The KOREAN Civilization: Things Every Civ Player Should Know

[Trifna]

Yin, can you say that Koreans are THAT MUCH culturally different from Chinese? As different French are from Germans or Americans from English? Or is it more that Koreans are like Singaporeans or many around there and are against China for some reasons but do have a culture that is quite similar? For exemple, all these French lords were battling against themselves, but they didn't had that much cultural difference. At least, they could be put in the French culture.

[Trifna]

Sorry, forgot to say the reason of my precedent message to clarify.


I think, but am not erudite on all this, that it is a possibility that Koreans are in fact CULTURALLY too close to Chinese to really put them as an entire civ in Civ III. They then would be kindda englobed in other oriental civs. They may have done alot, but if they aren't distinctive enough to me, I'd consider them more as a part of Chinese culture, without beeing part of China of course...

[Q Classic]

culturally, yes.

------

1. the cuisine:

look at the foods; chinese tends to be fried, or in sauce;
korean does not, it tends to be spicy.

chinese does not tend to have the same type of side dishes; indeed, few of the side dishes are the same.

chiense does not have the same desserts, as in the rice cakes they have are made differently and used completely differently.

------

2. the language:

korean is completely unrelated in terms of the spoken language, regarding both the manner in which it spoken, and the grammatical structure. indeed, they are so unrelated that linguists cannot place them in the same group.

there is some overlap between the vocabulary; but saying that this is a strong relation is like assuming that france and italy and spain are related and should be considered one because of their vocabulary and language.

the written language is also quite different. korea has moved away from much of the chinese ideograms that characterized the written language in early days.

------

3. the dress:

korean people wear different clothes (traditional clothes, anyway, before western clothes became the norm); there are no 'mandarin' collars, really, in traditional korean dress (you know, the very high collars); korean formal dress also tends to be multi-layered, brightly colored, and cut differently.

they also do not really have obis or kimonos, which are a japanese thing.

------

4. the customs:

yes, some religions may be similar: confucianism has a strong hold, as does buddhism. but to group korean and chinese together as the same culture would also imply that indonesia, pakistan, bangladesh, and saudi arabia are all the same because they share the common religion of islam.

koreans tend to be far more outward looking and mercurial than do chinese; this has been evidenced in previous interactions with the outside world. china, even though it has had far more missionaries throughout the ages, is still not very christian; neither does japan. korea, on the other hand, has a sizeable christian population. however, it was far more difficult for the western world to open up trade with korea, because, unlike japan, a show of force was not enough to completely open trade with america.

burials also tend to be different. korean burials are always followed by a train of people wearing white, and led up to mountain graves, sanso; chinese burians are not done in this fashion. often times, there are no pillars to mark graves, as in the japanese style, but there are markers.

------

5. the art:

korean dragons, for one thing, traditionally have a different number of toes than do chinese ones. korean art also looks quite different from japanese and chinese art, if you line them up side by side.

------

i'll think of more soon.

[Trifna]

yes, some religions may be similar: confucianism has a strong hold, as does buddhism. but to group korean and chinese together as the same culture would also imply that indonesia, pakistan, bangladesh, and saudi arabia are all the same because they share the common religion of islam.

Well since I'm trying to put general civilization that may include all, culturally, I DO put all these civilizations as beein included in civs in Civ III. In fact, Civ III's civs are general cultures (implying civilizations of course). For me, indonesia, pakistan, bangladesh, and saudi arabia are included in these civs: China, India, Arab and Khmer. They all are a mix of these ones.

That's why I'm wondering for Korean. With all what you said, they seem to me as a difficult case. I know they may have different meals and customs. We Canadians too, you know? And we don't dress like all others, and we don't etc. But we aren't distinctive enough, as German, France, Khmers, China, Japanese all seem as englobing their own category.

If Koreans are a mix with China, Occidental world, Japan and Khmers, they're stil a mix even if they are different from anybody. they didn't took a totally different line.

[ranskaldan]

Trifna, the distance between the Korean, Chinese and Japanese cultures is at least as significant as between, say, English, French, and Spanish cultures.

If you support separate civilizations for the English, French, Spanish, Germans, and Vikings, then I see no reason why you would consider the Korean civilization to be the same civilization as the Chinese.

If Koreans are a mix with China, Occidental world, Japan and Khmers, they're stil a mix even if they are different from anybody. they didn't took a totally different line.

As for the 'mixing' part, there is no reason why being a mixture would disquality a civilization. The English civ is a mixture, of the Germanic, Norse, Celts and Romans. The French are a mixture of the Romans, Gauls, Franks. They didn't take totally different lines from their predecessors. So? We keep them separate because they are distinct. And same goes for the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

The French, Spanish, and Italians can at least be traced by to a common Roman heritage. The Chinese, Koreans and Japanese can't. They started separately and they still are separate. They were pretty close to each other geographically, so they exchanged ideas. That's all.

Thus if the Poles, Spanish, and Vikings are in the xpack, so should the Koreans.

[Q Classic]

trifna... just to make this clear, i don't know if it was, i might just be confused by your wording...

but the koreans aren't a mix of japanese, chinese, the occident, and the khmers...

the khmers are kinda out of the way, the occident didn't have much influence in the beginning, japan was influenced by korea, and the genetics and language are different between koreans and the chinese.

[ranskaldan]

exactly, q cubed (hey, that's a cool name, it rhymes!). the koreans most definitely aren't a mix between the chinese and japanese. you might as well say next that the americans are a mix between the canadians and mexicans.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by thinkingamer
The Chinese also used chemical weapons about 300 BC (european used their fisrt chemical weapon in WWI) and authors like Sun Tzu tells us that Easten Asia had amazing battles that European could not even imagine. (And it took another 1800 years to produce someone like Marchiaveli)

Eever heard of Greek fire? Used by the Byzantine/Eastern Roman navy:

www.ruf.rice.edu/~athan for an illustration from a Byzantine manuscript. Also:

'Greek Fire was the secret weapon of the Eastern Roman Emperors. It is said to have been invented by a Syrian engineer, one Callinicus, a refugee from Maalbek, in the seventh century (673 AD). The "liquid fire" was hurled on to the ships of their enemies from siphons and burst into flames on contact. As it was reputed to be inextinguishable and burned even on water, it caused panic and dread. Its introduction into the warfare of its time was comparable in its demoralizing influence to the introduction of nuclear weapons in our time. Both Arab and Greek sources agree that it surpassed all incendiary weapons in destruction. The secret behind the Greek fire was handed down from one emperor to the next for centuries. Rumors about its composition include such chemicals as liquid petroleum, naphtha, burning pitch, sulphur, resin, quicklime and bitumen, along with some other "secret ingredient". The exact composition, however, remains unknown. For a thorough investigation of the weapon one can refer to Professor J.R. Partington's book, "A history of the Greek Fire and Gunpowder", Heffer, 1960. This volume quotes the ancient authorities extensively, with an excellent commentary. It also examines ancient and modern theories on the composition of the chemicals used in the Greek Fire. This is considered the most up to date source on the subject. '

Many examples of the advances of European/Mediterranean technology were lost or forgotten as civilizations changed, empires fell and wave after wave of invader wrought destruction.
The Antikythera Device:

https://www.giant.net.au/users/ruper...a/kythera3.htm and also:

https://www.giant.net.au/users/rupert/kythera/kythera5.htm

and Archimedes' death ray(!):

https://www.ex.ac.uk/~jbcalver/eureka.htm

https://www.uh.edu/admin/engines/epi252.htm

and others: www2.una.edu/dburton/AncInvVid.htm

[Trifna]

If you support separate civilizations for the English, French, Spanish, Germans, and Vikings, then I see no reason why you would consider the Korean civilization to be the same civilization as the Chinese.

If they are as different as European civs are between themselves, I see no reason why we would include all European civs and not do same for Asia. All I want is that we apply the same rule to all civs (which isn't very easy).

[yin26]

Wow! At one point, I had all but given up on this thread! First, I'm *very* happy that this thread has lately managed to raise some good discussions and, I hope, the profile of Korea!

My thanks to all of you here for adding to the thread and even giving me some credit for the work. Thanks again.

I'd like to especially thank those of you who have some knowledge of Korea for sharing it. And for those of you with a fair mind for arguing for fairness.

S. Kroeze

Thank you for this great thread! Especially your starting post was awesome. I also liked the heated debate following; I didn't read everything but quite a bit. Could you recommend any study about Korean history? I still prefer to add to my knowledge by reading.

Thank you sir! Kind words indeed. I can, if you like, point you to a few web sites full of information. And I could spend half a day telling you about good books. Of course Amazon.com will pull up a ton if you do a Korea search. Anyway, here are two great places to start:

http://www.korealore.com/ (a great run-down of a number of top Korea-related site)

http://www.koreanhistoryproject.org/Ket/KETIndex.htm (a great run-down of Korean history)

Perhaps I missed it, but your posts contain surprisingly little about those factors that in the end define a civilisation: culture, especially language and literature, and RELIGION, the cornerstone of every 'true' civilisation. To my knowledge Korea embraced for centuries some form of Buddhism, proving the supremacy of the Indian and Chinese civilisation!

I think Q-cubed gave some good answers, but I'll just add this for now and we can go into more detail if you like: If you judge a country as being a 'true' civilization according to the origin of the religion used, all of Europe is really just an offshoot of the Arabs and Jews.

Trifna:

Yin, can you say that Koreans are THAT MUCH culturally different from Chinese? As different French are from Germans or Americans from English?

As Q-cubed and others have nicely argued: Absolutely. In fact, moreso than the groups you mentioned.

If they are as different as European civs are between themselves, I see no reason why we would include all European civs and not do same for Asia. All I want is that we apply the same rule to all civs (which isn't very easy).

Right on! Precisely! This makes me very happy to read! Thank you, Trifna, for being open to information and then being willing to change your view a bit in return. Excellent.

[thinkingamer]

Sorry about my unspecific statement; i've should have typed "Chemical warfare using poison gas"

"Chemical warfare using poison gas goes back to at least the early 4th century BC in China...... including the smoke of burning mustard being used by the Germans against the Allies during WWI 2300 years later"

- from "The Genius of China" by Robert Temple -

English is my 3rd language so feel free to ask any question about my statements

[DaShi]

Yin,

Why do Korean girls say that they just want to be friends, then, as your friendship develops, they start dropping hits that they might want to be more than friends, but you, who are on the other side of the world for a year, don't want to make such a committment at that time, especially when it could jeopardize the friendship that you hold so dear, so you try to be sympathetic but not to go beyond the friendship hoping that they can wait until you return, and they respond be pouring out their feelings and telling you that it hurts too much to talk to you, so they want to end all communication with you, in which you, flabergasted, say that they should take as much time as they need only to have them get angry and then actually never talk to you again leaving you with no method of reaching them to apologize or to just find out if they are ok? Why do they do that?

[yin26]

DaShi:

Korean women (and I mean ALL) are psychotic. Listen to me, because I know. My wife is Korean. She's psychotic. My Korean friends who are girls? Psychotic. All of them.

But it's wonderful! They are psychotic about love issues because they have grown up in a culture that A) tries to get them to repress or fill guilty for having 'desires' and B) rewards a kind of melodramatic suffering on the way to some final bliss.

A + B = An entire generation of women who know they have a right to be much much happier in relationships but still feel that anything worth having is worth going through hell for.

So, trust me. If this girl is going through hell right now, she's loving it on some deep, psychotic level. But you are making a few mistakes, IMO. Don't tell her 'Take all the time you need.' That's too logical. That's the antithesis of psychotic. You should tell her (assuming you still want to have a relationship with her in the future, friends or more):

"I can't say for sure exactly how I feel right now, but I do know that each day I spend without you only makes me hurt somehow. Please just know that I am counting each day until I can see you face to face and tell you how much I miss our time together."

Man, that one will send her spinning happily for days! In the end, of course, this girl doesn't want to just be your friend. You know that ... but if you want to test the waters more, give her something to work with!

[yin26]

That advice just cost you 1,000 won. Cash only.

[DaShi]

I did tell her that I wasn't sure how I felt, but at this point she has cut off all communication with me. I have no means to contact her, and it has been a year since I last heard from her. Silly, that I thought she would send me an email saying 'hi." Anyway, I think that you may have described her perfectly. Many of her later emails were filled with a lot of angst, that only confused me. Thanks anyway. Your check is in the mail.