By Mark Peterson
This is No. 10 or the last in my series of articles advocating that Korea was a remarkably peaceful and stable place historically. And perhaps this is the most compelling one. The issue is the high population of a few number of surnames ― in other words, 21 percent of the population are Kim, 15 percent are Yi (Lee, Rhee), 9 percent are Pak (Park, Bak). A total of 45 percent of the population had one of three surnames. Add Choe (Choi) at 5 percent, and Jeong (Chung) at 5 percent, and you have 55 percent of the population with one of five surnames. This is really unusual compared to other countries.
I've written about this previously, but I have two angles of approach here. One is to re-emphasize and re-situate what I wrote before, and the other is new comparative material (that will appear in "part 2," next week).
The first point is to emphasize that the concentration of so few surnames evidences the peaceful history of Korea. In making this point I need to emphasize that this is a matter of comparison with other countries. Korea has suffered great invasions! My emphasis on the peaceful spaces between major wars is not to say there was not suffering and heartache in Korea. In fact, one of the objections I have to the typical recitation of the long list of "invasions" is that by ignoring the qualitative differences between the two major invasions, Japan (1592-98) and Mongol (1231-59), where millions of people died, and listing all the "invasions" as if they were the same, hides the fact that these two invasions were a quantum measure larger and more damaging to Korea.
At the same time, by de-emphasizing the scale of the Japanese and the Mongol invasions, one de-emphasizes the tremendous ability to recover demonstrated by the Korean people.
In the case of the Japanese invasion, though Korea was the greatest victim of the fight between Japan and Korea (and China as Korea's ally), the Korean court rebuilt and continued on. Whereas, the Japanese government fell in the wake of their failure in Korea.
And it can be argued that the Chinese government fell because of their losses (men and resources) in the war, for after all, the Ming Dynasty was defeated by a much smaller state out of Manchuria that established the Qing Dynasty. In a sense, China was the big loser because they were taken over by an alien power. Japan was taken over by a rival to Hideyoshi, Tokugawa. But Korea, that suffered the greatest losses in people and property, re-built, restored the king to the throne and reestablished social order, and all returned to order antebellum. It was remarkable.
In the case of the Mongols, the Goryeo court fought nobly for 28 years before the Mongols declared victory. Over those years, the Mongols formed new forces repeatedly and kept trying until they were satisfied, but herein the interesting thing is that they did not achieve complete control of Korea. In other conquered lands, notably China, the Mongols took over control of the country. In Korea, they did not. They were satisfied to have the Korean king remain on the court, but to marry a Mongol princess. Thus, Goryeo was called a "son-in-law kingdom," not a subjugated kingdom.
All the other conflicts ― with the Manchus, with the Khitans, the Jurchens and with Japanese pirate raids ― the scale of warfare does not compare. Two important measures can be applied: the number of fatalities, and the duration of the hostilities. These two large-scale invasions lasted years. None of the other hostilities did. These two saw millions of people dead. None of the others come anywhere near a million.
Thus, I think Korean history should remember the degree of devastation and emphasize the resistance and reconstruction to these two great "world-scale" wars, and at the same time see that the other hostilities were much smaller. And the times before, between and after these two great wars were hundreds of years.
And therein lies the story of peaceful development and cultural superiority in the primacy of the scholar (seonbi) and scholarly pursuits (the exam system) and a stable continuity of government and society. Thus, I have come to study the "peace" of Korea more than the "wars." I have tried to step back from the typical paradigm of "history is the study of wars" to the new paradigm of "history is the study of peace."
One of the current measures of this remarkable stability that I see in Korean history is the concentration of the surnames. Kim, Yi and Pak are the royal names of earlier dynasties that were never fully eliminated. The wars and invasions did not destroy the fabric of Korean society, and neither did the rise and fall of dynasties. In large measure the aristocracy of Korea has been in place for 1,500 years. More on surname issues next week.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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I've written about this previously, but I have two angles of approach here. One is to re-emphasize and re-situate what I wrote before, and the other is new comparative material (that will appear in "part 2," next week).
The first point is to emphasize that the concentration of so few surnames evidences the peaceful history of Korea. In making this point I need to emphasize that this is a matter of comparison with other countries. Korea has suffered great invasions! My emphasis on the peaceful spaces between major wars is not to say there was not suffering and heartache in Korea. In fact, one of the objections I have to the typical recitation of the long list of "invasions" is that by ignoring the qualitative differences between the two major invasions, Japan (1592-98) and Mongol (1231-59), where millions of people died, and listing all the "invasions" as if they were the same, hides the fact that these two invasions were a quantum measure larger and more damaging to Korea.
At the same time, by de-emphasizing the scale of the Japanese and the Mongol invasions, one de-emphasizes the tremendous ability to recover demonstrated by the Korean people.
In the case of the Japanese invasion, though Korea was the greatest victim of the fight between Japan and Korea (and China as Korea's ally), the Korean court rebuilt and continued on. Whereas, the Japanese government fell in the wake of their failure in Korea.
And it can be argued that the Chinese government fell because of their losses (men and resources) in the war, for after all, the Ming Dynasty was defeated by a much smaller state out of Manchuria that established the Qing Dynasty. In a sense, China was the big loser because they were taken over by an alien power. Japan was taken over by a rival to Hideyoshi, Tokugawa. But Korea, that suffered the greatest losses in people and property, re-built, restored the king to the throne and reestablished social order, and all returned to order antebellum. It was remarkable.
In the case of the Mongols, the Goryeo court fought nobly for 28 years before the Mongols declared victory. Over those years, the Mongols formed new forces repeatedly and kept trying until they were satisfied, but herein the interesting thing is that they did not achieve complete control of Korea. In other conquered lands, notably China, the Mongols took over control of the country. In Korea, they did not. They were satisfied to have the Korean king remain on the court, but to marry a Mongol princess. Thus, Goryeo was called a "son-in-law kingdom," not a subjugated kingdom.
All the other conflicts ― with the Manchus, with the Khitans, the Jurchens and with Japanese pirate raids ― the scale of warfare does not compare. Two important measures can be applied: the number of fatalities, and the duration of the hostilities. These two large-scale invasions lasted years. None of the other hostilities did. These two saw millions of people dead. None of the others come anywhere near a million.
Thus, I think Korean history should remember the degree of devastation and emphasize the resistance and reconstruction to these two great "world-scale" wars, and at the same time see that the other hostilities were much smaller. And the times before, between and after these two great wars were hundreds of years.
And therein lies the story of peaceful development and cultural superiority in the primacy of the scholar (seonbi) and scholarly pursuits (the exam system) and a stable continuity of government and society. Thus, I have come to study the "peace" of Korea more than the "wars." I have tried to step back from the typical paradigm of "history is the study of wars" to the new paradigm of "history is the study of peace."
One of the current measures of this remarkable stability that I see in Korean history is the concentration of the surnames. Kim, Yi and Pak are the royal names of earlier dynasties that were never fully eliminated. The wars and invasions did not destroy the fabric of Korean society, and neither did the rise and fall of dynasties. In large measure the aristocracy of Korea has been in place for 1,500 years. More on surname issues next week.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
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