Month: March 2020

Topic:

The focal point of my paper will be the analysis of different social structures throughout the three Kingdoms of Korea (Baekche, Goryeo, and Silla). There will be a heavy emphasis on the Silla Kingdom, as I find it the most interesting of the three kingdoms. I believe that throughout the course we have discussed each of the three Kingdoms in-depth, and have gone over various sources that have given us a great deal of information about society during that time period. It would be interesting to see how society and the social structures have changed as you move from one Kingdom to the next. Moreover, it would look at different aspects of social structure, as an example in Hangul depending on who you are speaking to you have to use a different way of speaking. Through this paper, one would be able to see the impact that social standing has is prevalent throughout Korean history and even in modern-day. The reason that there will be a heavy emphasis on the Silla Kingdom is that I find the sacred bone structure particularly interesting. However, seeing how the social class structure moves from Baekche, Goryeo, to Silla would be interesting. 

Sources: 

1. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-koreas-bone-rank-system-195711
   1. I would use this as a source to my knowledge about the bone rank system that existed through the Silla Dynasty.  The author of this book is a history teacher who specializes in Asian studies, although it is not a journal or a book I still believe that it holds a good deal of credibility in the basic information that it gives. 
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23720147.pdf
   1. This is an article that discusses the relationship between the Hwarang and Buddhism. I have only skimmed the first couple of pages and glanced over the references but currently, it seems like a reliable source. 
3. https://www.hierarchystructure.com/korean-royal-hierarchy/
   1. This article briefly goes into detail about the different social structures that existed in each of the Three Kingdoms.  This website doesn’t have a clear author, so I would most likely use it for brief background information. 
4. The Art of Ancient Korea (a book)
   1. I haven’t read over the book, however, it seems to have quite a few chapters on the rise of the Silla Kingdom, so it would be useful to help gather more information on the Kingdom. 
5. A concise history of Korea:
   1. This is our textbook, I plan on using it for foundational knowledge in the essay. I know that it is a good source to use because it is being used as a textbook in our class. The reason I plan on doing this is that it gives me a good amount of information on each of thee different Kingdoms

These past two weeks have been very hectic, first with Spring Break which was nice because it was the first break that I haven’t worked so it felt like an actual break. However, when we came back I believed that I would have more time to hang out and meet up with my friends before we would inevitably be sent home. It may sound ominous but the fact that we would be leaving campus was inevitable because with how small our campus is the coronavirus if it got to campus would spread like wildfire. However, it is definitely a disappointing end to my sophomore year. I wish  I could see more of my friends, and I wish that I didn’t have to wish my friends who are seniors goodbye like this. 
Although it’s hard to look at the positive during this time of trouble, one must think on the bright side. Comedians have a lot more to work with (even though it isn’t always funny), we get to do our laundry for free now, and we get to sleep in our own beds.

This week we spent the majority of the time focusing on what we were going to do once we are all sent back home. I think this class, in particular, made it very that although things will change, we will try to retain some type of normalcy, this was really helpful and I hope that my other classes continue in the same manner. This post isn’t very long because it has been a hectic week, but I wanted to say I enjoyed the class and working with everyone in it.

We talked about Open Education Resources during class this week. This was an interesting topic for many reasons, as we also talked about copyright. I knew that copyright was something that we all had to be aware of when copying music, scanning a book, however, I didn’t know how much Disney cared about copyright until this class. One of my friends paints Disney princess portraits for people and sells them on Etsy, and I am now very concerned that Disney will go after her for copyright. However, focusing on the Open Education Resource if our college is able to develop a full Open Education Resource that all students are able to use, attending classes will become a lot cheaper. Many Professors have us purchase textbooks that can cost up to $200, and it becomes expensive when you are taking 5/6 classes. I was super excited to hear that we do have an open online resource, even though it doesn’t relate to my classes specifically.

The topic of the week is Buddhism in the Korean peninsula. The origins of Buddhism in India during the 5th and 4th BCE. It spread to China when Mahayana Buddhism traveled to China in the 1st century CE, however, it was not originally very popular. Although the first documented entrance of Buddhism to Korea was around the 4th century, it clearly existed before then.

Buddhism was adopted by Koguryo before Paekje also adopted the religion. After its appearance in Paekje, it also spread to both Silla and Japan. The monk who trained Prince Shotoku came from Koguryo, not Paekje. This is unusual because of Paekje, is the Kingdom that has been working on spreading Buddhism throughout Korea.