Korea

Imagine Your Korea

South Korea is one of the most developed countries in the world, honored as an Asian Tiger along with Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The country has consistently sustained a high-growth economic rate since the 1960s, charged by rapid industrialization and exports, which enabled it to withstand the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and 2008 World Economic Crisis. Unlike most Asian countries, South Korea has long been a homogeneous society, having next to no ethnic minorities. However, with a growing number of immigrants, the nation is rapidly transforming into a multicultural state. Even though many South Koreans express no religious preference, there are two dominant religions in the country: Christianity and Buddhism.

The history of Korean statehood had begun in the 1st century BC when three separate kingdoms had emerged in the Korean Peninsula around the same time. China, the most advanced society in East Asia at the time, greatly influenced the Korean kingdoms. Korea adopted Confucian principles of governance and social order, but it was just the first of the many to be borrowed. Chinese culture continued to impact many areas of Korean culture, including technology, written language, art, and architecture, with Koreans molding these Chinese models into distinctly Korean forms. Adapting foreign things and perfecting them for their own use is a historical characteristic of Koreans. Around the 7th century, the three kingdoms were consolidated into a single dominion. Successive regimes have maintained Korean independence for more than a thousand-year. The last of these ruling kingdoms was the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910).

After the Japanese had surrendered in 1945, the two victors of World War II agreed to divide the Korean Peninsula by the 38th parallel. The United States forces seized the South, while the Soviet army took over the Northern half. Both sides had no plans for a permanent division but competing visions for the future of Korea prolonged it. The interim government in the South yearned for American-style capitalism, while communism was pushed in the North by Kim Il Sung. In 1947, the UN General Assembly established a temporary commission to organize a free election in Korea in an attempt to reunite the nation under one government. The United States and most South Koreans supported the idea, but Stalin declined. Faced with strong resistance, the UN proceeded with elections only in the South.

In the decades after the war, South Korea has experienced one of the fastest economic transformations in human history. Starting as a war-torn country, it has now become the 11th largest economy in the world in terms of GDP. Communist North Korea, on the other hand, has turned into the world’s most closed-off country with nuclear missiles that are capable of reaching the continental United States.