Chapter 9 Korea 347Korea’s peninsular geography and its location are significant in under-
standing Korean culture and history. The peninsula is mainly mountainous in
the north and along the eastern coast, while the southern and western portions
are flatter and naturally irrigated by rivers flowing west from the eastern high-
lands. Geography has played an essential role in shaping its culture and his-
tory, both in relation to its regional neighbors and in terms of the political and
cultural dynamics on the peninsula.
Korea has been part of the emerging East Asian cultural sphere since the
late second millennium B.C.E. when wet-rice agriculture diffused from Shan-
dong into the Korean Peninsula. An economic zone that Gina Barnes (2015)
calls the “Yellow Sea Interaction Sphere” (400 B.C.E.–300 C.E.) included Zhou
dynasty China, the northern Korean Peninsula, Kyushu in Japan, Okinawa,
and the Ryukyu Islands. A network of walled fortifications connected northern
Korea, China, and Manchuria long before the Qin unification of China (221
B.C.E.) with military operations and Iron Age technology. There was a Chinese
commandery in Lelang (near modern Pyongyang) for “surrounding people
wishing to submit to the Han Court” (Barnes 2015:311), and southern Korean
chiefs acted as agents to extract local goods needed for the iron industry.
Lelang was finally conquered by the Koguryo, one of Korea’s “Three King-
doms,” in 313 C.E.
The Three Kingdoms Period (Koguryo, Paekche, and Silla) lasted over a
thousand years (378 B.C.E. to 918 C.E.), during which Korea developed as a sepa-
rate cultural sphere with its own unique characteristics while also participating in
“East Asian Civilization.” The hallmarks of this civilization are a shared religion
(Buddhism), a shared state philosophy (Confucianism), and a shared bureau-
cratic structure founded on administrative institutions (Barnes 2015). Confucian-
ism and Buddhism both arrived in the fourth century C.E., perhaps through the
Lelang commandery but most likely through Paekche, along with texts, monks,
and institutions that had been developing in China. On the peninsula these new
ideas mingled with the preexisting culture that probably resembled the forms of
shamanism that are widespread in Asia (e.g., among the Hmong as we saw in
chapter 4), often referred to as Siberian shamanism. Korean scholars learned
Chinese and wrote with the Chinese classical script until the fifteenth century.
And yet the Koreans were a distinct people; their language, a member of the
Altaic family along with Japanese, was not related to Chinese (see chapter 2),
and although their elites admired and emulated Chinese culture, and in most
periods considered it wise or necessary to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor,
Koreans always maintained a separate identity and institutions.Religion, Ritual, and Korean Culture
Myths of Origin
Enduring states need to chronicle a memorable past. We have already met
the Grand Historian of China, Sima Qian (145–89 B.C.E.)., who wrote the