Facts about Korea
Notable islands include Jeju-do, Ulleung-do, and Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo in Korean).
Between 1592 and 1598, Japan invaded Korea causing enormous destruction before retreating in defeat.
An Jung-geun assassinated the former Resident-General of Korea, It? Hirobumi on October 26, 1909, which sealed Korea's fate as a colony of Japan.
The borders of Korea have fluctuated throughout history with the rise and fall of dynasties.
Goryeo pottery — the famous Korean celadon pottery — and the Tripitaka Koreana — the Buddhist scriptures represent two of Goryeo's greatest contributions.
Koreans commonly use Chili peppers, often as chile powder, making the cuisine distinctively spicy.
Worldwide, approximately eighty million people speak Korean, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, China, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently, the Philippines.
Evidence exists that Korea, during the Three Kingdom Period, profoundly impacted the development of Japanese Buddhism and Japan's culture.
Archaeological evidence that people lived on the Korean Peninsula around 700,000 years ago, during the Lower Paleolithic, exists.
The Korean Emperor never ratified the treaty, refusing to apply the Korean Imperial seal.
China's relationship with Korea throughout that time has been intimate, Korean culture to a large extent inherited from China.
Beginning in the 1870s, Japan began to pressure Korea to move out of China's sphere of influence into its own.
The United States waged a bombing campaign over North Korea that effectively destroyed most cities.
The Japanese colonial government banned the Korean language in official documents and obligated Koreans to adopt Japanese names.
When the Soviet Union refused to conduct democratic elections in the north, a permanent division of Korea resulted.
The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 B.C.E., and the Neolithic period begins around 6000 B.C.E.
The history of Korea began with the mythical kingdom of Gojoseon founded by Dangun in 2333 B.C.E.
Mercosur is composed of five full members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
China shares Korea's northwest border while The Russia shares the northeast.
Korean resisted Japan's occupation in the nonviolent March 1st Movement of 1919, where Japanese police and military killed 7000 demonstrators.
A soup or stew, often made with doenjang (fermented bean paste), usually accompany Korean meals.
Both North and South Korea commonly use Korea in English contexts.
The combined population of the Koreas has been estimated at about 72 million.
King Sejong the Great (1418-1450) promulgated Hangul, the Korean written alphabet, and this period saw various other cultural and technological advances, as well as the dominance of Neo-Confucianism over the entire peninsula.
Koreans stand number one on the list of homogeneous peoples, all speaking the Korean language.
The collapse of the traditional Korean value system constitutes another common theme of the time.
The politics of the Cold War resulted in the 1948 establishment of two separate governments, North Korea and South Korea.
Classical Korean literature has its roots in traditional folk beliefs and folk tales of the peninsula, strongly influenced by Confucianism, Buddhism and to some extent Daoism.
The Korean War led to the development of literature centered around the wounds and chaos of war.
Japan forced Korea to engage in foreign trade through the Treaty of Ganghwa in 1876.
Much of the post-war literature in South Korea deals with the daily lives of ordinary people, and their struggles with national pain.
Hangul texts sometimes include Hanja (Chinese characters) and Roman characters, particularly in South Korea.
Hangul only reached a dominant position in Korean literature in the second half of the nineteenth century, resulting in a major growth in Korean literature.
Baekdusan (2744 m.) stands as the highest mountain in Korea running the border with China.
Chaebols, family-owned business conglomerates, drove South Korea's explosive economic development.
During the seventh and eighth centuries, the Silk Road connected Korea to Arabia.
In 1910, Japan forced Korea to sign the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, executed by Korean ministers and advisors as full-powered attorney assigned by Sunjong of Korean Empire.
Korea's current division into North Korea and South Korea traces back to that division.
Korean festivities often showcase vibrant colors, which have been attributed to Mongolian influences: bright red, yellow, and green often mark traditional Korean motifs.
Ancient Chinese texts refer to Korea as "Rivers and Mountains Embroidered in Silk" (????) and "Eastern Nation of Decorum."
Kimchi, using a distinctive fermentation process of preserving vegetables, may be the best known Korean cuisine.
Traditional Korean culture suffered heavy loses, as Japan destroyed numerous Korean cultural artifacts or took them to Japan.
In 108 B.C.E., the Chinese Han Dynasty defeated Wiman Joseon and installed four commanderies in the area of Liaoning and the northern Korean peninsula.
At its height, Balhae's territory extended from northern Manchuria down to the northern provinces of modern-day Korea.
The Reunification of North and South Korea may bring a rebirth of Korea and a new golden age experienced in each of the earlier dynasties.
The Three Kingdoms of Korea (Goguryeo, Silla, and Baekje) dominated the peninsula and parts of Manchuria during the early Common Era.
Both North and South Korea declareKorean their official language, and Korean communities abroad widely speak Korean such as neighboring Yanbian, China.
Beginning in 1939, Japan conscripted over five million Koreans for labor and Japan's military and impressing approximately 200,000 girls and women, mostly from Korea and China, into work as prostitutes, euphemistically called "comfort women".
Halla (1950 m) stands as the highest in South Korea situates off the southern coast.
The cultural anthropologists and linguists debate Korea's genealogical classification of Korean.
A minority of ethnic Chinese (about 20,000) live in South Korea and small communities of ethnic Chinese and Japanese live in North Korea.
During the latter part of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea's isolationist policy earned the Western nickname the "Hermit Kingdom."
The Yellow Sea lies to the west, the East China Sea to the south, and the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east of Korea.
During the Joseon period, China highly regarded Korean silk and Korean pottery, made with blue-green celadon, considering them the highest quality in the world.
Like Japanese and Vietnamese, Korean has borrowed much vocabulary from the genetically unrelated Chinese or created vocabulary on Chinese models.
According to 2003 statistics compiled by the South Korean government, about 46 percent of citizens profess to follow no particular religion.
The adoption of the Chinese writing system ("hanja" in Korean) in the second century B.C.E., and Buddhism in the fourth century C.E., profoundly impacted the culture of the Three Kingdoms of Korea.
Korea has one of the longest continuous histories of any kingdom or nation in the world, if the 3000 B.C.E.
Koreans value scholarship, rewarding education and the study of Chinese classic texts; yangban educated boys in Hanja.
Korea developed a unique culture, though, through the cycles of dynasties beginning with Gojoseon and ending with Joseon.
The original capital may have been at the Manchuria-Korea border, but later moved to the location of Pyongyang, North Korea.
Some linguists place Korean in the Altaic language family; others consider the language isolate.
In 1377, Korea produced the Jikji, the world's oldest movable metal print document.
During the Joseon dynasty, Koreans brought Roman Catholicism (and other forms of Christianity followed shortly thereafter) into Korea.
Cheomseongdae, a 9.4-meter high observatory built in 634, stands out as one of the best known artifacts of Korea's history of science and technology, considered one of the world's oldest surviving astronomical observatories.
To this day, valuable Korean artifacts are in Japanese museums or with private collectors, many in the United States.
During the Korean War (1950-1953), millions of civilians died; approximately six million refugees sought safety in the south.
Koreans use Hangul script, invented in the fifteenth century, almost exclusively when writing.
Confucian tradition has dominated Korean thought, along with contributions by Buddhism, Daoism, and Korean Shamanism.
The southern and southwestern coastlines of Korea form a well-developed lias coastline, known as Dadohae-jin in Korean.
In August 1945, the forces of the Soviet Union and the United States agreed on a plan for conducting the surrender and disarming of Japanese troops in Korea.
Ancient Chinese texts refer to Korea as "Rivers and Mountains Embroidered in Silk" (????) and "Eastern Nation of Decorum."
In 1910, Japan succeeded in annexing Korea, maintaining tight control of Korean political and cultural life until August 1945 and the end of World War II.
The Jikji stands as the world's earliest remaining movable metal printed book, printed in Korea in 1377.
When the Japanese empire was dismantled at the end of World War Two, Korea fell victim to the Cold War. It was divided into two spheres of influence along the 38th parallel. The Americans controlled south of the line - the Russians installed a communist regime in the north, later ceding influence to China.Apr 4, 2013
There are various names of Korea in use today, derived from ancient kingdoms and dynasties. The modern English name Korea is an exonym derived from the Goryeo period and is used by both North Korea and South Korea in international contexts.
Korea is a country where all the world's major religions, Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and Islam, peacefully coexist with shamanism.
According to the provisions of the Constitution, an indirect presidential election took place in July. Syngman Rhee, as head of the new assembly, assumed the presidency and proclaimed the Republic of Korea (South Korea) on August 15, 1948.
South Korea is located in East Asia, on the southern half of the Korean Peninsula jutting out from the far east of the Asian land mass. The only country with a land border to South Korea is North Korea, lying to the north with 238 kilometres (148 mi) of border running along the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
Seoul is the capital and largest city in South Korea and considered a megacity because it has a population of over ten million people, with nearly half of its 10,208,302 people residing in the National Capital Area (which also includes Incheon and Gyeonggi.Oct 8, 2017
When the Japanese empire was dismantled at the end of World War Two, Korea fell victim to the Cold War. It was divided into two spheres of influence along the 38th parallel. The Americans controlled south of the line - the Russians installed a communist regime in the north, later ceding influence to China.Apr 4, 2013
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. ... The Korean peninsula is still divided today.
The name “Korea,” used by English speakers today, appears to have derived during the time of the Silk Road when the dynasty in Korea called itself Goryeo. The word was transliterated as “Cauli” in Italian and used by Marco Polo. The English words “Corea” and then “Korea” came from this transliteration.
Population of South Korea (2018 and historical)YearPopulationDensity (P/Km²)201851,164,435526201750,982,212524201650,791,919522201550,593,66252012 more rows
Over 2 Million Foreigners Live in Korea. The number of foreigners living in Korea has doubled in the last decade to surpass 2 million, the Justice Ministry said Wednesday. The exact number of foreign residents was 2,001,828 as of the end of June this year, accounting for 3.9 percent of the total population.Jul 28, 2016
The population of Seoul in 2016 is estimated at 10.29 million, although this is just the population of the Special City, which has a density of about 17,000 people per square kilometer (45,000/square mile). The sprawling metropolitan area is much larger at 25.6 million.Oct 20, 2017