1.
Culture of Korea
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The traditional culture of Korea refers to the shared cultural heritage of the Korean Peninsula. Since the mid-20th century, the peninsula has been split politically between and, resulting in a number of cultural differences, before Joseon Dynasty, the practice of Korean shamanism was deeply rooted in the Korean culture. Music, there is a distinction between court dance and folk dance, common court dances are jeongjaemu performed at banquets, and ilmu, performed at Korean Confucian rituals. Jeongjaemu is divided into native dances and forms imported from Central Asia, ilmu are divided into civil dance and military dance. Many mask dramas and mask dances are performed in regional areas of Korea. The traditional clothing is the genja, it is a kind of dress that women wear on festivals. It is pink with multiple symbols around the neck area, traditional choreography of court dances is reflected in many contemporary productions. Taekkyeon, a traditional Korean martial art, is central to the classic Korean dance, taekkyeon, being a complete system of integrated movement, found its core techniques adaptable to mask, dance and other traditional artforms of Korea. The earliest paintings found on the Korean peninsula are petroglyphs of prehistoric times, with the arrival of Buddhism from India via China, different techniques were introduced. These techniques quickly established themselves as the techniques, but indigenous techniques still survived. There is a tendency towards naturalism with subjects such as landscapes, flowers. Ink is the most common material used, and it is painted on paper or silk. In the 18th century indigenous techniques were advanced, particularly in calligraphy, Arts are both influenced by tradition and realism. For example, Han’s near-photographic Break Time at the Ironworks shows muscular men dripping with sweat, jeong Son’s Peak Chonnyo of Mount Kumgang is a classical Korean landscape of towering cliffs shrouded by mists. There is a set of handicrafts produced in Korea. Most of the handicrafts are created for an everyday use. Traditionally, metal, wood, fabric, lacquerware, and earthenware were the materials used. Ancient handicrafts, such as red and black pottery, share similarities with pottery of Chinese cultures along the Yellow River, the relics found of the Bronze Age, however, are distinctive and more elaborate
2.
History of Korea
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The Lower Paleolithic era in the Korean Peninsula began roughly half a million years ago. The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 BC, and the Neolithic period began after 6000 BC, followed by the Bronze Age by 800 BC, and the Iron Age around 400 BC. According to the mythic account recounted in the Samguk Yusa, the Gojoseon kingdom was founded in northern Korea, the Gija Joseon was purportedly founded in 12th century BC, and its existence and role have been controversial in the modern era. The written historical record on Gojoseon can be found from early 7th century BC, the Jin state was formed in southern Korea by the 3rd century BC. In the 2nd century BC, Gija Joseon was replaced by Wiman Joseon which fell to the Han China near the end of the century and this resulted in the fall of Gojoseon and led to succeeding warring states, the Proto–Three Kingdoms period that spanned the later Iron Age. From the 1st century, Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla grew to control the peninsula, in 698, Dae Jo-yeong established Balhae in old territories of Goguryeo, which led to the North South States Period. In the late 9th century, Silla was divided into the Later Three Kingdoms, during the Goryeo period, laws were codified, a civil service system was introduced, and culture influenced by Buddhism flourished. However, Mongol invasions in the 13th century brought Goryeo under its influence until the mid-14th century, in 1392, General Yi Seong-gye established the Joseon dynasty after a coup that overthrew the Goryeo dynasty in 1388. After enjoying a period of peace for two centuries, the Joseon dynasty faced foreign invasions and internal fractional strifes, beginning in 1592 until 1637. Henceforth, Joseon gradually became more and more isolationist and stagnant, by the mid 19th century, with the country unwilling to modernize, and encroachment of European powers, Joseon Korea was forced to sign unequal treaties with foreign powers. However, in 1905, the Korean Empire was forced to sign a treaty and in 1910 Japan annexed the Korean Empire. Korean resistance was manifested in the widespread nonviolent March 1st Movement of 1919, thereafter the resistance movements, coordinated by the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in exile, were largely active in neighboring Manchuria, China and Siberia. Figures from these organizations would become important in post WWII Korea. After the end of WW2 in 1945, the country was divided into an area, protected by the Soviets. In 1948, when the failed to agree on the formation of a single government. The new premier of North Korea, Kim il-Sung launched the Korean War in 1950 in an attempt to reunify the country under Communist rule. After immense material and human destruction, the conflict ended with a cease-fire in 1953, both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991. While both countries were essentially military rule after the war, South Korea eventually liberalized
3.
Koreans
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Koreans are an ethnic group native to the whole Korean Peninsula and southeastern Manchuria. Over the course of the 20th century, significant Korean communities have emerged in Australia, Canada, United States and, to a lesser extent, as of 2013, there were an estimated 7.4 million ethnic Korean expatriates around the planet. South Koreans refer to themselves as Hanguk-in, or Hanguk-saram, both of which mean Korean nation people, when referring to members of the Korean diaspora, Koreans often use the term Han-in. North Koreans refer to themselves as Joseon-in or Joseon-saram, both of which literally mean Joseon people, using similar words, Koreans in China refer to themselves as Chaoxianzu in Chinese or Joseonjok in Korean, which are cognates that literally mean Joseon ethnic group. Ethnic Koreans living in Russia and Central Asia refer to themselves as Koryo-saram, alluding to Goryeo, Koreans are the descendants of the peoples that migrated for over 13. 000-7.000 years from Southeast Asia and todays Russian Far East into the Korean Peninsula and southern Manchuria. Later Chinese and other, often said to be Siberian or paleo-Asian tribes migrated into parts of Korea, archaeological evidence suggests that most of the later arriving tribes were migrants from south-central Siberia. During the Four Commanderies of Han some Chinese clans migrated to northern Korea, susumu Ōno, Ki-Moon Lee and Choong-Soon Kim suspect that proto-Dravidian people migrated to Korea and parts of Japan. Susumu Ōno suggest also an Austronesian immigration into the Korean peninsula, the largest concentration of dolmens in the world is found on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, with an estimated 35, 000-100,000 dolmen, Korean males also exhibit a moderate frequency of Haplogroup C-M217. About 2% of Korean males belong to Haplogroup D-M174, the D1b-M55 subclade has been found with maximal frequency in a small sample of the Ainu people of Japan, and is generally frequent throughout the Japanese Archipelago. Haplogroup D4 is the modal haplogroup among Koreans and among Northeast Asians in general. Haplogroup B, which very frequently in many populations of Southeast Asia, Polynesia. Haplogroup A has been detected in approximately 7% to 15% of Koreans, Haplogroup A is the most common mtDNA haplogroup among the Chukchi, Eskimo, Na-Dene, and many Amerind ethnic groups of North and Central America. The language of the Korean people is the Korean language, which uses Hangul as its writing system with some Hanja. There are more than 78 million speakers of the Korean language worldwide, estimating the size, growth rate, sex ratio, and age structure of North Koreas population has been extremely difficult. Until release of data in 1989, the 1963 edition of the North Korea Central Yearbook was the last official publication to disclose population figures. After 1963 demographers used varying methods to estimate the population, thus, on the basis of remarks made by President Kim Il-sung in 1977 concerning school attendance, the population that year was calculated at 17.2 million persons. During the 1980s, health statistics, including life expectancy and causes of mortality, were made available to the outside world
4.
Demographics of South Korea
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In June 2012, South Koreas population reached 50 million. The number of minorities was negligible. Koreans tend to equate nationality or citizenship with membership in a single, homogeneous ethnic group, a common language and race also are viewed as important elements in Korean identity. The idea of multiracial and multiethnic nations still strikes many South Koreans as odd or even contradictory, immigration from first world nations is generally seen as a good thing, accepting immigrants who are dark-skinned is seen as absurd and unacceptable. Most immigrants who come from such as Pakistan and Indonesia are usually prevented from putting down roots due to the employment permit system. In the first official census, taken in 1949, the population of South Korea was calculated at 20,188,641 people. The 1985 census total was 40,466,577, population growth was slow, averaging about 1. 1% annually during the period from 1949 to 1955, when the population registered at 21.5 million. Growth accelerated between 1955 and 1966 to 29.2 million or an average of 2. 8%. As of January 1,1989, the population of South Korea was estimated to be approximately 42.2 million, the proportion of the total population under fifteen years of age has risen and fallen with the growth rate. In 1955 approximately 41. 2% of the population was under fifteen years of age, a percentage that rose to 43. 5% in 1966 before falling to 38. 3% in 1975,34. 2% in 1980, and 29. 9% in 1985. The decline in the growth rate and in the proportion of people under fifteen years of age after 1966 reflected the success of official and unofficial birth control programs. The government of President Syngman Rhee was conservative in such matters, there were 502,000 South Koreans sterilized in 1984, as compared with 426,000 in the previous year. The 1973 Maternal and Child Health Law legalized abortion, in 1983 the government began suspending medical insurance benefits for maternal care for pregnant women with three or more children. It also denied tax deductions for expenses to parents with two or more children. As in China, cultural attitudes posed problems for family planning programs, the government encouraged married couples to have only one child. This has been a prominent theme in public service advertising, which stresses have a single child, total fertility rates fell from 6.1 births per female in 1960 to 4.2 in 1970,2.8 in 1980, and 2.4 in 1984. The number of births, recorded as 711,810 in 1978. This development stirred apprehensions among family planning experts of a new baby boom, by 1986, however, the number of live births had declined to 806,041
5.
Demographics of North Korea
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The demographics of North Korea, a country in eastern Asia, are known through national censuses and international estimates. The Central Bureau of Statistics of North Korea conducted the most recent census in 2008, the population density is 199.54 inhabitants per square kilometre, and the 2014 estimated life expectancy is 69.81 years. In 1980, the rose at a near consistent, but low. Since 2000, North Koreas birth rate has exceeded its death rate, in terms of age structure, the population is dominated by the 15–64-year-old segment. The median age of the population is 32.9 years, nowadays, North Korean women have on average 2 children, against 3 in the early 1980s. According to The World Factbook, North Korea is racially homogeneous and contains a small Chinese community, the 2008 census listed two nationalities, Korean and Other. Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan in 1910, in which the Korean peninsula was occupied by Japanese. In 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II, negotiations on unification failed, and in 1948 two separate countries were formed, North and South Korea. Korean is the language of North Korea. As of 2008,8. 86% of the older than 5 years old have attained academic degrees. In 2000, North Korea spent 38. 2% of its expenditures on education, social insurance, estimates show that, in 2012, gross domestic product per capita was $1,800. The most significant sources of employment were machine building and manufacturing of products, military products. In 2006, the unemployment rate was between 14. 7% and 36. 5%, the 2008 census enumerated 5,887,471 households, averaging 3.9 persons per house. Average urbanization rate was 60. 3% in 2011, until the release of official data in 1989, the 1963 edition of the North Korea Central Yearbook was the last official publication to disclose population figures. After 1963 demographers used varying methods to estimate the population, thus, on the basis of remarks made by President Kim Il-sung in 1977 concerning school attendance, the population that year was calculated at 17.2 million persons. During the 1980s, health statistics, including life expectancy and causes of mortality, were made available to the outside world. Although the country lacks trained demographers, accurate data on household registration, migration, in their 1992 manoguege, The Population of North Korea, Eberstadt and Banister use the data given to the UNFPA and make their own assessments. They place the population at 21.4 million persons in mid-1990
6.
Korean diaspora
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The Korean diaspora consists of roughly seven million people, both descendants of early emigrants from the Korean Peninsula, as well as more recent emigres from Korea. Nearly four-fifths of expatriate Koreans live in just three countries, China, the United States, and Japan, other countries with greater than 0. 5% Korean minorities include Canada, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Australia, and Vietnam. All these figures include both permanent migrants and sojourners, thus, there is no single name for the Korean diaspora. Historically used term gyopo has come to have negative connotations as referring to people who, as a result, others prefer to use the term dongpo. Dongpo has a more transnational implication, emphasising links among various overseas Korean groups, official appellation used by North Korea for Korean citizens living outside the Korean Peninsula is haeoe gugmin whereas South Korea uses the term jaeoe gungmin to refer to entire Korean diaspora. Both terms translate as overseas nation or overseas people, prior to the modern era, Korea had been a territorially stable polity for centuries, as Jaeeun Kim described it, The congruence of territory, polity, and population was taken for granted. Koreans amount to 40. 4% of the population of the country. Three-quarters of the Koreans living in Japan are Japanese-born, and most are legal aliens, however, the latter would find themselves deported to Central Asia in 1938. Korea gained its independence after the Surrender of Japan in 1945 after World War II but was divided into North and South. After the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949 and they are considered to be one of the major minorities. Their population grew to about 2 million, they stayed mostly in northeastern China and their largest population was concentrated in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province, where they numbered 854,000 in 1997. Between 1.5 and 2 million Koreans now live in the United States, a handful are descended from laborers who migrated to Hawaii in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A significant number are descended from orphans of the Korean War, in which the United States was an ally of South Korea. Thousands were adopted by American families in the following the war. The vast majority, however, immigrated or are descended from those who immigrated after the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 abolished national immigration quotas, europe and Latin America were also minor destinations for post-war Korean emigration. Korean immigration to Latin America was documented as early as the 1950s, North Korean prisoners of war choose to emigrate to Chile in 1953, however, the majority of Korean settlement occurred in the late 1960s. As the South Korean economy continued to expand in the 1980s, investors from South Korea came to Latin America and established small businesses in the textiles industry. Brazil has Latin Americas largest Koreatown in São Paulo, there are also Koreatowns in cities such as Buenos Aires, Argentina, Guatemala City, Guatemala, Lima, Peru, mexico Citys Korean population is estimated to be around 30,000
7.
South Korean nationality law
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South Korean nationality law defines who is a South Korean citizen, as well as the procedures by which one may be naturalized into South Korean citizenship or renounce it. By being born in South Korea to parents who are stateless, by being acknowledged by a South Korean national parent while still a minor. By meeting the requirements for naturalization, a minor can apply with a foreigner parent who is applying for naturalization. This is known as Article 7 of the Addenda and those that fail to apply by the deadline may still be able to acquire South Korean nationality by applying for Special Naturalization. Under the Constitution of South Korea, North Korean citizens are recognized as South Korean nationals. However, in practice, a formal evaluation needs to take place which requires proof of North Korean nationality. Additionally, North Korean citizens do not have protection from South Korea per se. Additionally, South Korean law defines the term Overseas Korean as referring to South Korean nationals who reside overseas as well as Koreans with a Foreign Nationality. The latter group is composed of former South Korean nationals who gave up their South Korean nationality and it is important to note that not every descendant of a South Korean can be counted as an Overseas Korean or Korean with a Foreign Nationality under this law. There are three types of naturalization under South Korean law, General naturalization An applicant, Must have had domicile in South Korea for more than five consecutive years. Must have the ability to maintain a living on his/her own assets or skills, must have basic knowledge befitting a South Korean national, such as an understanding of the Korean language, customs, and culture. Simple naturalization An applicant, Must be legally adult, must have the ability to maintain a living based on their own assets or skills, or be a dependent member of a family capable of such. Must have basic knowledge befitting a South Korean national, such as an understanding of the Korean language, customs, must have had domicile in South Korea for more than three consecutive years. Be either, Those whose either parent have been a South Korean national in the past, born in South Korea, whose either parent was also born in South Korea. Adopted children of a South Korean national, who was of an adult age according to Korean Civil Law at the time of adoption. Special Naturalization There are many forms of special naturalization, with different requirements, however, the basic requirements are, Must be of good conduct. Must have basic knowledge befitting a South Korean national, such as an understanding of the Korean language, customs, Foreigners with at least one parent of South Korean nationality, except foster children who were adopted after they have become adults according to South Korean civil law. Those who acquire South Korean nationality by naturalization normally must give up foreign nationality within six months or forfeit South Korean nationality, an exception to this is draft-age males, who must complete or be exempted from military service before being allowed to forfeit Korean nationality
8.
Korean language
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It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of the Peoples Republic of China. Approximately 80 million people worldwide speak Korean and this implies that Korean is not an isolate, but a member of a small family. There is still debate on whether Korean and Japanese are related with each other, the Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax. A relation of Korean with Japonic languages has been proposed by linguists like William George Aston, Chinese characters arrived in Korea together with Buddhism during the pre-Three Kingdoms period. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in hanja, however, today, the hanja are largely unused in everyday life, but in South Korea they experience revivals on artistic works and are important in historic and/or linguistic studies of Korean. Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation, verb inflection, the Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North Korea and South Korea. In South Korea, the Korean language is referred to by names including hanguk-eo Korean language, hanguk-mal, Korean speech and uri-mal. In hanguk-eo and hanguk-mal, the first part of the word, hanguk, refers to the Korean nation while -eo and -mal mean language and speech, Korean is also simply referred to as guk-eo, literally national language. This name is based on the same Chinese characters meaning nation + language that are used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages. In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Chosŏn-mal, or more formally, the English word Korean is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first dynasty known to Western countries. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram and Goryeo In, the majority of historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. Such factors of typological divergence as Middle Mongolians exhibition of gender agreement can be used to argue that a relationship with Altaic is unlikely. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list, a good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asa, meaning hemp. Also, the doublet wo meaning hemp is attested in Western Old Japanese and it is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. Among ancient languages, various relatives of Korean have been proposed. Some classify the language of Jeju Island as a distinct modern Koreanic language, Other famous theories are the Dravido-Korean languages theory and the mostly unknown southern-theory which suggest an Austronesian relation. Korean is spoken by the Korean people in North Korea and South Korea and by the Korean diaspora in countries including the Peoples Republic of China, the United States, Japan. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea
9.
History of Korean
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The Korean language is attested from the early centuries of the Common Era in Chinese characters. The Featural writing system called hangul was introduced only in the fifteenth century, Korean being a language isolate, Proto-Korean is not a well-defined term, referring to the language spoken in prehistoric Korea during the Bronze and Iron ages. Other theories are the Dravido-Korean theory, or a connection to Austronesian, homer Hulbert claimed the Korean language was Ural-Altaic in his book, The History of Korea. The classification of Korean as Altaic was introduced by Gustaf John Ramstedt, but even within the Altaic hypothesis, a possible Korean–Japonic grouping within Altaic has been discussed by Samuel Martin, Roy Andrew Miller and Sergei Starostin. Others, notably Alexander Vovin, interpret the affinities between Korean and Japanese as an effect caused by geographic proximity sprachbund. Old Korean corresponds to the Korean language from the beginning of the Three Kingdoms of Korea to the part of the North–South States Period. Use of Classical Chinese by Koreans began in the century or earlier. It is unclear whether Old Korean may have been a tonal language and it is assumed that Old Korean was divided into dialects, corresponding to the three kingdoms. These hypothetical subdivisions of Old Korean are also known as Buyeo languages, of these, the Sillan language is the best attested due to the political domination of Later Silla by the seventh century. Only some literary records of Unified Silla, changed into Goryeo text, are extant, thus, the languages of the Three Kingdoms period are generally examined through official government names and local district names. The point at which Old Korean became Middle Korean is assessed variously by different scholars, the line is sometimes drawn during late Goryeo and sometimes around the 15th century in the early Joseon. There is very little literature for research of Old Korean, the first texts in Old Korean were written using hanja to represent the sound and grammar of the local language. Additional information about the language is drawn from various proper nouns recorded in Korean and Chinese records, various systems were used, beginning with ad hoc approaches and gradually becoming codified in the Idu script and the hyangchal system used for poetry. These were arrangements of Chinese characters to represent the language phonetically, Middle Korean corresponds to Korean spoken from the 10th to 16th centuries, or from the era of Goryeo to the middle of Joseon. The language standard of this period is based on the dialect of Kaesong because Goryeo moved the city to the northern area of the Korean Peninsula. A Chinese Song dynasty writer, Sūn Mù 孫穆, in his Jīlínlèi shì 雞林類事, recorded Goryeo-era Korean, from a phonological perspective however, the usefulness of studying this material is limited due to logographic nature of hanja. Ming dynasty Chinas Bureau of Translators compiled a Chinese-Korean vocabulary of Joseon-era Korean, there were tones in Middle Korean. The creation of the Hunminjeongeum, the name for hangul, was begun in 1443, and promulgated in September or October 1446 by Sejong the Great
