South Korea has 2000 years of recorded history!
The legendary beginning date of the Korean people is said to be 2333 B.C.E., when Tan'gun established the kingdom of Choson. To distinguish it from the later Choson Dynasty, it is now referred to as Ko ("Old") Choson.
It was said that a bear and a tiger had pleaded with Hwan-ung, a son of the heavenly king, to transform them into human beings. However, they need to follow his instructions that includes a hundred-day seclusion to avoid sunlight and the ingestion of a bunch of mugwort ( ssuk ) and twenty pieces of garlic. The tiger gave up half-way through. In the end, only the bear managed to persevere throughout and achieved the transformation. This bear is then turned into a woman who then married Hwan-ung, and their offspring was Tan'gun.
The Old Choson period is then divided into the Tan'gun, Kija, and Wiman periods respectively. Shortly after the fall of Wiman Choson in 108 B.C.E. and the establishment of Chinese military control in the north, the Three Kingdoms (Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche) period began. In 668, Silla unified the Three Kingdoms.
Silla's decline in the late ninth century brought about the rise of Later Paekche and Later Koguryo. Wang Kon, who established the Koryo Dynasty, eventually reunified the nation. A series of Mongol invasions that began in 1231 devastated the country in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. General Yi Song-gye overthrew Koryo and established the Choson Dynasty in 1392. Despite invasions by Japan and Manchu (Qing) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively, Choson continued for more than five centuries until 1910, when Japan colonized the nation for three and a half decades.
After which marks the beginning of the Korean war in 1950, where a fateful line was drawn on the 38th parallel in Korea. Korea was divided into two separate states, the Republic of Korea (South) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North).The war ended on year 1953 with millions of Korean died, many were left homeless, industries were destroyed and the entire country was heavily demoralized.
Over the past 30 years, South Korea has undergone rapid industrial growth. It has emerged as a strong economic power having a trillion dollar economy that is the 4th largest in Asia and 13th largest in the world.
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