Korean language, temperament, dress, and cuisine are distinct and contrast sharply with those of their neighbors. The proverbial quick temper and volatility of the Koreans contribute to that rebellious spirit which has won them the sobriquet, "the Irish of the East," and has helped preserve their independent identity in the face of foreign encroachment.
Altough mountains and waters clearly demarcate the peninsula for its inhabitants, these natural features also produce more than a dozen topographic divisions in the South alone which make central control and communication difficult. The South is almost as mountainous as the North, with the major mountain chain running along the east coast and sending a spur southwestward down the middle of the peninsula. Hilly or mountainous terrain takes up at least three-fourths of the country's area. Offshore South Korea has more than 600 inhabited islands, several of them 60 miles or more at sea; the largest and most important of all is Cheju-do, a separate province in the East China Sea.
Despite such geographic diversity—or perhaps because of its potential threat to political unity—Korean rulers early imposed a remarkable measure of political and cultural homogeneity. Customs, behavior, dress, and even folklore have usually borne the standardized stamp of the capital as a result of the ruler's policy, which frequently included regular rotation or exile of court officials to all parts of the country. The basic belief of the North Asian population, shamanism—still widespread today—was carefully overlaid with higher religions from China, first Buddhism and then Confucianism, which were also used to support centralized control.
Although the systematic introduction of Confucianism as the court philosophy caused some friction with the vested interests of Buddhism when a new dynasty took power in the 14th century, it never led to any serious division of the country. Confucianism cultivated a uniform pattern of behavior and the sense of belonging to a homogeneous, if hierarchal, family of all Koreans. Many Buddhists continued to practice their faith in peace, as much later a small but rapidly increasing minority of Christians could, after an initial period of fierce official persecution. As in China and Japan, the people of Korea have been generally tolerant of all religions except when they appeared to be linked to the political ambitions of foreign powers.
The Confucian code had the most profound impact of all the aspects of Chinese civilization borrowed by Korea. Not only did it serve to provide the pattern governing Korea's relations with China but it also produced the ethical foundation and the hierarchic framework for Korean society. Korean etiquette came to be rigidly molded along Confucian lines, helping to curb and control the boisterous ebullience and rebelliousness of the Korean temperament so that in most circumstances Koreans strove to maintain a staid sobriety or a patient stoicism. Above all, Confucianism served to buttress the claims of the state.
The need of a strong, central authority apparently became manifest very early in Korean history, well before the adoption of Confucianism. It arose from centuries of struggle between the small entities which first contested control of the central and southern parts of the Peninsula. Such contests soon invited the intervention of outside powers. About the third century A.D., three clans of tribal groups, known collectively as Han, shared control of the tip of the peninsula. Their name survives today in the official title taken by South Korea; Taehan Minguk, (Great Han People's Country). One of these clans had close ties to, and probably support from, Japan. It was eventually defeated and incorporated into a kingdom of Silla built up by its rival to the east. When Japanese influence shifted to a second kingdom in the southwest, Silla sought Chinese aid against the kingdom and a third one to the north. During the three centuries of this "Three Kingdom Era" it became clear to the Koreans that their internal rivalries were being exploited to aggrandize foreign powers, a lesson they have not yet forgotten. Silla managed to unify most of the peninsula in the late seventh century with Chinese aid, and then forced CHina to withdraw its armies, allowing Silla to become tributary but autonomous, a Confucian younger brother.
Silla's success inaugurated a golden age with a brilliant efflorescence of art and learning under
