China–Korea Relations

About 4 pages (1,323 words)

History of China Summary

China–Korea Relations

It is difficult to overstate the comprehensive influence of traditional China on Korea's cultural development and social institutions. That influence remained the single dominating feature of Korean culture until as late as the nineteenth century. Four elements of traditional Korean culture have manifested Chinese influence: political culture, popular and court artistic culture, language, and literature.

The long and continuous history of Chinese influence on Korean culture is said to have began with the Lo-lang Commandery in northwestern Korea (modern P'yongyan province), which was established by the Chinese Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) in 108 BCE. The flourishing commandery led to the sinicization of Korea. Through Lo-lang, the accouterments of the superior Chinese civilization, including advanced techniques in pottery making and iron smelting and an ideographic writing system, were transmitted to the loosely knit Korean tribes. With the Chinese writing system were introduced Chinese notions about state-craft and religion, and with the introduction of iron and bronze tools, the development of agriculture.

Political Culture

It is impossible to understand the traditional cultural affinity between China and Korea without referring to the political culture of Confucianism. The fermentation and development of Confucian ideas and institutions were sustained over the course of Korean dynastic history. Culturally, the Unified Shilla kingdom (668–935) in Korea borrowed extensively from Tang China (618–907) by organizing its central and provincial government administrations, its land and taxation systems, national university, and civil-service examinations along Confucian-Chinese lines.

During the Koryo kingdom (918–1392), Korean social, political, educational, and administrative systems were even more sinicized. The Koryo aristocracy embraced Confucianism for its political precepts and ethical principles and accepted Buddhism for spiritual fulfillment. The later Koryo period saw the decline of Buddhism and the increasing stature of Neo-Confucianism, with a renewed emphasis on the civil-service examination system. Under the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) in China, Korea was subject to occasional Mongol political interference but retained its political and cultural identity. Nor did the switch to Manchu Qing vassalage (1644–1912) change the Confucian character of Korean political and civil society. The Manchus themselves relied on the Chinese-run Confucian bureaucracy in China, which they had subjugated politically and militarily but not culturally. Meanwhile, the Choson kingdom (1392–1910) in Korea replaced Buddhism with the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) as the state creed. The essential nature and structure of Sino-Korean cultural relations thus remained intact.

Popular and Court Artistic Culture

From the first major period of Korean art, the Three Kingdoms (c. 57 BCE–668 CE), until the fifteenth century, Buddhism, introduced from China in 372 CE, remained the major source of inspiration in Korean visual art. Architecture, sculpture, and painting of the Koryo dynasty were largely influenced by the style of the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279). Porcelain making, introduced in the late eleventh century from Zhejiang, China, was transformed by native artisans into a Korean form—kingfisher-colored celadons, which even the Chinese held in high regard.

During the Choson dynasty, Korean arts were influenced by Confucian culture. White porcelain was popular among Koreans for Confucian rites and ancestor worship. In architecture, the Choson court constructed grand buildings in the capital of Seoul, such as the fifteenth-century Kyongbok palace, designed after the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Chinese prototypes in present-day Beijing. Paintings largely imitated northern Chinese style; professional court artists as well as scholar-gentry painters relied on Chinese themes and conventions. Not until the eighteenth century did distinctively Korean styles emerge.

Chinese music and instruments entered Korea at an early date, and over time Korea developed an extensive repertoire of Chinese-style court music and ritual dance, characterized by slow movements of the shoulders, hands, and neck.

Language

Although Korea has had its own language for several thousand years, its writing system dates only from the mid-fifteenth century; the indigenous Korean script, hangul, was invented in 1443 by King Sejong (1397–1450) during the early Choson dynasty. Most of what is known about the Korean language comes from that period. Information on earlier vocabulary is partly available in vocabularies compiled by the Chinese.

The Korean language borrowed many words from classical Chinese, including most of its technical terms and about 10 percent of its basic nouns, such as san (mountain) and kang (river). The borrowed words are sometimes written in Chinese characters. It is not known when the Chinese writing system came into widespread use in Korea, but the inscription on a great stele erected to honor the Koguryo king Kwanggaet'o in the early fifth century is the earliest extant historical record written with Chinese characters by Koreans.

Literature

Korean literature was written at first in classical Chinese, then in various transcription (idu, hyangch'al, or kugyol) systems using Chinese characters, and finally in hangul. Korean scholars were writing poetry in classical Chinese style by at least the fourth century CE. The introduction of Buddhism and of Chinese characters during the Three Kingdoms period enriched Korean literature and changed the Korean worldview. The Unified Shilla court sent many students to study in Tang China (618–907), and a great body of prose narratives written in classical Chinese resulted from these contacts.

From the institutionalization of civil-service examinations in the mid-tenth century until their abolition in 1894, every educated Korean read Confucian classics and Chinese histories and literature. The Korean upper classes (the yangban) were bilingual in a special sense: They spoke Korean but wrote in Chinese. Many of their prose works were set in China, while those written by commoners were set in Korea. The most important literary works often belonged to the Confucianist tradition. Extant literary works indicate that despite the transcription systems, before the twentieth century much Korean literature was written in Chinese rather than in Korean even after the invention of hangul. The prestige of Chinese letters was so great that hangul was scorned by most educated people.

China–Korea Relations Today

Although the number of adherents to Confucianism is small in Korea today, most Korean families still follow its principles, including ancestor worship. In North Korea, ideology and philosophy, along with other forms of religion (shamanism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Ch'ondogyo), have been officially repressed since 1945. In South Korea, however, freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed. Although there is no national religion in the south, a significant proportion of the population still adheres to Buddhist beliefs.

Because of the predominance of Confucian culture and institutions, the economic aspect of Sino-Korean relations has not traditionally been most important. This is changing, however, as South Korea in particular and post-Mao China have both been striving to achieve higher levels of economic development. As for North Korea, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left China as its only major ally. Yet since 1992, China has been cultivating friendly relations with South Korea as well. This is a far cry from the dictates of Communist ideology and from the days of the Korean War (1950–1953), when the People's Republic of China intervened on the side of North Korea.

That China now seeks good relations with both North and South Korea augurs well for Sino-Korean relations in the twenty-first century.