The Chinese Empire And Its Influence On Joseon Korea

By the time of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), the Chinese empire had heavily influenced Korea such as on the writing system and cultural identity. This was acknowledged in a memorial written in 1444 by a scholar-official under King Sejong that the Chinese empire had a huge impact on its surrounding nations. Like other well educated, this scholar-official wanted the Chinese empire to sustain its influence on Korea. Despite his beliefs, Joseon Korea developed differently overtime. Korea created its own writing system known as Hangul as well as building its cultural identity on top of the rich Chinese foundation. Moreover a rise of curiosity and openness towards non-Chinese cultures was also developed in the Joseon period.
One of the most significant
These elites, known as yangban disagreed on the independence of Korean culture due to their fear of losing power. This was evident when the scholar-official mentioned before criticized that only ‘barbarians’ such as “Mongolians, Tanguts, Jurchens, Japanese, and Tibetans have their own writings.” However, the creation of Korean writing systems was inevitable. Similar to Japan, after borrowing the Chinese writing language for centuries, in the mid-fifteenth century, Joseon Korea created and developed its own native alphabet, Hangul. The founding of the Hall of Worthies in 1420, sponsored by King Sejong, was an institution where scholars studied and published documents. Eventually, in 1443, Hangul was invented in this institution. The creation of a native alphabet was necessary because there was a conflict between the Korean language and the Chinese writing system. Korea had its own language however, since documents were all written in Chinese, the requirement for translation was inconvenient and inevitable. Yangban Children’s Board Games were great evidences to demonstrate the difficulty of learning to write in Chinese. These board games helped boys not only remember thousands of Chinese characters but also “Confucian classics and terms used for government offices and politics” in which they needed to be acknowledged in order
In terms of literature, poems were written by both genders however, similar to Japan regarding as kana, men wrote in Chinese characters whereas women wrote in Hangul. One example of a woman’s work was the Lady Hyegyeong’s Memoirs, written by the wife of Crown Prince Sado. Her memoirs were considered as a “political act” since she “wished to testify for herself and…others…and to persuade others of her testimony.” This literary work provided a great detail of the life of the royal family during this time. The invention of Hangul caused more women to publish their writings. As a result, three types of poems became popular during this time period. The shortest was called shijo, longer one known as saseol sijo and even longer was called gasa. Unlike the Chinese, Koreans did not use rhymes instead poetic language was depended on “alliteration and cadence”. Such small differences between the Chinese and Korean styles indicated the enhancing of Korean’s own identity. As literature started to develop away from Chinese culture, open-minded groups became to flourish and sought new cultures. In the eighteenth century, members from a group known as Northern learning group opposed the traditional bias towards the Manchus. This group was open-minded to new cultures. For example, Hong Daeyong visited Qing in