With its two-millennium-long chain of unbroken regal rule interspersed by regular fisticuffs, the Korean peninsula offers plenty for history buffs to get their teeth into. The country's early beginnings are shrouded in mystery, though events have been well documented since before the birth of Christ, a period when Korea's famed Three Kingdoms were springing into existence. Replacing Gojoseon – the first known Korean kingdom – these were Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje, three states that jostled for peninsular power for centuries, seeing off other nascent fiefdoms while dealing with the Chinese and Japanese states of the time. Even today, tangible evidence of all three kingdoms can still be seen. It was Silla that eventually prevailed, emerging victorious from a series of battles to bring the peninsula under unified control. Infighting and poor governance led to its demise, the slack taken up by the Goryeo dynasty, which lasted for almost five hundred years before folding and being replaced by Joseon rule. This was to last even longer, but was snuffed out by the Japanese at a time of global turmoil, bringing to an end Korea's succession of well over one hundred kings. 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, each writing their own historical versions of the time, and in the case of North Korea, slewing historical events even prior to partition. The war was never technically brought to an end, and its resolution – either peaceable, or by force – will add the next chapter to Korea's long history.
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 |
1910–45 |
|
Republic of Korea (South) |
1945 to present day |
|
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North) |
1945 to present day |
The beginnings
Remains of homo erectus show that the Korean peninsula may have been home to hominids for more than half a million years. The first evidence of habitation can be found in several clusters of Neanderthal sites dating from the Middle Paleolithic period (roughly 100,000–40,000 BC). The assortment of hand axes, scrapers and other tools made of stone and bone hauled from the complexes suggest a hunter-gatherer existence, while fish bones, nut shells and burnt rice provide further windows on the Korean caveman diet; the presence of carved tigers, leopards and bears on animal bones, as well as drawings, also shows that artistic endeavour on the peninsula goes back a long way. Neolithic sites (8000–3000 BC) are far more numerous than those from the Paleolithic era, and in these were found thousands of remnants from the peninsula'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, with some tombs covered with large stone slabs known as dolmen (“goindol” in Korean). Korea is home to over thirty thousand burial mounds. Three of the most important sites – Gochang and Hwasun in the Jeolla provinces, and Ganghwado, west of Incheon – are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The legend of Dangun
The Korean peninsula has played host to some of the world's longest-running monarchies, and such regal durability has made for comprehensive records. However, much of what's known about the years preceding the Three Kingdoms period remains obscure, and Korea has resorted to mythology to fill in the gaps of its creation – primarily the legend of Dangun.
The story begins with Hwanin, the “Lord of Heaven”, whose son Hwanung desired to live as a mortal being on Earth. Hwanin set his son down on Mount Paekdu (located in present-day North Korea) together with an army of three thousand disciples. Hwanung and his tribe took charge of the locals, and fostered celestial ideals of law, art and social structure. Two of his pets – a bear and a tiger – prayed to Hwanung that they be made human, just as he had been; they were each given twenty cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, and told to survive on noting else for a hundred days, before being sent to a cave. The tiger failed the challenge, but the bear prevailed, and on being made human soon bore Hwanung's child, Dangun, who went on to found Joseon in 2333 BC.
In 1993 North Korean officials announced that they had found Dangun's tomb in a location close to Pyongyang; unfortunately, they've been unwilling to share this evidence with the rest of the world.
Gojoseon
The peninsula's first kingdom was known as Joseon, though is today 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; 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. Joseon 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 Joseon are also rather vague, but large parts of its Manchurian population were squeezed onto the Korean peninsula during the Chinese Warring States Period (470–221 BC), and it seems likely to have fallen victim to a nascent Han dynasty in 109 BC. Joseon's historical name lives on: North Korea continues to refer to its land 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.
By 109 BC, after the fall of Gojoseon, power on the peninsula was decentralized to half-a-dozen fiefdoms, the most powerful of which – Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje – went on to become known as the Three Kingdoms. Though exact details regarding their beginnings are just as sketchy as those surrounding Gojoseon – two of the inaugurators are said to have hatched from eggs – this period saw the first definitive drawing of borders in Korean history, although it must be noted that none of them became fully-fledged kingdoms for a couple of centuries, each existing initially as a loose confederation of fiefdoms. Several of those jostling for power after Gojoseon's demise are not included under the Three Kingdoms banner; most notably, these include the states of Gaya, which was absorbed by Silla, and Buyeo, parts of which were incorporated by Goguryeo and Baekje. The kingdom of Tamna, isolated on Jeju Island, also came under Baekje control.
Territorial borders shifted continuously as all three kingdoms jostled for power, and a number of fortresses went up across the land, many of which can still be seen today. Outside forces were occasionally roped in to help; interestingly, Baekje was closely aligned with Japan for much of its time, while Silla sided with the Chinese Tang dynasty, despite their positions on the “wrong” sides of the peninsula. Because of these close ties with China and Japan, Korea acted as a conduit for a number of customs imported from the continent: Chinese characters came to be used with the Korean language and the import and gradual flourishing of Buddhism saw temples popping up all over the peninsula. However, it was Confucianism, another Chinese import, that 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; wonderful relics of the time have been discovered in their thousands from the grassy hill-tombs of dead kings and other formerly sacred sites. After centuries of warring that saw the kingdoms continually changing allegiance to each other and to Chinese and Japanese dynasties, matters finally came to a head in the mid-seventh century. In 660, supplemented by Tang forces from China, Silla triumphed in battle against Baekje, whose people leapt to their death from a cliff in the city of Buyeo. Muyeol died just a year later, but within a decade his son King Munmu defeated Goguryeo, setting the scene for a first-ever unified rule on the peninsula.
Goguryeo
The kingdom of Goguryeo (
) covered the whole of present-day North Korea, a large chunk of Chinese Manchuria and much of what is now Gangwon-do in the South, making it by far the largest of the Three Kingdoms by territory. Because of its location, the majority of Goguryeo's relics are a little harder to come by today than those from the Baekje or Silla kingdoms, and the history even more vague; most guesses place the inauguration of the first Goguryeo king, Dongmyeong, at 37 BC. At this point Goguryeo was still paying tax and tribute to China, but when the Han dynasty started to weaken in the third century, Goguryeo advanced and occupied swathes of territory; they eventually came to rule over an area (much of which is now in the Chinese region of Dongbei) almost three times the size of the present-day Korean peninsula. Baekje and Silla forces mounted sporadic attacks from the south, and the Chinese Tang invaded from the north, squeezing Goguryeo towards the Tuman and Anmok rivers that mark North Korea's present boundary. The Tang also provided pressure from the south by allying with the Silla dynasty, and when this Tang-Silla coalition defeated Baekje in 660, the fall of Goguryeo was inevitable; it was finally snuffed out in 668.
Baekje
The Baekje (
) dynasty, which controlled the southwest, was created as the result of great movements of people on the western side of the Korean peninsula. Buyeo, a smaller state not considered one of the Three Kingdoms, was pushed southward by the nascent kingdom of Goguryeo, and some elements decided to coalesce around a new leader – Onjo, the son of Dongmyeong, the first king of Goguryeo. Jealous of his brother's inheritance of that kingdom, Onjo proclaimed his own dynasty in 18 BC. Baekje is notable for its production of fine jewellery, which exhibited more restraint than that found in the other kingdoms, a fact often attributed to the dynasty's relatively early adoption of Buddhism as a state religion. Evidence of Baekje's close relationship with the Japanese kingdom of Wa 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. Unfortunately for Baekje, the Wa did not provide such protection as the Chinese Tang dynasty gave Silla, and much of its later history was spent conceding territory to Goguryeo. The capital shifted south from a location near present-day Seoul to Ungjin (now known as Gongju), then south again to Sabi (now Buyeo); after one final battle, fought in 660 against a Tang-Silla coalition, Baekje's small remaining population chose death over dishonour, and committed suicide from Sabi's riverside fortress.
Silla
Although it held the smallest territory of the Three Kingdoms, in the southeast, and was for centuries the most peaceable, it was the Silla (
) dynasty that defeated Baekje and Goguryeo to rule over the whole peninsula. Unlike its competitors, it only had one dynastic capital – Gyeongju – and many of the riches accumulated in almost a millennium of power (including over two hundred years as the capital of the whole peninsula) can still be seen today.
Silla's first king – Hyeokgeose – was crowned in 57 BC, but it was not until the sixth century AD that things got interesting. At this time, Silla accepted Buddhism as its state religion (the last of the Three Kingdoms to do so), and created a Confucian “bone rank” system in which people's lives were governed largely by heredity: Buddhism was used to sate spiritual needs, and Confucianism as a regulator of society. Following threats from the Japanese kingdom of Wa, they also began a rapid build-up of military strength; under the rule of King Jinheung (540–76) they absorbed the neighbouring Gaya confederacy, and started to nibble away at the other neighbouring kingdoms. Initially they sided with Baekje to attack Goguryeo, a dynasty already weakened by internal strife and pressure from the Chinese Tang to the north; a century later, Silla turned the tables on Baekje by allying with the Tang, then used the same alliance to finish off Goguryeo to the north and bring the Korean peninsula under unified rule.
Unified Silla
Following the quickfire defeats of its two competitor kingdoms in the 660s, the Silla dynasty gave rise to the Korean peninsula's first ever unification, keeping Gyeongju as the seat of power. This was, however, no easy matter: small pockets of Baekje and Goguryeo resistance lingered on, and a new (perhaps necessarily) nationalistic fervour developed by the king meant that the Chinese Tang – allies previously so crucial to Silla – had to be driven out, an action that also sent a strong “stay away” message to would-be Japanese invaders. Silla also had to contend with Balhae to the north; this large but unwieldy successor state to Goguryeo claimed back much of that kingdom's former territory, and set about establishing favourable relationships with nearby groups to the north.Once the dust had settled, the Chinese officially accepted the dynasty in exchange for regular tributes paid to Tang emperors; King Seongdeok (ruled 702–37) did much of the work, convincing the Tang that his kingdom would be much more useful as an ally than as a rival. Silla set about cultivating a peninsular sense of identity, and the pooling of ideas and talent saw the eighth century become a high-water mark of artistic development, particularly in metalwork and earthenware. This time also saw temple design reach elaborate heights, particularly at Bulguksa, built near Gyeongju in 751. 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.
Decline and fall
The late eighth century and most of the ninth were characterized by corruption and in-fighting at the highest levels of Silla society. Kings' reigns tended to be brief and bloody – the years from 836 to 839 alone saw five kings on the throne, the result of power struggles, murder and enforced suicide. Tales of regal immorality trickled down to the peasant class, leading to a number of rebellions; these increased in size and number as regal power over the countryside waned, eventually enveloping Silla in a state of perpetual 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 shrunk back beyond its Three Kingdoms-era borders, and after a power struggle Taebong took control of the peninsula; in 935 at Gyeongju's Anapji Pond, 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.
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 name of the Goryeo
(
) dynasty that eventually gave rise 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 was to marry Gyeongsun, the last king of Silla, and Taejo himself to wed a Silla queen, two telling examples of the new king's desire to cultivate a sense of national unity; he was even known to give 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 home town, Kaesong, a city in present-day North Korea. He 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: the Tripitaka Koreana – a set of more than eithty thousand wooden blocks carved with doctrine – was completed in 1251, and now resides in Haeinsa temple. This was not the only remarkable example of Goryeo ingenuity: 1377 saw the creation of Jikji, the world's first book printed with movable metal type (now in Paris, and the subject of a tug-of-war with the French government), 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.
The wars
Though the Goryeo borders as set out by King Taejo are almost identical to those that surround the Korean peninsula today, they were witness to numerous skirmishes and invasions. Notable among these were the Khitan Wars of the tenth and eleventh centuries, fought against proto-Mongol groups of the Chinese Liao dynasty. The Khitan had defeated Balhae just before the fall of Silla, and were attempting to gain control over the whole of China as well as the Korean peninsula, but three great invasions failed to take Goryeo territory, and a peace treaty was eventually signed. Two centuries later came the Mongol hordes; the Korean peninsula was part of the Eurasian landmass, and therefore a target for the great Khaans. Under the rule of Ögedei Khaan, the first invasion came in 1231, but it was not until the sixth campaign – which ended in 1248 – that Goryeo finally became a vassal state, a series of forced marriages effectively making its leaders part of the Mongol royal family. This lasted almost a century, before King Gongmin took advantage of a weakening Chinese–Mongol Yuan dynasty (founded by Kublai Khaan) to regain independence.
The Mongol annexation came at a great human cost, one echoed in a gradual worsening of Goryeo's economy and social structure. Gongmin 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: in conjunction with a series of decidedly non-Confucian love-triangles and affairs with young boys, this was to lead to his murder. His young and unprepared successor, King U, was pushed into battle with the Chinese Ming dynasty; Joseon's General Yi Seong-gye led the charge, but fearful of losing his soldiers he stopped at the border and returned to Seoul, forcing the abdication of the king, and putting U's young son Chang on the throne. The General decided that he was not yet happy with the arrangement, and had both U and Chang executed (the latter just 8 years old at the time); after one more failed attempt at putting the right puppet king on the throne, he 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 beforehand, 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, 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 go up in due course, with another four at some point home to the royal throne. From the start of the dynasty, Buddhism declined in power, and Confucianism permeated society yet further in its stead. Joseon's social system became even more hierarchical in nature, with the king and other royalty at the top, and the hereditary yangban class of scholars and aristocrats just beneath, then various levels of employment towards the servants and slaves at the bottom of the pile. All of these social strata were governed by heredity, but the yangban became ever more 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 placed great emphasis on study and the arts. Only the yangban had access to such education as could foster literacy in a country that wrote with Chinese characters. 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 sixteeth century, lying largely dormant until beached by waves of nationalist sentiment created by the end of Japanese annexation in 1945.
The Japanese invasions
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, and after King Seonjo refused to allow Japanese troops safe passage, Hideyoshi mustered all his military's power and unloaded the lot at Korea. After two relatively peaceable centuries, the Joseon dynasty was ill-prepared for such an assault, and within a month the Japanese had eaten up most of the peninsula; the advance was halted with forces from a Ming dynasty keen to defend its territory. By the time of the second main wave of attacks in 1597, Korean Admiral Yi Sun-shin had been able to better prepare Korea's southern coastline, now protected by a number of fortresses. The Japanese found themselves losing battle after battle, undone by Admiral Yi's “turtle ships”, vessels proclaimed by Koreans as the world's first armoured warships.
The “Hermit Kingdom”
The Japanese attacks – together with the dynastic transfer from Ming to Qing in China in the 1640s, which led to Joseon becoming a vassal state forced to spend substantial sums paying tribute to the emperors in Beijing – prompted Korea to turn inwards; it became known as the “Hermit Kingdom”, one of which outsiders knew little, and saw even less. One exception was a Dutch ship which crashed off Jeju Island in 1653 en route to Japan; the survivors were kept prisoner for thirteen years but finally managed to escape; the accounts of 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. In 1767, inside the grounds of Changgyeonggung palace, he forced Sado – his son and the country's crown prince – into a rice basket, locked the flap and left him inside to starve rather than let the country fall into his hands. Sado's son Jeongjo came to the throne on Yeongjo's death in 1776; he went on to become 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 man gradually improved.
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 with advances on the mainland in 1866, their battle fought partly as retaliation for the murder of several of their missionaries in Korea. Five years later, and in the same location, the Americans also attempted to prise the country open to trade; though they failed, 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 to the present day, Korea would be a ship largely steered along by foreign powers.
Through means both political and economic, the Japanese underwent a gradual strengthening of 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 (reigned 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, there to 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 acknowledgment of Japanese interests in Korea. Sensing shifts in power, Russia at this point began moving its rooks 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, the two fought the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–05, and 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 President-to-be 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 under dynastic succession, and it was with a whimper that the book closed on Korea's near two thousand years of unbroken regal rule.
After the signing of the Annexation Treaty in 1910, the Japanese wasted no time in putting themselves in all the top posts in politics, banking, law and industry with their 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 its workings. Korea was but part of the Empire of Japan's dream of continental hegemony, and being the nearest stepping stone to 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 nearby Changgyeonggung suddenly found itself home to a decidedly unroyal theme park and zoo. Korean currency, clothing and even the language itself were placed under ever stricter control, 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 being sent 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, an act 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. The result, however, 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 matter and the creation of organizations, and promoting 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 in Japanese, and even adopt a Japanese name (a practice known as soshi-kaimei), all helped by local collaborators (chinilpa). Thousands of these went across to Japan, but though many were there to do business and strengthen imperial ties, most were simply squeezed out of Korea by Japanese land confiscations.
The end of annexation
Throughout the remainder of 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”.
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. The impoverished 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 American 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, officials and high-rankers (including eventual Secretary of State Dean Rusk) with no in-depth knowledge of the peninsula sat with a map and a pencil, and scratched a line across the 38th parallel – 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 that refused to recognize each other, the two diametrically opposed in ideology. The Republic of Korea (now more commonly referred to as “South Korea”) declared independence on August 15, 1948, exactly three years after liberation from the Japanese, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (now better known as “North 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 Il-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 a polarization of opinion, 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 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, but declassified Soviet information shows 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 Northern supplies. 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, but 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.
A land in ruins
In effect, both sides lost the Korean War, as neither had achieved the aims espoused at the outset. Seoul had fallen four times – twice to each side – and Korea's population was literally decimated, with over three million killed, wounded or missing over the course of the war; to this can be added around half a million UNC troops, and what may well be over a million Chinese. 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; in addition to the confusion created by a front line that yo-yoed up and down the land, people were forced to switch sides to avoid starvation or torture, or to stay in contact with family members. Though the course of the battle and its aftermath were fairly straightforward, propaganda clouded many of the more basic details, and the war 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 is how close nuclear weapons were to being used in the conflict. After the war, General MacArthur was quoted as saying that he “would have dropped between thirty and fifty atomic bombs... strung across the neck of Manchuria.” Since the end of the war there have been innumerable accounts of atrocities committed by 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.
The following information refers to South Korean history after the Korean War. The history section of the chapter North Korea details events and gives information on North-South relations since the conflict.
To the present day
Considering its state after the war, South Korea's transformation is nothing short of astonishing. A rapid phase of industrialization, one often referred to as the “Economic Miracle” in the west, saw it 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 straightjacket in the 1980s, it developed sufficiently to be selected to host some of the world's most high-profile events – the Olympics in 1988, soccer's World Cup in 2002 and the G20 Summit in 2010.
Problematic beginnings
The postwar period proved extremely difficult for South Korea: cities had been laid to waste and families torn apart, 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 anyone opposed to his policies. In 1960 disgruntled students led the April 19 Movement against his 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: 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, was a catalyst for mass uprisings across the land, though mainly concentrated in Jeju Island and the Jeolla 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 Olympic legacy
Incredibly, just one year after the massacre, Seoul was given the rights to host the 1988 Summer Olympics: some estimates say the death count at Gwangju was similar to the Tiananmen Square massacre, but it's hard to imagine Beijing being granted a similar honour the year after those events. Although the Olympic plan had been Park Chung-hee's, Chun Doo-hwan followed it through in an apparent attempt to seek international recognition. Though he may have regarded the 1981 Olympic vote as a tacit global nod of acceptance, the strategy backfired when the country was thrust into the spotlight. Partly as a result of this increased attention, Korea's first 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 only worsened the effect of the Asian Currency Crisis on the country in 1997.
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.
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 however, choosing instead to wait for the results of a full investigation. South Korean conspiracy theorists initially pointed fingers at an American submarine that 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 23 November, 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.
Into the twenty-first century
South Korea's international reputation was further enhanced by the hugely successful co-hosting of the 2002 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). Late that year, Roh Moo-hyun was elected president on a slightly anti-American ticket; however, the fact that he sent Korean troops to Iraq so soon after taking office in early 2003 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 in the capital; the burden on local taxpayers made this a deeply unpopular project, though it has come to be loved by the public since. Lee was elected president 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 the land; in Seoul, one man died after setting fire to himself in protest. However, these political protests were small-fry compared to the North Korean attacks of 2010.
Korea has a long and fascinating religious history, one that has informed local life to the present day. Strewn with temples, the country is most closely identified with Buddhism, though Christianity actually 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 inferior to men.
Buddhism is a religion deriving from the teachings of the Buddha – also known as the Siddhartha Gautama or Sakyamuni, he 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 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 touched down 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 promise 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, covering 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 better known under its Chinese name of Tiantai.
Ornate temples sprang up all over the peninsula during the Unified Silla period but, though 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 (thus there are relatively few in Seoul, the Joseon capital), but though the religion was repressed, it never came close to evaporating entirely. Further troubles were to come 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 an active temple.
Temples
Korea's many temples are some of the most visually appealing places in the country. Most run along a similar design scheme: on entry to the temple complex you'll pass through the iljumun (
), or “first gate”, then the cheonwangmun
(
). 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 (
). 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 (
), the hall of the Vairocana Buddha; gwaneumjeon (
), a hall for the Bodhisattva of Compassion; geungnakjeon (
), the Nirvana Hall and home to the celestial Amitabha Buddha; mireukjeon (
), the hall of the future Maitreya Buddha; and nahanjeon (
), the hall of disciples. Some also feature the palsangjeon (
), 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 (
), 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 it can be heard if you were to strike it lightly with your fist. Needless to say, you shouldn't test these contentions.
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 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, who 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 clear: 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 conceptual 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 salary continues 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. All that said, Confucian ideas are slowly being eroded as Westernization continues to encroach, particularly as the number of Christians continues to grow.
Village practices
Mountain rites
By far the most common form of spirit worship in Korea, the sansinje remains a part of annual village festivals all across the country. The Dano festival in Gangneung – the biggest traditional event in the land – actually starts off with one of these in honour of General Kim Yu-sin, spearhead of the Silla campaigns that resulted in the unification of the country. Near Samcheok, just down the way, groups head to the hills for shamanistic gut ceremonies and animal exorcisms.
Rites to sea spirits
Though these rites are held at points all along Korea's coastline, they are most numerous in Gangwon province on the east, particularly around the city of Gangneung. The spirit is often the ghost of a local female who perished tragically, often without having married (see “Phallicism”); when finally placated by ceremonies and sacrifices, she becomes a patron of the village in question. One popular Gangwon tale regards a man who was prompted in a dream to rescue a travelling woman from a nearby islet; all he found on arrival was a basket containing the woman's portrait, and after carrying it home his village was blessed with a bumper crop. Villagers continue to pay respects to this day.
Rites to tree spirits
Korea has many trees dating back five centuries or more, so it's understandable that many local Korean myths – including the Tangun legend, which details Korea's creation – include a sacred tree somewhere along the way. Trees of such repute are treated with enormous respect, as even to snap a twig is said to invoke a punishment of some kind from the spirit that lives within.
Rites to rock spirits
As you make your way around Korea, you'll see English-language pamphlets pointing you towards rocks that are said to resemble turtles, tigers, sea dragons and the like. While some require an almost superhuman stretch of the imagination, many of these are still the subject of regular ceremonies for the spirits that are said to reside within the rock. You'll also see man-made stone mounds in and around certain temples, most notably wonderful Tapsa in Maisan Provincial Park, which is surrounded by spires of rock that were all stacked by just one man.
Jangseung
Having long served a range of purposes from protector to boundary marker, these carved wooden sticks may have jovial faces or snarling mouths full of blocky, painted teeth. You'll see the real things at the entrance to traditional villages – and replicas outside traditional restaurants.
Anyone who has seen the mysterious but rather phallic hareubang statues on beautiful Jeju Island will know that willy worship has long been popular in Korea. This usually takes the form of fertility rites, but the reasoning for some ceremonies is not so predictable: on a village south of Samcheok in Gangwon province once lived a young bride-to-be who was swept from the shore in a powerful storm. Her enraged spirit chased the fish from the seas until it was placated by a carved wooden penis; hundreds of the things now rise from the ground in a nearby park.
Christianity
Practised by well over a quarter of the 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 of Christians have been growing ever since, the majority now belonging to the Presbyterian, Catholic or Methodist churches.
Churches tend to be monstrous concrete edifices (many of them sporting rather frightening red neon crosses), and some are huge, with room for thousands of worshippers. In fact, Seoul's mini-island of Yeouido officially has the largest church in the world, with 170 pastors and over 100,000 registered deacons.
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 TV 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.
The beginnings
Film was first introduced to Korea at the very end of the nineteenth century; in 1899, just after making Korea's first-ever telephone call, King Gojong was shown a short documentary about the country put together by American traveller Burton Holmes, and Seoul's first cinema was opened shortly afterwards. Unfortunately, few examples from the prewar silent era have made it onto the international market; Korean produce was also scaled down, and at one point cut off entirely, during the Japanese occupation (1910–45). After World War II, and the end of annexation, there followed a short burst of films – many of which, understandably, had freedom as a central concept – but this was brought to an abrupt halt by the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
After the Korean War
Following the war, the film industries of the two Koreas developed separately; leaders on both sides saw movies as a hugely useful propaganda tool, and made immediate efforts to revive local cinema – the North Korean story continues in a different section. In the south, President Syngman Rhee conferred tax-exempt status on moviemakers, who got busy with works 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, the most popular being watched by millions, but the accession of Park Chung-hee to president in 1961 brought an end to what passed for cinematic freedom. In addition to the censorship and hard-fisted control over local produce, foreign films were vetted for approval and placed under a strict quota system, elements of which remained 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. After Park's death, democratization and the gradual relaxation of restrictions gave rise to the Hallyeo movement.
The Hallyeo “New Wave”
Throughout the periods of governmental suppression, a clutch of talented directors were forced to keep their best ideas under wraps, or else be very clever about putting them forward. With the loosening of the lid in the 1980s, the highest skilled came to the fore and finally gave Korea exposure in the West; foremost among these was Im Kwon-taek, a maverick who shrugged off his role as a creator of commercial quota-fillers to unleash striking new works on the world. The South Korean government continued to provide funding for films until the 1999 release of Swiri, the country's first fully independent film. Since then the industry has reached an ever-greater international audience, and a number of Korean directors such as Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook are now globally acclaimed.
The country's dramas have arguably been even more successful than its movies, though with an appeal largely limited to the Asian continent. Foremost among these was Winter Sonata, a series that received an almost religious following in Japan.
The DPRK has kept a tight lid on foreign production within the country, but after years of cajoling British director Daniel Gordon was allowed in to shoot a documentary about survivors of the country's 1966 football team. Together with his two follow-up efforts, they provide excellent windows into contemporary North Korean society.
The Game of Their Lives (2002)
In 1966 North Korea's football team had gone into the World Cup Finals in England as rank underdogs, but a stirring victory over Italy sent them through to the quarter-finals, where they lost 5–3 in an amazing game against Portugal; incredibly, they were 3–0 up at one point and heading for the semi-finals. The team returned home as international heroes, but little more was heard of them until the screening of this revealing documentary.
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 such reportage is to the average foreign viewer.
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.
Cinema is big business in North Korea – Kim Jong-il was pouring funds into the industry for decades before he became leader of the country, and in 1978 even went so far as to organize the kidnapping of Shin Sang-ok – a prominent South Korean director – in an effort to improve the quality of local produce. North Korea produces some of the world's most distinctive films; unfortunately, this niche in global cinema has remained almost entirely unexplored by the outside world. A few films have started to trickle onto the international market; to buy, go to 
www.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. Highlights include Nameless Heroes (a twenty-part series produced at immense cost while the country was gripped by famine), Sea of Blood, Duty of a Generation, We Love Our Soldiers and the surprisingly comical Family Basketball Team.
Kim Ki-duk
3-Iron (2004) Korean movies about eccentric loners are ten a penny. Here, the protagonist is a delivery boy who breaks into and then polishes up the houses that he knows to be empty. When he happens across one that's still home to a lonely girl, the couple begin a strange kind of silent relationship. Superbly acted, and an interesting take on the traditional love story.
Bad Guy (2001) A sadomasochistic thread runs through Kim Ki-duk's films, evident in Bad Guy, where a mute thug falls in love with a young beauty and tricks her into becoming a prostitute. This disturbing study of small-time gangsters and sexual slavery tells painful truths about Korean society, and though clichéd is absorbing in more than a voyeuristic sense.
Samaritan Girl (2004) A storyline that's less explicit and far deeper than its premise may suggest. Two teenage girls looking to save up for a trip to Europe enter the murky world of prostitution, one sleeping with the clients, the other managing the affairs while keeping an eye out for the cops. Inevitably, things don't quite go according to plan.
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) With just one set – a monastery in the middle of a remote lake – and a small cast, Kim Ki-duk somehow spins together a necessarily slow but undeniably beautiful allegory of human nature, one that relays the life of a boy nurtured to manhood by a reclusive monk.
The Isle (2001) In the middle of a lake, a mute woman rents out small floating huts to men looking to escape city life for a while, sometimes selling herself to them, sometimes murdering them. This was the film that pushed Kim Ki-duk's unique style onto the world stage, a dark love story with a couple of nasty surprises.
War and history
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, incidentally, came out the following year), the story plays backwards, revealing the lead-up piece by piece.
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.
Taegukgi (2004) Though it suffers from occasional shoddy acting, and the sense of history is unconvincing, this is an enjoyable war film, following the fate of two brothers as they battle through the horrors and in-fighting of the Korean War.
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.
Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) Too twee for some, but heart-warming to others and beautifully shot to boot, this 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.
In these lists, the symbol 
indicates a movie that is particularly recommended.
Park Chan-wook's “Vengeance Trilogy”
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002)
Acclaimed director Park Chan-wook kicked off a trio of films about revenge with this tale of a deaf-mute man who hatches a plot to find a kidney for his ailing sister, inadvertently kicking off a series of revenge-fuelled murders.
Oldboy (2003)
Oldboy was the first Korean film to win big at Cannes, a dark and violent tale of a businessman mysteriously arrested after a night out, imprisoned for years then given three days to discover why he was put away and to hunt down those responsible. Though lead man Choi Min-sik has an unfortunate habit of looking like an actor, even when he's not acting, it's still riveting.
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)
A teenage girl gets framed and sent down for killing a young boy, and spends her time in jail plotting revenge. On her release she's offered a plate of metaphorically cleansing white tofu by a Christian group; the tofu ends up on the floor and our heroine sets about getting back at the man to blame for her imprisonment.
Drama and horror
The Host (2006) The tranquil life
of a riverside merchant is blown to smithereens when the formaldehyde disposed into the river by the American military creates a ferocious underwater creature. This comic thriller smashed box office records in Korea; the international reception was nowhere near as fervent, but it's worth a look nonetheless.
Secret Sunshine (2007) It's rare for government ministers to go into movie-making, but so successful was Lee Chang-dong's effort that his film even won an award at Cannes. Focused on a woman entering middle age, it's a well-delivered interpretation of human suffering.
A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) This chiller seeks to petrify viewers not with lashings of ultra-violence but with that which cannot be seen. An adaptation of a Joseon-era folk story, it keeps its audience guessing, and some will find it Korea's best take on the horror genre.
Thirst (2009) Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, this was director Park Chan-wook's follow-up to his hugely successful Vengeance Trilogy. It's a romantic horror in which a priest, in love with his friend's wife, turns into a vampire – an odd concept that shouldn't work, but somehow Park pulls it off.
Comedy
My Sassy Girl (2001) A mega-hit from Tokyo to Taipei, this tale doesn't add too much to the rom-com genre, but one scene was almost entirely responsible for a spate of high-school-themed club nights. It's worth watching, as is My Tutor Friend, a follow-up that hits most of the
same buttons.
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.
Save the Green Planet! (2003) A social recluse and his tightrope-walker girlfriend endeavour to save the earth by hunting down the aliens that they believe to have infiltrated mankind; once captured, the extraterrestrials can only be destroyed by applying menthol rub to their groin and feet. Enough said.
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.
In the following lists, the symbol 
indicates a title that is particularly recommended.
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 injury of the national psyche.
Kim Dong-uk Palaces of Korea. A photo-filled hardcover detailing not only the minutiae of Seoul's wonderful palaces, but how they vary in style and form from those found elsewhere in Asia.
Korean Cultural Heritage Koreana. A compendium of articles written about Korean culture, mainly with reference to religious and shamanistic practices. Much of the detail overlaps, but it's worth tracking down.
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.
Rhee Won-sok Korea Unmasked: In Search of the Country, the Society and the People. The peculiarities of Korean society relayed in an easy-to-read comic strip. While it could be said that it makes light of some serious problems, it's an entertaining primer on the local psyche.
Simon Winchester Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles. This highly entertaining book details Winchester's walk from southern Jeju to the North Korean border. Written in the 1980s, it's now an extremely dated snapshot of Korean society; it is amazing how much it has changed in such a short time.
Local literature
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 nouveau riche, via twelve interconnected stories; A Dwarf Launches a Little Bell is particularly recommended, and has been reprinted hundreds of times in Korea.
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.
North Korea and the Korean War
Jasper Becker Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Despite Becker's view of North Korea being thoroughly one-sided, it often lends itself to easy sensationalism. A meaty fleshing-out of how the Western world sees Kim Jong-il.
Erik Cornell North Korea Under Communism – Report of a Special Envoy to Paradise. Sweden was the first Western country to open up diplomatic connections to the DPRK, and Cornell spent three years as the head of its embassy in Pyongyang.
His book is rather political, but provides a unique insight into life in North Korea.
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. For anyone with even a passing interest in North Korea, this is a must-read.
Max Hastings The Korean War. A conflict is not quite a war until it has been given the treatment by acclaimed historian Max Hastings. With this, 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 only 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 one 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 the 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
Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee Eating Korean: From Barbecue to Kimchi, Recipes from My Home. Easy-to-follow instructions for more than a hundred Korean dishes. The more predictable rice and noodle dishes are supplemented with side dishes, soups, teas and desserts.
Young Jin Song Korean Cooking: Traditions, Ingredients, Flavours, Techniques, Recipes. As the sweeping subtitle suggests, this is not so much a recipe book as an all-encompassing guide to Korean cuisine.
An ajumma is a Korean woman, though the term is something of a grey area: it encompasses old age and anything approaching it, but can also be used to describe a married female, or one with children. However, with women understandably reluctant to be tarred with the term, it's usually reserved for Korean grandmothers. In a country where women are still not regarded as equals, they've fought their way through war and poverty to provide a tough-as-nails embodiment of harder times, many regarding old age as a liberation of a kind from chauvinistic yokes. To do something with strength, purpose and resilience is to do it with “ajumma power”. Almost every single old-age ajumma has the same hairstyle – a bubble-perm affectionately known as a bbogeul-bbogeul (pronounced “boggle-boggle”), and foreign women with even a slight natural curl to their hair may well be asked where they go to get it permed.
B: Burberry man
What's generally known as a “flasher” in English is referred to as a Burberry man in Korea. These gents – dressed in a three-quarter-length jacket and little else – hang around universities in order to expose themselves to female students, most commonly when large crowds are gathered in the front enclosures. They're surprisingly common – most Korean girls will have seen at least one, and many schools see a Burberry man show up regularly. Korea's love of conformity means that even these sex pests have a uniform of sorts: while the Burberry label is not essential, most of their jackets are brown, and for some reason knee-length grey socks seem almost mandatory.
C: Clones and couple-look
The subject of cloning has long been controversial, but in Korea questions of morality come with a tinge of scandal. In 2005 a team of scientists from Seoul National University created an Afghan Hound named “Snuppy” – a combination of “puppy” and the initials of the university – and the world's first cloned human embryo, both to tumultuous acclaim from the world scientific community. Shortly afterwards, the team leader – Dr Hwang Woo-suk – was revealed to have fabricated much of his evidence. Surrounded by inconsolable team members, Dr Hwang issued a profuse apology on live TV. While the human embryo had been bluffed, the dog was later found to be a bona fide clone.
Identical appearances are nothing new in Korea – newlyweds have long worn matching clothes for the duration of their honeymoon, a concept known as “couple-look”. The preponderance of pinks and pastels shows which half of the pair usually makes the decisions, though it's becoming increasingly common for men to sport clothes that complement, rather than match, those of their bride. The best places to see the trend in action are Seoul's Myeongdong district, and the “honeymoon island” of Jeju.
In Korea, businessmen inevitably find themselves having to drink an awful lot as “social” job obligations, even if travelling with a car. To get round this situation Korea has daeri-unjeon, a network of drivers who drive both the customer and his car home, and who can be called from most bars; the telephone numbers usually end with 8282, digits whose pronunciation is almost identical to the Korean for “hurry, hurry!”
E: Eyelid surgery
In a country where appearance is not quite everything but pretty damn close, beauty is big business. The large and thriving plastic surgery industry sees women – and more than a few men – get all sorts from nose-jobs to a nip and tuck, but the most popular alteration by far is eyelid surgery. This involves the creation of a crease in the upper eyelid, the results being apparently more beautiful to Koreans, but distinctly non-oriental.
F: “Fan death”
“Fan death” is a truly curious phenomenon – whereas around the world people fall asleep with a fan or the air-conditioning left on, only in Korea does such folly regularly seem to result in fatalities. The reasons given include air currents starving the victim of air, reduced room temperatures inducing hypothermia, or even fan blades actually cutting the oxygen molecules in two. This is enough to convince most Koreans that the humble electric fan is an instrument to be feared – even broadsheet newspapers run fan-death stories, and the Korean government has issued warnings against using fans at night. Such beliefs are of much amusement to Korea's expat population (unless they find themselves sharing a room with a Korean in the summer).
G: Golf, gyopo and grandmother techno
Despite Korea's mountainous countryside and crowded, sprawling cities, golf has become one of the most popular sports in the country. Gongju's Seri Park is perhaps the best-known golfer, having won three of the four majors on the women's circuit and found her way onto the World Golf Hall of Fame; Grace Park and Jeong Jang have also won major titles. The men have fared less well, but K. J. Choi broke into the world's top 10 in 2007. Michelle Wie, a child prodigy dubbed the “female Tiger Woods” and competing in male events when barely into her teens, was born in Hawaii to Korean parents.
Wie is one of the most famous gyopo; this is a term used to refer to ethnic Koreans who live outside Korea, especially those who have become citizens of another country. Other famous gyopo include Yunjin Kim of Lost fame; Joe Hahn from nu-metal band Linkin Park; ESPN anchor Michael Kim; and Woody Allen's wife Soon-yi Previn. “Oddjob”, the Korean villain of Bond fame, was actually played by a Japanese-American wrestler.
While modern K-pop has swept across continental Asia, there's another strain of music that you're just as likely to come across on your way around Korea: “Trot” songs – best described as a kind of grandmother techno – are fast-paced ballads, set to odd synthesized rhythms and crooned out in a semi-compulsory warble. The songs have changed over the years but the style has been around since the 1930s and remains hugely popular with Korea's older set, as anyone who's seen a clutch of grannies getting down to the beats will testify. However, Trot is not the sole preserve of the elderly, and is unlikely to go out of fashion any time soon – university students belt out hits in noraebang, while young artists such as Jang Yoon-jeong have scored big by crossing the genre with the ballads that younger Koreans tend to prefer. Ubiquitous cabaret shows mean that Trot is rarely off the TV, and highway service stations on long-distance bus routes are filled with Trot tapes – they make fantastic souvenirs.
Koreans don't tend to follow worldwide internet trends – they're usually one step ahead. Most Koreans have for years had a hompy (a Korean bastardization of the word “homepage”), onto which they load countless photographs, musings, journal entries, songs and any other digitizable part of their lives. Foreigners living in Korea will often be asked to create a local hompy by Korean friends – if you don't exist online, you don't exist at all – and some have found them a great way to expand their social network.
Harisu didn't need the internet to find fame, just a sex change. Born male, she underwent sexual reassignment surgery, and flew in the face of a conservative society to become the country's first celebrity transsexual; she was also one of the first in the queue to change gender when it became legal to do so. Harisu's big break was a cosmetics commercial, in which the camera focused on her Adam's apple; her fame and voice were enough to propel several albums into the chart, and she has appeared in a number of films.
I: Internet deaths
Koreans are famed for their use of computers, most notably the amount of time they spend playing online games. In fact, there is a growing backlash among the non-Korean gaming community: such is their domination that the country's gamers are accused of taking over international gaming sites and tournaments. They even hit the international headlines with occasional internet deaths: stories of gamers making mammoth stints (one was measured at 92 hours) at one of the ubiquitous PC bars have become less common since the government ordered tighter controls, but there's still the occasional death behind closed doors.
Korean business is dominated by a troupe of gigantic business conglomerates known as jaebeol. A few of these organizations have achieved fame around the world, though most foreigners probably wouldn't know that the company is Korean even if the name is familiar to them. Some of the largest and most renowned jaebeol include Samsung, LG, Hyundai, SK, Lotte, Daewoo and Kumho Asiana. Most are still family-controlled, leading to enormous riches for the man at the helm; their power was a driving force behind Korea's “Economic Miracle”. Times have changed; after the Asian Financial Crisis and the resultant reforms, many chose (or were forced) to break up into smaller units.
Foreigners who choose to live in Korea full-time may well come into contact with jeonse, the country's unique system of property rental. Instead of paying a monthly rent, tenants slam down a huge “key money” deposit, which in most cases is over half of the property's value; the landlord earns off the interest, and refunds the deposit at the end of the contract. This is one reason why most Koreans live with their parents until marriage – youngsters are usually only able to pay the lump sum with family help. It's also quite risky – many families have lost everything after their landlord did a runner. This system is slowly giving way to a more international rental style, prompted in part by much lower interest rates.
L: Louis Vuitton
Though the numbers are gradually starting to decline, patterned brown handbags from French designer Louis Vuitton have long been standard issue on female Korean arms. However, high prices – and increased expertise of counterfeiting in China – force many to invest in a fake bag. Watch what happens if it starts to rain.
M: Missionaries and military service
Many visitors to Korea are surprised to learn that Buddhism, the state religion for centuries, has been surpassed as the most common religion by Christianity. Koreans assume most foreigners to be Christian, and some of the most actively religious will stop you in the street for a chat about joining their church – expats soon learn to steer clear of those approaching with a pamphlet or book. Korean Christianity made world news in 2007, when a group of 23 missionaries was abducted by the Taliban in Afghanistan; two were executed before a deal could be struck, and the rest had to suffer for over a month before their release.
South Korea still has compulsory military service for its young men. This was once 36 months, but is now around 24 months; it's likely to decrease further. Conscientious objectors will be jailed, but there are ways around the rule – many students manage to tie their service into university courses such as logistics and electronic engineering. Military service is also mandatory for men in North Korea, and women are actively encouraged to enrol as volunteers.
A nocheonnyeo is an “over-the-hill spinster”, a woman who has gone past the perceived outer boundary of marriageable age; 30 has long been the feared number, though the Korean age-counting system (whereby children are born aged 1 and become 2 on the date of the next Lunar New Year) makes this 28 or 29 in international terms. While it remains much harder for a woman to marry after achieving nocheonnyeo status, societal shifts (notably an increase in divorce rates, and the slow decline of the resign-after-marriage path for females) mean that it's by no means impossible.
O: Ohmy News
In a country whose news output generally ranges from insipid to downright corrupt, Ohmy News has ruffled feathers by providing a much-needed independent voice. In operation since 2000, this online newspaper may not be written by journalists (their motto is “Every Citizen is a Reporter”, and around eighty percent of their content comes from the public), but regular scoops have made them a big part of the news scene. They've even made a name for themselves abroad – the New York Times of March 6, 2003, ran with the headline “Online Newspaper Shakes Up Korean Politics”, a reference to the popular belief that Ohmy influenced the outcome of the 2002 presidential election by prompting protests against the American army presence.
P: Private tutoring
With Korea's mix of generous salaries and relatively poor foreign language rates, there's a large and growing market for English teachers. Most head across – at least initially – to teach children at after-school private tutoring institutes known as hagwon. These are not just for English lessons – the huge pressures inherent in Korea's educational system prompt an extremely high proportion of parents to push their kids into extra-curricular classes from ages as young as 5. In addition to language classes and “regular” school, the little mites may have violin lessons, computer training, art classes, dance groups and piano recitals crammed into their weekly schedule.
Q: Questionable English
Anyone spending time in Korea will note that expats employed as translators are having a good laugh. T-shirts splashed with questionable English are all over the place – “Skinny Bitch” got to be popular with young girls, though “Hey Guy! Lay Me” was a mercifully short-lived fad; some have more surreal slogans such as “Is Your Barn Insured?”, and others simply have random cuttings from foreign newspapers. The mirth is not restricted to clothing – Kiss and Asse are two of the biggest brands of toilet paper, there's an energy drink called Coolpis, a bakery chain called Gout, children's clothing shops called Hunt Kids and Baby Hunt, and bars with such names as Super Excellent Big Boy Club. Some questionable names, however, are purely down to the Koreans. There are spelling mistakes galore: “crab” is spelt with a “p” on a surprising number of the country's menus, and a certain hamburger chain is often spelt “Bugger King” on English-language maps. There's also the legacy of football hero Ahn Jung-hwan, who celebrated his two goals in the 2002 World Cup by kissing then holding aloft his wedding ring; within days, hundreds of bars and restaurants across the land had changed their name to “Kiss Ring”.
R: Red Devils
Having casually pinched their nickname from England's Manchester United, the South Korean national football team is often referred to as the “Red Devils”, as are their main supporters' group. A noisy but friendly bunch, the latter were one of the highlights of the 2002 World Cup, an event half-hosted in Korea; wearing standard-issue red T-shirts, their chant of “Dae-Han-Min-Guk!” – the country's name in Korean – pushed the team on to the semi-finals of the competition. Most wore a T-shirt emblazoned with “Be The Reds!”, perhaps the best-known example of “Konglish” (a hybrid of Korean and English which makes little sense in either language). The inventors of the logo initially neglected to copyright it, and it was eventually superseded by the official slogan of the supporters' club, the more grammatically correct “Reds Go Together”.
S: Sexy bars and sogaeting
Sexy bars are one of Korea's many takes on the hostess theme. Drinks at these places are served by scantily clad women to male customers who are expected to pay not just for their own drinks, but for the expensive ones selected by the woman or women. Those who just want a beer or two will be tolerated, but it's rich, whisky-quaffing regulars who get preferential treatment. Though this doesn't always lead to sex – there are plenty of dedicated brothels around, and many customers head to sexy bars for nothing more than an ego-boosting chat – it does happen. This line of work has become popular with university students seeking to top up their funds, but many girls are trafficked in from Southeast Asia or former Soviet states, and have little more freedom than the Korean “comfort women” from the Japanese annexation period.
One thing a sexy bar certainly won't play host to is a blind date, or “sogaeting”. Until recently, these were usually arranged by parents in anticipation of a happy marriage between friendly families, but in an increasingly liberal Korea sogaeting is now more common as a way for boys and girls to find their own partners.
T: Tongil and table gifts
After the cleaving apart of the Korean peninsula, both sides held a strong desire for reunification. “Tongil”, the local word for the concept, forms part of the names of parks, monuments, roads, bars, restaurants, hairdressers and countless more besides, but its popularity has been noticeably declining among South Korean youth: in an all-pervasive manner of which the North would be quite proud, almost anyone born after 1980 will claim that the absorption of such a poor country would play havoc on their own economy, pointing to Germany's fiscal woes after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
A first birthday party is a pretty special event wherever you are in the world, but Korea has added its own distinctive twist to proceedings – table gifts. At some point in the occasion, the baby will be seated on or dangled over a table laid out with money, rice, thread and a pencil, and pushed to make a selection that, it is said, will influence their future path. Money speaks for itself, but the selection of rice is said to lead to a comfortable life, thread to a long one, and a pencil to a scholarly career. Of course, this is not enough to satisfy many modern parents, who throw contemporary choices such as golf balls, footballs, DVDs or microphones onto the table too, often giving their young one precious little choice in the selection. Also interesting are the parties thrown to celebrate the hundredth day of a child's life – in times of high infant mortality, this was when the child was said to have “made it”, and the special day continues to be celebrated with a feast of colourful rice-cake.
U: Unconstitutional law and US forces
Koreans were, until recently, banned from marrying anyone of the same clan. This may have sounded like an extremely severe rule in a country with so few family names (around one-quarter of Koreans are named Kim, another fifteen percent Lee, and almost ten percent Park), but the ruling only in fact covered those who had both the same name and the same ancestral clan; some of these subdivisions, however, were over a million-strong in number. Same-clan marriages were termed incestuous, even if the pair were a dozen generations apart, but this law was found unconstitutional by the Korean court in 1997, and thousands have since taken advantage of this ruling.
US forces arrived back on Korean soil at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, only years after leaving the area following Japan's defeat in World War II; they have remained on the peninsula ever since in their tens of thousands. Their presence is largely unpopular in Korea, with regular protests taking place in Seoul. Successive Korean leaders have been forced to walk a political tightrope, telling locals that the American presence would be scaled down, but simultaneously begging them to stay. The mini-cities of good-time girls that have developed outside the major bases would also be short of custom.
V: Vanity mirrors
Korean girls are famed throughout East Asia for being a little vain. A vanity mirror is an almost essential part of every girl's armament; these are used at what can be disturbingly regular intervals to make sure that every single eyelash is in perfect position, and are usually kept in outer pockets – for some, the inside of a handbag is just too far away. Many Korean girls now have mirrored screens on their mobile phones.
W: Westernization
Though it remains one of the most unique societies on earth, Korea certainly doesn't suffer from a lack of Western influence. The once-traditional hanbok suits and horsehair hats gave way decades ago to T-shirts and jeans, the former almost always adorned with an English-language logo or slogan. Innumerable Western words have entered the Korean lexicon, albeit altered to fit the local tongue; foreign fast-food chains are everywhere; and American shows such as CSI, Lost and Prison Break are among the most popular on TV.
X: Xenophobia
Koreans tend to make foreigners feel very welcome, but this friendliness conceals a rampant xenophobia. Korea remains one of the most homogenous societies on earth, and traces of the “Hermit Kingdom” remain, mainly thanks to history lessons that paint the motherland in virginal white while detailing every single injustice inflicted on her; most of the official ire is reserved for the Japanese, but anti-Americanism is also rife. It must be said that this very rarely results in anything approaching violence – Korea is simply seen as a world apart, where foreigners will always be viewed as such, even if they were born in Korea and speak the language fluently. People are likewise seen as nationals first and human beings second, which leads to some blanket stereotyping; the rationale for many local deeds will be “because I'm Korean”. It also explains the surprise that many Koreans will show to Westerners able to use chopsticks – no matter how close you live to a Chinatown, it's simply not in your DNA.
Y: Yuhaeng and Yes!!
Yuhaeng is a Korean word meaning “in vogue” – and the compulsion to be in vogue has led to a recent fad for fancy underwear. After years of beige-coloured bras, Korean women (and their men, of course) needed something different, and one of the biggest and most innovative movers was Yes!!, a nationwide lingerie chain. One notable piece of marketing genius was seen on a bra-and-knickers set which had the word “No” plastered all over it; with the aid of glow-in-the-dark printing, this magically changed to “Yes!!” when the lights were off.
Z: Zodiac
Koreans are a superstitious bunch, and you'll see small tent-like fortune-telling booths in every city, most often attended by young couples looking for celestial approval of their relationship, or workers thinking about changing jobs. People's place in the zodiac may also be supplemented by palm-reading, teacup-gazing, craniology or Tarot cards.