Tell me everything you know about pre 1910 Korea

They didn't have video games.

Hermit Society

Class based society, backwards, slavery rampant, mud homes standard, nobility/yangban so unbelievable corrupt, Japan made every advantage to invade. Imjin War.

Cheondoism is interesting AF

>this thread

You guys make it seem like Korean history is unremarkable.

stole everything from china

Yep

Japan invaded them

Extremely unremarkable

Poorer than even south east asians

Turtle ships and war wagons.

A lot of ceramic, jade and interesting art.
Arirang is a beautiful melody.
Hangul alphabet is one of my favorites.

What's with the hate for Koreans on Veeky Forums? Is there some Japanese or Chinese butthurt that K-pop is huge now and dumb Japanese or Chinese are irrelevant? Deal with it.

Their empire owned most of the world 4000 BC

Damn viets were badass and I never knew. Shame they live in complete shit today. Did they do anything else badass?

No, Koreans just weren't that relevant for most of their history.

To be fair, Vietnam is pretty far from Beijing and Korea is quite close. It's easier to keep the Koreans on a leash than it was to keep the Vietnamese in line.

Well there is a reason no one has give OP a good reply.....

Pre 1910 Korea is extremely boring, which is what you'll get from the longest ruling dynasty in world history (Chosun 1392 - 1897) during which time basically nothing happened. Of course this being Korea they could never be admit to this and the drag out the most minor shit like Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships as if he was the greatest national hero ever (for extra lols after having proven himself to be a great admiral he spent most of the rest of his life being fucked over by the Korean court factions).

Going back further, Korea was reasonably interesting during the three kingdoms period, although its something of a misnomer to even think of it as 'korea' at this point. If you're really interested in very ancient history the first peoples to live on the korean peninsular had some uniqueish shit going on since they are likely to have migrated in south from siberia rather than east from china, as most people think.

If you want to be interested in Korean history pre-1910 pickings are slim on the ground for things that are actually interesting. Things that can actually hold my attention tend to be the weirder stuff around the edges like the continued prevalence of shamanism, the odd peasant uprising, and their ceramics which are frankly unsurpassed during the mid-part of the past millennium.

The best book to read is probably A History of Korea by Kyung Hwang, which is short and readable but still decently academic (although it covers past 1910 which is about half of the book? if irc). There are other books but frankly I wouldn't recommend them unless your a really balls deep into korean history and even then you will probably find them boring as fuck.

Phonetic alphabet.

Only plebs and women (lol) wrote in hangul pre-20th century. Marking it out as one of the crowining moments of Korea's interlectuallism is probably the biggest piece of revisionist bullshit I've ever seen

The Mongol invasion and occupation of Korea is interesting to read about. The Mongols initially destroyed the Korean armies like they were so good at doing, but a number of fortresses in the mountains held out for a very long time. Some of the more isolated fortresses became focal points for a series of rebellions that caused the Mongols a lot of trouble.

Okay, looking in this thread, it depresses me to realise everyone is giving poor quality replies.

I would not say Korean history was extremely boring. In fact, even among the 1392-1897/1910 period there were many things that occurred. The reason it is not spoken much here is because they were mostly domestic and not enough interactions with Westerners and such unlike Japan and such. It also did not help that Daewongun during the mid 19th century was pretty much very isolationist. I can write about Joseon for now and maybe I can talk about the other dynasties later.

I guess I can say some famous people asides from Admiral Yi Sun Shin were intellectuals such as Jeong Yak Yong, incognito "secret inspector" Park Mun Su, the controversial scholar Jo Gwang Jo, who found favour with the King Jungjong (who came to power via coup) but then later incited his rage somehow and was executed (this reign was known for various literary purges), and even Crown Prince Sohyeon, who would have bought Christianity and western sciences to Korea in the 1600s had it not been for his incompetent father King Injo, who Koreans now see as a terrible king.

The Koreans had interesting encounters with westerners too, such as the 1866 Byeonginyangyo (when the French military tried to force Korea to open diplomatically in response to Catholic persecutions, keep in mind Emperor Napoleon III's wife Eugenie was devoutly Catholic), and when a handful of Koreans fought alongside the Qing Chinese in their border dispute with the Russians near Amur during the 1600s, amongst others.

Of course, it all is small in comparison to the great achievements of the West or China in the grand scheme of things, but Korea was not exactly uneventful as people make it out to be. If you read about it, even just Joseon, you will find there is a rich supply of many events that took place with Korea pre-1910s. And yes, I'm Korean if you were wondering.

Don't bother. Everyone in this thread are Chinese or diehard weebs who put down Korea at every opportunity.

OK, but the Chinese and Japanese still haven't figured out how to use an alphabet.

I don't see why increasing literacy rate and giving a cultural identity in one aspect is a bad thing. It was designed to counter the fact only yangban (nobility) or seonbi (scholars) were really able to read Chinese characters, so that the lower class people would be able to read as well. Of course it was of little use at that point because of the controversy of allowing the plebeians to read and it was not really adopted by the nobility anyways. And it is true that it was called "women's characters", and it is not unlike how Hiragana/Katakana in Japan was also used in the past. Of course now the latter is used for non-Sino loanwords and the former is for native words. Also a flipside to this would be that increasing literacy rate for everybody may make it easier to control the masses, but I may be jumping off to conclusions a little bit here.

South Korean government considers Hangul as their intellectual property, so they own the copyright for something a king designed for the general use of masses, which I find appalling.

These Chinese and weebs have a massive chip on their shoulders for whatever reason which is kinda sad considering there's more than a billion of them and only 50 million Koreans

>And yes, I'm Korean if you were wondering.

No you're not.

무식한 서양인님 함부로 말안하면 좋겠습니다

The other reason that Korean history from this period was very boring (at least to most people trying to study it) is that anything that did happen was tied up in court politics and tiny philosophical quibbles amongst the literati/intelligentsia. As someone who has read a fair bit of Korean history this takes quite a bit of studying to properly understand properly and the pay off is to find that it always ends up crushing any interesting developments back into the old status quo. Which is terribly disheartening thing to be studying, with everything from military Yi's shitty treatment at court despite literally saving them from invasion to the massive failure that was Donghak just draining your will to read on further. And the same goes on way back through splits in east west/literrati ad well as Buddhism and p. much every peasant revolt. As I said before there are interesting things to be found in Korean history but they don't come from the headline dynasties but the smaller things around the edges or even further back in time.

Undoubtably there has been enough in Korean history to form the basis countless historical drama's, but in terms of actually studying Korean history pickings are slim on the ground (despite it all being perfectly recorded) with the there being little payoff in terms of intellectual reward for the devoted historian.

I love Korea, and I've spent quite a bit of time studying it at various points but beyond reading a general history, and frankly I would't recommend taking a course on or seriously studying pre-20th century to anyone that didn't already have a strong interest in Korea.

HOL UP

Yes I was about to mention the byeokpas and how many of the politics did end up becoming petty political squabbles, but I had no room in the previous room. I'm sorry about that. It is said the Korean court life was a lot like a chess board. You make one wrong move and it is pretty much checkmate on you and your family. It was very dangerous, and political intrigues of each factions and such ironically held down the country far more than it benefitted it in the long run, I would say. It is what also led Korea to fall under the suzerainty of Qing after the fall of Ming, when Gwanghaegun tried to play off neutrality, he was deposed by the pro-Ming government and replaced by the reckless Injo, who also had other problems.

I was also appalled with how the politics went and how they mistreated Yi Sun Shin because of political madness in spite of them facing a greater threat of being almost overrun by the Japanese. However, keep in mind this was not completely original to Korea, as Ming China also faced this kind of problem before its demise.

I do agree though, it is disheartening and objectively, I as a Korean do find Western history a lot more engaging and interesting (this includes the Eastern Roman Empire). A lot of the history in Korea now also tries to legitimise the current puppet government though, so I am a bit wary about that too. I just have to say to people that it was not uneventful, but unless there is some large interest in the country in itself, it may be difficult to follow it.

What do Koreans think about Gojoseon?

In a word, Korean history is stable. Don't believe the meme that Korea was the most invaded place in the world. All Korean dynasties were extremely long. I doubt any other country in Asia has such long dynasties. Korean history might not be interesting to some, but compared to most Asian countries, Korea rarely went through disastrous events where millions died for whatever reason. Chinese dynasties shine brightly but come crashing down to the ground every time. Korean dynasties don't shine as bright but live far longer and rarely get snuffed out.

Hangul is a great alphabet, I love it but in terms of 'mainstream' korean history it is more of a artifact that by a fluke just happened to become relevant in the twentieth century. Of course you can't say this because very korean has had it drilled into them since they were 5 years old that the greatest and wisest king ever invented the best alphabet for tangun's chosen people. And no one wants that kind of nationalistic shit smeared on them.

But I can shitpost about it here on Veeky Forums so thats exactly what I'm going to do.

Is this satire? It is making outrageous claims and they're very over the top, such as "Hannibal was Korean because his name had 'Han' in it and the Japanese revisionists made him into a foreign general. What in the world? Please tell me this is satire. I cannot comprehend it to be otherwise...

Imperial Japan was going bankrupt trying to bring Korea from 1000AD to 1930AD.

I see. There are claims that it is the most scientific language in the world or something, but there are some limitations to it. Some characters are also obsolete and no longer used, so most Koreans cannot pronounce hard letters such as the English "F" or "V", substituting the former with "ㅍ P" or even "ㅎ H" and the latter with "ㅂ B". But even that could change I guess, because apparently some of these sounds existed in the past. I personally believe the king had good intentions for this, though his father was a very authoritarian figure and was the one who desperately wanted the throne so much he killed some of his brothers for it, but ended up being quite an effective king. Sorry I am rambling on, but I would say Hangul is quite easy to learn if you tried it and unlike Japanese not everything has to end with a hard vowel (we have a neutral ㅡ for a softer flow).

100% true
Did you know korea also invented the pizza?

youtube.com/watch?v=KiLA6Bk_ivs

I personally think Gojoseon is interesting, but there is not enough information about the older dynasties to be honest. It was very large and had it not lost its territories to China who knows what Korea would have been now. But then again that is all speculative and what has been done has been done.

Stop replying to yourself.

These are all me here. I put pictures up in the posts to try and signify it is me.

The other guy is not me.

Oh for sure Hangul is a great alphabet. Supremely practical, beautiful to look at, easy to learn I was more just ranting about how its history in Korea is always wrapped up in this nationalistic bullshit. I mean p. much everything in Korean history is already tainted with that stain, but the history that is presented of hangul is just one of the best example of a total disregard for actual history and any attempt to say otherwise is taken as an insult to every korean ever.

Again I'm ranting about something stupid but this is the kind of shit its best to say on an anonymous image board.

Well I guess they also invented the Internet too.

I see. You couldn't really blame us though, we don't have much to be proud of seeing how we were always cornered by the great powers of the West and we need some form of achievement to cling onto. I mean I'm not a crazy nationalist for my country either, seeing how it ended up being a tool for globalist interest rather than being an effective country on its own in the end (and split into two no less!). It is significant in our country, but I'm unsure about its "contribution" to the rest of the world.

Here's something for you guys. It's called Gangrido map, a 1400s Korean map of the world.

You're nitpicking though. Why does it bother you what kind of spin Koreans put on it. Chinese people go on and on about gunpowder, printing, and compass but it was Europeans who put them to best use with guns and exploring. Or Japanese go on about katana and bushido, but katana was mainly for show and Imperial Japan's idea of bushido is from the 19th. I mean, if you criticize other countries for doing the same then my apologies. But if you think Korea is the only one then think again.

Your grammar is off.

No it isn't. Unless you put that in the translator or something.

Facts != butthurt

Chinese don't even think that much about Koreans or Korea. We are in no way butthurt about Korea?
Why would we be?

You got a source for this

Your right I am ranting and nitpicking unfairly, everyone does this kind of thing. It's just it always seems to happen when you discuss these kind of things, and particular in the case of Korea.

There is nothing more annoying that being told by someone they are right about some bullshit historical point because they are korean and despite you (foreigner) having read several books on that exact thing.

I'm just ranting about it because I can, and Veeky Forums is all about shitposting anyway.

Actually looking back I did write that in haste so there could be a bit of a mistake there, such as making it 말을 함부로 하지마 or something of that sort, but it is passable colloquially. I should not need to think twice about it anyways, it was a quick retort. ㅋㅋ

I never said all Chinese, I'm talking about YOU Chinese on this board.

He's being a faggot that is immensely wrong, Korea has the 11/12th largest economy in the world.

In my experience, Chinese are butthurt about EVERYBODY.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam

It mostly looked like everyone was just shitposting at the start after the first post was a snarky reply.

I didn't reply until here

The butthurt is reserved for Japan.

And vice versa.

Everyone else Chinese don't think about. Thailand is a vacation place though and Malaysia is great for business. Korea is clean and has great shows and entertainment.

Nah, i know Korea was poor in the 19th early 20th but how does he know if Korea was poor for all eternity. He's basing his statement on those black white pictures that show mudhuts and tits. But look up pics of Pyongyang from the same period and its a different story. Also, the gate has always been where the peasants reside. The wealthier live towatd the center away from the gates. Imagine if people based their entire opinion about their OWN country on less than 10 shitty cherrypicked pictures spammed on a shitposting board

And?

I find Gojoseon's Korean identity to be anachronistic.

The historical Joseon polity/region was located in Liaoxi and expanded into the Korean peninsula(Chinbon,Imdun etc.)

>The butthurt is reserved for Japan.

yeah....Chinks can't keep their composure whenever someone mentions about Nanjing

I guess so. But they say the same for Balhae, which was the dynasty that came after the fall of Goguryeo, but geographically located in the same region. It is a shame these older dynasties have little records of them left, though we can still piece enough to see that they existed.

Neither was Japan

>and particular in the case of Korea.

Sry for saying something dumb and obvious but thats just in your own experience. Goes both ways.

Damn dude stop trying to start shit between Koreans and Vietnamese and now Korea and Japan? If you getting enjoyment from this trolling then.. eh whatever. I rarelt come to this board since it was created. I thought it was more of a serious board but i guess not

It's okay. I don't think he meant any harm in expressing his opinion there. Some Koreans I know are huge shills for Korean everything, when to be honest, most of the cultural legacy isn't even regarded highly by the Koreans themselves, replacing it with synthetic K-POP "culture" nowadays. I mean, I'd shill Korean culture, but only enough so people don't think it's what the first 30 posters said about my country and of course, not to the extent of the fanatics. I probably shouldn't say this or else I will be in trouble though. This is some Cameroonian cave painting boards anyways.

That only applies to Joseon kings. The previous dynasties gave no fucks most of the time.

Try to ignore the first bulk of this thread I guess where everybody was saying "lol Korea sucks I'm not Japanese I swear :-DDDDD", but the Koreans do resent the Japanese a lot though, but under great overlord U.S.of A. we are forced to keep all that together. I don't mind a harmonious relationship either, but of course, inner politics and such where the foreigners may have a hard time understanding can still leak online too I suppose. From what I see there are still idiots in this boards just like anywhere else, trolls, etc. Of course the history boards would not be immune.

Pic is assassination of Queen Min by Japan, indeed a sad moment of our history.

Gojoseon was west of Zhou era Liaodong.(northern Hebei/Liaoxi?)

Goguryeo/Buyeo and the Black Water Malgal had northeastern origins(Jilin,Heilongjiang,Outer Manchuria)

Unfortunately,we have no records of what Gojoseon spoke though we do know they had contact with the Yemaek.

I keep forgetting to complete my thoughts. Sorry. I meant there are people who contest whether Balhae had Chinese or Korean identity. It's clearly Korean though. I hope i did not imply Goguryeo and Gojoseon was of same origins. I need to take a bit of a rest, my head is spinning today but I think I wrote what I needed to, I think.

Ancient civilisations in general are very interesting. I always wondered about them and perhaps they are much different than what we envision them to be nowadays.

Also for same geographical location I meant Balhae and Goguryeo, and nothing to do with Gojoseon. Perhaps that's where the confusion came from.

You do realize that all the shitposters from the beginning are the same guys you're chatting with now? The guy you're discussing is this shitposter

WE WUZ NEAPOLITANS N SHIT

I should have figured. I am a bit dizzy though. I guess I'll stop posting until something serious comes up.

I don't think it's fair to lump extinct polities as Chinese,Korean etc.

The Three Kingdoms of Korea is only Korean in retrospect. Goryeo did what Unified Silla could not.

In that sense yes. We could not strictly label them as these in the modern sense when people had completely different mindset in the past. But you know how we Asians can be. Petty about cultural identities and achievements and whatnot. Geopolitics, etc all play a role in this.

I agree.

You can't have an honest discussion of Jin/Sam Han and their relationship with the Yayoi/Wa without nationalists equating Koreanic/Japonic languages with modern day entities.

Who. Fucking. Cares?

Think about it, and think about yourself and why you get offended by something so inconsequential, while you're at it.

How is this a particularly Asian thing? Don't let Veeky Forums racists get to your head.

Charlemagne is claimed by French and Germans. Ancient Rome is claimed by Italians. It's the nature of nationalism to subsume ancient societies into modern identities via historical narratives.

How about cultural inventions? Literature or anything. The 500yrs of peace must have created at least something.

Tripitaka Koreana
Tons of neo confucian writings

kek I didn't even post here after that

>everyone leaves and thread devolves into whining gooks asshurt that Veeky Forums won't pander to them

I am losing my shit over this thread btw.
Thanks Veeky Forums for being my new favorite board.

Overall peaceful civilized country. That's a good thing. Japan is famous for its warlords era but it must have been tough time for the people at that time.

Tripitaka Koreana is from Goryeo. I think he was asking about Joseon.

Joseon probably made more Neo-Confucian writings than anyone though. Just look up a list of Korean Neo-Confucian scholars on Wikipedia and compare the number with those from Japan or China. This is what having such a stable, peaceful and stagnant (due to the peace and resistance to change) society does. Or maybe the list is longer because of more contributors *shrug* but then again Korean wiki in general has way less contributors than the other two.

Confucianism was never really accepted in Japan. There are over one thousand Buddhist temples in Kyoto but no Confucian one.

I meant temples of national treasure.

Both Korea and Vietnam are in the same tributary status.

Also Korea was never ruled directly by China for 1000 as Vietnam was.

>Confucianism was never really accepted in Japan.
The Tokugawa shogunate is pretty much known as the Neo-Confucian renaissance in Japanese history and noble samurai cunts received their basic education in Confucian academies, like the Ashikaga Gakko, the biggest in the country.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashikaga_Gakko

Confucianism was only disestablished by the Meiji and meme westernization, in addition to spastic nationalism. Same way it declined in all East Asian countries. But Confucian morality never did exactly disappear.

One thing that Korea was legitimately good at was printing. Tripitaka Koreana, Joseon Annals, and invented the metal printed. Shame that they were only used for official and religious purposes. Shows you how important ideology is.

Also, hwatcha.

To the chinks in this thread:

what makes you think your backwards dirty greasy ass peasant country is better than korea?

your communist shithole has done more harm to the world just in the last 60 years than the sum total of all good things from your pre-modern dynastic history.

>pollution
>overpopulation
>extreme lack of hygiene and manners
>culture of treating human beings worse than shit

Communist China is the cancer that has caused the most harm in the history of humanity

t. Park