty was a Korean princess. In 1392 General Yi Seong-gye staged a coup, defeated General Choe Yong, and ended the dynasty.

  • Yi Seong-gye named his new dynasty Joseon, moved the capital from Kaesong to Hanseong, and built the Gyeongbokgung palace. In 1394 he adopted Confucianism as the official ideology, costing the Buddhists much power and wealth. The prevailing philosophy became Neo-Confucianism, epitomized by the seonbi, scholars who passed up wealth and power for lives of study and integrity. Joseon stood as a nominal tributary of China while exercising full sovereignty, holding the highest position among China's tributary states.

    Sejong the Great, who reigned from 1418 to 1450, personally created and promulgated Hangul, the Korean alphabet. His golden age brought advances in printing, astronomy, calendar science, ceramics, cartography, and medicine, some of them unrivaled elsewhere. Society was ordered into the yangban noble class, the jungin middle class, the yangin commoners, and the cheonin at the bottom, which included butchers, tanners, shamans, entertainers, and the nobi.

    In 1592, and again in 1597, the Japanese invaded. Two centuries of peace had left the Korean military unprepared. Toyotomi Hideyoshi meant to conquer China and India through Korea, but he met the Righteous Army, the naval superiority of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships, and help from the Wanli Emperor of Ming China. The destruction was tremendous, and the Japanese carried home an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 noses cut from Korean victims. Within 30 years the Manchus invaded in 1627 and 1637. After that came a nearly 200-year peace, with Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo leading an 18th-century renaissance.

  • In the 19th century, royal in-law families seized the government, breeding corruption, severe poverty, and peasant rebellions. Joseon's strict isolationism earned it the nickname "the hermit kingdom", but it could not hold out against imperialism. Beginning in 1871, Japan pressed for influence and forced Korea out of China's traditional sphere. The First Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 stripped the Qing of its position under Article 1 of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. That same year, Empress Myeongseong was assassinated by Japanese agents.

    In 1897 the Joseon dynasty proclaimed the Korean Empire, and King Gojong became emperor. The brief period saw modernization of the military, economy, education, and industry, with investment from Russia, Japan, France, and the United States. The Russians were pushed out after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905. Korea became a protectorate of Japan soon after. On the 26th of October 1909 in Manchuria, An Jung-geun assassinated the former Resident-General of Korea, Ito Hirobumi.

    In 1910 the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty was forced through, signed by Lee Wan-Yong under the Emperor's power of attorney. According to Yi Tae-jin, the Emperor never actually ratified it, and a long dispute persists over its legality. Resistance took shape in the nonviolent March First Movement of 1919, during which 7,000 demonstrators were killed. From 1939 over five million Koreans were conscripted for labour, nearly 400,000 of them dying. Roughly 200,000 girls and women, mostly from China and Korea, were forced into sexual slavery. In 1993 Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the injustices faced by those euphemistically named "comfort women".

  • On the 2nd of September 1945, with the surrender of Japan, Korea was partitioned along the 38th parallel. The Soviet Union administered the north, the United States the south, and the division was meant to be temporary. Instead, two governments formed in 1948. North Korea became a one-party state ruled by the Workers' Party of Korea, built on Kim Il Sung's Juche ideology. South Korea became a multi-party state with a capitalist market economy. In June 1950 North Korea invaded the South with Soviet tanks. By the armistice in 1953 more than 1.2 million people had died and most cities lay in ruins. The two governments are officially still at war.

    The divergence since then has been stark. In 1957 South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and by 2008 it was 17 times as high. South Korea grew into a developed country and a regional power, its economy ranked fourteenth-largest by GDP at purchasing power parity, its pop culture spreading as the Korean Wave. North Korea, following its "military first" Songun policy, fields 7.8 million active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel and possesses nuclear weapons. It is widely considered to have the worst human rights record in the world.

    For all this, a shared culture endures across the line. Koreans use metal chopsticks, unique among Asian countries, with examples found in the sites of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Ssireum wrestling has been practiced for thousands of years, held during the Dano Festival and Chuseok. Taekkyon, considered the oldest Korean fighting technique, was nearly lost in the Japanese occupation and the Korean War, yet revived in South Korea from the 1980s. In 2018 the leaders of both states signed the Panmunjom Declaration, announcing that they would work to end the conflict that began so long ago at one line on a map.

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Cultural regions

Common questions

Where is Korea located and what makes up the region?

Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. It is bordered by China to the north and Russia to the northeast, across the Amnok and Duman rivers, and is separated from Japan to the southeast by the Korea Strait.

Why is Korea divided into North Korea and South Korea?

Korea has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel since the end of World War II in Asia in 1945, when the Soviet Union and United States agreed to divide it into two occupation zones. The division was meant to be temporary, but in 1948 two separate governments, the DPRK and the ROK, were established with the backing of each power.

Where does the name Korea come from?

Korea is the modern spelling of Corea, a name attested in English as early as 1614 and derived from the ancient kingdom of Goryeo. Goryeo's name was a continuation of Goguryeo, the northernmost of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.

Who invented Hangul, the Korean alphabet?

Sejong the Great, who reigned from 1418 to 1450 during the Joseon dynasty, personally created and promulgated Hangul, the Korean alphabet. His reign was a golden age of cultural and scientific advancement.

When was the Korean War and how did it end?

The Korean War was fought from 1950 to 1953, beginning in June 1950 when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded the South. More than 1.2 million people died, and the war ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two governments officially still at war.

What were the Three Kingdoms of Korea?

The Three Kingdoms of Korea were Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla. Goguryeo controlled the northern half of the peninsula and Manchuria, while Silla and Baekje controlled the southern half, until Silla conquered Baekje and Goguryeo with Tang aid in 668 to form Unified Silla.

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All sources

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