A History of Korea (2 page)

Throughout its history the Korean nation has been influenced by the immense power and culture of China. Historically the Chinese were far more numerous and more powerful militarily than Koreans; their technology and culture were also more advanced. Before 1895 successive Chinese dynasties from the Han to the Qing empires exerted great power and influence on Korea. Koreans drew from the Chinese model in organizing its political institutions,
and the Korean adoption of the Chinese political system extended to society and culture. But this adoption of Chinese institutions and culture was not an expression of submission. Rather, it was the indispensable condition of being civilized in the East Asian context. It did not obliterate the identity of the Korean people.

After 1895, following its military defeat of China (the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895), Japan made political and economic inroads into Korea, which led to Korea’s 35 years of subjugation. No sooner was Korea liberated from Japan’s imperialistic rule at the end of World War II than Western influence arrived in two conflicting forms—the capitalistic, liberal-democratic tradition of the United States and the communism of the Soviet Union. Conflicting ideologies and a rivalry for power in what came to be known as the Cold War split the Korean nation into two hostile states.
²
Despite these formidable outside influences, it was the blood, sweat, and passion of its own people that basically shaped Korea’s long history and made Koreans stand out as the masters of their own history.

In the premodern era Korea suffered from a major problem. Compared to other nations, each of Korea’s dynasties lasted too long, much longer than in China or any other country, and fell into chronic corruption, stagnation, inertia, and lethargy. The dynastic cycle was so long in Korea that the reforms needed to meet changing domestic and international situations were absent. One reason may have been that Korea was a relatively small and culturally uniform country with fewer variables to bring about a rapid dynastic change. Another reason may have been Koreans’ unflagging adherence to the Confucian concepts of loyalty, which led them to cling to a dynasty, once it was established, much more faithfully than other peoples.

This book aims to provide foreign readers with a general survey of Korea’s long, rich history from ancient times to the present. To achieve this goal, it discusses Korea’s major political, economic, social, and cultural developments, as well as the dynamics underlying them. In history, the closer the past is to the present, the more important it seems to us. This book therefore devotes a great deal of space to the description of the post-Chos
ŏ
n period. In particular, it treats in detail the most recent developments, including the Hwang U-s
ŏ
k scandal and the spreading Korean wave of pop culture throughout Asia.

Like that of many other countries, Korean history is also full of different interpretations by individual historians. This work endeavors to suggest the most recent interpretations on every controversial issue in Korean history. The
account in this book also generally reflects a coherent consensus of varying schools. For instance, on the origins of
yangban
(“two orders” or “two sectors”), the aristocratic class of the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty (1392–1910), this book takes the view that, from the beginning of the kingdom, the yangban and commoner classes were strictly differentiated.

New historical facts are also revealed in these chapters. Here I list just a few examples. First, the rank of the six ministries,
yuk-pu
in the Kory
ŏ
dynasty and
yuk-cho
in the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty, was actually arranged in the order of Yi (Personnel), Py
ŏ
ng (Military), Ho (Taxation), Hy
ŏ
ng (Punishment), Ye (Rites), and Kong (Engineering), instead of Yi, Ho, Ye, Py
ŏ
ng, Hy
ŏ
ng, and Kong following the account in the
Ky
ŏ
ngguk taej
ŏ
n,
or the Great Code of State Administration, which was perfected in 1470. Second, the Three Kingdoms of Kogury
ŏ
, Paekche, and Silla all accepted Buddhism as a result of the proselytizing efforts of Indian Buddhist monks, some of whom suffered martyrdom in Korea. Third, in the late Chos
ŏ
n period, when the kingdom was the focus of a fierce power struggle between neighboring powers, it was not Hermann Budler, the German vice-consul to Chos
ŏ
n, but rather Paul Georg von Möllendorf, who came to Chos
ŏ
n in late 1882 as one of the special advisers on foreign affairs, who proposed that it become a neutral, unaligned nation. And finally, in 1895 Queen Min, the consort of the Chos
ŏ
n king Kojong, was not murdered in her bedroom. She was dragged to the courtyard of the Ky
ŏ
ngbok-kung palace and then publicly hacked to death by the Japanese.

Character assessment occupies a prominent place in the study of history. This book endeavors to assess the major leaders in Korean history, especially those in post–World War II Korea, North as well as South, that is, Syngman Rhee and his successors in South Korea as well as North Korean leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

This book stresses, in particular, a “history war,” South Korea’s long-standing battle with China and Japan over historical records and territorial disputes. The Republic of Korea is now at odds with the People’s Republic of China over the recent Chinese attempt to include the histories of Korea’s ancient kingdoms of Old Chos
ŏ
n, Puy
ŏ
, Kogury
ŏ
, and Parhae into its own history. Specifically China has been making systematic attempts to portray the once mighty Kogury
ŏ
kingdom, which ruled the northern part of the Korean peninsula and parts of present-day Manchuria between the first and seventh centuries, as ethnic Chinese rather than an independent Korean nation. Korea has also been at loggerheads with Japan over that country’s attempts to revise its secondary-school
textbooks to omit discussions of the atrocities committed during its colonial rule (1910–1945) and the conflicting sovereignty claims over the Tok-to islets, known as Takeshima in Japan, in the East Sea.

Regarding the form of the Korean names, this book generally follows the McCune-Reischauer system now internationally used, with the exception of such well-known names as Seoul (S
ŏ
ul), Pyongyang (P’y
ŏ
ngyang), Syngman Rhee (Yi S
ŭ
ng-man), Kim Il-sung (Kim Il-s
ŏ
ng), Park Chung-hee (Pak Ch
ŏ
ng-h
ŭ
i), and Kim Jong-il (Kim Ch
ŏ
ng-il). Family names precede personal names, which usually consist of two syllables and are hyphenated. This book also uses the
pinyin
rather than Wade-Giles spelling for Chinese names.

As with most other states, geography and climate have played key roles in Korean history. Korea is a peninsula situated at the northeastern rim of the Asian continent. The Korean peninsula and its adjacent islands, which have sustained the Korean people for hundreds of thousands of years, lie within the latitude range of 33° to 43° north and the longitude range of 124° to 131° east. This is almost equal to the distance between the states of South Carolina (Columbia) and Massachusetts (Boston). The Korean peninsula is 600 miles in length, but in width it varies from 200 miles at the broadest point to 90 miles at its narrow waist.

Shaped somewhat like a rabbit or a tiger and comprising a landed area about the size of the state of Minnesota, the total area of the Korean peninsula is some 85,000 square miles (221,000 square kilometers). Of this total, the part under administrative control of the Republic of Korea (
ROK
) takes up 38,000 square miles (99,000 square kilometers), or about 45 percent of the whole. The Korean peninsula is about two-thirds the size of the Japanese home islands and equal to the island of Great Britain. South Korea (
ROK
) is slightly larger than Portugal and Hungary or the state of Indiana. The shortest distance from the Korean peninsula’s west coast to the Chinese Shandong peninsula is about 119 miles (190 kilometers), and 129 miles (206 kilometers) from the east coast to the Japanese islands.

In far northern Korea, the Yalu (Amnok) and the Tumen (Tuman) rivers separate the Korean peninsula from China and Russia. The historic rivers have their sources on the slopes of Paektu-san, a border-straddling extinct volcano
which, at 9,000 feet (2,744 meters), is Korea’s tallest peak and whose crater contains Lake Ch’
ŏ
nji, or Heavenly Lake. Koreans have historically regarded this mountain as a sacred place. Thus Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s “Great Leader,” and his guerrilla band claimed an association with this mountain as part of the founding myth of North Korea. Also, the personality cult of its “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-il, holds that he was born in a humble log cabin on the slope of the mountain (he was actually born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, then in the Soviet Union). The upper reaches of the two rivers are usually shallow and completely frozen over during the winter months, allowing movement of human and animal cargoes over their icy surface. In the past the Korean people could easily wade across these frozen rivers to Manchuria, where they migrated in large numbers and established pioneer settlements. These gradually evolved into prosperous agricultural settlements, where their descendents have maintained a coherent ethnic and cultural unity up until the present.

Three bodies of water—the East Sea (Sea of Japan), the Yellow Sea, and the South Sea—enclose the Korean peninsula on three sides. Compared to the smooth coastline of the east coast, the west and south coasts are marked by an endless succession of bays, inlets, and peninsulas and have good natural harbors, including Pusan and Inch’
ŏ
n.

Approximately 70 percent of the Korean peninsula is mountainous. Of the total land mass, elevations of more than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) above sea level account for 10 percent. The higher mountains are located mostly in the northern and eastern parts of Korea. The peninsula is crisscrossed by several ranges of mountains; the dominant feature is the Nangnim and T’aebaek mountain ranges, which run down the east coast like a spine and cause most of Korea’s rivers to flow westward. These mountain ranges have historically inhibited communication and cultural homogeneity between various parts of the country. Regional isolation has also led to conflict throughout the country’s history, particularly between the Ch
ŏ
lla and Ky
ŏ
ngsang provinces in southern Korea and between the P’y
ŏ
ngan and Hamgy
ŏ
ng provinces in northern Korea. Mountains, steep hills, and streams command Korea’s landscape, which appears to have been a factor in shaping what is said to be one of Koreans’ peculiar characteristics, that of a quick temper.

Although relatively short and shallow, Korea’s rivers have played an important part in the nation’s history. The rivers running in an east-west direction have provided physical barriers against foreign invaders. More important, they have
functioned as arteries of commerce, provided water for the irrigation of farmlands, and, in the twentieth century, served as sources of hydroelectric power. Stretches of plains appear intermittently along the rivers and streams, essentially isolated from one another by mountains and hills. Although comprising only 20 percent of the land area, these plains, which provide the bulk of the country’s agricultural products, have been essential, throughout the country’s history, in providing a means of livelihood for the majority of the Korean people. But because of the low fertility of Korea’s soil, life has never been easy for those untold millions who have toiled over the centuries on Korea’s plains and elsewhere in the country’s rural areas.

The Korean peninsula as a whole is only moderately endowed with natural resources. Most of the farm products, especially rice, have historically come from the southern part of the peninsula. Southern Korea, in fact, is considered the rice bowl of Korea. Throughout Korea’s history, rice has been the staple diet and has also functioned as currency. For these reasons, South Korea has always had a much greater population density than other parts of the country. On the other hand, the northern mountain ranges contain concentrations of mineral deposits. In fact, North Korea has most of the mineral resources of the peninsula. As of 2008 North Korea had $6.2 trillion worth of ample mineral resources, 24.1 times more than South Korea’s $257 billion. In addition, North Korea has 6 billion tons of magnesite (South Korea has none), 20.5 billion tons of coal, and 2,000 tons of gold, as well as important deposits of iron ore, lead, zinc, tungsten, barite, graphite, molybdenum, limestone, mica, fluorite, copper, nickel, silver, aluminum, and uranium. South Korea has overcome this disadvantage by producing a highly educated and motivated populace that has made that country one of the ten largest industrialized nations in the world. As of 2009 South Korea’s economy was 37.4 times larger than that of North Korea. Its nominal
GNI
stood at $837.2 billion in stark contrast to North Korea’s $22.4 billion. South Korea’s per-capita
GNI
, at $17,175, was 17.9 times larger than North Korea’s $960. Its total trade volume of $686.6 billion was 201.9 times greater than North Korea’s $3.4 billion.

Korea’s looming mountains are unevenly distributed in the eastern part of the peninsula, as are Japan’s highest mountains in the western part of the main island of Honshu. Therefore, whereas the Korean peninsula faces China, the Japanese islands face the Pacific, although the East Sea provides a few natural havens for ships. As a result, Korea has had a geographical affinity with China but, figuratively, turns its back on Japan.

In mountainous Korea the settlements that formed had mountains or hills in the rear and rivers or streams at the front. According to traditional geomantic theories, these areas were considered propitious sites. The Korean peninsula had many such favorable places where villages and cities were formed.