The Uniqueness in Korean History

Located in the northeastern corner of the Asian continent, the Korean peninsula shares a land border with two gigantic neighbors - China to the north and Russia to the northeast - and to the southeast, it faces another influential neighbor, Japan, across the Korea Strait. From a historical perspective, in most cases, such a peculiar geographical location determines much of the political, social, economic, and cultural systems of a nation, often in a negative way. For that reason, the conventional Western knowledge on Korean history is often restricted in the dark period of modern Korean history, particularly its victimization at the hands of bigger, more dominant neighbors. Some examples might be Korea’s annexation by Japan in 1910, an arbitrary division of the peninsula into two zones – Soviet U-nion-controlled North and U.S.-controlled South - in the 1940s, and the Korean War in 1950, in which the United Nations military forces (led by the United States) fought for the South a…