Why Korean History?

This course follows the Korean peninsula from the earliest evidence to the present. Before the first kingdom comes four practical questions: what the course covers, how the story is divided into periods, how anyone knows it, and what to call things. Getting those four right makes every later chapter easier to read.

Scope: What the Course Covers

Up to the division of 1945 to 1948 the course follows the whole peninsula, because Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla, Goryeo and Joseon were not "northern" or "southern" states. After the division it follows mainly South Korea. Chapter 9 gives the division and North Korea one short chapter drawn from open sources and no more. The course tells the story in order. It does not repeat the detail already in Korean Political History I and Korean Political History II, and it gives literature, drama, cookery and the alphabet to their own courses (for example Korean Literature and Korean Alphabet 1).

The Land

The Geography of Korea article gives an area of 223,179 km² including islands (220,847 km² for the peninsula alone), compared in the article with the United Kingdom (244,100 km²). It gives the peninsula as "approximately" 1,000 km north to south and 300 km east to west, with a coastline of 8,460 km and 3,960 nearby islands. "Mountains cover 70 percent of Korea", the highest peak being Mount Paektu at 2,744 m. The Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen rivers form the northern border; the Yellow Sea lies to the west, the East China Sea and Korea Strait to the south, and the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east. Most large rivers flow west, with the Nakdong an exception flowing south. Why it matters: a peninsula next to China, with Japan across a strait, was always in contact with both. That is my framing, not a quotation from the article.

The Periods

The infobox and lead of the History of Korea article give these divisions. I read the lead and the prehistory and ancient sections; the Goryeo and Joseon sections were cut off, so the dates for those come from the infobox only.

How We Know

• Archaeology. For prehistory the article leans on settlements, bronze objects and tombs. For Gojoseon it cites the Guanzi, a Chinese text, as containing the "first written historical record on Gojoseon".
• Later chronicles. The Samguk yusa is the main source for the Gojoseon founding story. The History of Korea article dates it to 1281. Earlier chapters of Korean Literature gave "around 1280" and 1285 from other articles, so the date is a disagreement between sources, not settled here. The Samguk sagi is a mid-twelfth-century history (1145 or 1146, depending on the article, per Korean Literature 2).
• Inscriptions. The Gwanggaeto Stele was erected in 414 by Jangsu for his father, Gwanggaeto the Great of Goguryeo, near the tomb at Ji'an, Jilin Province, China. The article gives its height as about 6.39 m and says the inscription is "written exclusively in Classical Chinese". Disputes about its reading are in the next box.
• Court records. The Veritable Records (sillok) of the Joseon dynasty are, per the article, "thought to be the longest continual documentation of a single dynasty in the world". The lead gives 1392 to 1865 and 1,893 volumes; the article's own list runs on to the reign that ended in 1910, so the end date is inconsistent within the page. Historians kept daily records and could not be overruled; copies were stored in several places; the 1592 to 1598 Japanese invasions destroyed all but the Jeonju copy. The records of the last two kings are treated separately as controversial because of Japanese interference. The article says the records are in UNESCO's Memory of the World registry but gives no year.

The Names of Korea

• Joseon. The name of Gojoseon, "Old Joseon", used to distinguish it from the later dynasty; the name was revived in 1392 by the new dynasty.
• Goryeo. A shortened form of Goguryeo, first used in the fifth century. The Goryeo dynasty regarded itself as Goguryeo's successor. The Names of Korea article calls the English "Korea" an exonym derived from Goryeo. Marco Polo's "Cauli" came from Chinese Gāolí. The modern spelling "Korea" first appears in late seventeenth-century writing by Hendrick Hamel, and "Corea" remained in use in the US and UK until the early Japanese occupation.
• Samhan. "Three Han": southern confederacies at first, then the Three Kingdoms from the seventh century, and by Goryeo a common name for all Korea.
• Daehan Jeguk (1897). The Korean Empire. Under Japanese rule the name reverted to Joseon (Chōsen). The Provisional Government used Daehanminguk, which South Korea adopted in 1948.
• Today. South Korea uses Hanguk for itself or Korea as a whole. North Korea uses Chosŏn. The article adds that from January 2024 North Korea began calling South Korea Hanguk and Daehanminguk, citing Daily NK, which is one source and a news site I did not check.

Spelling Korean Names in English

The Romanization of Korean article names McCune–Reischauer (1939; adopted by South Korea in 1948, modified in 1984) and Revised Romanization, announced on 7 July 2000 as South Korea's official system. It describes Yale as the standard for linguists but is inconsistent about when it began (1942, 1950s or 1968). Names appear in several forms for these reasons, according to the article: mismatches between spelling and pronunciation (Silla is written 신라 but pronounced sil-la), the shortage of vowel letters in the Latin alphabet, early Western and Japanese-era conventions, and personal choice. The surname 이 (李) is "variously romanized as Lee, Yi, I, or Rhee". The article does not mention Park or Bak; I know from general knowledge that 박 is Bak in Revised Romanization and Pak in McCune–Reischauer, and that Park is a common personal spelling. That last point is mine and unverified here.

This course uses Revised Romanization for places, dynasties and people (Goryeo, Joseon, Gwanggaeto), and gives the other common spelling in brackets when a source uses it. Where a person's own spelling is well known (Syngman Rhee, for example), I use that and say so.

What the Sources Left Open

• The date of the Samguk yusa (1280, 1281 or 1285 across three articles).
• The end date and volume count of the Joseon Veritable Records within one article, and the year of the UNESCO listing.
• When the Yale system began (1942, 1950s or 1968).
• Who should be credited for the 391 inscription passage, and what it says.

Exercises

Next: Korean History 2 starts with prehistory and Gojoseon, and with how the Dangun story has been used.