Korean History and Culture

Prior to the seventeenth century, encompassing more than two and a half centuries, Korea held firm to the tradition of non-reciprocity with countries other than China due to its devastating history of being invaded by neighboring countries. Such invasions included the Japanese invasions of 1592 and 1597 and the Manchu invasions of 1627 and 1636. Due to their closed borders, Korea became known as the “Hermit Kingdom” (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008). It wasn’t until 1875 that Korea had no choice but to accept foreign relations and sign the Treaty of Kanghwa of 1876 with Japan, to their disadvantage (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008; Kim 1980). This treaty allowed Japan to appropriate Korea’s right to foreign trade and brought Korea’s self-imposed isolation to an end, eventually making way for other unequal international treaties with Western powers. Japan formally claimed Korea as its protectorate, to the disgruntlement of Korea’s people, after winning the two major battles of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. Both of which were fought on the Korean peninsula (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).

The beginnings of Korean relocation to America started with Horace N. Allen, a Protestant medical missionary and a diplomat from the United States, taking advantage of the socioeconomic crises of the early 1900s, brought on by massive natural disasters of famine and drought, to convince King Kojong to permit Koreans to begin immigrating to Hawaii to work on plantations. Allen, along with other recruiters, looked to farmers who had lost their main source of income and had relocated to port cities such as P’yŏngyang and Inch’ŏn in search of employment as their best recruiting opportunity with little success (Eunjung and Wolpin 20...

... middle of paper ...

...n its freedom from Japan in 1945, a standing that was continually threatened by the Cold War. Post-World War II, the contention between the Soviet Union and the US turned the Korean peninsula into a war zone from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953 when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. In Korea, the Korean war is refered to as ‘Yugio’ (literally June 25) as it marks the date upon which the North Korean army crossed the US military planners’ dividing line known as the 38th parallel (Eunjung and Wolpin 2008).

Works Cited

Healey, Joseph F. 2014. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Kim, Key-Hiuk. 1980. The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Kwon, Hyeyoung, and Chanhaeng Lee. 2009. Korean American History. Los Angeles, CA: Korean Education Center.