Culture of Korea

The people of South Korea place a significant emphasis on education, which can be seen from the disciplined study habits of Korean students and how the majority of the students attend gender divided middle and high schools. According to Jaeyoung Kim, who is a student from SKKU’s Global Dual Degree Program, the majority of middle school and high school students in South Korea attend either an all-girls or all-boys school. Sending their child to an all-girls or all-boys school is a popular choice…

"If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light” (p. 3). Nothing to envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick is a unique heartrending book based on the experiences of six North Koreans or defectors over the course of fifteen years. Over the course of this time, the defectors she chose to interview experienced the death of Kim II-Sung, the rise of his son Kim Jong-II to power, and a demoralizing scarcity that…

North Korean Government North Korea is located within the continent of Asia, and is viewed as the 99th largest nation in the world as it stands at a staggering 120,408 kilometers of land. The traditional religious views in North Korea are made up of Buddhism and Confucianism. North Korea is also known to practice that of Christianity. The language of North Korean is Korean, and is shared with that of South Korea. North Korean government is very patriarchal as the regime goes about creating and…

is the account of Kang’s early life spent inside of a North Korean prison camp with his family for ten years; Kang also describes the developments that take place after his release such as departure from North Korea, his voyage into China, and finding the means to finally arrive at South Korea. Kang will depart from both North Korea’s authoritarian state and the ideology he was forced to embrace from as early on in life as a child. Life for Kang in the prison camps started when he was a child…

liberalization of its cinema eventually led to a changing view of its Northern counterparts, since the people became more open to trying to approach North Korea. One facet of the political history focus is arguing that what drives the change in South Korean perceptions is that they are trying to bury the Cold War rhetoric that drove them to cut off ties with North Korea. Thus, they are now trying to reach out to the North. However, sources that focus on the social side of the conflict argue that…

North Korea has put the world in a very precarious situation, with the risk of nuclear war breaking out being front and center. They have constantly appeared in the news for various hostile activities, but their nuclear weapons program is the most prominent. It appears that North Korea acts with hostility towards all western countries, most notably by threatening the United States with nuclear weapons. What is even more terrifying, however, is North Korea’s hostility towards its greatest ally,…

law. Even though this caused thousands of people flocking to the capital of Wisconsin it is nothing compared to the protests of South Korea in and around the 1960 elections that would later be named the Minjung movement. At the point of the 1960 election the freedom and democracy of South Korea was at stake. Thankfully, due to South Korea’s strong protest culture and the unification of the Minjung movement…

this occurring seemingly every other month. North Korea, and its somewhat crazy lineage of leaders from the Kim family, has been a large topic of discussion ever since the early 1950s. Yet what is strange about this is that the Korean war is talked about very little in our culture. It’s very common to hear someone talk about World War 2 or even the Vietnam war, but the Korean war doesn’t…

Since its inception under the Kim regime, North Korea has been known to the world as an oppressive militaristic state that threatens to bring the world to its knees. This paper will be focused on the film The Propaganda Game (2015), directed and produced by Spanish film director Álvaro Longoria. During the time the film was being recorded, sanctions were placed on North Korea by the United States after North Korea cyber hacked Sony Entertainment over the film, The Interview. The Propaganda…

native South Korean culture better. This project helped me understand the South Korean culture and how it has impacted Aaron’s life thus far. Learning about Aaron’s wonderful journey as a military member in South Korea, to becoming a successful exchange student in the United States as a student here at Dordt College, was one of the most interesting series of conversations I have held with a fellow student here at Dordt College. Aaron has a true love and respect for his culture back home, yet he…