[...]... rural areas getting together to learn Korean and talk about child-rearing Language and Religion The national and official language is Korean, a member of the Altaic family of languages Korean is written in a largely phonetic alphabet called hangul, consisting of 14 basic consonants and 10 simple vowels The letters are combined into syllables, some of which correspond to Chinese characters Chinese loanwords... Northeast Asia and that over time they made their way, with migrating people, into the Korean Peninsula and across the Korean Strait to Japan Physical anthropology provides other clues that Koreans originated in Northeast Asia Physical anthropology is the study of humans as physical beings Koreans possess several physical characteristics that  From Early Settlements to the Silla Unification of Korea tie... last 20 years feature an image of Tangun as the altarpiece In 1993 North Korea reported finding the actual tomb of Tangun and his queen The site has been built up and surrounded in recent stonework in a rather elaborate fashion By asserting that the oldest Korean was a North Korean, North Korea reinforces its claim to legitimacy over that of South Korea Similarly, North Korea today claims historical... from a rural area or is associated with  Kyongju xi A Brief History of Korea a ­particular group that is up to no good (leaders of the two military coups in 1961 and 1980 were from the same region with a marked dialect) Sometimes one of the North Korean dialects shows up in a South Korean drama Each region of Korea has its own unique food— cold noodles are a favorite throughout all Korea today but... contradict this claim An interesting foundation myth of the Kaya also survives According to this myth the first king of Kaya was named Suro, with the surname Kim He married a maiden who sailed into the harbor of Kaya (present-day Kimhae) on a boat made of stone She is credited with bringing Buddhism to Kaya She was from the royal family of a kingdom called Ayuta, a Southeast Asian kingdom that had adopted Buddhism... distant areas accepted Chinese culture and civilization later History means literacy, and in Korea, literacy meant adopting Chinese characters They were a poor fit, however Korean is radically different from Chinese, yet the cumbersome set of Chinese characters was the only form of literacy available As Koreans adopted Chinese literacy, 12 From Early Settlements to the Silla Unification of Korea they accepted... origin and a separate language family  A Brief History of Korea Korean founding myths also indicate non-Chinese origin The most popular Korean myth is that of Tangun, which was recorded in The Samguk Yusa, a Korean history written in 1285 c.e It claimed that Tangun, the founder of Korea, who ruled the land wisely for 1,000 years, was born in the 50th year of the first emperor of China, 2333 b.c.e Tangun... had formed the Yamato state Paekche was to be a longtime ally of Yamato Wa (Best 1982, 443) When Paekche became a Buddhist state in 384, it became the most important conduit of the new religion to Japan, but the alliance went beyond Buddhism In the early fifth century Paekche and Yamato Wa formed a military alliance to attack Silla Their association was such that some 200 years later, in the unification... in Korea for a few years before returning to their homelands Others stay longer and in some cases marry Korean spouses and obtain Korean citizenship Such migrant workers are sometimes racially the same as Koreans (i.e., mainland Chinese, Mongolians, or Vietnamese), though others are not (i.e., Filipinos, Southeast Asians, and South Asians), and in some cases immigrants are Caucasians from Russia In any... that Koreans descended from the Chinese Among China’s major contributions to Korean civilization are the use of Chinese characters, Buddhism, and Confucianism Korea is clearly part of the Chinese cultural realm, but this was not always so The earliest Koreans shared common traits with peoples in Northeast Asia, including similarities in religion, social organization, housing, and language The Korean . along the 38th parallel since the defeat of Japan (Korea s former colonial ruler) at the end of World War II. Outside of Korea, South Korea is better known than North Korea; a parliamentary. are reports of Filipino women working in the same rural areas getting together to learn Korean and talk about child-rearing. Language and Religion The national and of cial language is Korean,. SILLA UNIFICATION OF KOREA tie them to Northeast Asia rather than to China, two of which are tooth shape and high incidence of a birthmark known as the “Mongolian spot.” A large percentage of Koreans