Korea 101

Since I'm gonna be living here for the next year, I thought it would be a good idea to learn the basics, so I'm giving myself a little history lesson with this post. This is also for all those people who thought I was gonna be living in a mud hut or up a tree in the middle of nowhere. First of all, Korea is here: Close up, it kinda reminds me of Ireland: One of the world's oldest civilisations, according to legend Korea was founded in 2333 BC. Despite numerous invasions over the centuries, Korea remained independent and unified under a single government until the twentieth century. The official language is Korean, spoken by 78 million people worldwide. The classification of the language is debated. Some say Korean is related to languages spoken in Turkey, Mongolia and Siberia (Altaic languages). Others sources suggest links with Hungarian and Finnish; apparently ancient 12th century Hungarian poetry bares remarkable similarities to pure Korean. Then again it may be an isolated language. The written form is very easy to learn, as the alphabet is almost purely phonetic. I can read Korean myself, I just don't know what any of the words mean. Looks like this: 안녕하세요. Pronounced like this: annyeong haseyo. Means: Hello! In 1910, Japan invaded and occupied the country until the end of the World War II. Korean culture and economy suffered heavy losses during this period. The Korean language was banned and Koreans were forced to support the Japanese war effort. Tens of thousands of men were conscripted into Japan's military. Approximately 200,000 girls and women, mostly from Korea and China, were conscripted as sex slaves. Anti-Japanese sentiment is still fairly strong in Korea, as a result of Japanese war crimes and continuing Korean-Japanese disputes. Kids in my class as young as ten years old have told me how they hate the Japanese as the Japanese killed many of their own people. When Japan were defeated at the end of World War II, the UN developed plans for a trusteeship administration, the Soviet Union administering the northern end of the peninsula and the United States effectively administering the south. This was supposed to be temporary, but the now divided nation failed to come to an agreement on how the country would go forward. In 1948 two separate governments were formed, each modelled on the politics of the country that had been administering that region. The North became a Communist state, the South a liberal capitalist democracy. South Korea went on to prosper and has become the tenth largest economy in the world today. The North is a totalitarian dictatorship. It is still hoped that one day the country will be unified again, though technically they are still at War as the Korean Civil War (1950 - 1953) ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. All that now stops the North from invading the South are the 90,000 American Military personnel stationed in the DMZ, and I think about a million landmines, though actually South Korea has better relations with North Korea than most other countries do today. South Koreans have high life expectancies, very high literacy levels (because the alphabet is so easy to learn!), good healthcare and infrastructure, cheap and efficient public transport. And! Mobile phones seem to work everywhere! Underground, on the tube - why can't ours do that? There are very few foreigners in South Korea. In Itaewon, a neighbourhood of Seoul, you do see a few black and white faces, mainly from the nearby military base, but elsewhere you can go a whole day walking around and see only Koreans. Well, maybe Chinese and Japanese too, but I can’t tell the difference to be honest. And the vast majority of people speak at best only a couple of words of English - which is why we’re here of course! Only thing we don’t like about Koreans is their very un-British way of barging right past if you’re standing in their way without saying a word. Seems very rude to us but seems to be the habit so best just get used to it. North Korea spends around 25% of the nation's GDP on the military. It's estimated by aid workers that between 600,000 and 3.5 million people died in North Korea in the 1990's due to famine. By 1999 foreign aid was alleviating this problem, but with the recent missile testing crisis, aid is likely to decline again. Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. Mobile phones were outlawed in June 2004. There is no internet access. The state is officially athiest, and religious activities are heavily supressed. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations accuse North Korea of having one of the worst human rights records of any nation. Head of state Kim Jong-il was (according to official North Korean accounts) born in a log cabin at his father's guerrilla base on the country's highest mountain - an event marked by a double rainbow and a new star in the sky. The post of president has been assigned "eternally" to his late father. Finally, Here's a quote from the first copy of The Korea Times I bought here, from a story about an American who made the mistake of voluntarily entering the North: Without anaesthesia, a doctor removed the tattoo [of the words "US Army" alongside two crossed rifles] using knife and scissors: "anasthetics and painkillers are for heroes on the battlefield. There's nothing for you no matter how hard you scream now," were the doctor's calm words to writhing Jenkins.