Geography
Korea is located Northeast Asia between China and Japan. However, after the Korean War, the land was divided into two, North Korea and South Korea. South Korea(The Republic of Korea) consist of 9 provinces and the capital city is Seoul. There are a lot of mountains in Korea, so about 70% in this land is mountains. Due to orogeny, Korea has long and big mountains, called Tae-back Mountains, along the East Sea. As a result, if we see Korea as sectional view, it looks like this.
<The map of Korea> <Sectional view of Korea>
Red-line is Taeback Mountains
Religion
The main religions in Korea are the Buddhism, the Christian, and the Confucianism. Buddgism and Confucianism are traditional religions in Korea, which is the heritage of the east culture with historical background. Chritian is the result of west culture. Catholic and Protestant has grown by the effect of Europe and the United States.
Clothing
Korea has the traditional clothing, called Han-Bok. Han-Bok is really beautiful, because straight line and curve are in harmony with Han-Bok. The types of Han-bok is formal dress, usual clothes and also is divided into women, men and children. In addition, Korean loves white, so they were called 'the white-clad folk'.
These are the pictures which were taken right after the Korean War by a foreigner volunteer called Adam. If you want to check more pictures in 1950's Korea, visit the address on the photos, please.
Hanbok
The traditional shoes of women, called the floral shoes.
Patriarchal / Matriarchal
Even though the custom of patriarchal is rapidly changing due to equality of sexes, Korea was a patriarchal society. Traditionally, Korea was matriarchal society in Korea Dynasty, but due to the Confucianism in Cho-seon Dynasty, Korea began to have strong patriarchal custom. In this reason, women thought that they had to work just in house and they believed that men should not enter the kitchen. When there was an important things to decide, people followed the oldest man's opinion. Korea have held a memorial service for their ancestors and men was the main promoter. In this reason, Korean thought only son could continue their family, so there were strong son preference in Korea. However, this patriarchal custom is now reducing rapidly.
High Context / Low Context
Korea has high-context. For example, Korean often use "you know what I mean" in dialogue without saying contents. However, most of Korean realized the meaning. Also, if listener took some time in answering the question, or say "Hmm...", speaker would know that listener have a negative opinion about his or her question. Therefore, it is really important in Korea to think about the context when people talk with each other.
댓글
댓글 쓰기