What defines Korean culture?
Korean, spoken by about 77 million people is an East Asian language that is commonly included by proponents of the Altaic family and it does have a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself and the Jeju language form the Koreanic language family. About 5.6 million consider Korean as a Heritage Language. It is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate. With that said, Korean presence or influence is strongly found in the Khitan language. Lesser-known Dravido-Korean languages theory, suggests the Korean relationship with Dravidian languages in India. Some of the common features in the Korean and Dravidian languages are similar vocabulary. Korean has also been disputed to be related to Japanese due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by few researchers. Korean definitely has similarity to Chinese restricted to the script only. Korean vocabulary comprises 35% of native words, 60% of Sino-Korean words and 5% loanwords mostly from the English language.
To understand the Korean culture in-depth, let’s first understand its history.
During the 1960s, Korea witnessed a significant change in their land. An economic miracle, population shift, urbanisation, changes in family life, and the formation of civil society were all key players in this drastic transformation. This rise in this significant change began with the fall of the Syngman Rhee dictatorship in 1960. This fall can be attributed to the student power and the establishment of a military administration led by Park Jung-hee a year later. This new military power established itself with a new vision for the country, a vision to achieve a major economic development and control its population. Fortunately, all their efforts seem to be fruitful. As Korea transformed within its borders, so did it, beyond their shores. With the newfound freedom, the Korean language and culture began to globalize. In the modern era, Korea stands proud as one of the leading economies of the world.
With the basic knowledge of Korea’s history established, let’s move on to their culture itself. Korean culture is homogenous in nature and rarely diverse. Due to their history, Korea has learned to love and protect its culture, therefore, they can seem hostile to any additional foreign cultural mix. However, the Korean culture itself is extremely vibrant. They majorly celebrate two holidays, New Year’s Day, the second full moon after the winter solstice and Chuseok, the eighth full moon. These celebrations are centred around celebrating their ancestors, family, games, harvest festivals and food. When it comes to Family life, Koreans value marriage a lot, especially arranged marriages. Marriage is regarded as a rite of passage. Divorce was extremely rare but has become more common only in recent years. Unfortunately, the Korean lifestyle is influenced by their primarily patriarchal society. When it comes to food, ‘Kimchi’ is the national dish and is eaten with most meals. Previously, Korean music and arts were linked to natural cycles and religion, giving rise to folk culture in rural areas that are still considered popular even today. But now, due to the significant globalization of their entertainment industry, K-pops and K-dramas have taken over the arts sector of this country.
Apart from this, ‘Hallyu’ or the Korean wave as termed by the Chinese media, is the rise in global popularity of South Korean culture from the 1980s. Hallyu grew from a regional phenomenon to a worldwide one, propelled by the Internet and social media. It began spreading to North, East and South Asia but soon enough spread across the globe, specifically due to YouTube. Some reports claim the term Hallyu to be a derivative of a Japanese word, Ryu that refers to a style, while others claim that it was first used by South Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 1999 when the ministry published a music CD named in Chinese “Song from Korea”. While its distinct roots are yet to be discovered, it is broadly accepted that the Chinese media played a major role in the coining of the said terminology. This is due to certain traces of the term’s origins to Korean television dramas that were found to be aired on Chinese television in 1997, labelling the phenomenon hanliu, which translates as “Korean wave.” Finally, in 2001, the Asahi Shimbun resurrected the phrase as hanryu or kanryu.
Finally,
Of the 3000 languages in use currently, Korean is known to be the 13th most commonly used language. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia and Central Asia. The English word “Korean” is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram and/or Koryo-in and call the language Koryo-mal.
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