Mark Peterson

The end of Korea?

The video “South Korea is Over” has been making waves in Korea. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. It gives a statistical analysis of the end of Korea as its dystopian population decline will ruin not only the population but the culture, the housing and the economy of Korea as it declines into ruin. The video argues that it may already be too late — that the freight train of low population growth cannot be stopped. It is a very grim video. People who see the video report feeling depressed and hopeless, and that, indeed, is the message of the video. I don’t completely disagree with the video, but I do think there is hope on the horizon. The reason I feel hopeful is that I’ve seen Korea, in the last sixty years, overcome many difficulties, and I think they can overcome this one. But it will require a sea change in culture — a paradigm shift, we say. But I’ve seen sea changes before. The most obvious one was the economic miracle. I first came to Korea in 1965 when per capita income was $125 per year. Grinding poverty was everywhere. Korea, on the economic front, is an ent

Yi Sun-sin was a Seoulite

I was recently invited to give the keynote speech for a conference held at Seoul City Hall to honor Yi Sun-sin and to share knowledge about his life and times, including his life in Seoul. He was born in Seoul, where there are two different plaques that each claim he was born on that spot. They are 150 meters apart, but that’s probably as close as we are going to get to the actual location. He moved to Asan when he was 14, and Asan has a shrine to honor him and claims him as their native son. However, he was born in Seoul. Seoul city leaders are about to set history straight by building a commemorative hall for him in the next few years. They are looking for the right place and examining some building plans. Who was Yi Sun-sin? We may well need to answer that question, but most people who have anything to do with Korea already know. It is his huge statue that stands guard over the central intersection in Gwanghwamun. He was the admiral who fought the Japanese in the 1592-98 Imjin War. But there is more to the story — a lot more. My presentation outlined nine crises in his life, any

Choe Chi-won and Confucianism

On my recent spring trip to Korea, I was asked to participate in a conference celebrating Choe Chi-won. The conference was held in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang Province, on the north slopes of Mount Jiri. I was perplexed that Choe would be celebrated so far from Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, the place where he lived. But I soon found out that Choe had been assigned as the magistrate of Hamyang and he served there for six years, a long term compared to the average of closer to one year. And in the heart of Hamyang is a huge park with “one thousand trees” descended from ones originally planted by Choe 1,200 years ago. Choe is a very important figure in Korean history. He is the first Confucian sage enshrined at the Seonggyungwan, the national shrine to Confucius and his disciples. There were a total of 18 Korean sages enshrined there, but Choe was the first. He is honored for bringing Confucianism to Korea. He lived in the late ninth and early 10th century at the height of the Silla Dynasty (57 BCE – 935 CE). His story is filled with remarkable achievements. He went to Tang Chi

Impeachments in Korea's history

Lately, I’ve been asked the precedents for impeachments in Korean history. It's a hot topic as the Constitutional Court on Friday impeached the country's second president in less than 10 years. And indeed, there is a history of removing a king in the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty and the 918-1392 Goryeo Dynasty as well. There is, of course, the removal from office through legal and non-violent means of impeachment. But there is also what you might call impeachment by assassination — the removal from office by violence. Korea has seen both methods in historic times and modern times. In that regard, I'm reminded of something I’ve written elsewhere — that while we often think the highest form of democracy is voting, it's actually when a tense, even potentially violent, political situation is resolved peacefully through impeachment. That's democracy at its most powerful. The issue is made more complicated for non-parliamentary democracies like Korea and the United States, because there is no established method for removal through a no-confidence vote in parliament. Most European democra

'Munjip' as measure of status

In my last piece, I introduced you to the "munjip" — the collection of writings published posthumously for prominent scholar-officials in traditional times. As a measure of social status, it occurs to me that this was an even higher level of accomplishment than the "mungwa" exam. In the 1392-1910 Joseon Dynasty, there were about 15,000 men who passed the mungwa exam, but only about 3,000 were honored to have a munjip.

What is a 'munjip'?

I recently met an old friend. He’s a very old friend; in fact, he died in 1979, but I “met” him through the massive book he left behind. His name is Yun Nam-han, a professor at Chung-Ang University, and when I met him it was at his home that had been turned into a wall-to-wall, shelf-to-shelf, crowded library — no, archive. I wondered how his wife put up with his having taken over the whole house with shoeboxes full of 4-by-6 index cards. I was introduced to him because I wanted to find articles written over time about adoption and inheritance issues as I was preparing my Ph.D. dissertation. Yun was compiling a topic index on everything ever written in a "munjip."

An epiphany about metal movable type — literacy and civilized government

I’ve had an epiphany. This one is about Korean printing technology. The basic question is: Why, if the Gutenberg press spawned the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment and the end of feudalism in Europe, did not the same thing happen in Korea 200 years ahead of Gutenberg when Korea developed its own metal movable type?

A new oldest book in world

An international Toegye studies conference

Recently, I was privileged to attend the 30th International Conference of the Toegye Studies Association — this time held in Taiwan. The Toegye Studies Association was established to learn and perpetuate the teachings of Yi Hwang, who is most familiar to us as the man whose image is on the 1,000 won note. He is on the most common denomination of currency because he is, in effect, one of the “founding fathers” of Korea — we put the founding fathers and mothers on our money, do we not? He has been the most appreciated of all of the scholars of Korea, a nation that reveres scholars.

The real problem with Korea's Nobel prizes

Korea has a Nobel Prize for literature. Finally. And there was a Nobel Peace Prize awarded to former President Kim Dae-jung. But where are the other prizes?