my timesThe Korea Times
Mark Peterson
OpinionColumnsColumnists

Mark Peterson

Mark Peterson is associate professor of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.

Read more

Mark Peterson

Challenge for 'jesa'

By Mark PetersonIt's hard to keep up with social changes in Korea. My finger on the pulse has been my YouTube channel, The Frog Outside the Well, and the responses and comments people post. I've been surprised to see the negative comments regarding all things related to Confucian practices. The most recent has been comments on “ancestor ceremonies,” or “jesa.” The practice was once translated as ancestor worship but that term was discarded as inaccurate and biased long ago.Jesa suffered as the enemy of some Christian sects early on. The Catholic persecutions of the 18th century were largely centered on the ancestor ceremonies, which were inaccurately translated as ancestor worship ― bowing down to the ancestors was all the evidence the Christians needed. Bowing equals worship. They overlooked the fact that living people would bow to each other. Worship everyday on the street? No, just Korean etiquette. Well, some Christian sects, including paradoxically Catholics (some, but not all? I don't know), started to accept jesa as an acceptable performance. So, the sc

Jul 17, 2022By Mark Peterson
Challenge for 'jesa'
Mark Peterson

Korea's three E's - education, economy, entertainment

By Mark PetersonAs an observer of Korea for the last 57 years, I have seen momentous changes. The first we should talk about is the economy and rightly so, for the Korea that I first knew in 1965 was desperately poor ― $125/year/per capita income. Aid from the United States was equal to native GNP ― incredible! We have seen the economy take off. Younger people haven't seen it, but they've read about it. And yet the economic miracle is actually miracle number two.People usually think of the economic miracle as the first, but as my old friend Horace G. Underwood used to say, “The education miracle preceded the economic miracle.” And I subscribe to that idea also. When I was first in Korea, the terribly poor people were everywhere pursuing education. Everyone was convinced that education was the way out of poverty ― and it was true. I learned early on in Korean life that the “haksaeng” (the student) was respected. Look at the meaning of the Chinese characters for “haksaeng” ― literally, “to study as a way of life.” That was the key.Today K

Jun 19, 2022By Mark Peterson
Korea's three E's - education, economy, entertainment
Mark Peterson

Today's world informed by history

By Mark PetersonFor those few who don't think history is important, and for those who do as well, I thought today I would recap some of the historical issues that I've been looking at in this column to see how they inform our lives and decisions in present-day Korea.I've written a lot about Confucianism and how many of the negative views that some people hold about Confucianism can be transformed by an understanding of the role Confucianism played in Korean history ― not recent history, but earlier, pre-18th-century history. We see that it is only the history of the last three hundred years of Confucian practice in Korea that Confucianism has taken on the male-dominant perspective oppressing females that many are critical of in the philosophy. History teaches us that Confucian principles can apply to the modern world in an egalitarian way like they did for a thousand years in Korea, from the Three Kingdoms Period to the 18th century ― a time when sons and daughters inherited equally, where they hosted ancestor ceremonies on a rotational basis, including the daughters, and where the j

May 22, 2022By Mark Peterson
Today's world informed by history
Mark Peterson

Paradigm shifts in jokbo understanding

By Mark PetersonLast month, after writing a “call to arms” for all Koreans, especially the female half of Korea, to redo their jokbo (genealogies) and start to think of jokbo as the pre-18th-century Korean “pal-gojodo” chart, which is the same as the Western “five-generation pedigree chart.” I started thinking more about what it will take to bring about such a paradigm shift. And it appears it would be difficult. But maybe not.We've already seen the paradigm shift from son-preference to daughter-preference in recent decades. This followed the paradigm shift from the large family and the three-generation family to the nuclear family. This followed the paradigm shift from a 90 percent rural society to a 90 percent urban society. This included the paradigm shift from a single-story “hanok” house to living in an apartment, initially as high as on the 10th, over time to the 20th, the 30th, the 40th, or the 50th floor. After all of these paradigm shifts, and many other related ones, is it too much to expect a paradigm shift from the male-line

Apr 24, 2022By Mark Peterson
Paradigm shifts in jokbo understanding
Mark Peterson

Jokbo: new approach for men and women

By Mark PetersonKorea is in a new age, one that has discarded the old hierarchies and the old male dominance. True, much of male dominance still remains, but much is changing. There is still a predominance of men in elected offices, but I recently had dinner with the consul general of the San Francisco consulate, with his political consul, and found out that women now comprise 70 percent of the incoming class of diplomats each year. We will soon have a corps of diplomats and ambassadors who are majority women. I want to relate this to jokbo ― Korean-style printed genealogical books. Jokbo have been documents of male ancestry, but that might be changing. And Korea might look to the West for bilateral, male and female lines of ancestry, but it need only look into its own history to find evidence of a gender-balanced approach to genealogy and recording family history. I've written elsewhere about the development of the male-dominant approach to Confucianism that transformed Korea in the late 17th century. The Korea that we think of today as the traditional Korea with inheritance by the

Mar 27, 2022By Mark Peterson
Jokbo: new approach for men and women
Mark Peterson

Non-massacre of Wang clan

By Mark PetersonThat's an odd title! The point I want to address is the mistaken idea common in Korean society that the establishment of the Joseon Kingdom was a revolutionary action accompanied by wholesale social change and the emergence of a radical new elite. Baloney. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the transition of dynastic houses from Goryeo to Joseon could not have been any less revolutionary!That's an odd title! The point I want to address is the mistaken idea common in Korean society that the establishment of the Joseon Kingdom was a revolutionary action accompanied by wholesale social change and the emergence of a radical new elite. Baloney. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the transition of dynastic houses from Goryeo to Joseon could not have been any less revolutionary!This issue has come across my desk several times in recent months when I write, or make videos, about the peaceful and stable history of Korea. When I point out that the dynastic transfer from Gaya to Silla, from Silla to Goryeo, from Goryeo to Joseon, was relativel

Feb 27, 2022By Mark Peterson
Mark Peterson

Korean names and the slave question

By Mark PetersonI am going to return to a familiar story for me, the remarkable story of Korean family names. I am returning to this issue because I still get questions and comments based on popular misinformation and mistaken ideas that still circulate in Korea.The mistaken ideas: (1) that traditionally, only yangban aristocrats had surnames ― and that commoners and slaves didn't acquire surnames until the 20th century; (2) that the high frequency of the names Kim, Yi and Bak are because of all the slaves who took names and merely copied the most common surnames ― Kim, Yi and Bak, and (3) that slaves numbered between 90 percent or at least 50 percent of the population.Let's take these three items in reverse order. The estimates of slaves at 90 percent is ridiculous and even 50 percent is a great exaggeration. At the outset of the Joseon Kingdom slave-holdings may have been as high as 40 percent, but that number declined gradually over time, especially when Korea reached the period of increased commercial activity of the 18th and 19th centuries. At the point in the early 20th century

Feb 2, 2022By Mark Peterson
Mark Peterson

The Year of the Tiger

By Mark PetersonGoodbye, Ox. Hello, Tiger. Sounds formidable, no? If the Year of the Ox was bad, and it was, what will the Year of the Tiger bring? On the one hand, who wants to see a tiger come in? But maybe the tiger is a good symbol ― to scare all our other demons away?In Korea's traditional sexagenary cycle for recording years, 2022 will be the year, “imin.” It's a homophone for “immigration;” does that mean it will be a good year for immigrants? In Korea? In Europe? In America?Looking at “imin” years in the past, every 60 years, 1962, 1902, 1842, 1782, etc., it was a remarkably quiet year, falling between major events. There was a minor purge of officials in 1722, but other than that, nothing pops up ― a quiet year. So, the tiger comes in and keeps bad things from happening, it would appear. This character bodes well for 2022 after all.Maybe the quietude of this particular year of the cycle reinforces my “song-and-dance” of late: that Korea has more periods of peace and tranquility than it does of war and chaos. There have been, of

Jan 2, 2022By Mark Peterson
Mark Peterson

What has happened to Korean family?

By Mark PetersonI had a chance to reflect on what it was that drew me to Korean studies when I was interviewed for an EBS (Educational Broadcasting Service) program about four years ago. The interviewer, Jeong Gwan-yong, asked me how I came to study Korea. I told him there were two factors primarily, at the outset: the Korean emphasis on the family and the striving for excellence in education. But now it appears the “love of family” is out the window in many homes.A recent Pew Survey has revealed a shocking new picture of the Korean family. Of the 17 wealthy nations surveyed about “values”, 15 of the 17 ranked family as their first concern. Korea's was “material wealth.” Family was #3. And with reports of falling birthrates, falling marriage rates, rising divorce rates, the question is, what has happened to the Korean family?Korea is still concerned with education, but unfortunately, that is often at the sacrifice of the family. The best example of the worst of this kind of practice is sending children off to study in boarding schools or sometimes

Dec 5, 2021By Mark Peterson
Mark Peterson

Phenomenon of learning Korean

By Mark PetersonKorean language programs are booming all over the world. The K-pop craze, the music, the movies, the dramatic series, are all fueling an interest in learning the Korean language.At my university, for example, for the first 25 years I was there, we would often have to beg the department chair to allow us to teach a section of 101 even though there were only ten or twelve students enrolled. The minimum requirement was 20. But we'd beg and the chair would usually be understanding and let us carry the course with less than the necessary number of registered students.Now, the same university, in the last ten years or so, growing each year, has five or six sections of 101 with 20 students in each section! Exclamation point.The Korean wave in all its manifestations has fueled the rise. Some students love the music, some the movies, and some the dramas. And some like anything and everything Korean.When I started studying Korean, there were no language textbooks. None. Teachers would put together “mimeo” pages that they would prepare themselves. And no one wanted t

Nov 7, 2021By Mark Peterson
previous page
7891011
next page

Top 5 stories