KOREA AND THE KOREAN PEOPLE
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| The Land and the People
Korea is a peninsula bordering on Manchuria and Rusia to the north, facing China to the West across the Yellow Sea and Japan to the east and south across the Sea of Japan and the Korea Straits. This peninsula, together with its adjacent islands, covers an area of 221,362 square kilometers. Although historically one country Korea has been divided into two halves since the end of World War II in 1945. The Republic of Korea in the south covers 99,221 square kilometers, making the nation a little more than twice the size of Switzerland. The eastern part of the peninsula is mountainous with several towering mountain ranges and virtually no coastal plain. On the other hand the western part has most of the large rivers and richer alluvial lands. Korea enjoys a temperate climate with four distinct seasons. In the extreme north, however, the winter lasts a full five months and the average temperature inJanuary and February is belcw freezing. In the rest of the country moderately cold dry winters and warm humid summers are the norm. Spring and autumn are particularly pleasant with crisp weather and clear blue skies. The Korean people are believed to be the descendants of several Mongolian tribes which migrated from Central Asia in prehistoric times. Although some historians maintain that a people of proto-Caucasian origin may have reached the Korean peninsula earlier, the Mongolian strain predominated the early Korean population. Interestingly, the Korean language belongs to the Ural-Altaic group and is related to such agglutinative tongues as Mongolian, Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish The Korean race is homogenous, with a unique culture and civilization, and traits quite distinct from both the Chinese and the Japanese |
The History of Korea According to ancient legend, the Korean people are the descendants of an bear-like god who descended from heaven in the northern part of the Korean peninsula This god transformed an earthly bear into a woman and married her. Their union produced a son named Tan'gun who is said to have founded the Ancient Choson Kingdom. It is believed that the history of the Korean people began approximately 5,000 years ago with the influx of Mongolian tribes onto the peninsula. The cultural development of these Neolithic tribes was accelerated by the Chinese conquest of Ancient Choson in 108 B.C When the Chinese were finally driven from their colony on the Korean peninsula in 313 AD, they had left a lasting cultural imprint on the inhabitants. Toward the middle of the first century B.C, the Korean peninsula was divided into three kingdoms Koguryo to the north, Paekche southwest of the Han River, and Silla in the southeast corner of the peninsula Koguryo (73 B.C.- 668 AD.), with its acce$ibility to Chinese culture, was the first to mature culturally The official Chinese style of writing was introduced to the privileged royalty and aristocracy and it wasn't long before the classics of Confucius and Lao-tse, as well as Buddhism, were introduced Buddhist images and texts to Japan for the first time in 552 and served as an important conduit of Chinese culture and technology to Japan. At first, the Silla Kingdom (57 B.C4i68 AD.) was the smallest of the Three Kingdoms, but it later conquered Koguryo and Paekche to spread the seeds of a colorful civilization. Particularly during the Unified Silla period (668-936), Korea witnessed the birth of a golden age of art and culture However, a series of violent internal rifts cut Silla's golden age short and gave rise to the Koryo Kingdom (918-1392) founded by Wang Kon, who adopted Buddhism as his kingdom's ruling |
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