The Korea Times

Yi Sun-sin and Yulgok, great men of Korea

As a young graduate student interested in Korean history and the Korean family system, I was working on analyzing jokbo. I wanted to do a study of an ideal "yangban" clan. As I was looking at various jokbo, my adviser, Ed Wagner, suggested I look at the Deoksu Yi-ssi, who he said were an ideal yangban clan. The word "yangban" means "two groups," and refers to the "mun" (civilian) and "mu" (military), the two main branches of officials. He went on to mention that the most prominent representatives of both the mu-side and the mun-side were found in that clan: Yi Sun-sin and Yi I, the latter well-known by his art name, Yulgok, meaning "chestnut valley." Graduate school brought me one more twist of fate regarding the Deoksu Yi-ssi. I was studying the jokbo one day, when the head librarian of the Korean collection came to my study carrell with a twinkle in his eye, and said, “Come follow me.” He took me to the sub-basement — the Korean collection was in the basement of the Harvard-Yenching building, and below the basement there was another basement where newly acquired books were bein

May 3, 2026By Mark Peterson

Yi Sun-sin and Yulgok, great men of Korea

Mark Peterson

Chinese character education in Korea

When I first came to Korea in 1965, Chinese characters, called "hanja" in Korean, could be seen everywhere — road signs, names on buildings, advertisements and even in newspapers. However, hanja has all but vanished. Newspapers no longer have headlines in Chinese characters, we see very few on signs around town — maybe at a Chinese restaurant? And in the field of education, the list of 900 characters mandatory for middle school students to learn and 1800 for high school students hasn’t been seen for a while. But a group testifying to the National Assembly for a committee on education is hoping that it will change. They will be calling for a revival of Chinese character education in Korea. Their argument is that knowing the Chinese characters that underpin 60 percent of Korean vocabulary will help students become more literate, articulate and knowledgeable about the language they speak and write. I will be one of those testifying at the committee meeting. I have produced a couple of videos on my YouTube channel about the added value of Chinese character knowledge in learning and us

Apr 12, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

The 'zombie' in Korean history

There is an idea in Korean history that will not die. I, and others, try to kill it, but it won’t die. It’s a zombie. I think I can talk about zombies in Korean culture, although I would think that the concept is alien to native Korean culture, but with the rash of zombie movies made in Korea as of late, I’ve decided I can use the term to look at an issue within Korean culture. This came to the fore again recently when I was interviewed for a YouTube broadcast, not my own, but for a channel called “Intelligence Inside.” They made two videos, where we discussed a wide range of topics. I mentioned two of my favorite subjects within my ever-constant refrain about the peaceful traditions of Korean history — No. 1, peaceful transitions between dynasties, and No. 2, the dominance of the surnames Kim, Lee and Park. These were royal surnames of old dynasties and therefore are a symbol of the continuation of tradition and the peaceful transitions of Korea. I like to compare Korea with other countries where, with a change of dynasty, the old dynastic social order is exterminated in a

Mar 29, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

A recent 'jokbo' forum

I wrote a column for the Nov. 13 edition of The Korea Times titled "Korea's new jokbo” in which I suggested that since Korea was no longer a "patrilineal society," the Korean genealogical books called "jokbo" needed to be reoriented and updated. Jokbo that show the male lines of family history are a snapshot of the society at the time. Korea has not always been patrilineal — it became so in the late 17th century. Jokbo describe that kind of society, which was dominated by men. But today’s society has moved away from that tradition, and jokbo need to as well. The president-publisher of The Korea Times liked the article and on my subsequent visit to Korea, he called me into his office and asked if I’d like to organize a The Korea Times Global Forum on the topic of “new jokbo." I responded that I’d be more than happy to do so. We held the forum on March 3 and it went very well. We had about 100 people attending and I invited four other speakers in addition to myself, with a panel discussion at the end. The theme of the program was modern jokbo and talking about how they can incl

Mar 22, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

What is so hard about learning Korean?

Recently, a man I met with to work on a new project, a man who has no previous experience with Korea, told me he’s going to start studying and learn Korean. I bit my tongue and said, “It’s really a difficult language.” I didn’t want to discourage him, but inwardly I’m thinking of all the “older” people I’ve known who have tried to learn Korean after the age of 40 and give up after a few months of trying. It’s axiomatic that children’s brains are adapted to language learning — American kids learn English, Korean kids learn Korean. Something happens in human brains as they grow older and it becomes harder to learn languages. My best student from 35 years of teaching over one thousand students thinks he learned Korean well because his brain “ossified” late. He was a “late bloomer." He says he simply understood Korean — he didn’t study grammar rules, didn’t memorize vocab lists but just learned it, like a child. Whatever theories there are for language learning, Korean is just a hard language. Why? Let me outline a few of many problem areas. First is pron

Mar 2, 2026

Mark Peterson

The examination system

From this title, one might think I’m going to write about the current system in Korea, the all-important “suneung” exam for college entrance, or maybe one of the exams for entrance into government service or the foreign service, or perhaps the exams for entrance into a major company. But no, I’m going to write about the historical antecedent to all these exams — the civil service exams, munkwa, of the 918-1392 Goryeo and 1392-1910 Joseon dynasties. The examination system of Korea, China and Vietnam was the subject of a recent conference at Anyang University. I attended and presented a paper that goes beyond the examination system, per se. There are studies of the examination system itself that look at those who were successful at the exams, the ages of the oldest exam passer (80), the youngest to pass an exam (17), who became prime ministers and what became of those who took first place in the exam. There are other aspects of the exam itself, its subject matter, how often and why exams were held and other issues pertaining to the exam itself. My paper took a different approach

Feb 17, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Tribute to Ahn Sung-ki

Ahn Sung-ki, a great actor, died recently. If you know who he is, you are a fan of Korean movies. If you don’t know who he is, but you have seen a few Korean movies, you’ve probably seen him. He was a great actor who appeared in several interesting and meaningful roles. I am not a student of cinema, either Korean or American, but I enjoyed his work in two movies I’d like to recommend. The first is "The Taebaek Mountains" (1994), based on a major multi-volume novel of the same name, and the second is the 1996 film "Festival." Both were directed by Im Kwon-taek. Others may well remember him for "Two Cops" (1993) or "Silmido" (2003) or "Radio Star" (2006). "The Taebaek Mountains" is the story of a rural town torn apart by the divisions in society between communist and conservative factions at the outset of the 1950-53 Korean War. The movie calmly portrays the appeal each side held for its followers. It answers the question, “Why would anyone want to be a communist in Korea in 1948?” Given the oppression of the farming class by members of the land-owning classes, it shows how som

Feb 2, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Loyalty versus compromise

Are you ready for a rather philosophical piece today? On my YouTube channel I received a comment about loyalty versus compromise. It was the kind of comment that when I first read it, I rejected it because I thought it missed the point. But as I thought about it more, I moved through the steps from rejection to consideration, acceptance and conversion. The comment was in response to a video I made about a poem by Jeong Mong-ju, where I recited his poem at his tomb site. The poem, often called "The Song of Loyalty," is my favorite sijo poem and I recite it in every appropriate situation that I can — and probably in some inappropriate ones as well. It goes: "Though I die, and die again; though I die one hundred deaths, After my bones have turned to dust, whether my soul lives on or not, For my king, this small, ever-loyal heart of mine will never fade away." I assume you all know the story of how Jeong was asked by Yi Seong-gye to support the Joseon Dynasty that Yi was about to found, but he refused and declared his loyalty to the last Goryeo king — effectively choosing death. He refus

Jan 18, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Correcting Japanese corruptions of Korean history

The president's recent mention of the "Hwandan Gogi" has brought the question of Japanese influence on Korean history to the fore. The text purports to tell the earliest history of Korea and is generally considered to be a clumsy forgery, but those who adhere to it accuse nonbelievers of being subject to Japanese versions of Korean history. What does corruption of Korean historiography by the Japanese have to do with the text? Nothing, really. But if one questions the validity of the "Hwandan Gogi," supporters of the text accuse critics of taking a Japanese colonial point of view and distorting Korean history. Sometimes they will straight-up call others “chinilpa,” meaning pro-Japanese or a Japanese collaborator. Today, I thought I might take a look at what the “colonial” perspective on Korean history actually is. I think it will take more than one column — there’s probably a book or two to be written on the subject — but since the term is used and clearly abused, a brief examination would be a healthy start. In my view, there are two categories of historical distortion pe

Jan 11, 2026By Mark Peterson

Correcting Japanese corruptions of Korean history

Mark Peterson

The story of high-rise apartment buildings

Last time I wrote about the area of Seoul without high-rise apartment buildings — the traditional, and fashionable neighborhood of Bukchon. Writing about an area with no high-rise apartments made me think about Seoul’s history of high-rise apartments. When I first came to Korea in 1965, every neighborhood was like Bukchon. One-story hanok, and two-story “new” homes that were being built in the '60s. No five-story walk-ups — they were the next to come. No elevators, but four- and five-story apartment buildings. In New York, that kind of apartment building is called a “walk-up” — meaning no elevator! I remember an incident in 1968, when a set of five-story walk-up apartments was being built. There was a set of those apartments — new and modern — in Mapo or Yongsan, built on the banks of the Han River. The river began to erode the banks, weakening the buildings’ foundations, and eventually they collapsed into the river. The thing I remember about that incident was the wife of the director of our program then, who commented, “Somehow these people need to learn how t

Jan 1, 2026By Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson

Yi Sun-sin and Yulgok, great men of Korea

Chinese character education in Korea

The 'zombie' in Korean history

A recent 'jokbo' forum

What is so hard about learning Korean?

The examination system

Tribute to Ahn Sung-ki

Loyalty versus compromise

Correcting Japanese corruptions of Korean history

The story of high-rise apartment buildings

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