HISTORY
Modern Seoul has functioned continuously as a capital city since 1394, when the nascent Joseon dynasty selected it as the most auspicious place from which to rule their new kingdom, though Neolithic remains prove the area had already been a major centre of population for several thousand years prior to this. Seoul most likely first served as a place of power at around the same time that Augustus was inaugurating the Roman Empire: the Baekje dynasty proclaimed their first capital in 18 BC, on a site likely to have been within the present-day city limits. They soon moved the throne southwest to Ungjin (now known as Gongju), and Seoul was passed this way and that between the Three Kingdoms until the Joseon dynasty came to power in 1392, and favoured Seoul’s position at the centre of the peninsula. Over a period of more than five centuries a full 27 kings came and went, alliances were made and broken with the Chinese and Japanese dynasties of the time and in the seventeenth century Korea retreated into its shell, becoming a “Hermit Kingdom”, effectively shut off to the rest of the world. In 1910, at a time of global turmoil, Joseon rule was snuffed out by the Japanese, bringing to an end Korea’s monarchy. World War II ended Japanese annexation, after which Korea was split in two in the face of the looming Cold War. There then followed the brutal Korean War, and in 1953 the communist North and the capitalist South went their separate ways; Seoul remained a capital city, but only of the south of the peninsula, while Pyongyang became the northern centre of control. With its position almost exactly on the line of control, Seoul inevitably suffered widespread destruction, making it all the more remarkable when, within just one generation, the city rose from the ashes to become an industrial powerhouse.
The beginnings
Rivers tend to provide a road map of civilization, and with its fertile valley, the wide Hangang likely proved a tempting base for hunter-gatherers during Paleolithic times. However, the first tangible evidence of habitation in Seoul itself is a clutch of Neolithic remains found in what is now the east of the city; dating from 7000 to 3000 BC, these artefacts detail the area’s transition from the Stone to the Bronze Age. In addition to the use of metal tools, from 7000 BC pottery was being produced with distinctive comb-toothed patterns (jeulmun) similar to those found in Mongolia and Manchuria. Fired earth also came to play a part in death rituals, a fact made evident by small, shell-like “jars” into which the broken bodies were placed together with personal belongings; these were then lowered into a pit and covered with earth. An even more distinctive style of burial was to develop in the first millennium BC, with some tombs covered with dolmens. Korea is home to over thirty thousand such burial mounds; these are spread across the country, but are most prevalent in Ganghwado, an island west of Seoul whose collection is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
Today the peninsula’s first kingdom is usually referred to as Gojoseon (“Old Joseon”) in an effort to distinguish it from the later Joseon period (1392–1910). Its origins are obscure, to say the least, but most experts agree that it got going in 2333 BC under the leadership of Dangun, who has since become the subject of one of Korea’s most cherished myths – apparently, he was the son of a tiger turned human. Gojoseon initially functioned as a loose federation of fiefdoms covering not only parts of the Korean peninsula but large swathes of Manchuria too. By 500 BC it had become a single, highly organized dominion, even drawing praise from Confucius and other Chinese sages. Accounts of the fall of Gojoseon are also rather vague, but Seoul seems to have been at the forefront: the kingdom was apparently conquered by the nascent Chinese Han dynasty in 109 BC, who were in turn forced out over the following few decades by natives of the Hangang area at the start of what’s now known as the “Three Kingdoms” period. Joseon’s historical name lives on: North Korea continues to refer to itself as such (and South Korea as Namjoseon, or “South Joseon”), while many South Korean tourist brochures use “The Land of Morning Calm” – a literal translation of the term – as a national motto.
KOREA’S MAJOR HISTORICAL ERAS
Gojoseon c.2333 BC to c.109 BC
Three Kingdoms c.57 BC to 668 AD
Silla c.57 BC to 668 AD
Goguryeo c.37 BC to 668 AD
Baekje c.18 BC to 660 AD
Unified Silla 668–935
Goryeo 918–1392
Joseon 1392–1910
Japanese colonial period 1910–1945
Republic of Korea (South) 1945 to present day
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North) 1945 to present day
The Three Kingdoms period
By 109 BC, after the fall of Gojoseon, the peninsula had split into half a dozen fiefdoms, the most powerful of which – Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje – became known as the Three Kingdoms. Around this time, close ties with China brought Buddhism to Korea, while Confucianism (another Chinese import) provided the social building blocks, with a number of educational academies supplying the yangban, scholars at the head of the aristocracy. Great advances were made in the arts, particularly with regard to jewellery and pottery, and thousands of wonderful relics have been discovered in the grassy hill-tombs of dead kings and other formerly sacred sites.
Fertile and with good transportation routes, the Hangang valleys were in demand, and Seoul was to fall under the banner of all three kingdoms at different times. First in were the Baekje, a kingdom created in 18 BC as the result of great movements of people on the western side of the Korean peninsula. The dynasty was inaugurated by King Onjo, a man jealous of his brother’s inheritance of the rival Goguryeo kingdom, itself started by their father Dongmyeong. Wiryeseong, which almost certainly lay within Seoul’s present-day borders, became the first Baekje capital.
Goguryeo got their own back several generations down the line when the great king Gwanggaeto seized control of the Hangang area in 329 AD. Baekje retreated southwest, establishing new capitals at what are now Gongju and Buyeo, and cultivating an artistic reputation. Baekje became friendly with the Japanese kingdom of Wa, and evidence of this close relationship can still be seen today – the lacquered boxes, folding screens, immaculate earthenware and intricate jewellery of Japan are said to derive from the influence of Baekje artisans. This relationship allowed Baekje to grow in power, and they were to retake Seoul, only to see it snatched back by Goguryeo’s King Jangsu in 475, after which the city was renamed Hanseong.
Baekje were not done with Seoul, and formed an alliance with Silla, the peninsula’s third kingdom. Together, they pushed Goguryeo north and out of Seoul in 551, though Silla was to become the senior party in the relationship, since the Japanese Wa did not provide Baekje such protection as the Chinese Tang dynasty gave Silla. After taking control of Seoul, Silla enlisted Tang help in 660 to eliminate the Baekje kingdom, whose last pockets of resistance literally toppled from a cliff in Buyeo’s riverside fortress. This left only Goguryeo as peninsular rivals, and with a vice-like position between Silla to the south and the Tang to the north, it was only a matter of time (eight years, to be precise) before they too were vanquished, setting the scene for a first-ever unified rule on the peninsula.
SEOUL’S HISTORICAL NAMES
Wiryeseong under Baekje rule, partly as capital c.18 BC to 475 AD
Hanseong under Goguryeo rule 475 to 668
Hanyang under Unified Silla rule 668 to 918
Namgyeong under Goryeo rule 918 to 1392
Seoul as capital of the Joseon dynasty 1392 to 1910
Gyeongseong (Keijo) during Japanese occupation 1910 to 1945
Seoul again as capital of the Republic of Korea 1945 to present
Unified Silla
Following the quickfire defeats of its two competitor kingdoms in the 660s, the Silla dynasty instigated the Korean peninsula’s first-ever unification. They kept the southeastern city of Gyeongju as their seat of power, renaming Seoul “Hanyang” but relegating it to a provincial power base. Silla set about cultivating a peninsular sense of identity, and the pooling of ideas and talent in the eighth century created a high-water mark of artistic development, particularly in metalwork and earthenware. However, rulers stuck to a rigidly Confucian “bone rank” system, which placed strict limits on what an individual could achieve in life, based almost entirely on their genetic background. Though it largely succeeded in keeping the proletariat quiet, this highly centralized system was to lead to Silla’s demise: the late eighth century and most of the ninth were characterized by corruption and in-fighting at the highest levels of Silla society, and a near-permanent state of civil war. With the Silla king reduced to little more than a figurehead, the former kingdoms of Baekje and Goguryeo were resurrected (now known as “Hubaekje” and “Taebong” respectively). Silla shrank back to within its Three Kingdoms-era borders, and after a power struggle Taebong took control of the peninsula; in 935, King Gyeongsun ceded control of his empire in a peaceful transfer of power to Taebong leader Wang Geon, who went on to become Taejo, the first king of the Goryeo dynasty.
The Goryeo dynasty
Having grown from a mini-kingdom known as Taebong, one of the many battling for power following the collapse of Silla control, it was the Goryeo dynasty that eventually gave its name to the English term “Korea”. It began life in 918 under the rule of Taejo, a powerful leader who needed less than two decades to bring the whole peninsula under his control. One of his daughters married Gyeongsun, the last king of Silla, and Taejo himself wed a Silla queen, two telling examples of the new king’s desire to cultivate a sense of national unity – he even gave positions of authority to known enemies. Relations with China and Japan were good, and the kingdom became ever more prosperous.
Following the fall of Silla, Taejo moved the national capital to his hometown, Kaesong, a city in present-day North Korea, while Seoul became Namgyeong, the “Southern Capital”. Taejo and successive leaders also changed some of the bureaucratic systems that had contributed to Silla’s downfall: power was centralized in the king but devolved to the furthest reaches of his domain, and even those without aristocratic backgrounds could, in theory, reach lofty governmental positions via a system of state-run examinations. Despite the Confucian social system, Buddhism continued to function as the state religion, and repeated refinements in the pottery industry saw Korean produce attain a level of quality only bettered in China. In fact, despite great efforts, some pottery techniques perfected in Goryeo times remain a mystery today, perhaps never to be replicated.
In 1248, Goryeo was attacked by Mongol hordes, and became a vassal state of the Great Khans. Annexation came at a great human cost, one echoed in a gradual worsening of Goryeo’s economy and social structure. This lasted almost a century, before King Gongmin took advantage of a weakening Chinese–Mongol Yuan dynasty (founded by Kublai Khan) to regain independence. He made an attempt at reform, purging the top ranks of those he felt to be pro-Mongol, but this instilled fear of yet more change into the yangban elite, and he was eventually murdered. After a series of short-lived kings, powerful Joseon General Yi Seong-gye decided to take the mantle himself, and in 1392 declared himself King Taejo, the first leader of the Joseon dynasty.
The Joseon dynasty
The Joseon era started off much the same as the Goryeo dynasty had almost five centuries before, with a militaristic king named Taejo on the throne, a name that translates as “The Grand Ancestor”. Joseon was to last even longer, with a full 27 kings ruling from 1392 until the Japanese annexation in 1910. Taejo moved the capital from Kaesong to Seoul (the first time the city had used its present name), and immediately set about entrenching his power with a series of mammoth projects. The first few years of his reign saw the wonderful palace of Gyeongbokgung, the ancestral shrines of Jongmyo and a gate-studded city wall go up. His vision was quite astonishing – the chosen capital and its palace and shrine remain to this day, together with sections of the wall. More grand palaces would rise in due course, while another four would at various times house the royal throne. From the start of the dynasty, Buddhism declined in influence as Confucianism permeated society ever more in its stead. Joseon’s social system became more hierarchical in nature, with the king and other royalty at the top, and the hereditary yangban class of scholars and aristocrats just beneath, followed by various levels of employment, with the servants and slaves at the bottom of the pile. All of these social strata were governed by heredity, but the yangban became increasingly powerful as the dynasty progressed, gradually starting to undermine the power of the king. They were viewed as a world apart by the commoners, and they placed great emphasis on study and the arts. However, only the yangban had access to education and literacy, as Chinese characters were used. In the 1440s King Sejong (reigned 1418–50) devised hangeul, a new and simple local script that all classes could read and write; the yangban were not fond of this, and it was banned at the beginning of the sixteenth century, lying largely dormant until it was resurrected by waves of nationalist sentiment that greeted the end of Japanese annexation in 1945.
The “Hermit Kingdom”
In 1592, under the command of feared warlord Hideyoshi, Japan set out to conquer the Ming dynasty, with China a stepping stone towards possible domination of the whole Asian continent. The Korean peninsula had the misfortune to be both in the way and loyal to the Ming. After King Seonjo refused to allow Japanese troops safe passage, Hideyoshi mustered all his military’s power and unloaded the lot at Korea, with another major wave of attacks coming in 1597. Korea was then also affected by the internal strife of its closest ally, China. Following the dynastic transfer from Ming to Qing in the 1640s Joseon became a vassal state, forced to spend substantial sums paying tribute to the emperors in Beijing. After all this, it was no surprise that Korea turned inwards: it became known as the “Hermit Kingdom”, one of which outsiders knew little, and saw even less. One exception was a Dutch ship that crashed off Jeju Island in 1653 en route to Japan; the survivors were brought to Seoul, but their appeal for release was turned down by King Hyojong. They were essentially kept prisoner in Korea for thirteen years but finally managed to escape, and the accounts of one survivor, Hendrick Hamel, provided the Western world with one of its first windows into isolationist Korea.
The Dutch prisoners had entered a land in which corruption and factionalism were rife, one that achieved little social or economic stability until the rule of King Yeongjo (1724–76), who authorized a purge of crooked officials, but also murdered his son . Yeongjo’s grandson Jeongjo, who came to the throne in 1776, became one of the most revered of Korea’s kings, instigating top-to-bottom reform to wrench power from the yangban elite, and allowing for the creation of a small middle class. The lot of the poor also gradually improved.
The end of isolation
Following Japan’s opening up to foreign trade in the 1860s (the Meiji Restoration), Korea found itself under pressure to do likewise, not just from the Japanese but from the United States and the more powerful European countries – warships were sent from around the globe to ensure agreement. Much of the activity occurred on and around the island of Ganghwado, just west of Seoul. The French occupied the isle but failed to advance on the mainland in 1866, their battle fought partly as retaliation for the murder of several French missionaries. Five years later, and in the same location, the Americans also attempted – and failed – to prise the country open to trade. The third bout of gunboat diplomacy – this time by the Japanese in 1876 – resulted in the Treaty of Ganghwa, which dragged Korea into the global marketplace on unfair terms. From this point until well after the Korean War, Korea would be a ship largely steered by foreign powers.
Through means both political and economic, the Japanese gradually strengthened their position in Korea. Local resentment boiled over into occasional riots and protests, and peaked in 1895 after the Japanese-orchestrated murder of Empress Myeongseong – “Queen Min” to the Japanese – in Gyeongbokgung palace. After this event, King Gojong (r.1863–1910) fled to the Russian embassy for protection; in 1897, when things had quietened down sufficiently, he moved into the nearby palace of Deoksugung where he set up the short-lived Empire of Korea, a toothless administration under almost full Japanese control.
In 1902 Japan forged an alliance with the British Empire, recognizing British interests in China in return for British acknowledgement of Japanese interests in Korea. Sensing shifts in power, Russia began expanding into Korea, though they ran into the Japanese on the way. To avoid confrontation, Japan suggested that the two countries carve Korea up along the 38th parallel, a line roughly bisecting the peninsula. Russia refused to accept, and the two fought the Russo-Japanese War across Manchuria and the Yellow Sea in 1904–05; after its surprise victory, Japan was in a position to occupy the peninsula outright. They were given tacit permission to do so in 1905 by US Secretary of State and future president William Taft, who agreed in a secret meeting to accept Japanese domination of Korea if Japan would accept the American occupation of the Philippines. Korea became a Japanese protectorate that year, and Japan gradually ratcheted up its power on the peninsula before a final outright annexation in 1910. Joseon’s kings had next to no say in the running of the country during its last quarter-century of dynastic succession. Sunjong, the peninsula’s final monarch, retreated into early retirement in Changdeokgung, and the book softly closed on Korea’s near two thousand years of unbroken regal rule.
The Japanese occupation
After the signing of the Annexation Treaty in 1910, Japan wasted no time in filling all the top posts in politics, banking, law and industry with its own personnel; despite the fact that they never represented more than four percent of the peninsular population, they came to control almost every sphere of the country. Korea was but part of the Empire of Japan’s dream of continental hegemony, and being the nearest stepping stone from the motherland, it was also the most heavily trampled on. While the Japanese went on to occupy most of Southeast Asia and large swathes of China, only in Korea did they have the time and leverage necessary to attempt a total annihilation of national identity. Some of the most powerful insults to national pride were hammered home early. The royal palace of Gyeongbokgung had all the Confucian principles observed in its construction shattered by the placing of a modern Japanese structure in its first holy courtyard, while Changgyeonggung suddenly found itself home to a decidedly un-royal theme park and zoo. Korean currency, clothing and even the language itself were placed under ever stricter control, locals were required to take Japanese names, and thousands of local “comfort women” were forced into sexual slavery. Korean productivity grew, but much of this was also for Japan’s benefit – within ten years, more than half of the country’s rice was heading across the sea.
The local populace, unsurprisingly, objected to this enforced servitude. In 1919, the March 1st Movement saw millions of Koreans take to the streets in a series of non-violent nationwide protests. A declaration of independence was read out in Seoul’s Tapgol Park, followed by processions through the streets and the singing of the Korean national anthem. The Japanese police attempted to suppress the revolt through force; around seven thousand died in the months of resistance demonstrations that followed. A government-in-exile was established across the sea in Shanghai, but in Korea itself the main result of the resistance movement was a marked change of Japanese policy towards Korea, with Saito Makoto (the admiral in charge of quelling the chaos) agreeing to lift the bans on Korean radio, printed material and the creation of organizations, a policing that aimed to promote harmony rather than pushing the militarist line. The pendulum swung back towards oppression on the approach to World War II – in the late 1930s, Japan began forcing Koreans to worship at Shinto shrines, speak Japanese and even adopt a Japanese name (a practice known as soshi-kaimei), all helped by local collaborators (chinilpa).
The end of annexation
Throughout the occupation period, the Korean government-in-exile had been forced ever further west from China’s eastern seaboard, eventually landing near the Tibetan plateau in the Sichuanese city of Chongqing. Modern Korean museums and history books extol the achievements of what was, in reality, a largely toothless group. In doing this they gloss over the fundamental reason for Korea’s independence: the American A-bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thereby ending both World War II and the Empire of Japan itself. With Tokyo busy elsewhere, Seoul was little affected by the war: the main change in city life was the conscription of tens of thousands of Korean men, many of whom never returned.
An even greater number of Koreans had moved to Japan prior to the war. Some, of course, were collaborators fearful of reprisals should they head home, but the majority were simply squeezed out of their impoverished homeland by Japanese land confiscations. Many of these Korean families remain in Japan today, and are referred to there as “Zainichi Koreans”.
The Korean War
Known to many as the “Forgotten War”, sandwiched as it was between World War II and the war in Vietnam, the Korean conflict was one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies, laying waste to the city of Seoul, which stood more or less in the middle of the two warring parties. The impoverished Korean peninsula had already been pushed to the back of the global mind during World War II; the land was under Japanese control, but the Allied forces had developed no plans for its future should the war be won. In fact, at the close of the war US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius had to be told in a meeting where Korea actually was. It was only when the Soviet Union sent troops into Korea in 1945 that consideration was given to Korea’s postwar life. During an emergency meeting on August 10, 1945, American officials and high-rankers (including eventual Secretary of State Dean Rusk) sat with a National Geographic map and a pencil, and scratched a line across the 38th parallel, just north of Seoul – a simple solution, but one that was to have grave repercussions for Korea.
The build-up to war
With World War II rapidly developing into the Cold War, Soviet forces occupied the northern half of the peninsula, Americans the south. Both countries imposed their own social, political and economic norms on the Koreans under their control, thereby creating two de facto states diametrically opposed in ideology that refused to recognize each other. The Republic of Korea (now more commonly referred to as “South Korea”) declared independence in Seoul on August 15, 1948, exactly three years after liberation from the Japanese, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea followed suit just over three weeks later. The US installed a leader favourable to them, selecting Syngman Rhee (ironically born in what is now North Korea), who had degrees from American universities. Stalin chose the much younger Kim II-sung, who like Rhee had been in exile for much of the Japanese occupation. The foreign forces withdrew, and the two Koreas were left to their own devices, each hellbent on unifying the peninsula by absorbing the opposing half; inevitably, locals were forced into this polarization of opinions, one that split friends and even families apart. Kim wanted to wade into war immediately, and Stalin turned down two requests for approval of such an action. The third time, for reasons that remain open to conjecture, he apparently gave the nod.
War breaks out
Nobody knows for sure exactly how the Korean War started. Or, rather, everyone does: the other side attacked first. The South Korean line is that on June 25, 1950, troops from the northern Korean People’s Army (KPA) burst across the 38th parallel, then little more than a roll of tape. The DPRK itself claims that it was the south that started the war, and indeed both sides had started smaller conflicts along the line on several occasions; declassified Soviet information seems to show that the main battle was kicked off by the north. With the southern forces substantially ill-equipped in comparison, Seoul fell just three days later, but they were soon aided by a sixteen-nation coalition fighting under the United Nations banner – the vast majority of troops were from the United States, but additional forces arrived from Britain, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, Turkey, the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, Thailand, Ethiopia, Greece, Colombia, Belgium, South Africa and Luxembourg; other countries provided non-combative support.
Within three months, the KPA had hemmed the United Nations Command (UNC) into the far southeast of the country, behind a short line of control that became known as the Pusan Perimeter, a boundary surrounding the (now re-romanized) city of Busan. Though the KPA held most of the peninsula, American general Douglas MacArthur identified a weak logistical spine and poor supply lines as their Achilles heel, and ordered amphibious landings behind enemy lines at Incheon, just west of Seoul, in an attempt to cut off their enemy. The ambitious plan worked to perfection, and UNC forces pushed north way beyond the 38th parallel, reaching sections of the Chinese border within six weeks. At this stage, with the battle seemingly won, the Chinese entered the fight and ordered almost a million troops into North Korea; with their help, the KPA were able to push back past the 38th parallel. The UNC made one more thrust north in early 1951, and after six months the two sides ended up pretty much where they started. The lines of the conflict settled around the 38th parallel, near what was to become the Demilitarized Zone. The fighting did not end for well over two years, until the signing of an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953. North Korea, China and the United Nations Command signed the document, but South Korea refused to do likewise, meaning that the war is still technically being fought today.
In effect, both sides lost. Seoul had fallen four times – twice to each side – and Korea’s population was decimated, with over two million civilians killed, wounded or missing over the course of the war; to this can be added a combined total of around two million troops killed or injured in action. Had the war been “contained” and brought to an end when the line of control stabilized in early 1951, these figures would have been far lower. The war split thousands of families as the front line yo-yoed up and down the land, and as people were forced to switch sides to avoid starvation or torture, or to stay in contact with other family members. Though the course of the war was easy enough to understand, propaganda clouded many of the more basic details, and the conflict was largely forgotten by the West. For all the coverage of Vietnam, few know that a far greater amount of napalm fell on North Korea, a much more “suitable” target for the material thanks to its greater number of large urban areas. Also kept quiet was how close they came to using nuclear weapons. Since the end of the war there have been innumerable accounts of atrocities committed on both sides, many detailing beatings, torture and the unlawful murder of prisoners of war, others documenting the slaughter of entire villages. Korea lay in ruins, yet two countries were slowly able to emerge from the ashes.
To the present day
Considering its state after the war, Seoul’s transformation is nothing short of astonishing. A rapid phase of industrialization, one often referred to as the “Economic Miracle” in the West, saw South Korea become one of Asia’s most ferocious financial tigers, and Seoul morph from battle-scarred wasteland into one of the world’s largest and most dynamic cities. The country’s GDP-per-head shot up from under US$100 in 1963 to almost US$30,000 in 2010. Thanks in large part to the bullishness of large conglomerates (known as jaebeol) such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG, it now sits proudly on the cusp of the world’s ten most powerful economies. And, since flinging off its autocratic straitjacket in the 1980s, it developed sufficiently to be selected as host of two of the world’s most high-profile sporting events – the Summer Olympics in 1988, and football’s World Cup in 2002 – plus the G20 Summit in 2010.
Problematic beginnings
Today’s visitor to Seoul will scarcely be able to imagine the state that the city was in after the double whammy of Japanese occupation and the Korean War. Korea was, essentially, a third-world country, with shantytowns widespread even in central Seoul. Indeed, more than half the city’s population was homeless and the construction of new housing was hampered by the fact that Japan had stripped the peninsula’s trees for its own use. Neither were Korea’s problems merely structural or economic in nature – every single person in the land carried memories of wartime atrocities in their minds, and countless families had been torn apart. In addition, accusations and recriminations were rife, and everyone knew that hostilities with the North could resume at any moment. American-educated Syngman Rhee, who had been selected as president before the war, ruled in an increasingly autocratic manner, making constitutional amendments to stay in power and purging parliament of those against his policies. In 1960 disgruntled students led the April 19 Movement against Rhee’s rule, and after being toppled in a coup he was forced into exile, choosing Hawaii as his new home.
One dictator was swiftly replaced with another: Yun Bo-seon came to office as a puppet of military general Park Chung-hee, who then swiftly engineered a coup and took the presidency himself in 1962. To an even greater degree than Rhee before him, Park’s name became synonymous with corruption, dictatorship and the flouting of human rights – thousands were jailed merely for daring to criticize his rule. To his credit, Park introduced the economic reforms that allowed his country to push forward – until the mid-1970s, the South Korean economy actually lagged behind that of North Korea – and the country made great advances in automotive, electronic, heavy and chemical industries. This was, however, achieved at a cost, since Korean tradition largely went out of the window in favour of bare economic progress. These policies were a major factor behind the loss of Korea’s traditional buildings: today, Seoul has almost none left. Park’s authoritarian rule continued to ruffle feathers around the country, and the danger from the North had far from subsided – Park was the subject, and Seoul the scene, of two failed assassination attempts by North Korean agents. It was, however, members of his own intelligence service who gunned him down in 1979, claiming that he was “an insurmountable obstacle to democratic reform”. Those responsible were hanged the following year.
Park’s eventual successor, Chun Doo-hwan, was also from the southeast of the country, and the resultant Seoul–Gyeongsang tangent of power saw those parts of the country developing rapidly, while others languished far behind. The arrest of liberal southwestern politician Kim Dae-jung, as well as the botched trials following the assassination of Park Chung-hee, were catalysts for mass uprisings across the land, though mainly concentrated in Jeju Island and the southwestern provinces. These culminated in the Gwangju Massacre of May 1980, where over two hundred civilians died after their protest was crushed by the military.
THE SINKING OF THE CHEONAN, AND THE YEONPYEONGDO ATTACKS
On March 26, 2010, the Cheonan, a South Korean naval vessel, sank in the waters off Baengnyeongdo, killing 46 of its crew of just over one hundred, and claiming the life of one rescue worker. With the incident taking place in waters so close to the North Korean border, there was immediate worldwide suspicion that Pyongyang was behind the attack; Seoul refused to be drawn into such a conclusion, choosing instead to wait for the results of a full investigation. South Korean conspiracy theorists initially blamed an American submarine which had “gone missing”, though such rumours were hurriedly put to bed when the sub resurfaced a few days later on the other side of the world. One rumour that refused to go away was that the attack may have been an internal show of force from Kim Jong-un, who was at the time being groomed for leadership in North Korea. It was suggested that Kim may have used the incident to prove himself to the country’s military leadership, who were known to be unhappy with a dynastic transfer of power from his father, Kim Jong-Il. Two months after the incident, an international team found that the Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo, most likely fired by a North Korean vessel.
Pyongyang continues to deny responsibility for the sinking of the Cheonan, but the attacks of November 23, 2010, were more directly attributable to North Korea. Almost two hundred shells and rockets were fired from North Korea’s southern coast at the South Korean island of Yeonpyeongdo in response to Seoul’s refusal to halt a military training exercise in nearby waters. The northern shelling appeared to be indiscriminate, killing two civilians and two soldiers from the South, which responded in kind with howitzers of its own. This was one of the most serious cross-border incidents since the Korean War, and many southerners formerly sympathetic to the North were suddenly favouring a powerful military response to any future attacks. At the time of writing, the situation remained tense.
The Olympic legacy
Rather incredibly, just one year after the massacre, Seoul was given the rights to host the 1988 Summer Olympics. Some estimates say the Gwangju Massacre resulted in a similar death count to the Tiananmen Square massacre, though it’s hard to imagine Beijing being granted a similar honour the year after those events. Originally the brainchild of Park Chung-hee, the Olympic plan was followed through by Chun Doo-hwan in an apparent attempt to seek international recognition of his authoritarian rule. Though he may have regarded the winning of the 1981 Olympic vote as a tacit global nod of acceptance, the strategy backfired somewhat when the country was thrust into the spotlight. Partly as a result of this increased attention, Korea’s first-ever free elections were held in 1987, with Roh Tae-woo taking the helm. During the same period Korean conglomerates, known as the jaebeol, were spreading their financial arms around the world. Korea’s aggressive, debt-funded expansion worsened the effect of the Asian Currency Crisis on the country in 1997, and for several years after it struck, the bare shells of over a hundred partially finished buildings stood around Seoul.
In 1998, once-condemned liberal activist Kim Dae-jung completed a remarkable turnaround by being appointed president himself. The first South Korean leader to favour a peaceable reunification of the peninsula, he wasted no time in kicking off his “Sunshine Policy” of reconciliation with the North; some minor industrial projects were outsourced across the border, and new Seoul-funded factories were built around the city of Kaesong, just north of the DMZ. In 2000, after an historic Pyongyang summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Into the twenty-first century
South Korea’s international reputation was further enhanced by its hugely successful co-hosting of the 2002 Football World Cup with Japan. However, that same year a series of incidents gave rise to something of an anti-American (and, by extension, anti-Western) sentiment. Most significant was the accidental killing of two local schoolgirls by an American armoured vehicle, which led to large protests against the US military presence (one that has declined, bit by bit, ever since). Later that year, Roh Moo-hyun was elected president on a slightly anti-American ticket; soon after taking office in early 2003, however, he sent Korean troops to Iraq, which made him instantly unpopular, and he committed suicide in 2009, following a bribery scandal. Roh’s presidency coincided with Lee Myung-bak’s tenure as mayor of Seoul. In 2003, Lee announced plans to gentrify the Cheonggyecheon creek, which was an expensive and therefore deeply unpopular project – today, however, it is much beloved by the public.
Lee was elected president of Korea in 2008, but as with Roh before him, there were almost immediate protests against his rule, this time thanks to a beef trade agreement made with the USA. Fears that mad cow disease would be imported to this beef-loving land resulted in mass protests around the city, and rioting around Gwanghwamun Plaza; one man died after setting fire to himself in protest. The plaza itself was renovated shortly afterwards, and other major projects followed, including the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, the new City Hall and some futuristic floating islands in the Hangang. Like Incheon Airport, these designs all display a curvy, chrome-and-glass style of architecture, intended to portray Seoul as a city of the future, surely one factor behind its selection as host of the G20 Summit in 2010. In 2014, however, Seoul was again rocked by protests after the sinking of the Sewol off Korea’s southwestern coast, a tragic incident in which almost 300 died – the vast majority were of school age. The issue turned into a political hot potato, with opposition parties stoking widespread protests against president Park Geun-hye.
RELIGION
Korea has a long and fascinating religious history, one that continues to inform local life. Buddhism is the religion most closely identified with Korea, though Christianity now has a greater number of followers. The rise of the latter is particularly interesting when laid over Korea’s largely Confucian mindset, which is often diametrically opposed to Christian ideals and beliefs – priests and pastors preach equality at Sunday service, but outside church relative age still governs many forms of social interaction, and women remain socially inferior to men.
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion deriving from the teachings of the Buddha, also known as the Siddhartha Gautama or Sakyamuni, who lived in India sometime between the fourth and sixth centuries BC. Although there are two main schools of thought and several smaller ones, Buddhist philosophy revolves around the precept that karma, rebirth and suffering are intrinsic elements of existence, but that the cycle of birth and death can be escaped on what is known as the “Noble Eightfold Path” to nirvana.
An import from China (which had in turn imported it from the Indian subcontinent), Buddhism arrived in Korea at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period. Goguryeo and Baekje both adopted it at around the same time, in the last decades of the fourth century – Goguryeo king Sosurim accepted Buddhism almost as soon as the first Chinese monks arrived in 372, while Baekje king Chimnyu adopted it after taking the throne in 384. The Silla kings were less impressed by the creed, but a major change in regal thought occurred in 527 after an interesting episode involving an official who had decided to switch to Buddhism. He was to be beheaded for his beliefs, and with his final few gasps swore to the king that his blood would not be red, but a milky white; his prediction was true, and the king soon chose Buddhism as his state religion.
Even in China, Buddhism was at this point in something of an embryonic phase, and Korean monks took the opportunity to develop the Mahayana style by ironing out what they saw to be inconsistencies in the doctrine. Disagreements followed, leading to the creation of several sects, of which the Jogye order is by far the largest, including about ninety percent of Korea’s Buddhists; other notable sects include Seon, largely known in the West as Zen, the Japanese translation, and Cheontae, which is likewise better known under its Chinese name of Tiantai.
Ornate temples sprang up all over the peninsula during the Unified Silla period, but although Buddhism remained the state religion throughout the Goryeo era, the rise of Confucianism squeezed it during Joseon times. Monks were treated with scant respect and temples were largely removed from the main cities (one reason why there are relatively few in Seoul, the Joseon capital), but though the religion was repressed, it never came close to extinction. Further troubles came during the Japanese occupation period, during the latter years of which many Koreans were forced to worship at Shinto shrines. Mercifully, although many of the temples that weren’t closed by the Japanese were burnt down in the Korean War that followed the Japanese occupation, reconstruction programmes have been so comprehensive that in most Korean cities you will seldom be more than a walk away from the nearest temple, each one still an active place of worship. Seoul has fared less well in this regard, but there are some temples in the city centre, and more on the slopes of the city’s surrounding mountains.
Temples
Korea’s many temples are some of the most visually appealing places in the country, though there are precious few good examples in Seoul. Most run along a similar design scheme: on entry to the temple complex you’ll pass through the iljumun (일주문), or “first gate”, then the cheonwangmun (천왕문). The latter almost always contains four large guardians, two menacing figures towering on each side of the dividing walkway; these control the four heavens and provide guidance to those with a righteous heart. The central building of a Korean temple is the main hall, or daeungjeon (대웅전). Initially, it was only Sakyamuni – the historical Buddha – who was enshrined here, but this was soon flanked on left and right by bodhisattvas (a term for those who have reached nirvana). Most of these halls have doors at the front, which are usually only for elder monks; novices, and visiting foreigners, use side-entrances. Among the many other halls that you may find on the complex are the daejeokgwangjeon (대적광전), the hall of the Vairocana Buddha; gwaneumjeon (관음전), a hall for the Bodhisattva of Compassion; geungnakjeon (극락전), the Nirvana Hall and home to the celestial Amitabha Buddha; mireukjeon (미륵전), the hall of the future Maitreya Buddha; and nahanjeon (나한전), the hall of disciples. Some also feature the palsangjeon (팔상전), a hall featuring eight paintings detailing the life of the Sakyamuni Buddha, though these are more often found on the outside of another hall.
Somewhere in the complex you’ll find the beomjonggak (범종각), a “bell pavilion” containing instruments to awaken the four sentient beings – a drum for land animals, a wooden fish for the water-borne, a bronze gong for creatures of the air, and a large bell for monks who have slept in. The bell itself can sometimes weigh upwards of twenty tonnes, and the best will have an information board telling you how far away they can be heard if you were to strike them lightly with your fist. Needless to say, you shouldn’t test these contentions.
Confucianism
Like Buddhism, Confucian thought made its way across the sea from China – the exact date remains a mystery, but it seems that it first spread to Korea at the beginning of the Three Kingdoms era. Although Confucianism can’t be classified as a religion – there’s no central figure of worship, or concept of an afterlife – it is used as a means of self-cultivation, and a guide to “proper” conduct, particularly the showing of respect for those higher up the social hierarchy. For centuries it co-existed with the state religion, informing not only political thought but also national ethics, and in many ways it still governs the Korean way of life today. Central to the concept are the Five Moral Disciplines of human-to-human conduct, namely ruler to subject, father to son, husband to wife, elder to younger and friend to friend.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the concepts of filial piety began to permeate Korean life, with adherence to the rules gradually taking the form of ceremonial rites. In the Silla kingdom there developed a “bone rank” system used to segregate social strata, one that was to increase in rigidity until the Joseon era. This was essentially a caste system, one that governed almost every sphere of local life – each “level” of society would have strict limits placed on what they could achieve, the size of their dwelling, whom they could marry and even what colours they were allowed to wear.
At the dawn of the Joseon dynasty in 1392, King Taejo had the Jongmyo shrines built in central Seoul, and for centuries afterwards, ruling kings would venerate their ancestors here in regular ceremonies. At this time, Confucianism truly took hold, with numerous academies (hyanggyo) built around the country at which students from the elite yangban classes would wade through wave after wave of punishing examinations on their way to senior governmental posts. Buddhism had been on the decline for some time, with Confucian scholars arguing that making appeals to gods unseen had a detrimental effect on the national psyche, and that building ornate temples absorbed funds too readily. Some, in fact, began to clamour for the burning of those temples, as well as the murder of monks. As with other beliefs, some followers violated the core principles for their own ends and, despite the birth of great neo-Confucian philosophers such as Yi-Yi and Toegye, enforced slavery and servitude meant that the lot of those at the lower caste levels changed little over the centuries.
Confucianism today
It’s often said that Korea remains the most Confucian of all the world’s societies. In addition to several remaining academies and shrines – there’s one of the latter at Inwangsan, just west of Gyeongbokgung – colourful ancestral ceremonies take place each year at Jongmyo in Seoul. Its impact on everyday life is also evident: on getting to know a local, you’ll generally be asked a series of questions both direct and indirect (particularly with regard to age, marriage, education and employment), the answers to which will be used to file you into mental pigeonholes. Though foreigners are treated somewhat differently, this is the main reason why locals see nothing wrong in barging strangers out of the way on the street or showing no mercy on the road – no introduction has been made, and without knowledge of the “proper” behaviour in such a situation no moves are made towards showing respect. Among those who do know each other, it’s easy to find Confucian traits: women are still seen as inferior to men (their salaries continue to lag far behind, and they’re usually expected to quit their job on having a child, never to return to the workplace); the boss or highest earner will usually pay after a group meal; family values remain high, and paper qualifications from reputable universities carry more weight than actual intelligence. Also notable is bungsu, a concept that involves the moving of ancestral grave sites. Perhaps the most high-profile examples of corpse-shifting have been before general elections. After Kim Dae-jung lost the elections in 1987 and 1992, he decided to move the graves of his ancestors to more auspicious locations, and he duly won the next election in 1998. However, Confucian ideas are slowly being eroded as Westernization continues to encroach, particularly as the number of Christians continues to grow.
Christianity
Making up well over a quarter of the country by population, Christianity is now Korea’s leading religion by number of worshippers, having surpassed Buddhism at the start of the twenty-first century. Surprisingly, the religion has been on the peninsula since the end of the eighteenth century, having been brought across the waters by missionaries from various European empires. At the time, the Confucian yangban in charge were fearful of change, hardly surprising considering how far apart the fundamental beliefs of the two creeds are. Christianity’s refusal to perform ancestral rites eventually led to its repression, and hundreds of Christians were martyred in the 1870s and 1880s. A number of French missionaries were also murdered in this period, before Korea was forcefully opened up for trade. The numbers have been growing ever since, the majority now belonging to the Presbyterian, Catholic or Methodist churches.
Churches tend to be monstrous concrete edifices (many visitors note that most sport rather Satanic-looking red neon crosses), and some are huge, with room for thousands of worshippers. In fact, the island of Yeouido, near Seoul, officially has the largest church in the world, with 170 pastors and over 100,000 registered deacons.
FILM
For all of its efforts in finance, electronics and promoting its food and tradition, it’s Korea’s film industry that has had the most success in pushing the country as a global brand. While Korean horror flicks have developed an international cult following, and a number of esteemed directors have set international film festivals abuzz, special mention must also be made of the locally produced television dramas that have caught on like wildfire across Asia. Like many of the movies, these are highly melodramatic offerings that don’t seek to play on the heartstrings so much as power-chord the merry hell out of them. All of these form part of the Hallyeo movement, a “New Wave” of Korean production that has been in motion since cinematic restrictions were lifted in the 1980s.
After the Korean War, the film industries in North and South Korea developed separately; leaders on both sides saw movies as a hugely useful propaganda tool, and made immediate efforts to revive local cinema. In the south, President Syngman Rhee conferred tax-exempt status on movie-makers, who made films looking back at the misery of wartime and the occupation, and forward to a rosy future for non-Communist Korea. By the end of the 1950s, annual movie output had reached triple figures, with the most popular being watched by millions. The accession of Park Chung-hee to president in 1961, however, brought an end to what passed for cinematic freedom – in addition to the censorship and hard-fisted restrictions over local productions, foreign films were vetted and placed under a strict quota system, elements of which remained in place until 2006. As Park’s rule grew ever more dictatorial, he inaugurated a short-lived era of “governmental policy” films; these were hugely unpopular, and cinema attendance dropped sharply.
NORTH KOREAN CINEMA
Cinema is big business in North
Korea – cinephile Kim Jong-Il poured funds into
the industry for decades before he became leader of the
country, and in 1978 even organized the kidnapping of
Shin Sang-ok – a
prominent South Korean director – in an effort to improve
the quality of local cinema. North Korea produces some of
the world’s most distinctive films, a few of which have
started to trickle onto the international market; to buy, go
to 
north-korea-books.com. The themes stick rigidly
to brave North Korean resistance during the Korean War and
the Japanese occupation, depicting Americans as unspeakably
evil and South Koreans as their puppets.
A State of Mind (2004) On the surface, this is a documentary about two young girls training for the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang, but it amounts to a first-ever stab at a genuine portrayal of the average life of today’s North Koreans. It was evidently a success: after the film was shown on DPRK state TV, locals complained that it was “dull”, having merely filmed them going about their daily lives; little did they know how compelling this kind of realistic reportage is to the average foreign viewer.
Comrade Kim Goes Flying (2012) Produced and directed by Nick Bonner, this was
the first foreign film to be made in North Korea,
receiving the personal approval of Kim Jong-Il. In
Korean and with an all-DPRK cast, this light-hearted
“commie rom-com” tells the story of an ambitious young
trapeze artist.
Crossing the Line (2006) James Joseph Dresnok is a movie-maker’s delight, but this fascinating documentary is the world’s only peek inside the mind of “Comrade Joe”, one of four American soldiers known to have defected to North Korea after the Korean War. With a candour that shows a genuine love of his new country, Dresnok tells of his journey from a troubled adolescence to old age in Pyongyang, including his crossing of the treacherous DMZ, a failed attempt at escape, and his stint as a star on the North Korean silver screen.
The Interview (2014) This dumb comedy became a giant global news story even before its release. Its plot – two boobs are sent to assassinate Kim Jong-un – angered the establishment in North Korea, and Sony Pictures had their systems hacked as an apparently direct result. The storyline of the film itself is less interesting, but it’s still worth a watch.
The Hallyeo “New Wave”
After Park’s death, democratization and the gradual relaxation of restrictions gave rise to the Hallyeo movement. With the loosening of controls in the 1980s, a clutch of talented directors was finally able to give Korea exposure in the West. Foremost among them was Im Kwon-taek, a maverick who shrugged off his role as a creator of commercial quota-fillers to unleash some striking new films. The government continued to provide funding for the movie industry until the 1999 release of Shiri, the country’s first fully independent film. Since then, Korean films have reached an ever-greater international audience, and a number of directors such as Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook are now globally acclaimed. The films recommended here are those that give an insight into Korea in general and Seoul in particular.
Chihwaseon (2002) Sometimes going under the title Painted Fire, this beautifully shot tale of Jang Seung-eop – a nineteenth-century Seoulite painter best known by his pen name Owon – won the Best Director award at Cannes for Im Kwon-taek, a maverick who had been around for decades but was previously ignored on the international stage.
Joint Security Area (2000) Any Korean film about the DMZ is worth a look, as is anything by acclaimed director Park Chan-wook. Here, two North Korean soldiers are killed in the DMZ; like Memento (which came out the following year), the story plays backwards, revealing the lead-up piece by piece.
Ode to my Father (2014) A look at Korea from the 1950s to the present day, through the eyes of an ordinary man who gets caught up in the Korean and Vietnamese wars. The film was criticized by some for glorifying the country’s dictatorial past – the fact that it was a huge hit demonstrates the local appetite for such selective nostalgia, and the politics which continue to divide South Korea.
Shiri (1999) Also known as Swiri, this was a landmark film in Korean cinema, marking the dawn of a Hollywood style long suppressed by the government. The mix of explosions and loud music is not of as much interest to foreigners as it is to Koreans, but the plot – South Korean cops hunt down a North Korean sniper girl – is interesting enough. The girl was played by Yunjin Kim, who later found fame on the American TV series Lost.
Silmido (2003) Loosely based on events in the 1960s, which saw South Korean operatives receive secret training on the island of Silmido to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. The film broke Korean box office records, and provides a fascinating depiction of the tensions of the time.
The Host (2006) The tranquil life of a riverside merchant is blown to smithereens when formaldehyde disposed into the river by the American military creates a ferocious underwater creature. This comic thriller smashed box office records in Korea; although the international reception was nowhere near as fervent, it’s worth a look.
The King and the Clown (2005) A period drama with homosexual undercurrents,
this was an unexpected smash hit at the box office. Set
during the reign of King Yeonsan – whose short rule
began in 1494 – it tells of a pair of street
entertainers who find themselves in Seoul’s royal court.
One of them fosters an ever-closer relationship with the
king.
The President’s Last Bang (2005) Korea has long been crying out for satire, particularly something to inject a little fun into its turgid political reportage, and this hits the nail squarely on the head (as demonstrated by the lawsuit that followed). It’s based on a true story, namely the assassination of president Park Chung-hee in 1979; the portrayal of Park as something of a Japanese-sympathetic playboy certainly ruffled a few feathers.
Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) Too twee for some, but heart-warming to others, this beautifully shot film tells of a motley assortment of American, South Korean and North Korean combatants from the Korean War who somehow end up in the same village, among people unaware not only of the conflict raging around them but of warfare in general.
BOOKS
Despite Korea’s long and interesting history, the East Asian sections in most bookshops largely focus on China and Japan. The majority of books that are devoted to Korea cover North Korea or the Korean War; far less biased than most newspaper or television reports, these are the best form of reportage about the world’s most curious state and how it was created.
FICTION
Cho Se-hui The Dwarf. Even miracles have a downside: Seoul’s economy underwent a truly remarkable transformation in the 1970s, but at what cost to its people and culture? This weighty, tersely delivered novel uncovers the spiritual decline of Seoul’s nouveaux riches, via twelve interconnected stories; A Dwarf Launches a Little Bell is particularly recommended, and has been reprinted hundreds of times in Korea.
Adam Johnson The Orphan Master’s Son.
Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, this
tells the story of an orphan who struggles through life
in North Korea, and ends up employed as a kidnapper of
Japanese citizens.
Park Wan-Suh Who Ate Up All the Shinga? A semi-autobiographical mother-daughter story from one of Korea’s most highly acclaimed writers, set during the Korean War. Fans of Park should also check out Sketch of the Fading Sun, a collection of short stories.
Yi Munyeol Our Twisted Hero. This tale of
psychological warfare at a Korean elementary school has
a deceptively twee plotline, managing to explore the use
and misuse of power while providing metaphorical
parallels to Korean politics of the 1970s.
Young Ha Kim Your Republic is Calling You and I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. Two books from a man whose international reputation is growing by the year, his popularity and his existentialist tendencies marking him out as a potential Korean Murakami. The first book revolves around a North Korean spy torn between his homeland and the South, while the second, set in Seoul, is the dark tale of a refined thinker with suicidal tendencies.
HISTORY AND SOCIETY
Michael Breen The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. Although the four main sections of this book – society, history, economy and politics – may seem dry, the accounts are relayed with warmth and a pleasing depth of knowledge.
Bruce Cumings Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. The Korean peninsula went through myriad changes in the twentieth century, and this weighty tome analyzes the effects of such disquiet on its population, showing that the South’s seemingly smooth trajectory towards democracy and capitalism masked a great suffering of the national psyche.
Euny Hong The Birth of Korean Cool. A good rundown of Korea’s attempts to conquer Asia, then the world at large, with its pop culture – as well as the more obvious drama and music, it looks at how this impacted upon Korea’s place on the global economic stage.
Keith Pratt Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea. This thoroughly readable book provides a chronicle of Korean goings-on from the very first kingdoms to the modern day, its text broken up with interesting illustrated features on the arts and customs prevalent at the time.
Daniel Tudor Korea: The Impossible Country. Written by Korea’s former Economist correspondent, this looks at how the country transformed from a failed state to an economic powerhouse in the space of a generation or two – and what today’s generation has in store.
NORTH KOREA AND THE KOREAN WAR
Bruce Cumings North Korea: Another Country.
The US-North Korean dispute is far more complex than
Western media would have you imagine, and this book
provides a revealing – if slightly hard to digest –
glance at the flipside. Cumings’ meticulous research is
without parallel, and the accounts of American
atrocities and cover-ups both in the “Forgotten War” and
during the nuclear crisis offer plenty of food for
thought.
Guy Delisle Pyongyang. A comic strip describing his time as a cartoonist in Pyongyang, Delisle’s well-observed and frequently hilarious book is a North Korean rarity – one that tells it like it is, and doesn’t seek to make political or ideological statements. His illustrations are eerily accurate.
Barbara Demick Nothing to Envy. An admirably
well-researched look at modern life in North Korea,
based on the experiences of six residents of Chongjin, a
major city in the northeast of the country. Gulags, the
Kim cult, famine and poverty all get a mention,
juxtaposed with the views of a seemingly unwavering
believer in the regime.
Max Hastings The Korean War. A conflict is not quite a war until it has been given the treatment by acclaimed historian Max Hastings. Here, he has provided more than his usual mix of fascinating, balanced and well-researched material; the account of the stand of the Gloucesters on the Imjin is particularly absorbing.
Kang Chol-Hwan The Aquariums of Pyongyang. Having fled his homeland after spending time in a North Korean gulag, Kang’s harrowing accounts of squalor, starvation and brutality represent one of the few windows into the world’s most fenced-off social systems. He’s not a natural author, however, and the confused sermonizing at the end rather dilutes the book’s appeal.
Bradley K. Martin Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader. Almost 900 pages long – 200 of which are references – this isn’t a tome to carry around in your backpack, but for an in-depth look at the Kims and the perpetration of their personality cult, it’s hard to beat.
Don Oberdorfer The Two Koreas: A Contemporary
History. Lengthy, but engaging and
surprisingly easy to read, this book traces various
events in postwar Korea, as well as examining how they
were affected by the actions and policies of China,
Russia, Japan and the US. You’d be hard pressed to find
a book about North Korea more neutral in tone.
RECIPE BOOKS
Debra Samuels and Taekyung Chung The Korean Table. One hundred easy-to-follow recipes “from barbecue to bibimbap”, accompanied by photos that will make you drool, this book will have your kitchen covered with chilli paste in no time at all.
Marja Vongerichten and Jean Georges Vongerichten The Kimchi Chronicles: Korean Cooking for an American Kitchen. A very useful cookbook, which takes account of the fact that its readers may not have access to a full Korean kitchen’s-worth of utensils.
KOREAN
The sole official tongue of both North and South Korea, the Korean language is spoken by almost eighty million people, making it one of the world’s twenty most-spoken tongues. It’s a highly tricky language to pick up – much to the chagrin of linguists, it remains stubbornly “unclassified” on the global language tree, its very origins something of a mystery. Some lump it in with the Altaic group (itself rather vague), which would put it on the same branch as Turkish and Mongolian, though many view it as a language isolate. Korean is therefore in the same boat as Japanese, its closest linguistic brother; both share a subject-object-verb syntax and similar grammar, though well over half of the Korean words themselves actually originate from China. Korea also used Chinese text for centuries, even after creating its own characters (known as hangeul; 한글) in the 1440s, but now almost exclusively uses the local system for everyday functions.
Native speakers of European languages will encounter some pretty significant grammatical differences when attempting to get a handle on the Korean tongue. Korean nouns remain unaffected whether they refer to singular or plural objects, very little use is made of articles, and verbs do not change case according to whom or what they’re referring to – gayo can mean “I go”, “he/she/it goes” or “we/they go”, the meaning made clear by the context. Verbs do, however, alter depending on which level of politeness the speaker wants to use, and the relationship between speaker and listener; the conversation will sound quite different depending on whether it’s between a child and a mother, a boss and an employee, or even good friends of slightly different age. In general, it’s pretty safe to stick to verbs with the polite –yo ending; the verb forms given here are in a formal style which should suffice for most travellers. Unfortunately, there are few good books from which to learn Korean; those from the Teach Yourself and Colloquial series fall short of the two companies’ usually high standards, but are about as good as you’ll find.
THE ORIGINS OF HANGEUL
Though it may seem surprising, hangeul was actually a royal creation, having been the brainchild of King Sejong in the 1440s. Up until then, his Joseon kingdom and the dynasties that went before had been using Chinese characters, but seeing that most of his citizens were illiterate and denied education, the king devised a system that would be easier for the common man to learn. He was forced to do much of his work in secret, as the change did not go down well with the Confucian yangban scholars, some of whom were almost king-like in their power at the time; as the only members of society to receive an education strong enough to make reading Chinese characters a possibility, they argued against the change in an effort to maintain their privileged access to historical texts and suchlike. Hangeul experienced periodic bursts of popularity, but was kept down first by the yangban, and then almost erased entirely by the Japanese during their occupation of the peninsula (1910–45). Today, it’s the official writing system of both North and South Korea, as well as a small autonomous Korean pocket in the Chinese province of Jilin. Students in Korea study at least two thousand Chinese characters at school, and some of the simpler ones are still used in daily life.
Korean characters
Though it consists of a highly distinctive scrawl of circles and Tetris shapes, many foreigners find Korean text surprisingly easy to learn. Koreans tend to assume that foreigners don’t have the inclination or mental capability to decipher hangeul, so your efforts will not go unappreciated. Koreans are immensely proud of hangeul, which they see as the world’s most logical written system. While this is no great exaggeration, the efficiency also has a downside – user-friendly it may well be, but in reality hangeul is a very narrow system that cannot cope with sounds not found in the Korean language, a fact that partially explains the Korean people’s occasionally curious pronunciation of foreign words.
Korean characters are grouped into syllabic boxes of more or less equal size, and generally arranged left to right – if you see a line of text made up of eighteen of these character-chunks, it will have eighteen syllables when spoken. The way in which the characters fall into the boxes is unique and takes a bit of figuring out – some have two characters in the top half and one at the bottom (the top two are read left to right, followed by the bottom one, so 한 makes han), while others have two or three characters arranged vertically (these are read downwards, so 국 makes guk). Thus put together, we have 한국 – hanguk, meaning “Korea”.
HANGEUL CHARACTERS
The basic building blocks of hangeul are listed here. Note that some consonants are pronounced differently depending on whether they’re at the beginning or end of a syllable or word (syllable-ending sounds are in brackets here), and that “ng” is used as an initial null consonant for syllables that start with a vowel.
Pronunciation
Pronouncing Korean words is tough – some sounds simply do not have English-language equivalents. You’ll see from the hangeul box that there’s only one character for “l” and “r”, with its actual sound some way in between the two – try saying both phonemes at the same time. The letters “k”, “d”, “b” and “j” are often written “k”, “t”, “p” and “ch”, and are pronounced approximately halfway towards those Roman equivalents; unfortunately, the second set also have their place in the official system, and are usually referred to as aspirated consonants, accompanied as they are by a puff of air. Consonants are fairly easy to master – note that some are doubled up, and spoken more forcefully – but pronunciation guides to some of the tricky vowels and diphthongs are as follows (British English readings offer the closest equivalents):
a as in “car”
ya as in “yap”
eo as in “hot”
yeo as in “yob”
o pronounced “ore”
yo pronounced as the British “your”
u as in “Jew”
yu pronounced “you”
eu no English equivalent; widen your mouth and try an “euggh” sound of disgust
i as in “pea”
e as in “bed”
ae as in “air”
ye as in “yet”
yae as in “yeah”
wi as in “window”
we as in “wedding”
wae as in the beginning of “where”
wa as in “wag”
oe as in the beginning of “way”
ui no English equivalent; add an “ee” sound to eu above
wo as in “wad”
TRANSLITERATARY TROUBLES
Rendering the Korean language in Roman text is, simply, a battle that can never be won – a classic problem of square pegs and round holes. Numerous systems have been employed down the years, perhaps best exemplified in the Korean family name now usually romanized as “Lee”: this has also been written as Rhee, Li, Ri, Lih, Rhi, Ree, Yi, Rii and more besides. Under the current system it would be “I”, but the actual pronunciation is simply “ee” – it’s amazing how much trouble a simple vowel can cause (especially when almost a fifth of the country has this name).
A Korean’s age, schooling, family and even lifestyle influence the way that they’ll romanize a given word, but official standards have long been in place. The Yale and McCune–Reischauer systems became widely accepted in the 1940s, and the latter is still much in evidence today; under its rules, aspirated consonants are marked with apostrophes, and certain vowels with breves. One problem – other than looking ugly – was that these punctuation markings are often neglected, even in language study books; though it remains the official system in North Korea, the South formulated its own system of Revised Romanization in 2000. While this is far from perfect, it’s the official standard, and has been used throughout this book; exceptions include names of the many hotels, restaurants, universities and individuals who cling to the old ways. One other issue is the Korean syllable shi; this is now romanized as si, a rather ridiculous change since it takes Koreans years of language classes before they can pronounce the syllable without palatalizing it – “six” and “sister” will be pronounced “shix” and “shister”. We’ve written it as shi in the language listings to help you achieve the correct pronunciation, but obeyed the official system in the rest of the book – Sinchon is pronounced “Shinchon”, and so on.
Koreans themselves find it hard to render foreign words in hangeul as there are many sounds that don’t fit into the system – the difficulties with “l” and “r” sharing the same character being an obvious example – but even when parallels exist they are sometimes distorted. The letter “a” is usually written as an “e” or “ae” in an unsuccessful effort to Americanize the pronunciation – “hat”, for example, will be pronounced “het” by the majority of the population, while to kowtow to American norms gimbap is often written “kimbob”.
USEFUL WORDS AND PHRASES
BASICS
COMMUNICATING
MEETINGS AND GREETINGS
NUMBERS
Rather confusingly, the Korean language has two separate number systems operating in parallel – a native Korean system, and a Sino-Korean system of Chinese origin – and you’ll have to learn according to the situation which one to use. To tell the time, you’ll need both – amazingly, minutes and hours run on different systems. The native Korean system only goes up to 99, and has been placed on the right-hand side of the readings. Dates and months use the Sino-Korean system alone, with il (sun) used as a suffix for days, and wol (moon) for months: June 7 is thus yuk-wol chil-il.
TIME AND DATES
TRANSPORT AND TRAVEL
DIRECTIONS AND GENERAL PLACES
ACCOMMODATION
SHOPPING, MONEY AND BANKS
POST AND TELEPHONES
HEALTH
FOOD AND DRINK
PLACES
ORDERING
STAPLE INGREDIENTS
WESTERN FOOD
DRINKS
GLOSSARY
ajeossi an older or married man.
ajumma an older or married woman.
anju bar snacks.
-bang room.
-bawi boulder or large rock.
-bong mountain peak. The highest peak in a park is often referred to as ilchulbong (“Number One Peak”).
buk- north.
buncheong a Korean style of pottery popular in Joseon times and often bluish-green.
celadon a Korean style of pottery used since the Three Kingdoms period – often pale green in colour, with a cracked glaze.
Chuseok Korean Thanksgiving.
dae- big, large, great.
Dangun mythical founder of Korea.
DMZ the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.
-do island.
-dong city neighbourhood; part of a -gu.
dong- east.
dongdongju a milky rice wine much favoured by Korean students; very similar to makgeolli.
DPRK Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
-ga section of a major street.
-gil street.
gisaeng Female entertainers popular in dynastic times.
-gu district of a city, subdivided into -dong neighbourhoods.
-gung palace.
gwageo civil service examinations in the Joseon era.
Gyopo Koreans, or people of Korean descent, living overseas.
hagwon private academy for after-school study. Many expats work at an English academy (yeongeo hagwon).
hallyu the “Korean New Wave” of pop culture, most specifically films.
hanbok traditional Korean clothing.
hangeul the Korean alphabet.
hanja Chinese characters, which are still sometimes used in Korea.
hanji traditional handmade paper.
hanok a style of traditional, tile-roofed wooden housing.
hof a Korean-style bar.
insam ginseng.
jjimjilbang Korean spa-cum-sauna facilities, often used by families and youth groups.
KNTO Korea National Tourism Organization.
makgeolli a milky rice wine much favoured by Korean students; very similar to dongdongju.
mudang practitioner of shamanism; usually female.
mugunghwa Korea’s third-highest level of train, one below a saemaeul. Named after Korea’s national flower, a variety of hibiscus.
-mun city or fortress gate.
-myo Confucian shrine.
nam- south.
-ni village; sometimes pronounced -ri.
-no large street; sometimes pronounced -ro.
nocheonnyeo an “over-the-hill” female – Korean women have long been expected to marry by the age of thirty, though this is slowly changing.
noraebang a “singing room”, often the venue of choice for the end of a night out.
ondol traditional underfloor system of heating, using wood fires underneath traditional buildings.
pansori Korean opera derived from shamanistic songs, sung by female vocalists.
pyeong Korean unit of measurement equivalent to approximately 3.3 square metres; still commonly used to measure the floorspace of housing or offices.
-ri village; sometimes pronounced -ni.
-ro large street; sometimes pronounced -no.
ROK Republic of Korea.
-sa temple.
-san mountain; often used to describe an entire range.
sanseong mountain fortress.
seo- west.
Seon Korean Buddhist sect proximate to Zen in Japan.
seonsaengnim title for a teacher, which goes before the family name, or after the given name. Hence, a teacher will be referred to as “Martin seonsaengnim”. It’s also used as a version of “Mister”.
seowon Confucian academy in Joseon times.
-si city, subdivided into -gu districts.
sijang market.
soju clear alcoholic drink (around 25 percent alcohol by volume) which is often compared to vodka.
ssireum a Korean wrestling style to Mongolian or Greco-Roman styles.
STO Seoul Tourism Organization.
taekwondo Korean martial art.
tongil unification, a highly important concept on the divided Korean peninsula.
woeguk-in foreigner; pronounced “way-goog-in”. Woeguk-saram is also used.
yangban the scholarly “upper class” in Joseon times.
yeogwan Korean form of accommodation, similar to a motel but privately run and almost always older.
yeoinsuk Korean form of accommodation, similar to a yeogwan but with communal toilets and showers.