Does it actually match history?

2nd question — Does it make Korea special in the world of peoples?

I think the answer to both is a big — No”

I was just about to pounce on that historical assumption, but you did a great job beating me to it, usinkorea.

Does it actually match history?

2nd question — Does it make Korea special in the world of peoples?

I think the answer to both is a big — No.

The last few years, I’ve had the great luxury of branching out my reading to other areas, espeically places I wanted to learn more about which I couldn’t before, and one of the books I’m reading now is The Greatness that was Babylon — which is an academic study of the ancient civilizations that were Bablyonia and Assyria.

Two entities that were great empires in their regions, but also a region that was — what — trampled on by countless invasions and blah blah blah.

You could say this just helps prove Korea’s point, since the same area is being trampled on again — making it just two unique areas in the greater world — but then jump to another area — The great homeland of the most modern colonial empires — Western Europe.

If you read any general history of that territory, or the individual nation-states of today that cover areas where different kingdoms (and peoples) ebbed and flowed over the centuries — what do you find?

Many, many, many, many examples of other nations or migrant bands of masses of people flowing back and forth here and there with plenty of bloodshed, death, and mayhem.

To pick a topic, read about the Vikings in Europe. Anybody who loves PC games should be able to relate to that….

It is what we call “history.”

The idea that poor little Korea is some aberration from the global norm, that its “5,000 years of invasion and oppression” have made it some special, pitable case justifying this or that current aspect of Korean culture, is hogwash.

But they have so successfully sold the idea, it is repeated as something etched in stone by Koreans and non-Koreans alike whenever Korean history is mentioned — no matter who is mentioning it — those with no knowledge of Korea, some knowlege, or people who have spent a whole career studying it.

It really boggles the mind.

It is mentioned so much, and taken at face value so much, it is down right irritating.

Yes, there are instances where the territory of Korea was attacked — both by nation-state actors such as different dynastyies in China and Japan or when the tribes were able to get their act together in Mongolia or Manchuria, and by those nomadic tribes and Japanese pirates —

but, the very same type of nomadic peoples marched across Europe — often setting up shop permanently in this and that region —

and perhaps that is the best way to get into the second point I wanted to make —-

Korea does boast of one thing that is much more true than the “poor me….oppressed like virtually no other in the world” stuff — its genetic and cultural homogeneity.

How do you think Korea managed this feat?

They and outsiders clearly understand it is different than in many places in the world.

Why do you think that is?

(First, I think if we dug into this more deeply too, you’d find more of the nomdic blood from Manchuria mixing in the native Korean gene pool, but that is just a guess on my part with just a tiny note here and there from my reading to spark the curiosity I don’t have the language skills to dig into more….)

But anyway, Korea is more homogenous than other regions —- why? —

Where is the resentment?