All posts by Yumi

Continuous GRSJ in modern Korea

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It is quite depressing to know that there are a lot of issues going on in Korea regarding to GRSJ issues. To sum up my blog posts, I will introduce or get in slight touch with concurrent GRSJ issues happening in South Korea right now.

Gender:

  • Salary: there is difference in income of male and female in South Korea. Male receive slightly higher income than female. From OECD, it showed that Korea has biggest difference among all the countries with 36.60 % in difference.
    • For this some males complain that females have a lot of breaks for periods, pregnancy and such but the gap is to great for all the breaks. Moreover, not all the companies are having these kind of breaks but only good ones so it is harder to receive complain from male.
  • Roles in family: referring to Andrea’s blog post regarding masculinity. The program mentioned shows difference of male and female roles in household very clearly. Not all the fathers were able to cook for the children. It is because Korean families still believe that female should do housework at the same time as her own work.
    • It is inclining to change since male start to help out with household but it is very seldom and sometimes it doesn’t work out as it was planned at first.
  • Date payment: for this one, a lot of female believes male earn more so they should pay. It tends to change but still a lot of people are thinking male should pay the fees along with buy them gifts.

Race:

  • There are still ongoing race inequality happening in Korea. Younger generation accepted and communicate with them as they are one of them but older generations are not.
    • One of the example was recent photos that I saw. Korean old grandpa was swearing and trying to use physical violence toward Turkish who were selling ice cream in front of the building. He was swearing and saying how there are no jobs for younger ones but he is taking one of spots that Korean guys could have taken.
    • There is another example where Muslim guy works in local market of Korea and Korean people keep asking him why is ISIS doing such horrible thing. Asking him to stop them as if he was part of it just because he is Muslim.

Sexuality:

  • This one is quite hopeful. Recently, there were a lot of videos regarding to seem like gay couples walking down the street and seeing the reaction of citizens. One of the worst response was from Russia. From Korea, WiKiTree (website) did the similar experiment in Seoul’s street.
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqH9AaFcvUo
    • This is the video showing the reactions of the citizens. They were mostly starting or glancing once in a while but there was no saying or violence used upon them. It was quite interesting since I thought Korea was quite conservative but we are getting better.

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This is the illustration that I wanted to share before I wrap up. It is from SantaDesign.com and showing how current Korea is changing. From Korean flag, if you take away few things, it become Japanese flag. It shows how current government is not doing right job in ruling and things become like what Japanese government want us to be. On the bottom, it shows in Korean saying “plans of them”. It is quite fascinating and directly touches on how things are going!

There are just so many things to discuss but these are some of the things that I wanted to mention before I wrap up the whole blog post. Thank you for all who’s been reading the blog post. Hope you all enjoyed.

If you have any comments then just leave one~

Broken flowers of the past – Enforced Sex Slaves in Korea

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# ATTENTION: today’s topic is quite sensitive to some people. It can be offensive, uncomfortable and depressing. If you are not willing to read this post, then I am not forcing you.#

Petals or flowers…. We do know that flower is one of commonly used symbolism to describe women. Why are flowers used to symbolize the women? I think it is because flower is weak (compare to other plants), visually appealing and how flowers attract bees when they bloom? That is also similar to girls becoming women. After it blooms, it will naturally cease and create seeds to spread.

Most women in Korea during Japanese colonization believed they will have perfectly normal lives same as what their mothers, grandmothers, grand-grandmothers lived. Marrying a man, having children and becoming old to see grandchildren and die surrounded by families. But these were shattered when Japanese government thought of something incredibly, outrageously inhuman act.

Japan participated in a lot of wars, including WW2. Whenever wars happen, government allowed soldiers to rape women whether they were young or old. In Nanking Massacre that happened in 1937, soldiers killed numerous citizens and captured women alive. They killed women, too when they were done raping them. Realizing that killing women after raping them is quite inefficient, they thought of new idea. The idea was to create station in places where wars were happening and place women in those stations to become sex slaves….

Of course, they wouldn’t let Japanese citizens to participate in the station. Instead, Japanese government started to put out fake information throughout the villages to collect women. The fake information was mostly the “jobs” that women could easily do to help male in wars. Some examples were nurse, cook, and many others. When women came into sign up for the job, government promised to send the money to the family or pay money to her. Women or girls believed those words and left home, families to do “work”.

It was really lucky for some women to stay in Korea. Most of them were taken to foreign countries where they know nothing of.

…

Then they were raped by soldiers. They shouted out in resistance, tried to run away from this place. But they couldn’t. If they resisted, they were beaten up severely and raped numerous times. In small room where women can just lay her back down, sometime more than 50 soldiers came to rape the women in small room. They were given only few condoms entire time to prevent HIVS or any sex related diseases. One of survivors even said they had to wash condoms to reuse in attempt to prevent illness. But obviously it is not enough to prevent from illness or getting pregnant.

If women do get illness and become pregnant, they blame women for not acting right and punished or even killed for this. If women tried to run off and caught, they call all the women and killed caught women inhumane way in front of all the people. One of the known way that I read somewhere was to roll the women in spiked board from end to end and cut off her head when she reaches the other end. If pregnant, soldiers put heated metal up to vagina to cause abortion.

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One of the victim is lady above. Looking at her stomach, we could see various stamps. It is all from Japanese soldiers who put burning metal on women’s stomach to punish their wrong behaviour along with recognition who she is.

…

After the war ended, some women were fortunate enough to return to their own country to find the family. But not all of them are lucky enough to return but to remain in unknown country with unknown people, language and environment. However, it wasn’t even fortunate for the women who returned to Korea. Since family made them disgrace of the family and never acknowledge them. It is quite depressing to see how they are treated as disease if they returned.

Japanese government who planned all of this and let the event to happen is still denying the fact that they are the ones who caused it. Women or girls who were now called as “Enforced sex slaves” become old ladies and still just wait for sincere apologies.

Writing regarding to this topic is just horrific and blood boiling. I still don’t know a lot about this topic and don’t know how to describe all the events that happened but this is what I can possibly do to describe. If you have any ideas, comments or want to share your knowledge. Please do.

#Adding on to this post, I saw recent Korea’s news that Japanese government is willing to apology and pay to Enforced Sex Slaves but that is not until the statue to memorize Enforced Sex Slaves were removed. Don’t you all think this is just ridiculous?

위안부 평화비 소녀상 (서울=연합뉴스) 진성철 기자 = 제1000차 일본군 위안부 문제 해결을 위한 정기 수요시위가 14일 서울 중학동 주한 일본대사관 앞에서 열렸다. 이날 제막된 위안부 평화비의 소녀상이 조용히 일본 대사관을 바라보고 있다. 2011.12.14 zjin@yna.co.kr/2011-12-14 17:37:52/

위안부 평화비 소녀상
(서울=연합뉴스) 진성철 기자 = 제1000차 일본군 위안부 문제 해결을 위한 정기 수요시위가 14일 서울 중학동 주한 일본대사관 앞에서 열렸다. 이날 제막된 위안부 평화비의 소녀상이 조용히 일본 대사관을 바라보고 있다. 2011.12.14(It is set in front of Japanese embassy silently staring at the building)
zjin@yna.co.kr/2011-12-14 17:37:52/

Japanese people are not even getting educated on this problems and they put up hilarious and mocking photoshopped statue to mock women who were raped by soldiers. They comment by saying how women were “willing” to give their body away to Japanese soldiers. It is very ignorant saying.

# when searching there will be more information of Enforced Sex Slaves in “Comfort Woman” but recently UN declared to use “enforced sex slaves” as right term to describe. #

Ones Forgotten

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Other artwork of mine. It is to show the lack of awareness of all the independence activists who risked their lives to give their future generation independence.

Other artwork of mine. It is to show the lack of awareness of all the independence activists who risked their lives to give their future generation independence.

Even though I said I will be focusing on concurrent events that are happening in Korea, I tend to slip into past event for some reason… Anyway, as I started to write about the past event, I will continue with past events that are related to GRSJ issues in Asia- South Korea.

When it comes to modern Korea, most intriguing yet well known event is regarding to Japanese colonization in the peninsula of Korea. There are various factors that Korea became one of colonized country in the world. First of all, it was given the chance for Japan to start flowing in. Korea at the past is like current North Korea. We didn’t have big exchanges happening since the one of the “governor” disagreed with accepting western culture or products into Korea itself. Probably due to fear that our traditional culture will disappear due to fusion made with other culture. Secondly, there was inner breakdown. Some of the governors believed that Korea wouldn’t have a chance toward Japan so they betrayed and “sold” the country to Japanese government. “Selling” the country includes giving the top secret about country such as the military information and weakness that they could possibly use to seize Korea. In result of those, on 1905 the forceful contract was made between Japanese government and Korean government which disadvantaged Korea government so much. Because contract that was made took over the control of Korean government’s right of diplomacy. From here onward, as many people are aware of this, Japanese government took over the whole country and they ruled it very very cruelly.

As diplomacy was held by Japanese government, they did whatever they like with the country. Japanese citizens came over to Korea to live since they were treated better in the country. Police or even Japanese citizens treated the citizens with cruelty. Women were always receiving sexual harassment; citizens were to be used violence with no reason. However, police let it be unless Korean citizens used violence against Japanese students. If caused harm toward Japanese, then they were punished severely. Due to this unfair treatment, some of the citizens started to revolt against the Japanese government.

They are called “Independence Activist” – they work to gain the freedom of Korea back from the hand of Japanese government. ­­­­They literally gave up on their life to help the life of citizens better in sense of less violation and others. They tried so heard to throw the government out of the country. But since the activists are minority member of the whole country (the ones who are actually leading the movement and planning the movement) so they were working in really tough environment. They were chased after by Japanese government, sometime if they were captured they will tortured inhumane way until their death. They had their families, friends and lovers but just because they wanted to see the freedom of the country, they worked with their life to go against the government.

Back to the point, with their numerous lives and efforts throughout the whole year, Korea finally gained the independence against Japanese government. People celebrated but did not remember much who were sacrificed behind the scene. Currently, a lot of students are not aware of the people who gladly died to gain the independence. Obviously, they do not remember female activists more than male activists. There is only proof of a photo who helped to gain independence but it is still lacking to verify every individual people who worked for the independence.

Education: What is right for our future generation? (part 2)

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Last time, I talked about Korean Education and how it is different from Western education. To summarize, Korean education is rigid style which base on the textbook and memorize. Contrasting to it, western education offers individual creative thoughts toward the certain issues or topic.

I briefly talked about Education in order to mention about the on going issue happening in Korea. To explain what this issue is, the current president of Korea decided to change the textbook of Korea, specifically History textbook.

What’s so special about it?

Well, until now, Korea used various textbooks; no fixed single textbook to be used in the education. So sometimes books covered slightly different information and focus points. But current president Park Geun Hye decided to change this and unify into single book. It sound pretty reasonable. But there are a lot of disagreement going on between students. Let’s see what are some agreements and disagreements of unifying history textbook.

Agree:

  1. Since there are various history textbooks (more than one kind), confusion can be caused upon students in learning history. It is because different publishing house include slightly different knowledge. (They have main topic to teach but it may vary upon which textbook they are using).
  2. It is believed that history should be taught in “neutral” perspective. Indicating that history should be taught in an objective standard.
  3. There are a lot of errors or mistakes made in the authorized textbooks. So the mistakes should be almost completely fixed in new textbooks.
  4. It is duty for us, governors to deduce the pressure on entrance examination. (Entrance examination is the exam that high school students take in order to go to university. Apparently, there is increasing pressure given to the students due to this examination getting harder.) Also, since there are a lot of textbooks covering slightly different information, students have to study all of them in preparing for examination.

Disagree:

  1. We should teach students in various and wider perspectives/ opinions so they are not slanted to single perspectives or opinions.
  2. The interpretation of history is just a part of study but it can’t become solid opinion.
  3. History can be made through debate but not solidly through opinions and interpretation. (Meaning, history can’ be decided and recorded according to one’s opinion or interpretation. But rather has to be debated to find one general idea)
  4. When it comes to history, when publishing textbooks, it could include views that may be biased/ prejudiced. (Because people share somewhat different perspectives toward single event or idea)
  5. Even though the publishing companies are independent, it doesn’t mean the published textbooks just get in to students’ hand without going through governments’ verification.
  6. For example, one of Korea’s Independent activists, Dr. Yoon Bong Gill is great example. In Korea and China, he was and is considered as one of the greatest activists who fought for the independence from Japan. Moreover, China’s most powerful authority mentioned single Chosun man (Korean man) did what China’s 100 thousand soldiers couldn’t do. On contrary, from Japanese government, he was mentioned as terrorist and murderer for killing their general. This shows how the words, phrases and sentences are decided through the which perspectives it is being viewed through. Moreover, it changes the perspectives of the students depending on what perspectives they are created to be viewed.

In present, opinions of citizens were quite competitive but it is inclined more toward disagreement.

Personally, I am more inclined to disagreement due to various reasons. First of all, as some of who went through IB program in my high school, I know that history is very sensitive topic to talk about. It is because history can be changed as the time flows by where they have more evidences been found with technological advancement and others. Moreover, history that we are currently learning may not be true. It may change completely because we know history is mostly based on the record that is left by winner” of the event.

The reasons that I disagree is:

  • Current textbook is anyway going through verification of Government of Education to check any inappropriate information included so why there is needs to create new textbook that is unified. –> Also could think it is waste of money.
  • Personally, I believe it is REALL IMPORTANT to view history in different perspectives rather than one single perspectives. History forms when different ideas come to form into one. (It is because history is mainly recorded events, people has different perspectives and view even though they are standing at the same spot at the same time.) So, going through various perspectives to create history book is VERY important.
  • It is true that examination is hard. How about making the examination easier since students are not only struggling with single subject, History but all other subjects.

What do you think? 

Education: What is right for our future generation? (part 1)

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Education in Korea…. What do you think of it?

As someone who experienced elementary school education and western side of education, I know how it is different. I felt it through my skin.

To be simple, Korean education is fixed and western is not. Fixed means no creativeness. Korean education does not require any creativeness nor personal thought. It is rather based off from the textbook that was given from the school and study only from it. You don’t need to know why it is like that or how it became like this but rather memorize just because it is on textbook and what teacher said. It was just recently when they started to ask about personal opinions and ideas toward certain perspectives or facts but it is still lacking to show individual self. Of course it doesn’t mean students in Korea do not have their own perspectives and ideas toward what they are learning.   Some do but not all of them. To me, when I was in elementary school in Korea. The way to study for the quiz or test was to memorize what is on the textbook and statistical number. For math, just memorizing equations so I could use them to solve problems.

For Western education, it is different. They do have some parts where you have to memorize some factual information but in class, teachers explain why it is like that through various activities that involve ourselves to experience or to show videos and others that is much easier to understand. In high school, doing science, we actually do dissection to see how and why the system is like and what is actually like. It is more intriguing, interesting and easy to memorize.

Not only from learning but also we know when communicating with teachers. In Korea, when you are to speak to teacher or the class is the time when teacher asks question to be answered from students. You do not just speak your ideas in but you raise your hands up to be picked to speak. Then you stand up to say it out loud. On the other hand, in western education, you are given any time to speak out loud about your ideas and freely interact with teacher and other students about the answer that you have. There is mostly not fixed answers but more of personal ideas and thoughts.

Even in university, this can be shown. Recently I saw interesting slideshow where it shows the difference in Korean and Western universities. When giving lectures, professors in Korea do not provoke questions but rather just say what he has to teach and facts that will be on test. For western universities, it is rather giving students questions or topics that will lead to natural conversation about the idea that students may have.

Both sides have advantages and disadvantages but these are main things that I felt was some what “Asianess” and basic knowledge on what I am going to write next.

What are some of your thoughts?

12 hours… 65 years

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If you are looking through recent news regarding to Korea, you will find something interesting yet rather depressing regarding to North Korea and South Korea.

To summarize, after long time, politicians had two different perspectives toward ruling the land of Korean Peninsula. One was communism and other is Democracy. Due to their different perspectives toward how to rule the peninsula, they decided to divide the peninsula into two half in order to rule as they believe what is good. This happened in 1945.

In 1950, North Korea’s government wanted to take over the whole peninsula so on June 25th, at 4am, invaded suddenly. This caused the whole peninsula to be in panic. All the males were taken to military to be trained to fight in war. According to the families that were separated, they mentioned how they will be separated only for 10 days but it ended up being 65 years.

Some people were separated due to male members being away for military and ending up not meeting them every again. Some people were separated while they were trying to evacuate as far as possible. Most of them were separated due to great amount of crowd trying to go toward south or north.

After the war paused and had treaty signed to have temporary peace, North Korea’s and South Korea’s government came together to let the separated families to meet together after a long time. There were times when this event paused due to continuous troubles and conflicts that happened between the countries. But in 2015, they actually made up to let dispersed families to meet after 65 years.

https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/posts/10153155009284071 (from Facebook page, Business Insider)

This is the video where it has the English subtitles and what I found interesting was the comment that was left under the video. They mostly commented on how it is cruel to separate the family and letting them meet for only 12 hours instead of helping them to live together.

From here, I was able to see how it was relevant to one of GRSJ 230 classes that we had talking about law oppression toward minorities. It was not “minorities” but the main reason that they can’t live together was one of the laws of North and South Korea. Causing the war itself it painful to the race but suppressing them so they can’t meet showed deeper feelings for people who can’t see each other even though they breathe same air, stand on same peninsula.

From Tuesday to Thursday, some fortunate people were able to meet their separated family. However, there were another issues that government couldn’t afford to let all the people to meet their separated family, that they had to draw certain people out.

Looking at this ongoing sadness and conflict, I hope peace to come fast.

“It goes ill with the house where the hen sings and rooster is silent.”

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“It goes ill with the house where the hen sings and rooster is silent.” (암탉이 울면 집안이 망한다) is one of famous proverbs that Koreans are aware of.

Why am I mentioning this in GRSJ blog? Guess what! This is the proverb that indicates significant gender inequality in past Korea.Let’s analyze that proverb to specify why this indicates “gender inequality”.

Hen represents female or female members in the family. Rooster, then obviously  represents male or male members in the family. The rooster itself is the one that makes noise in the morning to wake the people. Moreover, rooster is the leader that leads the hens. So it is symbol that shows when the female being noisy (a.k.a getting involved in politics or even family matter) was considered bad omen. Mainly because the role of women is being the “lady of the house”. Doing houseworks, chit and chat with neighbouring ladies of the house (in same status) and behave well and assist one’s husband well so they don’t lose their face in the society. So if they get involved in the “roles of male” then it was sign that the house would result in destruction.

Incident that is most closely related to this proverb happened to last empress of Korea, Queen MyeongSeong.

This is my own artwork that I produced from IB Art. This is based of the assassination of Queen Myeongseong.

This is my own artwork that I produced from IB Art. This is based of the assassination of Queen Myeongseong.

http://mariachung.wix.com/artisp201415#!final-artwork/c1m72 

The queen was assassinated by Japanese government, specifically soldiers who were ordered to murder the queen. She is one of the females that advocated different political issues of Korea to help the country to stay as the country itself. This involves the historical background regarding to invasion of Japan in 20th century. The queen was trying her best to rule out Japanese government from taking over Korea. Considering the queen being obstacle to their future aim, Japanese government set up Empress Assassination plan.

October 8th, Japanese soldiers invaded the castle and started killing massive amount of people who got in their way. When they finally reached to the bedroom of queen’s, they did most outrageous actions to the queen and assassinated her. This is called Eulmi Incident.  Currently, Japanese government is denying the fact that assassinated the queen (even with the eye witnesses) and trying to refuse to apologize.

Back to the point, Empress MyeongSeong was considered as one of the victims of “hen” that caused destruction to the household of hers, the kingdom of Korea. The cause was her passionate advocation in the politics. That’s what people think it is. I personally believe, that she was murdered due to the narrow perspective of ancestors toward women in general. If they have considered the opinions of the women and listened to them at least small bit, the history could have changed.

What do you think of it? Any opinions regarding to the proverb that I worked with since high school?

( The artwork is my own and it is created for the sake of gender inequality and the social injustice that happened in Korea 20th century. I consider this as one of interesting yet painful part of the history. If you want more information regarding to art piece, there is link up there that leads to my personal art blog or just leave comments~)

Creation of Hangul

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Invention of Hangul

Hello Guys~ Do you know what day is today? October 9th is the Hangul Day! Today is the day to commemorate the invention of Hangul and to give appreciation to King Sejong who spent his life to invent language from scratch.

Hangul is something that people all around the world consider as something significant, innovative and (well it is informal but) cool. It is because Hangul could literally pronounce the words or the sound. It is because of the vowels and consonants being flexible. With Hangul, you could pronounce or even write in Korean what we hear. It is also considered significant since it is registered in UNESCO.

HOWEVER, it is not appreciated as much as it should be! K-pop songs include English or English words and concurrent people create “internet language” to use instead of using beautiful words given for us to use. Before this gets too serious, I like to discuss invention of Hangul.

Oct 9th, the day where people commemorate the invention of Hangul and show appreciation to King Sejong

Oct 9th, the day where people commemorate the invention of Hangul and show appreciation to King Sejong.

Hangul, Hoon Min Jung Eum and Korean language… what do you think of them? Let me rephrase this. Do you know what Hangul is? or Hoon Min Jung Eum is?

I bet not many of you will recognize these two words. These two words are Korean languages: Hangul, 한글 and Hoon Min Jung Eum,훈민정음. If those two words are Korean languages what is the difference? The difference between these two are very simple. One is 1st edition and the another is  2nd edition.

Hangul is like 2nd edition book. Koreans use Hangul to communicate. It is formed with 21 vowels, 14 consonants, and 5 double constants. In order to form the word or letter, at least one vowel and consonants required. With these alphabets, various combinations of words could be made. Hoon Min Jung Eum is the 1st edition of Hangul. To put it simple,  Hangul is modified language of Hoon Min Jung Eum.

Going back to main idea, can you believe if there is GRSJ issues behind invention of Hangul/ Hoon Min Jung Eum?

To start with, the time we are going back to is Chosun Dynasty. . Chosun is the last dynasty which the king ruled the country. The time is set to 1418 to 1450 when SeJong the Great ruled the country.

At the time of Sejong the Great, there was status to divide the citizens in to different rank. The highest was the royal family: kings, queens. Then, it was nobles, commoners and slave or servants. Since Korea didn’t have its own language, so the country was borrowing the China’s language to communicate with others. Due to this, there were a lot of people who were illiterate just because of their status or gender.

Women and slaves were not considered as “human” so they were not educated at all. Some women and commoners were educated to certain level if they are fortunate enough but they couldn’t participate in any roles of the society in our case, “government”.(Some of fortunate cases were women in prostitution, child from decent family or commoners that had enough money to send them to school).  Due to this, it was hard to communicate with citizens to clarify the laws or basic knowledge.

In 1428, there was incident which the son killed his own father. Chosun, considering the respect to the elders most significant attitude, believed this was just one outrageous, uneducated act done as the child. SeJong the Great was in despair of how people were illiterate about some of important aspects of country. So he decided to create our own language that was easy to read and learn.

From here, to conclude SeJong the Great invented Hangul so it was easy for commoners, slaves and women to learn and use it in real life so that they were aware of what’s happening in the country, cause no disrespectful act through education.

In our point of view, we could say the invention of Hangul was resulted from gender inequality, social justice so everyone has equal rights and do not cause any ignorant crimes to be caused.

Hope you enjoyed~

*Some of the diagram to show how Korea’s websites and Google is celebrating the Hangul Day*

Hangul Day - Naver

Hangul Day - Daum

Hangul - Google

What do you think of it?

Personally, I think this is just fabulous. It is first time that I am realizing that King actually cared about “status difference” and “gender inequality” happening in the country and trying to let EVERYONE have education given. Not mentioned above but when he proposed of inventing the language, all the governors disagreed of this. Mainly because THEY DON’T WANT TO LET LOWER ONES (women or slaves/commoners) TO EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO OVERTHROW THEM. They just care about how citizens start to get education and realize A LOT of bribing or extortion done to them then they don’t stand a chance.

But, since SeJong the Great invented Hangul, currently we are able to have some freedom and difference from other Asian countries. To stay independent.

Giving a hint about future blog post topic – Independent activists actually used Hangul to communicate with each other secretly in order to gain independence from Japan in later century. This is when people realized the importance of having their own languages and used the most.