First of all, the readers should keep in mind that this information is based on my Korean history subject I took 10 years ago - since then, my brain cells have decreased with about 20,000 per day!! And this information is interpreted by ME, so may not be quite objective.


  • Information everyone knows

    • Korea is a peninsula located in 30-43N, 125-133E. The population is about 70 million in North and South Korea. The capital city is Seoul.

  • History and interesting points from me

    • Korea was established as a country about 4400 years ago. The Korean use our own language Korean. Korean is known as a branch of Ural-Altai language group, which is similar to Mongolian. Before 1443, we had borrowed Chinese characters for writing. But King Se-Jong and scholars invented Han-Gul which is Korean character. King Se-Jong was very interested in science, so encouraged scientists. As a result, sun clock, water clock, rain gauge, etc were invented at that time, and particularly, the rain gauge is known as the first in the world (Bullestine, 1993)--> I am pretty proud of this as a meteorologist!.

    Korea accepted Budism at about B.C. 400, and it was a national religion for more than 1500 years. Many of Korean art heritages are based on the Budism. However, the corruption of the religion and the politics brought the collapse of Corea dynasty (My country was known as Corea from that dynasty by Arabian traders), and a new goverment by the Lee was established, and the Lee dynasty chose confucianism as the new government philosophy. Confucianism was a main ideology from the 1300's to 1700's when Christianity was introduced. Because at that time confucianism respected arts, but look down other areas like science, engineering, business, music, art, etc, it was one of the basic reasons why Korea couldn't catch up the changes of the world in the 18C.


    (be continued if I get some enquiries about further ore more detail stories about Korea...)

  • Recommendable places for travel

    • Seoul
    Je-Ju Island
    Seo-Rak mountain and east beaches
    South coast and little islands
    Kyoung-Ju city --> the capital city of Shin-Ra dynasty for more than 1000 years from BC 400 to AD 900 and there are many cultural heritages in that city.

  • Recommendable food

    • As you might know, some of Korean food is pretty spicy. One thing I realized compared to other country spicy food was that Korean spicy food has red color because mainly we use red chilli for spicy taste.
    My favourite Korean food is
    Bul-Go-Gi -- Korean beef BBQ.
    Jab-Chae -- yummy noodle
    Man-Doo -- Korean dumpling
    Tang-Su-Yook -- Fried pork with sweek sour souce

    Check this link for more information: Korean food recipe

    IF you want to know more details, please contact eplim@earthsci.unimelb.edu.au with your questions. 

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