South Korea

Its been more than half a month here in the Land of the Morning Calm, South Korea. This post is gonna be different than those of previous. Aside from writing my tales being here, this post will entail a deep and interesting observations and my personal thoughts.

대한민국

The Republic of South Korea

South Korea is a well known country, even till today known for its Hallyu wave or what is commonly referred to as the Korean Pop-Culture influence. Indeed, we see K-pops slowly shading off J-pop and other genres of Asian music with catchy lyrics, addictive chorus, and eye candies. There are, in addition more to pop-culture to South Korea.

Their Myth entails a story of Koreans being descendant of the heavens quoted from the Tangun Myth. The Myth goes as such. Hwanin 환인, the God of the Heavens had a son named Hwanung 환웅 who loved and yearned to live on earth. And so, after receiving permission from his father, he descended to earth from the top of Mount Taebak along with 3000 followers. As the myth goes along, there was a bear and a tiger, whom came to Hwanung in wish to become Human beings. Hwanung accepted their wish and gave them 20 cloves of white garlic and a mugwort. The bear and tiger were to stay inside a cave, avoiding sunlight for 100 days. As time goes by, the tiger gave up weeks after while the bear remained till the end of the 100th day. Having fulfilled the task, the bear was transformed into a women, whom then Hwanung married and gave birth to a child names Tangun, who supposedly founded Korea and became her first King. Or so myth has it.

Korea is a nation with a history as interesting as those of China and Japan. Rather, I like to think that Korea as a marriage between Japan and China with a little twist of its own. Korea had kingdoms, warring states, oppression by Japanese, and was a scapegoat to the WW2 cold war. North and South Korea till today are in the midst of ceasefire. I repeat Ceasefire. Thus, the war is still on may it be physical, weaponry, or psychological. I will cover more on North and South Korea later.

As i aforementioned, I like to think Korea as a marriage between Japan and China. In sense, I take it from its historical influence of China during its kingdom period and of Japan from its invasion. One might think, Korea resembles Japan in many ways, with its advanced technology, urban development and modern culture. Having been and lived in Japan, Korea is about 35% of Japan and a whole lot of China and perhaps 10% of Western influence. I will further explain my claims in the following posts.

Nevertheless, South Korea is a blooming city and I would say, heading in a positive direction towards becoming a powerful economic and influential nation.