Info about Korea

Subject: Info about Korea Sun 16 Mar 2008, 00:02

Korea

Korea is a geographic area, civilization, and a former state situated on the Korean Peninsula in East Asia. Korea is currently divided into North Korea and South Korea.

Although the borders of historical Korean dynasties fluctuated, the peninsula today is defined as coterminous with the political borders of the two Koreas combined. Thus, the peninsula borders China to the northwest and Russia to the northeast, with Japan situated to the southeast across the Korea Strait.

Capital: Seoul; Pyongyang.

The history of Korea began with the legendary founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BCE by Dangun. Limited linguistic evidence suggests probable Altaic origins of these people, whose northern Mongolian steppe culture absorbed migration and trade with the peoples of Manchuria and China. The adoption of the Chinese writing system ("hanja" in Korean) in the 2nd century BC, and Buddhism in the 4th century AD, had profound effects on the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Koreans later passed on a modified version of these cultural advances to Japan.

Since the Goryeo Dynasty, Korea was ruled by a single government and maintained political and cultural independence until the nineteenth century, despite the Mongol invasions of the Goryeo Dynasty in the 13th century and Japanese invasions of the Joseon Dynasty in the 16th century. In 1377, Korea produced the Jikji, the world's oldest movable metal print document. In the 15th century, the turtle ships, possibly the world's first ironclad warships, were deployed, and King Sejong the Great promulgated the Korean alphabet han-geul to increase literacy among his people who could not read nor write hanja (Chinese characters).

The history of Korea stretches from Lower Paleolithic times to the present. The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 BCE, and the Neolithic period began before 6000 BCE, followed by the Bronze Age around 2500 BCE. The Gojoseon (Old Joseon) kingdom was founded in 2333 BCE, eventually stretching from the peninsula to much of Manchuria. By 3rd Century BCE, it disintegrated into many successor states.

In the early Common Era, the Three Kingdoms (Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje) conquered other successor states of Gojoseon and came to dominate the peninsula and much of Manchuria. The three kingdoms competed with each other both economically and militarily. While Goguryeo and Baekje were more powerful for much of the era (especially Goguryeo, which defeated massive Chinese invasions) Silla's power gradually extended across Korea and it eventually established the first unified state to cover most of Korean peninsula by 676, while former Goguryeo general Dae Jo-yeong founded Balhae as the successor to Goguryeo.

Unified Silla itself fell apart in the late 9th century, giving way to the tumultuous Later Three Kingdoms period (892-936), which ended with the establishment of the Goryeo Dynasty. After the fall of Balhae in 926 to Khitan, much of its people led by the Crown Prince Dae Gwang-hyeon were absorbed into Goryeo. During the Goryeo period, laws were codified, a civil service system was introduced, and Buddhism flourished. In 993 - 1019 Khitan Liao Dynasty invaded Goryeo and were repelled. In 1238, the Mongolian Empire invaded and after nearly thirty years of war, the two sides signed a peace treaty.

In 1392, the general Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) after a coup. King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) promulgated hangul, the Korean alphabet. Between 1592-1598, Japan invaded Korea, but was eventually repelled with the efforts by the Navy led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, resistance armies, and Chinese aid. In the 1620s and 1630s, Joseon suffered invasions by the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Beginning in the 1870s, Japan began to force Korea out of China's sphere of influence into its own.

The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. It extends southwards for about 684 miles (1,100 km) from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan (East Sea) on the east, the East China Sea to the south, and the Yellow Sea to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water.

Mountains cover 70 percent of the Korean Peninsula and arable plains are generally small and far in between the successive mountain ranges. The peninsula becomes more mountainous towards the north and the east, with the highest mountains (including Baekdu Mountain which stands at 2,744 m or 9,003 feet) found in the north.

The peninsula has 8,460 kilometres of coastline, and the south and west coasts are highly irregular in particular; most of the 3,579 islands off the peninsula are found along the south and the west coasts.

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