cities were already appearing. Dolmen burial sites became increasingly elaborate and numerous. (A dolmen is a single‐chamber megalithic tomb for the burial of important persons. Over 40% of the world’s dolmens are found on the Korean Peninsula.)
Korean mythology has it that the first Korean state, often called the GoJoseon Dynasty, was founded in 2333 BCE by the son of the Divine Creator and a female bear in human form. Modern historians generally agree that the GoJoseon Dynasty became a centralized kingdom before the fourth century BCE. (Note: In Korean, “Joseon” means “Land of the Morning Calm,” and “go” means “ancient.” To combine “Go” and “Joseon” distinguishes this ancient Joseon dynasty from the Yi Joseon Dynasty of the fourteenth century.)
Traditional Korea
A defeated rebel general of China’s Han Empire fled to Korea and founded the Wiman Joseon Dynasty (194–108 BCE). It was a Sinicized state whose capital was at Pyongyang (today’s capital of North Korea) and whose territory straddled the northern part of the Korean Peninsula and part of Manchuria (in modern China’s northeast) and Mongolia. The Han Martial Emperor’s troops unseated it and established four Chinese military commanderies in 109–108 BCE; two of these, the Xuantu and Lelang Commanderies, were in existence for another four centuries before they were overrun by indigenous Korean forces in 302 and 313 CE, respectively. The existence of these Chinese military colonies in Korea for a total of five centuries left its mark on Korean culture. A parallel can be drawn between these outposts and those of the ancient Romans in the lands of the Gaulish and Germanic peoples.
The Chinese‐controlled territories in the northern regions coexisted with three Korean kingdoms to the south: Silla (57 BCE–935 CE), Goguryeo (37 BCE–668 CE), and Baekje (318 BCE–660 CE). When China’s Han Empire fell in the early third century, the three Korean kingdoms fought one another for dominance. The Silla Kingdom strengthened its hand by forming an alliance with China’s Tang Empire, defeated its rivals, and then expelled the Chinese forces. It achieved the unification of most of the Korean Peninsula (676), accepted the status of vassal state to China’s Tang Empire, and embraced a policy of wholesale borrowing from China. It sent frequent and large missions to China, who brought Chinese ways back to Korea. It built a centralized bureaucratic government, adopted Confucianism as its state ideology, and used Han Chinese as its official language. It adopted a land policy that nationalized all land ownership, and then distributed it to government officials and peasants. This policy granted large concentrations of land to high government officials, and tied the peasants to the land, subjecting them to the burden of taxes and labor service. Although the Silla borrowed extensively from China, it nevertheless was successful in resisting Chinese political control and defending its cultural identity. The Silla Dynasty imported Buddhism, and began building temples and shrines, casting huge bells in bronze and iron, and carving stone Buddhas. Korean monks traveled to China to study Buddhism, and their missionaries crossed the ocean to make Japanese Buddhist converts. Korea was a bridge in the transfer of Chinese civilization to Japan.
The Silla Dynasty was wiped out in a palace coup and replaced by the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1368). (The English word “Korea” is derived from “Goryeo.”) The Goryeo Dynasty moved its capital south to a location near modern Seoul, the capital of today’s South Korea. It built an elaborate capital, set up a centralized government bureaucracy, and installed an imperial examination system, all on Chinese models. But the Korean examination system was much more aristocratic than the Chinese original: High office was reserved for high‐ranking aristocratic families. Korea produced the world’s first document printed by a metal movable‐type printing press (1234). They later used the metal movable‐type printing press to reproduce their libraries that had been destroyed by the Mongols. Although the Chinese had invented the technique of movable‐type printing in the mid‐eleventh century, it had failed to put it to wide use. The Koreans were the first to use this technology with the added innovation of metal type to print large numbers of books.
The Goryeo Dynasty tottered after the palace guard carried out a massacre of its royal court. Military strongman General Choe Chung‐han assumed the role of de facto ruler of Korea, but allowed the Goryeo king to continue to reign in name.
Northern Asia was experiencing radical shifts in the balance of power during the period of 800–1400. The nomadic tribes of the Chi‐tans, Nüzhens, and Mongols were getting more powerful as they whittled away at the territories of China’s Song Empire. Eventually, the Mongols conquered the Song Empire and founded the Mongol Yuan Empire in China. They also conquered Korea and ruled it with an iron fist (1270–1350s), and they drained Korean resources to back their doomed invasions of Japan. However, they left Korean rulers in place as figureheads. This dual structure of government was nothing new. Korean strongman Choe Chung‐han had ruled while he allowed the king to reign; in Japan, the shogun ruled and the emperor reigned for eight centuries. And the Japanese would rule Korea while a Korean king reigned during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945.
When the Mongol Empire fell, the Goryeo Dynasty was too weak to stand on its own legs. Korean General Yi Seonggye took over in a largely bloodless coup, and founded the Yi Joseon Dynasty with its capital at Hanyang (modern Seoul). As Korea’s last and longest dynasty, spanning five centuries, it left Korea with a substantial legacy.
First of all, the Yi Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897) established effective control over all of the Korean Peninsula, banning the private ownership of armies that could challenge its power. It formed close ties with China’s Ming Empire and continued a policy of borrowing from China. It revived reverence for books and book learning to overcome the consequences of the barbaric rule of the Mongols. It internalized Zhu Xi’s Neo‐Confucianism so deeply into Korean culture and society that it continues to shape Korea’s social structure, moral values, etiquette, folk customs, and politics to this day. The Yi Joseon Dynasty introduced fundamental changes. Earlier, the Silla Dynasty had a system of land ownership that gave huge landholdings to a handful of highly placed aristocrats and various levels of officialdom, creating a new and much larger landholding aristocracy of civil and military officials. The new class system placed the royal family at the top of a hierarchic system of four classes: an expanded aristocracy of land‐ and officeholders, the middle class of government employees, the commoners who were mostly various kinds of professionals, and the “lowborn.” The lowborn consisted of slaves and serfs, reputedly making up one‐third of the population; they were owned privately or by the government. (The Joseon government ordered the freeing of government‐owned slaves in 1801 and abolished the class system in 1894.)
Traditional Korean culture reached its peak in the Yi Joseon Dynasty. Scholarship and technology flourished. The royal court presided over the creation of a new Korean writing system in 1443. Known as Hangul, it was a phonetic alphabet system that freed the Korean language from the much more rigid and difficult Chinese system of characters. Substantial economic growth took place between 1600 and 1800. As agriculture grew, a surplus became available for trading, which stimulated the growth of the merchant class. Wealthy merchants began buying their way into the elite classes, just as their counterparts did in China and Japan. Trade with the Japanese, the Manchus, the Chinese, and even the Arabs grew. Pyongnam became an important international trading port. But the merchants’ eagerness for foreign trade was at odds with the regime’s desire to keep out foreign influence. Heightened activity in smuggling and piracy, often based in Japan and threatening sea lanes, became an increasing scourge. Similar developments were taking place in Ming China at the same time.
Map of Joseon Korea.
Despite its successes, Korea’s economic growth was slow and difficult. Its mountainous terrain and bitterly cold winters limited agricultural productivity. Chronic infighting among domestic factions and repeated foreign invasions were destructive as well. With a relatively weak economy and a divided body politic, Korea was ill‐prepared to face the challenges of the nineteenth century.
Foreign Invasions of Korea
Korea’s