Thanks for doing this. Alright, here are my questions:

• The Joseon king was an absolute monarch, but why were so many kings dethroned by palace coups? Such things never happened in the Ming, but was relative common in the Joseon. At which point did the power of the ministers surpass the power of the king?

• In the Da Ming Hui Dian, it states that the founder of the Joseon killed his monarch and usurped power. In the first episode television drama of Jingbirok, it shows that during the reign of King Seonjo, that particular section of the Da Ming Hui Dian was amended and a grand ceremony was held for the occassion. What exactly did the amended text say (I cannot seem to find it) and was it really that important to the Joseon kings?

• To what extent was Buddhism suppressed during the Joseon? I have read conflicting views on this particular topic.

• I have read that after the Korean War, Syngman Rhee suppressed the Yi royal family for fears that they would challenge his power. Was there ever the possibly that imperial rule could be restored?

This one is specifically for /u/keyilan:

• So I've read online that the medieval Korean language was a tonal language, and that some aspects of these tones are still preserved in regional dialects. Is this true?

Why was christianity (and specifically the evangelist variety), so successful in South Korea?

I have seen arguments that the Japanese colonialism actually did some good for Korea (this is not coming from Japanese scholars either). They typically cite the amount of roads and railroads built, the land reforms, the increased land use efficiency, as well as the training and education that came along with the Japanese. They do not argue that colonialism was good overall, just that Korea had some positive things that came out of it. What are your thoughts regarding this?

Naturally, when people think of South Korea, they also think of chaebols like Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, etc. I see differing arguments as to where the chaebols took root, either during the Japanese colonialization, or following it. I wonder what your opinions are regarding the origins of chaebols, how much of their origins can be traced back to the colonial period?

How much of 박정희 origin story was true, and how much was more propoganda to give him legitimacy and provide a common connection between him and the poor people? For example, he said his mother attempted to abort him by leaping from a ladder when she found out she was pregnant because they were too poor to afford another child. What are your thoughts regarding this?

Thanks for doing this guys, i lived in Korea a few years ago and picked up a bit of Korea Language, a thing that i never could get a clear answer on why do Koreans have 2 sets of numbers? (il, ee, sam / hanna,tool,set)

Im sure i willhave more questions!! cheers again!

I recall reading about the South Korean regime at the time of the war being very corrupt, authoritarian and the like. Was that the case (and if so, how did such a situation come to be?) and were the UN forces (or perhaps rather the allied politicians) fully aware of this? As in someone high ranking/head of state/someone like that going "well defending the South against aggression is the right thing to do, I guess, but they are a bunch of shits", you get what I mean.

The war seems to gets framed (when it's not sadly forgotten altogether) as defending against the communist invasion (and then overextending the other way north) in popular/mine perception, but there seems to be little talk about - if you will excuse the terrible simplification - defending seemingly also bad guys against ostensibly worse bad guys. Or was the situation of the Cold War justification enough? This is all a bit wordy but I hope I got my vague question across.

Thanks for this AMA, first of all.

I have a few questions and I'd love to have you and your expertise answer them:

Is war the most realistic way to reunification in front of the strong polarization and supremacy goals in both countries? How damaged would SK be in the first few days of conflict?

How has humanitarian help to NK being seen in other East Asian countries? Was this ever affected by the suspicions or the regime's use of humanitarian resources to fuel militaristic projects?

Thanks in advance. Had to rewrite the post because of the 20 years rule. I hope this is acceptable now.

Kind of a weird question, but why is Korea so ethically homogenous? It's basically the only country in the region I can think of without an indigenous minority, and as I understand the language is perfectly intelligible across the entirety with the exception of Jeju. This is particularly strange to me because the country was more than one countries as recently as the Tang.

Second question, what effect did Hideyoshi's invasion have on Korea? I know about its effects in Japan and China, but presumably having the largest war in the world on one's soil would leave a mark.

Great looking AMA everyone!

In 1994 my dad, at that time serving in the Air Force, was sent to the Korean border immediately after the death of Kim Il-sung as the US believed that N. Korea would invade/attack etc. Did the world really think that North Korea would make good on threats to invade the South after the death of the first Kim? What was international response to his death?

How split was Korean society on Japanese colonisation? Were there many Koreans who supported it, and any who believed that Koreans were really underdeveloped Japanese as Japan claimed?

Was there a left wing in Korea aside from the Stalinists that Kim Il-Sung was part of?

Why did Korea not participate in the First Sino-Japanese War, even though it was being fought over Korea itself?

Is there any "historical background" for the racism against Korean people in Japan? Not implying that it can be justified, but just asking whether there's some root for it.

Does Korea have an indigenous religion?

Just how mechanized were the North Korean forces at the outbreak of the Korean War? What happened to these forces as the war went on? Did North Korean armor play a significant role in any encounters with American forces?

In China, there are numerous different dynasties that rule over the country. These are often used as historical benchmarks; is there anything similar when talking about Korean history?

In modern times, there appears to be definite propaganda bias against the North Korean regime in America, and much of the Western world. From what I've gathered, it's not without factual backing, but is there any way to easily separate propaganda about the North Korean state from fact? Or is the country too cut off from much of the world for that to be possible?

It's quite late here for myself, but I undoubtedly will have more questions about Korea later in the day. Should I edit my original comment or create a new one?

Finally, thank you for your time and (potential) replies!

What are the biggest debates and most significant schools of thought in your spheres of interest? How has the historiography developed?

During the Cold War, how did the economic and industrial support that South Korea received from the US compare to what other US allies in Asia, particularly Japan and the Philippines, received over the same period? How did these affect the Korean economic miracle?

My question is about Korea and China. China conquered and assimilated many areas adjacent to its original Han centre (or, in some cases, was conquered by and then assimilated other areas).

How come this didn't happen with Korea, considering its geographical proximity? Especially during the Qing Empire, as the Manchus lived right next door. Butt also before.

What were the relations between the Korean Peninsula and China during the early modern era?

What were some of the major incidents that led to the Korean War?

When North Korea became communist, was the general populace in favor of it? What were their opinions?

What are some good books to get a good understanding of the whole overview of Korean history?

Thanks for doing this panel?

I have a few questions on Balhae (발해), the "successor" state to Goguryeo and contemporary to Unified Silla. There doesn't seem to be much on them, but:

• what was society like in Balhae vs Silla? What were some important differences between the two?
• Even though Koreans seemed to have played an important part in the Kingdom, should we think of it as a Korean polity like Baekjae or Koryeo or should we think of it as a multicultural state with a strong Korean aristocracy?
• What happened to Balhae? Why were they not eventually incorporated into Silla or Koryeo (or visa versa, why hadn't Balhae to absorb the Koreans on the Pennisula)
• What books are out there for further reading on Balhae?

How similar was Japanese colonialism in Korea to European colonialism in the same period?

To all panelists, can you tell me anything you know about Ulleungdo? It's a cool little island, but so little information about it exists online.

To /u/keyilan, I have a linguistic background myself, so I've got a lot of questions.

Do you know of anything weird or interesting about the dialect spoken on Ulleungdo? As for the odd "tense" consonants of modern Korean, when did they develop, and do we know from what? Did earlier forms of Korean have three series of obstruents? Do you give any credence at all to theories of a genetic relationship between Korean and other language families? What about ancient areal relationships? I've heard from several sources that Korean and Japanese have freakishly similar syntax but completely different lexicons (aside from common Chinese loans) - is this true? When's the earliest that we get significant phonetic information about Korean? How far back can we confidently reconstruct Korean phonology? Finally, to give a sense of what Middle Korean looked/sounded like, could you give us an example of romanized Middle (or earlier) Korean text, with a romanized Modern Korean version after it? Examples of even earlier forms of Korean would be great too, as would modern divergent dialects.

Given how closed off North Korea is, what kind of source materials do you use to study what's going on there?

If Kremlinology was an inexact science I imagine Pyonyangology must be even more difficult.

How credible are the claims B. R. Myers makes in The Cleanest Race that chinilpa who were willing to work with the new regime were actually not really persecuted in North Korea -- that, if anything, they were even less likely to face judgment than in the south (not that the south was particularly vigorous in prosecuting them either), and many Japanese-era chinilpa propagandists pretty much transitioned seamlessly into becoming North Korean propagandists?

Here's a very broad and ambiguous question:

What is Korea? When did Korea gain an independent identity?

I don't mean their political independence. I'm asking where the ethnic identity comes from.

Talking to Koreans, they like to think of their national identity as existing far into the distant past, and that they descend from a people group who moved together from central Asia into Korea and stayed there, making them distinct from their Chinese neighbours.

Talking to Chinese people, I've heard people emphasize the dependence of Korea on China. Some people seem to view Korea as an offshoot of China that only really developed its own independent culture during the Qing dynasty

But looking at Korean history, it seems like the answer must be a combination of these things, but with added complexities. There are historical kingdoms that stretch from northern Korea into Manchuria, and it seems whether you call them "Korean", "Chinese", or "Manchurian" depends more on modern ideas of nationalism than any actual historical self-identity. The Koreans do have a distinct language, but so did the Manchurians, and I understand that the Manchurians have almost completely assimilated into the majority Han culture.

So: what makes Korea Korea? How and when did it develop to be culturally distinct? Where there some states whether the definition gets a bit blurry?

Can anyone tell me generally about the relationship between Japan and Korean peninsula before the invasion at the end of the 16th century?

I know that Japan sent troops to support Kudara against Shiragi in the 7th century and following the fall of Kudara to Shiragi and China, many people from Kudara including the royal family fled to Japan. But what else was going on?

Also, what's the current consensus on the Mimana controversy?

The Korean language is isolated with no similar languages. Does this mean we do not know where Koreans migrated from or are the Koreans the original inhabitants of the peninsula?

Hello all and thanks for doing this.

I am interested in the lore behind the cholima and how it pertains to North Korea. What exactly is so special about this horse and why do you not see such motifs from, say, the Chinese Communists?

To /u/Cenodoxus - why is North Korea so economically inferior nowadays, and where did its strangely controlling society come from? It's essentially a monarchy, sure, but a benevolent 'Supreme Leader' can get far more done than a benevolent president or prime minister (as we've seen throughout history and even in modern China). So - where did North Korea go wrong?

How difficult is it to publish recent history in Korea? I've been told that it's impossible to publish works that are critical of the North (specifically on the Shin/Choi kidnapping, which was recently written up in English), and the controversy with Park Yu-ha and the Comfort Women also comes to mind.

How did the collapse of the USSR affect North Korea? Presumably it screwed them up pretty badly, right? Did it contribute to the famine that happened there during the 1990s?

Can anyone tell me about the Mongol invasion of Korea? Was it as bloody as the other Mongol invasions?

I know that in China there are texts like "Lives of Model Women" and "Domestic Duties of Women" that were written by Empress Wu from the Tang dynasty. These anthology of texts for proper court ladies usually include the topics of weaving, dying, cooking, etiquette and the like. My searches for similar texts for the Joseon court have come up empty handed. My question is do these texts exist for the Joseon court and have they been translated for English reading?

The Soviet Union obviously wanted a puppet state in North Korea. How much control did Kim Il-sung have in North Korea, free from Soviet control? If he was in firm control, how did build his power base in North Korea?

So, I know that Korea has always had influence from China and Japan (or the countries that used to be there), but didn't the Japanese occupation of Korea in WWII produce an extreme amount of influence? and how exactly did this occur?

Why and how did Korean come to have its own alphabet, despite being more or less controlled by China for thousands of years? And did the Japanese try to erradicate it during the period of colonization in 1910-1945?

Is there such a thing as north korea jewelry (beyond the political pins) and what styles has it followed post war?

Is there a Korean jewellery traditional that noticeably differs from neighbouring countries and if so how?

How was Korean nationalism like before the Sino-Japanese War? Could Korean nationalism itself have been a factor in instigating the war?

I studied a little bit of modern Korean politics and I'm particularly interested in the relationship with the US. I remember reading that US officials exerted significant influence on Syngman Rhee to try to stop him from launching a full scale attack on the North during a period of skirmishes along the border before the Korean War. On the other hand, during the Gwangju Uprising, the US failed to restrain ROK forces and the result (besides the many dead) was a lot of anti-American sentiment.

Basically I'm wondering if you can shed some more light on US interventions in SK. Was there any consistent framework for when the US would or would not intervene or was it completely ad hoc? Was there any consistency across presidents? It seems that American interventions became less frequent as SK developed; was there a tipping point in which the US would no longer overtly intervene? What methods were used to influence situations? What are some other interventions by the US in SK and what were their effects (e.g. The US supposedly saved Kim Dae-Jung from the kcia)?

How did the yangban rationalize the role of the Queen Dowager as regent with Neo-Confucianism in late Joseon?

/u/koliano

I recently read Cleanest Race by BR Myers, how historically accurate is this book according to what you have seen and read? I know the book takes alot of shots at other Korean historians, but I enjoyed the book and its discussion on the 'real' political ideology of North Korea as Race-based nationalism as Myers puts it.

Thanks alot

How did Neo-Confucianism adapt or resist Japanese rule?