Korea- The "True Nation of Food Delivery"

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What?

The term "Baedalue Minjok", is an ancient term meaning "The people of the Baedal". Basically, that's what the ancient Koreans called themselves to elevate themselves among the other ethnic groups. Baedal, is the nation in which Hwanung came down from Heaven and made. (Remember Creation of the Nation?)

Well, that shouldn't get confused with "The people of delivery" or "fast delivery". South Korea is one of the few countries where you can get McDonald's delivered to, well, almost anywhere in the country. And an app/company,  "배달의민족" (The people of Delivery), has the list of almost all restaurants in the nation, that has delivery service. No interest. 20 million people have downloaded the application.

See, many people in Korea like to have food delivered. It's usually a free service, and others, well a free service if you order more than a certain amount of cash. (McDonald is 30,000 Won, or around $30 USD)

You know those Korean-Chinese restaurants across Koreatowns in LA, NY, Vancouver and Toronto? Well, they're one of the popular choices for delivery, even if many people just eat it at the restaurants.

Anyways, I'll give out more tips about restaurants, and how their services are awesome here in Korea.

And don't forget for pizza.

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Oiljang 오일장: Korea's Unique Food Market

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Wait. It's already the 27th of October? How many days have passed since my last post... oh.
Well, I'll do my best to come back on schedule... But this is all I could post for now. Sorry!

This market is not made out of oil. And no, it is not a economic race for gas companies. Oil means 5 days. And I'll explain where that name came from. 

오일장, or the 5-day market, is a tradition that continues to this day on many countrysides across the nation. It is a place, in which a bunch of people selling food... sells food every five days. They are individuals, who stay for hours on a stool or sitting on newspaper, selling things.

Photo from the Korean Tourism Organization (한국관광공사), a government-based institute

Oiljang originated from salesmen who didn't know the calendar thousands, and I mean thousands of years ago, and decided to meet every 5 days.

Personally, I can describe the people selling food on these street markets very kind. Without measuring weight, they always give extra food (And once gave me tons of free food :D). This is called "정", or Jung. It is something similar to the English term "Sympathy", however the same thing done to strangers. "정", has no other word for it in any language on Earth. It is a simple, Korean term. And that's one thing I love about Korea.

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Korean Last Names Explained

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Korean last names. The first thing that comes to your mind: Kim. This is no surprise, as 21.6% (in 2000), according to the Korean Census, had the last name Kim. However, this is because of many ancestries in the Kim last name. Let's look into that.

Blue: Kim    Green: Lee    Orange: Park    Red: Choi    Purple: Jung    White: Other
Korea Stats 2000/Wikipedia (CC)

Many surnames have many ancestries in them. Uncommon surnames usually have one ancestry, like mine, Moon, which is the 23rd most common last name in South Korea (with 0.8 percent!). Then, in one ancestry, it may be divided into groups, known as 파 (Pa). It is usually founded by a person who leaves the 본관 (Bongwan, the place where the ancestry was started).

The most populous family, the Kim family, has a bit of history connecting to Korea's neighbors.

Many people with the surname "Kim" came from the Southeast side of the peninsula. Many Kim ancestries there are interconnected to one huge Kim ancestry, that founded the Shilla Dynasty.

Since many Japanese are thought to be of Korean descent, as the latest Korean immigration to Japan being in the 1940's, some Japanese "received" the last name "Kim" from former dynasties of Korea. Some are just descendants of the Koreans who immigrated there. It's complicated; in the 5-6th century Southern Korean dynasties discovered the land of Japan, taught them some stuff, in which the Japanese modified them into their own version (such as Karate and Sushi). That's when Japanese people became more closer to the other East Asians and shared their culture.

If you look at the Northern tip of North Korea, where it was occupied by many Korean and Manchurian Dynasties, South Manchuria was finally occupied forever by Joeson Dynasty of Korea in the 1400's. The Manchurian people who lived there at the time were "culturally mixed" with the Koreans there and became part of their ethnic identities. Many people then were considered to become a barely-known level of society between slaves and commoners, in which most of them were butchers. Off topic again, anyways in the Korean History Recorders, with many books recorded by royal historians at the time, shows in the 1400's, King Sejong the Great (Who made the Korean Writing system), gave some South Manchurians the last name of Kim. That's why, near the borders of North Korea, the People's Republic of China has many citizens with the surname Kum/Gum. 

Onto the Lees. it's pronounced as "E" in South Korea, because of the new pronunciation rule in the 60's and 90's, while North Korea still uses "Rhee". Yang is Liang, et cetra et cetra.  And the rest is too complicated for me to say.

But I can tell you a bit about my last name, Moon. With about 300,000~400,000 people with the last name, its only ancestry, the Hampyung Moons, originated in Hampyung District, Naju City, in Jeonla Province, founded by Dasung Moon, who later became one of the highest officials in Baekjae Dynasty. I'm 48 generations apart from him. 

The story of the Moons goes on like this. When the mayor of Naju was "playing" in the creek, he heard a baby cry. Soon, he discovered a little boy with really, really white skin (no offense!), and decided to raise him. Since the little boy was so good at recognizing most objects, his last name became Moon, which comes from Moonhwa, made up of two words, "Culture Flower". So, Moon=culture? Anyways, the Moons are divided into 6 groups, in which two of them went to the Island Province that used to be part of Jeonla at the time: Jeju Island. One group, the Namjaegongs, made by the great-great grandson of Dasung Moon, settled in Daejung, the Southwest corner of the island. And the Choongjaegongs, descendants of Ikjum Moon, probably the most famous Moon in Korea because he let cotton seeds enter into Korea (which was considered illegal in at-the-time Chinese dynasties, because they said that they wanted to keep their awesome culture inside their lands), and later Japan, settled in another part of Jeju. I said "another part", because I belong in the Namjaegongs and barely know it, through my friend who went to school with me in that island. And my grandfather lives in Illgwa Village, Daejung, which has the highest percentage of the Namjaegongs, so no wonder I know that fact. 

And also, some ancestries are "descedant" ancestries of some East Chinese ones, but since East China doesn't have one language but a lot, who cares? There's a lot of Ancestry group educational centers and meetings, too.

Summary:

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Chaebols, Explained

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If you finish reading this post, you would know why this took so much time. Also, I took Samsung as an example in this post.

Chaebols, whether is an international news or news in Korea, appear onto the news headlines these days. But before I can talk about all of this, what is a "Chaebol"?

You know how almost all large Korean companies are family companies? We call the families Chaebolga, (재벌가). The members of it are the chaebols. Why does Korea have so many family companies that are rich? Koreans have this "Family ideology", so it was like starting in the 1500's, one ancestry lived in a town and another prominent ancestry in another town. Some, or most Koreans love to keep their things in the family. And to avoid huge amount of taxes, many chaebols spread their wealth to their relatives, and give them high spots on their companies. Also, many wealthy people want to "keep the wealth among their families" and improve relations between chaebol families, so in order to do this, they usually have one chaebol son get married to another chaebol daughter from another company.

Wait, before you see the map below, the reason there is Samsung Electronics but also Samsung Cars is because of less tax payments, so many children to give the companies to and relatives splitting off to make another Chaebol family line. Samsung Group is a group of companies under the Lee family, but isn't really a company itself. And in Korea, the Chaebol family is usually in the Chair's family, not the CEO.

This contributes to why eleven Chaebol companies are all interconnected, based on Samsung's founder Lee Byung Chul;

Long story short Lee Byung Chul made sure that their children were married to children of other major companies and officials of governments. From this part the post is all about the family tree, so if you don't want to read it, you can close the window.

AND SERIOUSLY, DON'T COPY THIS STUFF ONTO YOUR OWN BLOG. Except for expeddi, where I got the family tree photo from.

 Lee Byung Chul had two half-Japanese children we don't care about, and 8 children that became really wealthy people. The eight children are: Male: Gunhee, Changhee, Manghee. Female: Myunghee, Dukhee, Soonie, Sookhee, and Inhee. Notice how all these people's names end with "hee": most Korean siblings have at least one letter (English equivalent are syllables) in their name that their brothers and sisters have.

Son Gunhee:

Relations with Joongang Newspaper Group: Lee's son Lee Gunhee, who got to be the Chair of Samsung Group, was married to the daughter of Joongang Newspaper Group founder, in which one of his three sons became the chair of Joongang News and the other two sons were jealous (or given from his father) and founded Bogwang Group, another Chaebol group.
Relations with Daesang Group: Gunhee's son Jaeyong, who's going to take over Samsung Group when he dies, marries the daughter of the Chair of Daesang Group. Jaeyong's wife and her sister are the largest stock holders of the largest group in Dae
Relations with Donga News Group: Gunhee's daughter marries brother of Donga Chair.

Son Manghee: Received CJ Group from Father

Son Changhee: Received Saehan Group from father

Relations with Dongbang Group:  Changhee's son Jaegwan gets married the daughter of Dongbang Group's Chair. 

Relations with Life Group (Bankrupt in 1990's): Changhee's daughter Hyejin marries the son of former Life Group Chair

Daughter Myunghee: Received Shinsaegae Group (Which made the largest department store in the World) from her father

Daughter Sukhee:

Relations with LG Group: Sukhee was married to the brother of the Chair of LG

Daughter Inhee: Received Hansol Group/ Seperated from Samsung, and had 5 children and 12 grandchildren.

Phew. This took a long time because I was really tired last night and I wrote like once sentence an hour. Sorry!

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Religion in Korea

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Religion. In Asia, there's radical Islam in the West, and sometimes radical Buddhism in the South East. Christianity is very unknown in China, however the religion is very different in the Korean Peninsula. Let us look into Korea's religion.

In North Korea before 1948, the place had freedom of religion. But now, there is barely freedom of religion, except for one, where North Koreans believe Kim Jung Un and his daddy and granddaddy does not poop and is a god.

Shining Kim Il Sung- NamuWiki/ (CC) 

Religion in South Korea is, well, has more things to explain.

First of all, Korean Protestants and I think Muslims do not participate in traditional Korean events, like remembering someone who died on his/her death day, et cetra. Catholics and Buddhists participate, though. Traditional beliefs tied with Confucianism and all sorts are not considered religions.

South Korea, according to a 2005 census, is 46.5% No religion, 22.8% Korean Buddhism, 29.2% Christianity (18.3% Protestant, 10.9% Catholic), and the leftover 1.7% are diverse minority religions such as Islam and Hindu.

Buddhism came into the Korean Peninsula in the 6th century and became the national religion of many dynasties until 1392, when the Korean Confucian-believers founded the Joeson dynasty. Buddhism was kind of modified into a type of Buddhism called "Korean Buddhism". It spread around the world, and there are less than 10 Korean Buddhist temples in the Czech Republic. (Simply saying this because I had to study about the Czech Republic in a school project years and years ago.)

Catholicism, just like in other nations, is directly connected to the Vatican City. However, Protestant Christianity is way more complicated, as you can basically make your own Protestant religion in one second. Also, there are hundreds of scam Protestant Christian religions in Korea, and they belong in a group called "사이비 종교" (Psyee-bee Jonggyo). If you heard of the Sewol Ferry disaster that happened in Korea a year ago, the former C.E.O. of the company was a leader of one of these strange religions- 구원파 (Guwon-pa, Miracle Group), in which they claim that they know when they were "saved by god" by the day, hour and minute. However, not all protestant groups are like this. Some protestants didn't participate to behead statues of Buddha in the 80's and 90's. The people who did those things were radical protestants.

For protestant groups that exist in America in Europe, the major three groups are Presbyterianism Church (장로교회), Methodism (감리교회), and the Baptists (침례교회). 

There are 40,000 Korean nationals who are Muslims, and there is a larger population for foreign Muslim labor workers. Same as Hindu. 

As of overseas Koreans, Korean Buddhist temples were built (There's actually one in Metro Vancouver), and quite a lot of Catholic and Protestant churches that usually has like 1 English mass and the rest is just in Korean. 

St. Andrew Kim Korean Catholic Church, Metro Vancouver

And that's it for Korea's religion.

Contact me at: thekoreanstory.outlook.com

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Dialects/Regions of Korea Explained

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Dialects of Korea. Like the U.S. or the U.K., it is the same language however sounds different in many of their areas. However, to South Korea, one of the most homogeneous nations of the world with 95% being ethnically Korean, it may be different.

From the South:
Jeju (제주) Culture: Gray, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province
Jeonla (전라) Culture: Gold, South and North Jeonla Province, Gwangju City
Gyungsang (경상) Culture: Red, South and North Gyungsang Prov, Busan, Ulsan, and Daegu Cities
Choongchung (충청) Culture: Blue, South and North Choongchung Prov, Daejeon City, Sejong Special City
Gyungi (경기) Culture: Dark Green, Gyungi Province, Seoul Special City, Incheon
Gangwon (강원) Culture: Purple, South Korean and North Korean Gangwon Proivnces, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Region
Hwanghae (황해) Culture: Orange, South and North Hwanghae Provinces
Pyungan (평안) Culture: Lime Green, South and North Pyungan Provinces, Pyungyang, New Yiju Free Trade City, and Jagang Province
Hamgyung (함경) Culture: North and South Hamgyung Provinces, Nasun Special City

Korea has 9 different dialects with its own regional culture, dialect, and stereotypes. The languages, no matter how strange one person from Jeonla can speak, I bet that a person from Hamgyung province could understand it. In fact, Jeju is the most culturally different province from the rest of Korea. That's why there was a secession movement in the 50's. (But seriously, they can understand Korean fine, and I'm a Jeju person myself, so...) The provincial borders are very clear; the Jeonla dialect exists in the Jeonla Provinces, Gyungsang dialect in the Gyungsang Provinces, and so on. In fact, the reason there are the "North and South provinces" in South Korea, is because one nation is hard to govern with only 5 provinces (At the time Jeju was part of Jeonla.), and they thought the reasonable number would be around 10.

Some regional stereotypes I know of is putting dangke (당께) on every end of a sentence said by a Choongchung person, a dialect sounding similar to South Japanese (but many of their ancestors came from Korea) in Gyungsang, and a bunch of unknown words used by Jeju commoners.
There is also a regional variety in Kimchi, Korea's national food, which makes a great side dish, Very strange, but if you compare it to comparing German beer to Czech beer or a bunch of types of German beer INSIDE Germany, that's probably not an uncommon thing to see in the world.

Nowadays, the Gyungi cultural popularity is growing in South Korea, and the Pyungan cultural popularity is like 100% in North Korea.

In the old days where Korean dynasties used to control a huge chunk of Manchuria, (Northeast China), some North Korean cultures were there, too. Now, the place is just full of Han Chinese, Manchurians, and a Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Mao Zedong loved Koreans, too.

Also saying, the Hamgyung Culture actually is a mix of Korean and Manchurian ethnicity. The Southern half of Manchurian ethnicity is known to be "sucked in" by Korea.
Good night.

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Why is Seoul's Metropolitan Area so Populated?

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Hello Internet,

Buildings with N Tower in North Seoul right behind them 

If you look at a list of the most populous metropolitan areas of the world, Seoul was 4th last year (2014) and now, they passed Delhi and became the third most populous metropolitan area of the world, at around 26.1 million! And that's MORE than half of South Korea's population of 51.4 million in August 2015. So why is Seoul's metropolitan area so populated?

Photo of Park in 1963

It all has to do with Korean urbanization since 1961, to be exact. See, there was a coup in 1961 led by Chung-hee Park, who later retired from the army and became "president" (He was a dictator for 18 years; being the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, AND 9th president!). Park, who was the father of current president (and the first to be a female), Geun-hye Park, was known for his huge violence and the killings of tens of thousands of Koreans, as well as aggressive anti-communist policies that still effects many Koreans today. However, without his really bad labor policies and the suffering of many laborers including young girls, South Korea couldn't have become the economic giant it is now today. Oops, off topic. (I'll explain this in another post.)

Anyways, former "president" Park made the Korean agriculture market smaller and made many farmers lose jobs and come up to Seoul, where there were plenty of minor jobs you barely could live with.

South Korea was (and is) a VERY capital-based nation; Seoul is the largest, most wealthiest, the most economically developed... almost anything you can say about. In fact, that might "go around in circles" and the "most developed" part might be the reason why more and more people are coming to live in Seoul. And as the young children in the start of the Republic of Korea (I meant the late 1940's) were getting older and older, they began to quit their city jobs and go back to their hometown for farming. And now, that's what almost everyone's doing: coming up to Seoul following their parents or when they go to college, living there until you're old enough to quit your job, and go back to the place you lived when you were young. No wonder Korean stereotypes show only old people in farming towns. However, things might change; a lot of parents in Seoul are starting to send their children to farming towns to study. Who knows what's going to happen next? You decide. In the future, that will be just another topic for me to write about.

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