The KOREAN Civilization: Things Every Civ Player Should Know

[yin26]

Contact her! The one year of no communication only made her want you more. LOL Thanks, I'll check my mail.

[DaShi]

I've tried, but her email doesn't work. She would never give me her home address (afraid of her parents finding out about me). Perhaps it won't be too hard to find a Korean girl with the last name Kim, though. Though I may be able to go through a friend of a friend, but it's a long shot. Maybe, I need to learn to let go.

That check may take awhile, will you accept RMB instead?

[yin26]

Yes, just ask for Ms. Kim and you'll find her in second! LOL Anyway, best of luck. If you come out to Seoul, I'll buy you some soju.

[Q Classic]

DaShi... do you know how much W1000 is worth?

[siredgar]

Dear Sir,

Anyone who says Korea is not culturally distinct enough from China or Japan is simply ignorant. I am sorry, but that is like saying France is not any different from Germany or Italy. In fact, France has inherited much of its culture from Italy and most of Europe shares a common cultural thread. Thus, I would argue that Europeans are generally more closely tied together than Asians.

Indeed, many Koreans consider themselves almost an entirely different race from other Asians. For instance, people in southern China and Okinawa (Japan) have more genetic ties to Southeast Asians than Koreans. In general, Koreans are considered by geneticists as more culturally "pure" than almost any other national grouping. That's because they've occupied nearly the exact same territory for thousands of years.

If you look at most of Europe, the facial features are generally "European" throughout the continent, with the exception of hair color. However, when comparing Asians, it's much more diverse: i.e. make a comparison between Japanese and Indians.

The languages are also very distinct from each other. While the vast majority of Europeans use the Greek-based alphabet, the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese all use different writing systems (and they neighbor each other!) If you go from Britain to Sweden to Germany to Spain, you can read signs and understand a few words here and there. You can't do this in Asia at all!

Regardless, this debate is inane because we are all related to each other much more closely than we think. In fact, the concept of nationhood is a relatively new INVENTION (only a few hundred years old) and generally used as a means of mobilizing the masses for silly wars (see "Nationalism").

In Her Majesty's Service,

Sir Edgar

[yin26]

In general, Koreans are considered by geneticists as more culturally "pure" than almost any other national grouping. That's because they've occupied nearly the exact same territory for thousands of years.

Very well said, sir! And your comparison with Europe is right on target. I suppose I could bemoan the lack of education we get in the West about peoples in the East, but I'll be honest and say that I hardly knew anything about Korea myself until I moved here.

As Chaucer's famous work once said in reference to painting of a man standing over a lion he defeated with his own hands: "Who painted the lion? Tell me, who?"

And while I agree with your general sentiment that we are more alike than we often admit or understand, I think it is vitally important that people not trivialize differences, either, since that breeds intellectual fraud and laziness. In fact, I think our differences should be celebrated. Just imagine McDonalds and Blue Jeans on every street corner of every nation to see what a sick and boring world that would be ... oh, wait ...

[ranskaldan]

The languages are also very distinct from each other. While the vast majority of Europeans use the Greek-based alphabet, the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese all use different writing systems (and they neighbor each other!) If you go from Britain to Sweden to Germany to Spain, you can read signs and understand a few words here and there. You can't do this in Asia at all!

well, if you're Chinese (and I am) and you go to Japan, you will be able to read signs and understand a few words here and there. And just as the Europeans all use a Greek-based alphabet, the East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) use Chinese-based systems.

That is not the main point however. Nearly all European languages can be traced by to a common source (Indo-European), spoken in around 4000 BC. Some European languages have even more recent common sources (the Germanic languages, for example, have a common source around 500BC - 1AD). Here I'm comparing the spoken languages themselves, which tend stay within their races, not the alphabets or writing systems, which can easily be borrowed from race to race. This shows that European races are very, very close to each other. The three East Asian languages, Chinese, Korean and Japanese, cannot be traced back to any common source at all. (Their writing systems can, but writing systems are easily transferred from race to race.) This suggests totally different origins for the 3 groups.

[molly bloom]

Oh, Phoenicia, lest we forget you....

https://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/00380.html

Phoenicia, via Greece, via Rome....at least for Western Europe.

[Q Classic]

the East Asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) use Chinese-based systems.

umm... right...

if you're a chinese person, i'd like to see you try and read standard korean writing.

chinese uses ideograms.

korean uses an alphabet.

when koreans use chinese characters, friend, it's much in the same way english speakers will use japanese words or german phrases, like zeitgeist, to represent an idea, or a phrase, in simple terms.

outside of that, there is precious little to connect the written languages of korea and china together.

what you said about japan may well be true.

but for you to allege that you can understand most korean signs without giving an example, instead only citing japanese signs, you do a grave disservice to your arguments and to all three cultures involved.

[yin26]

I think what he means is that a lot of street signs in Japan and Korea *also* use Chinese characters. He's right in that regard, but it's losing popularity fast here in Korea. But the World Cup is a good example: Since both the Japanese and Koreans (well, the educated ones) can read the commonly used Chinese characters, it becomes a 'convenient' common why to name places, etc.

However, a Chinese person would never be able to make any sense of Korean or Japanese writing. A Korean can't understand Japanese writing. And Japanese can't understand Korean. It's just the common use of Chinese characters that is an exception, but this common use is fading in Korea (and Japan?) as they realize that being saddled with the HUGE amount of time it takes to learn it could be much better spent, say, learning English or just sleeping.

In other words, there was a day in age when Korean and Japan (at the upper levels of society) needed to read and write Chinese in order to conduct various kinds of business with China and get a classical education. Koreans cast off this yoke, however, by creating their own alphabet (of course, this was initially designed for the illiterate masses).

But keep in mind, Korea has *always* had its own native language.

[Veracitas]

Originally posted by yin26
I think what he means is that a lot of street signs in Japan and Korea *also* use Chinese characters. He's right in that regard, but it's losing popularity fast here in Korea. But the World Cup is a good example: Since both the Japanese and Koreans (well, the educated ones) can read the commonly used Chinese characters, it becomes a 'convenient' common why to name places, etc.

Just as many signs in Korea are in English, but that's losing popularity, too, I think...

btw...in the Korea Herald or Korea times there was this article about English Errors in the newly built world cup stadium which I thought was pretty funny...can't find it right now, tho...

This is also a funny site...while primarily Japanese stuff, it's got some Korean stuff in it, too...

[siredgar]

Chinese characters are often used, but...

a Chinese person would not be able to read a newspaper or walk down the streets of Seoul or Tokyo and understand much.

There is no doubt that the Chinese had tremendous influence on the Korean and Japanese in the early stages of development. For a long time, the only "civilized" nation in Asia was China (and often what it called "the scholar nation of Korea", not "the barbaric islands of Japan", however.)

Regardless, from my understanding, Japanese civilization was largely shaped by specifically Korean inventions and customs. Much of what we know of "traditional" Japanese culture is in fact derived from ancient Korea (now long forgotten by Koreans), albeit based on a Chinese background. This is similar to how a lot of what is part of French civilization is based upon Roman teachings derived from Greek principles. That is why many Koreans and Chinese bemoan the fact that the Japanese are so admired by Westerners, despite being relative newcomers to civilized life.

Tides change, however. For the last century, the Japanese have had a more "net" effect on the region. The modern Korean education and government system is based on Japanese models implemented during occupation (1910-1945). While this is only 35 years, it is still in place today. Also, Japanese pop culture is quite potent now in the more modernized countries of Asia, especially Taiwan.

I believe that cultures are constantly influencing each other. While there are periods of isolation and internal development, you cannot stop people from exchanging ideas and products. Nevertheless, Asian civilizations are much more "distinct" from each other than European civilizations.

[siredgar]

Ms. Bloom, we're both wrong.

Directly from your lifting:

"The alphabet of modern Western Europe is the Roman alphabet, the base of most alphabets used for the newly written languages of Africa and America, as well as for scientific alphabets."

The PRE-CURSORS for the modern alphabet used in Western Europe and elsewhere do come from Egypt. However, the Roman alphabet is said to be the basis.

I still think the true originator is the Greek alphabet, however.

[S. Kroeze]

Originally posted by siredgar

Anyone who says Korea is not culturally distinct enough from China or Japan is simply ignorant. I am sorry, but that is like saying France is not any different from Germany or Italy. In fact, France has inherited much of its culture from Italy and most of Europe shares a common cultural thread. Thus, I would argue that Europeans are generally more closely tied together than Asians.

When you would have read my previous post you would know I am not claiming that Korea is not culturally distinct from China. The question is: Is Korean culture sufficiently different from Chinese and Japanese culture to be considered an autonomous Civilisation?

When you would have explored my list of Major Civilisations, you would recognise the fact that national culture alone is not a decisive reason to consider an independent nation a Civilisation.
Of course Germany is different from France, as is France from Italy! And Bavaria is different from Prussia and Kent is different from Suffolk! Would that be sufficient reason to invent a 'Kentish' civilisation?

Before continuing the debate, I think it would be useful to describe how the concept 'Civilisation' is used by historians:

"What do we mean when we talk about a civilisation? A civilisation is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilisations.

A civilisation is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European , a westerner. The civilisation to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilisations change.

Civilisations may involve a large number of people, as with China ("a civilisation pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilisation may include several nation states, as is the case with western, Latin American and Arab civilisations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese civilisation.

Civilisations obviously blend and overlap, and may include subcivilisations. Western civilisation has two big variants, European and North American, and Islam has its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilisations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real. Civilisation are dynamic: they rise and fall, they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilisations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.

Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global affairs. They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history of civilisations. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21 major civilisations; only six of them exist in the contemporary world. Civilisation identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interaction among seven or eight main civilisations. These include western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilisation. The most important conflicts will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilisations from one another.

Why will this be the case? First, differences among civilisations are not only real, they are basic. Civilisations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and most important, religion. The people of different civilisations have different views on the relation between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy.

These differences are the product of centuries. They will not soon disappear. They are far more fundamental than differences among political ideologies and political regimes."
(Source: S.P.Huntington; 'The clash of civilisations',1993)

It is not my intention to deny categorically the existence of a Korean civilisation. Yet as I said before: to my knowledge -and I admit my knowledge about Korea is almost exclusively based on one panoramic historical study: 'East Asia, the great tradition' by E.O.Reischauer and J.F.Fairbank(1960)- Korea didn't have its own religion and only remarkably late its own literature.

About the literature:
'A thorough knowledge of Chinese classical literature and mastery of its medium (known to the Koreans as hanmun) have traditionally been necessary conditions to social and political preferment in Korea. As a consequence, the great bulk of Korean literature in all branches of learning is written in Chinese. History, biography and belles-lettres form the principal topics, but there are numberless works dealing with every phase of life. The finest products of of this literature, which has always been subject to the influence of changing Chinese fashions, can be compared without disadvantage to the works of the great Chinese masters. The willing subservience to Chinese civilisation, however, has had a repressive effect on the development of the Korean genius. For, side by side with the Chinese tradition, there was a native literature that, with one significant exception, was transmitted only orally until the invention of the Korean phonetic script (onmun in Sino-Korean or hangul in Korean) in the 15th century.

Chinese was widely used for documentary purposes by the end of the 4th century AD. Its literary potentialities were fully realised during the period when the peninsula was unified under Silla rule. Ch'ö Chi-won, the greatest scholar of this period, having attained honours at the imperial court of T'ang China for literary proficiency, returned to his native land and produced a famous collection of essays and poems, "Pen-Plowings in a Cassia-Garden". His example of study in China under official auspices was followed by a considerable number of scholars under the Wang dynasty of the kingdom of Koryo, which succeeded Silla.

The extant historical literature of the period preceding the Yi dynasty (1392-1910), both official and private, is extremely meagre when compared with that of China for the same period. Primary source material for the whole of the pre-Koryo history is practically limited to two works of relatively late compilation: the Samguk sagi ("Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms"), compiled in the middle of the 12th century by Kim Pu-sik, a fervent Confucian and one of the outstanding literary figures of the kingdom of Koryo; and, more than a century later the Samguk yusa ("Remnants of the Three Kingdoms"), by the Buddhist monk Il-yon. The first dynastic history is the Koryo-sa (15th century), which deals, in the manner of Chinese histories , with the events, institutions and personalities of the Koryo period. The documentation for the Yi dynasty is incomparably more voluminous, as it includes the official annals of the dynasty (Yijo sillok) and various privately compiled descriptions of political and social institutions. Such works, intended for the use of the aristocracy and officialdom, remained until modern times the province of literary Chinese.

Native Korean literature as referred to here means the poetry and prose that was primarily of indigenous inspiration. Being a folk creation, it long antedated writing; but some idea of its origin and early manifestations can be gained from brief notices in the Chinese dynastic histories and from anthropological study of some examples that have been preserved in Korea in Chinese translation.(!) The earliest poetry consisted of incantatory songs associated with the primitive shamanistic religion; the earliest narratives are myths in praise of tribal (in some cases totemistic) ancestors. These were inseparably connected with the music and dancing that took place at seasonal religious festivals and other special occasions, such as the election of tribal kingdoms.

The geographic posision of the kingdom of Silla enabled it to remain longer aloof from Chinese civilisation than the other two states of the Three Kingdoms: Koguryo and Paekche; hence its indigenous culture developed to a higher degree, and the earliest attempt to represent the Korean language graphically was made in this region. Idu, as the script was called, was an adaptation of Chinese characters to phonetic purposes, and was devised in the latter part of the 7th century AD. The 25 poems that are its principal extant monument date from before AD 600 to the end of the 10th century. They are best known by the Chinese term hyang'ga ("village song"), which was originally a designation for Korean, as opposed to Chinese, verse. Composed of four, eight or ten phrases, they express simple emotions and represent a national literature of all social classes which had a long poetic tradition behind it.

The use of the idu script for literary purposes died out early in the Koryo period (935-1392), and no means for the recording of native literature were available until the invention of the hangul script in 1446. The oldest extant collection of poems, the Akchang kasa (16th century), contains a number that date from from the Koryo period and are known as chang'ga ("long song"). Being intended to be sung to musical accompaniment, they consist of a varying number of stanzas, each followed by a refrain. They deal primarily with love between the sexes.

The longest-enduring and most universally popular verse form -even to the present day- is the sijo. It became the characteristic form of the period of the Yi dynasty and attained the height of perfection in the 17th and 18th centuries. One of the greatest masters was Yun Son-do (1587-1666). Most sijo consist of three lines each of four phrases, with a fixed number of syllables in each phrase: 3, 4, 4, 4(3) ; 3, 4, 4, 4(3) ; 3, 5, 4, 4. In subject matter they have much in common with the poetry of T'ang China, whence many drew inspiration: contemplation of nature, parting of friends, transitoriness of life. Another popular verse form of the Yi period was the long narrative poem called chapka, sung by male professional entertainers.

Several works of late Koryo contain many elements of the novel, but it was not until the latter half of the Yi period that this form, strongly influenced by novels imported from China, assumed a dominant position in Korean literature. Hanmun remained its principal vehicle, though there is also a considerable body of tales written in hangul -much of it anonymous, as a result either of its low social position or of its satirization of Yi institutions.

Korean literature after1900 was profoundly influenced by western ideas and literary forms. It was inevitable that in the vast intellectual and social upheavals of modern times the Korean vernacular should replace Chinese as the medium of all written communication.'
(source: 'Encyclopaedia Britannica', article 'Korean literature')

So it seems to me that before the 20th century the Chinese literature and language were most dominant.
Compare this situation with the relative importance of the various national European literatures in the vernacular versus Latin:

English: Caedmon (7th cent.); Beowulf(mid-8th cent.), first masterpiece
French: Séquence de Sainte Eulalie(~900); Chanson de Roland(~1100), first masterpiece
Spanish: jarchas from ~1000; Poema de Mío Cid(~1200), first masterpiece
German: Hildebrandslied(~810); Nibelungenlied, Parzival and Tristan, first masterpieces all written shortly after 1200
Norse: Edda(before 1000), first masterpiece
Italian: "trovatori" (from ~1220; La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri(1265-1321), first masterpiece

Japanese: Kojiki ("A Record of Ancient Matters",712); Genji monogatari ("The Tale of Genji") by Murasaki Shikibu(978?-1026?), first masterpiece

And while I agree that most westerners -Europeans and Americans, myself included- know far too little about East Asian/Chinese cultures and civilisation, the position of that other Major Asian civilisation, i.e. the Indian, is far worse indeed!
By dividing the Chinese/East Asian civilisation into its various nationalities -not realising that within China itself we could also make all sorts of linguistic and cultural divisions- we are mainly following today's political boundaries.

To subdivide the Indian civilisation we have to divide India into its constituents parts. After all, political India as we know it today is only the accidental result of colonial rule by the British, who unified the country. Without the dominance of the British, the Indian civilisation would doubtless be divided into a dozen states at least! Like Western Christianity and the Chinese civilisation, the Indian civilisation was kept together by one dominant religion, Hinduism, one dominant language, Sanskrit, and its own 'Holy Scriptures', the Vedas. (for China: Confucianism, Mandarin and the 'Classics') Yet beneath this unifying surface one can find a most bewildering variety!

'Ethnological studies have revealed six main races in the Indian sub-continent. The earliest was apparently the Negrito and this was followed by the Proto-Australoid, the Mongoloid, the Mediterranean, and later those associated with Aryan culture. There is evidence of the Proto-Australoid, the Mediterranean, Alpine, and Mongoloid in the skeletal remains at Harappan sites. Presumably by this time (~1500BC) the first five of the races mentioned above were well settled in India. The Proto-Australoid were the basic element in the Indian population and their speech was of the Austric linguistic group, a specimen of which survives in the Munda speech of certain primitive tribes. The Mediterranean race is generally associated with Dravidian culture. The concentration of the Mongoloid people was in the north-eastern and northern fringes of the sub-continent, and their speech conforms to the Sino-Tibetan group. The last to come were the people commonly referred to as the Aryans. Aryan is in fact a linguistic term indicating a speech-group of Indo-European origin, and is not an ethnic term.'
(source: R.Thapar, 'A History of India',1966)

There are 14 major Indian languages -Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Karanese (or Kannada), Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu- each with a sturdy literature of its own. Sanskrit is not spoken, but it is the chief classical language of India and new philosophical, philological and religious works in this language are not infrequent. Occasionally new poems and dramas of considerable extent and literary merit appear. Other classical languages used in India are:
(1) Prakrit, normally the language of the Jains and used in books published in Bombay state or in the Hindi or Marwari-speaking area
(2) the Buddhist Pali, rare in India
(3) Tibetan, published at Calcutta and Darjeeling
(4) the Pahlavi of the Parsees, published in Pahlavi or Gujarati script in Bombay state
(5) Arabic, appearing chiefly in Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad (Deccan)
(6) Persian, more occasional.
Many of the vernacular languages, chiefly the Dravidian group, Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese and Malayalam also have their old or classical periods; re-editions of their classical works are frequent, and for the most part are published within the areas of the respective vernaculars.

Indeed, many Koreans consider themselves almost an entirely different race from other Asians. For instance, people in southern China and Okinawa (Japan) have more genetic ties to Southeast Asians than Koreans. In general, Koreans are considered by geneticists as more culturally "pure" than almost any other national grouping. That's because they've occupied nearly the exact same territory for thousands of years.

If you look at most of Europe, the facial features are generally "European" throughout the continent, with the exception of hair color. However, when comparing Asians, it's much more diverse: i.e. make a comparison between Japanese and Indians.

I am rather disturbed by the use of this argument of 'racial purity'. To me this is tantamount to denying that German Jews, who were killed during the 'Holocaust', were ordinary German citizens living in the country for many centuries, or to saying that Colin Powell, a so-called Afro-American, can neither be a westerner nor an American, because his ancestors were brought as slaves out of Africa to the US, though English is his native language, he is a Christian, reads the New York Times, supports western ideas like rule of law, human individual rights and democracy and eats with knife and fork!
Geneticists study genetics, historians and anthropologists study cultures and linguists study languages. The concept of 'cultural purity' seems to me also highly debatable!

The languages are also very distinct from each other. While the vast majority of Europeans use the Greek-based alphabet, the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese all use different writing systems (and they neighbor each other!) If you go from Britain to Sweden to Germany to Spain, you can read signs and understand a few words here and there. You can't do this in Asia at all!

I think we should separate the discussion about languages and writing systems!
'With the possible exceptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, and Easter Island writing to be considered later, all other writing systems devised anywhere in the world, at any time, appear to have been descendants of systems modified from or at least inspired by Sumerian or early Mesoamerican writing. One reason why there were so few independent origins of writing is the great difficulty of inventing it, as we have already discussed. The other reason is that other opportunities for the independent invention of writing were preempyed by Sumerian of Mesoamerican writing and their derivatives.'
(source: J.Diamond, 'Guns, Germs and Steel',1998)

[ranskaldan]

if you're a chinese person, i'd like to see you try and read standard korean writing.

um... i believe i've been gravely misunderstood.

I am Chinese, and I know that I'm incapable of reading Korean or Japanese. I also know that the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages are totally unrelated from each other.

but for you to allege that you can understand most korean signs without giving an example, instead only citing japanese signs, you do a grave disservice to your arguments and to all three cultures involved.

i never alleged that I can understand most Korean signs, because I can't. My only example was Japan, not Korea, and I said I'll be able to understand a few words here and there in Japan, not Korea. And that was to correct siredgar's point about how Europeans can read each other's signs but Asians can't. Asians can, in one instance, which is between Chinese and Japanese.

Thus, if I walk down the streets of Tokyo, I would be able to recognize words like 'bank', 'airport', 'post office' and so on It's like you walking down the streets of, say, France. You won't be able to read the newspapers, or anything. But you'll see things like 'café' or 'hôtel' and you'd be able to guess what they mean.

But as I said, that's not the main point in that paragraph I wrote. My main point was that the three languages use related writing systems, but the languages themselves aren't related. That was, in turn, to prove the point that the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are different enough, which was the original debate anyway.