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5. Mark Peterson

Property ownership in traditional Korea

Since I have been writing recently of changes in Confucianism involving changes in property inheritance, I have been thinking that most readers have no idea about how complicated property ownership was in traditional Korea. It was surprisingly complicated and unlike anything you would expect

2021-01-03 17:02

It was not the wars

I need to follow up from last week's article about Korea's penchant for stability in spite of wars and the social change that takes place, not as a result of the wars, but afterward unrelated to the war. I think it's true of the Japanese invasion of the 1590s and the Korean war of the 1950s.

2020-12-20 16:31

Changes after two wars

I suppose most who see the reference to two wars would assume I'm going to write about the Korean War and World War II, but no, - put on your history hat - I'm writing about the Japanese Invasion of 1592, and the Manchu Invasion of 1636.

2020-12-06 17:05

Korean-Americans

My attitude about Korean-Americans has changed over the years. When I first encountered Korea, living there, I met people who wanted to go to America “by hook or by crook.” And indeed, many were able to cobble together reasons to get a visa to visit America, and then they disappeared or overstayed their visas, but eventually ended up gaining American citizenship. I thought the whole enterprise was corrupt and I wanted to have nothing to do with it.

2020-11-08 16:49

My previous article, “End of han,” generated one of the largest responses of any of my articles. “Han” is something everyone knows something about. The responses fell into four categories: 1. the expression of “han” in psychiatry, 2. the origin of “han” was not ancient but rather was in the Japanese period, 3. that “han” is overplayed, exaggerated and even trite as an explanation of Koreanness, and indeed, 4. “han” is dead, or close to a well-deserved death.

2020-10-25 18:50

One of the hallmarks of Korean culture has been “han,” the supposedly untranslatable concept encompassing the feeling of resentment, angst, victimization, anger, frustration - all rolled into one. The term often comes up in describing Korean culture and the essence of the Korean personality. “Han” is often mentioned with its untranslatable partner, “jeong” - love, affection, rapport, camaraderie, friendship - all rolled into one. I'm happy to report “jeong” is alive and well, in my opinion. But “han” might be on the way out.

2020-10-11 17:21

Congratulations on COVID-19 handling

Korea has done a marvelous job in handling the coronavirus. There has been a recent spike, but like previous spikes, they have controlled it well, with just under 400 deaths at this point. My state of Utah, in the United States, has over 400. Korea's population is around 50 million; Utah's is under 3 million - about 1/16 the size of Korea. If Utah had Korea's record, we would have had 25 deaths. The United States is about six times bigger than Korea. If the United States had Korea's record, rather than losing 200,000 people, at this point, we would have only lost 2,400. The United States' ha...

2020-09-27 16:41

Jokbo adventure

I was recently contacted by a young man, a third-generation Korean American who had some questions about research on his own Korean jokbo - family genealogy. I was pleased to receive the email and happy to answer his questions. But more importantly, I was thoroughly taken with his ability to figure out how to read a genealogy.

2020-09-13 19:19

Japanese influence on Korea

Japan's influence on Korea is still visible in some ways. And invisible in other ways. The Japanese colonial occupation of Korea was a failure in all regards, politically, morally, ethically. But the evil results of the occupation remain in many ways.

2020-08-30 17:15

Traditional Korean 'seoja' discrimination

Two things have set my mind recently to writing about traditional social classes and discrimination between classes. The first was a video I was asked to make for the Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles - it was a video, actually four videos, about Pak Ji-won and his lesser-known disciple, Pak Je-ga. More on that below. The second occurred when I binge-watched “Crash Landing on You” in the last few weeks - it was the “throw-away fact” (incidental mentioning) that the main female protagonist, Seri, was born “illegitimately.” This brings up the topic traditionally termed “seoja” - a child born ...

2020-08-16 16:59

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