South Koreans refer to themselves as Hanguk-in[j] or Hanguk-saram,[k] both of which mean "people of three Han". The "Han" in the names of the Korean Empire, Daehan Jeguk, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Daehan Minguk or Hanguk, are named in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea, not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula.[15][16] Members of the Korean diaspora often use the term Han-in.[l]
North Koreans refer to themselves as Joseon-in[m] or Joseon-saram,[n] both of which literally mean "people of Joseon". The term is derived from Joseon, the last dynastic kingdom of Korea, which itself has been named after Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom. Similarly, Koreans in China refer to themselves as Chaoxianzu[o] in Chinese or Joseonjok, Joseonsaram[p] in Korean, which are cognates that literally mean "Joseon ethnic group".[17][18]Koreans in Japan refer to themselves as Zainichi Chousenjin, Chousenjin[q] in Japanese or Jaeil Joseonin, Joseonsaram, Joseonin[r] in Korean. Ethnic Koreans living in Russia and Central Asia refer to themselves as Koryo-saram,[s] alluding to Goryeo, a Korean dynasty spanning from 918 to 1392, which also spawned the word 'Korea'.
In an inter-Korean context, such as when dealing with the Koreanic languages or the Korean ethnicity as a whole, South Koreans use the term 'Hangyeore'.[u]
Origins
The origin of Koreans has not been well clarified yet. Based on linguistic, archaeologic and genetic evidence, their place of origin is located somewhere in Northeast Asia, but its exact pattern of expansion and arrival into the Korean peninsula remain unclear.[19]
Archaeological evidence suggests that Proto-Koreans were migrants from Manchuria during the Bronze Age.[20] Most linguists similarly place the linguistic homeland of Proto-Korean and of early Koreans somewhere in Manchuria, such as in the Liao River region. Later, Koreanic-speakers migrated to northern Korea and started to expand further south, replacing and assimilating Japonic-speakers and likely causing the Yayoi migration.[21][22] Whitman (2011) suggests that the Proto-Koreans arrived in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BCE and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them).[23] Vovin suggests Proto-Korean is equivalent to the variant of Koreanic languages spoken in southern Manchuria and northern Korean peninsula by the time of the Three Kingdoms of Korea period and spread to southern Korea through influence from Goguryeo migrants.[24] The arrival of early Koreans can be associated with the Bronze Age dagger culture, which expanded from the West Liao River region.[25] Archaeologic evidence points to a connection between the pottery-making style of the Late Neolithic to Bronze Age cultures in the West Liao River basin and the Korean peninsula.[26] Miyamoto 2021 similarly argues that Proto-Koreanic arrived with the "rolled rim vessel culture" (Jeomtodae culture) from the Liaodong Peninsula, gradually replacing the Japonic speakers of the Mumun-Yayoi culture.[27]
However, a number of Korean scholars[who?] reject the notion that the Korean speakers were not native to the Korean Peninsula, and argue that no solid evidence of such linguistic migration/shift as well as population and material change in the peninsular region has ever been found to support later migrations.[25]
The largest concentration of dolmens in the world is found on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, with an estimated 35,000-100,000 dolmen,[28] Korea accounts for nearly 40% of the world's total. Similar dolmens can be found in Northeast China, the Shandong Peninsula and the Kyushu island, yet it is unclear why this culture only flourished so extensively on the Korean Peninsula and its surroundings compared to the bigger remainder of Northeast Asia.
Geographic location and dates of ancient individuals in Northeast Asia. The Bronze Age West Liao River farmers (WLR_BA) display long-term genetic continuity with modern Koreans.
Proto-Macro-Koreanic arrived after Proto-Japonic from Liaodong and the Changbaishan region with the introduction of bronze daggers around 300 BC.[29]
Modern Koreans can be modeled to be derived primarily from Bronze Age farmers from the West Liao River.[30] West Liao River farmers of the Bronze Age themselves can be modelled to be derived from the combination of two Ancient Northern East Asian lineages, namely "Neolithic Yellow River farmers" and Ancient Northeast Asians (Amur hunter-gatherers) during the Neolithic period. The spread of Proto-Koreanic can be linked to the expansion of Bronze Age West Liao River farmers. It is also suggested that this type of ancestry was introduced into the Japanese gene pool by early Koreanic-speakers, during the Kofun period.[31] WLR_BA ancestry is also associated with the Upper Xiajiadian culture, which in turn can be used as source proxy for Bronze Age and modern Koreans.[32][33] Wang and Wang (2022) stated that Koreans in the Three Kingdoms Period had Jōmon ancestry, which ranged from 10% to 95%,[34] and significantly contributed to the genetic makeup of modern Koreans. But subsequent arrivals of newcomers from Northeast China (Manchuria) 'diluted' this Jomon ancestry and made the Koreans genetically homogenous.[35] 70% of variation was ensured via interactions with southern Chinese settlers, who shared ancestry with Iron Age Cambodians.[36] According to a 2023 study, modern Koreans can be modeled as having 85% Bronze Age West Liao River and 15% Taiwan Hanben ancestry.[37]
Koreans display high frequencies of the Y-DNA haplogroups O2-M122 (approximately 40% of all present-day Korean males), O1b2-M176 (approximately 30%), and C2-M217 (approximately 15%).[38] Some regional variance may exist; in a study of South Korean Y-DNA published in 2011, the ratio of O2-M122 to O1b2-M176 is greatest in Seoul-Gyeonggi (1.8065), with the ratio declining in a counterclockwise direction around South Korea (Chungcheong 1.6364, Jeolla 1.3929, Jeju 1.3571, Gyeongsang 1.2400, Gangwon 0.9600).[39][40][41][42][43]Haplogroup C2-M217 tends to be found in about 13% of males from most regions of South Korea, but it is somewhat more common (about 17%) among males from the Gyeongsang region in the southeast of the peninsula and somewhat less common (about 7%) among males from Jeju, located off the southwest coast of the peninsula.[44] Haplogroup C2-M217 has been found in a greater proportion (about 26%) of a small sample (n=19) of males from North Korea.[45][46] However, haplogroups are not a reliable indicator of an individual's overall ancestry; Koreans are more similar to one another in regard to their autosomes than they are similar to members of other ethnic groups. Studies of polymorphisms in the human Y-chromosome have so far produced evidence to suggest that the Korean people have a long history as a distinct, mostly endogamous ethnic group, with successive prehistoric waves of people moving to the peninsula and two major Y-chromosome haplogroups.[47]
The mitochondrial DNA markers (mtDNA haplogroups and HVR-I sequences) of Korean populations showed close relationships with Manchurians, Japanese, Mongolians and northern Han Chinese but not with Southeast Asians. Y-chromosomal distances showed a close relationship to most East Asian population groups, including Southeast Asian ones.[48] Ancient genome comparisons revealed that the genetic makeup of Koreans can be best described as an admixture of the NeolithicDevil's Gate genome in the Amur region in the Russian Far-East adjacent to North Korea as well as that of rice-farming agriculturalists from the Yangtze river valley.[49] The results from the findings in the Devil's Gate showed that the ancient populations of the area were already admixed from both Northeast Asian and Southeast Asian sources. These groups correlate closely to modern Koreanic and Japonic, who form a cluster in regional comparisons, along with certain Tungusic groups, such as Ulchis, Nanais, and Oroqens.[50]
Koreans show a close genetic relationship with other modern East Asians such as the Yamato Japanese, Southern Tungusic groups and some northern Han Chinesesubgroups from Hebei and Manchuria.[11][12][14][51][52][13] According to a genetic distance measurements from a large scale genetic study from 2021 titled 'Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia, Koreans are genetically closest to Yamato Japanese, followed by a larger margin by Northern Han on FST genetic distance measurements.[53] The reference population for Koreans used in Geno 2.0 Next Generation is 94% Eastern Asia and 5% Southeast Asia & Oceania.[54]
A 2015 study revealed some European admixture in Koreans (1.6%), which originated from interactions with Silk Road traders and Mongolians, who were well-acquainted with European-like peoples.[55]
Genealogy
Korea Foundation Associate Professor of History, Eugene Y. Park said that many Koreans seem to have a genealogical memory blackout before the twentieth century.[56][57] According to him the vast majority Koreans do not know their actual genealogical history. Through "inventing tradition" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, families devised a kind of master narrative story that purports to explain a surname-ancestral seat combination's history to the extent where it is next to impossible to look beyond these master narrative stories.[58] He gave an example of what "inventing tradition" was like from his own family's genealogy where a document from 1873 recorded three children in a particular family and a later 1920 document recorded an extra son in that same family.[59] Park said that these master narratives connect the same surname and ancestral seat to a single, common ancestor. This trend became universal in the nineteenth century, but genealogies which were published in the seventeenth century actually admit that they did not know how the different lines of the same surname or ancestral seat are related at all.[60] Only a small percentage of Koreans had surnames and ancestral seats to begin with, and that the rest of the Korean population had adopted these surname and ancestral seat identities within the last two to three hundred years.[61]
North Korea and South Korea share a common heritage, but the political division since 1945 has resulted in some divergence of their modern cultures.[citation needed]
The language of the Korean people is the Korean language, which uses Hangul, invented by Sejong the Great, as its main writing system. Daily usage of Hanja has been phased out in Korean peninsula other than usage by some South Korean newspapers and media companies when referring to key politicians (e.g. current and former Presidents, leaders of major political parties) or handful of countries (e.g. China, Japan, Canada, United States, United Kingdom) as an abbreviation. Otherwise, Hanja is exclusively used for academic, historical and religious purposes. Roman alphabet is the de facto secondary writing system in South Korea especially for loan words and is widely used in day-to-day and official communication. There are more than 78 million speakers of the Korean language worldwide.[62]
Demographics
Traditional Korean royal wedding ceremony with the male royal wearing royal costume
In June 2012, South Korea's population reached 50 million[67] and by the end of 2016, South Korea's population has surpassed 51 million people.[68] Since the 2000s, South Korea has been struggling with a low birthrate, leading some researchers to suggest that if current population trends hold, the country's population will shrink to approximately 38 million population towards the end of the 21st century.[69] In 2018, fertility in South Korea became again a topic of international debate after only 26,500 babies were born in October and an estimated of 325,000 babies in the year, causing the country to have the lowest birth rate in the world.[70][71][72]
North Korean soldiers wearing Soviet-inspired uniform in the Joint Security Area
Estimating the size, growth rate, sex ratio, and age structure of North Korea's population has been extremely difficult. Until release of official data in 1989, the 1963 edition of the North Korea Central Yearbook was the last official publication to disclose population figures. After 1963 demographers used varying methods to estimate the population. They either totalled the number of delegates elected to the Supreme People's Assembly (each delegate representing 50,000 people before 1962 and 30,000 people afterwards) or relied on official statements that a certain number of persons, or percentage of the population, was engaged in a particular activity. Thus, on the basis of remarks made by President Kim Il Sung in 1977 concerning school attendance, the population that year was calculated at 17.2 million persons. During the 1980s, health statistics, including life expectancy and causes of mortality, were gradually made available to the outside world.[73]
In 1989, the Central Bureau of Statistics released demographic data to the United Nations Population Fund in order to secure the UNFPA's assistance in holding North Korea's first nationwide census since the establishment of the state in 1948. Although the figures given to the United Nations might have been distorted, it appears that in line with other attempts to open itself to the outside world, the North Korean regime has also opened somewhat in the demographic realm. Although the country lacks trained demographers, accurate data on household registration, migration, and births and deaths are available to North Korean authorities. According to the United States scholar Nicholas Eberstadt and demographer Brian Ko, vital statistics and personal information on residents are kept by agencies on the ri ("village", the local administrative unit) level in rural areas and the dong ("district" or "block") level in urban areas.[73]
Korean diaspora
Korean emigration to the U.S. was known to have begun as early as 1903, but the Korean American community did not grow to a significant size until after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965; as of 2017, excluding the undocumented and uncounted, roughly 1.85 million Koreans emigrants and people of Korean descent live in the United States according to the official figure by the US Census.[74] The Greater Los Angeles Area and New York metropolitan area in the United States contain the largest populations of ethnic Koreans outside of Korea or China. The Korean population in the United States represents a small share of the American economy, but has a disproportionately positive impact.[citation needed]Korean Americans have a savings rate double that of the U.S. average and also graduate from college at a rate double that of the U.S. average, providing highly skilled and educated professionals to the American workforce.[citation needed] According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Census 2021 data, median household earnings for Korean Americans was $82,946, approximately 19.0% higher than the U.S. average at the time of $69,717.[75]
Significant Overseas Korean populations are also present in China, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, and Canada as well. The number of Koreans in Indonesia grew during the 1980s, while during the 1990s and 2000s the number of Koreans in the Philippines and Koreans in Vietnam have also grown significantly.[76][77] In Central Asia, significant populations reside in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as parts of Russia including the Far East. Known as Koryo-saram, many of these are descendants of Koreans who were forcely deported during the Soviet Union's Stalin regime.[78] The Korean overseas community of Uzbekistan is the 5th largest outside Korea.[4]
Koreans in the United Kingdom now form Western Europe's largest Korean community, albeit still relatively small; Koreans in Germany used to outnumber those in the UK until the late 1990s. In Australia, Korean Australians comprise a modest minority. Koreans have migrated[where?] significantly since the 1960s.
Part-Korean populations
Pak Noja said that there were 5,747 Japanese-Korean couples in Korea at the end of 1941.[79] Pak Cheil estimated there to be 70,000 to 80,000 "semi-Koreans" in Japan in the years immediately after the war.[80] Many of them remained in Japan as Zainichi Koreans, maintaining their Korean heritage. However, due to assimilation, their numbers are much lower in recent times.
Kopinos are people of mixed Filipino and Korean descent. The 'Mixed Filipino Heritage Act of 2020' estimated there were around 30,000 Kopinos.[81]
Lai Đại Hàn is a Vietnamese term referring to mixed children born to South Korean men and South Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. These children were largely conceived as the result of wartime rape. No exact data is available on the number of Korean-Vietnamese because many of them choose to conceal their roots, but an estimate by a Korean scholar says the number of Lai Dai Han around the world is at least 5,000 to as many as 150,000.[82][83][84]
^ In 2019, 95.1% of South Korea population was South Korean by nationality and 4.9% were of foreign nationality. South Korea is thus considered one of the most ethnically homogeneous societies in the world. Precise number of ethnic Koreans specifically is difficult to estimate since South Korean statistics do not record ethnicity. Furthermore, many immigrants are repatriated ethnic Koreans themselves while unknown number of South Korean citizens are not ethnically Korean which skews any statistical estimate. Some of the largest groups of immigrants are ethnic Koreans from China (Joseonjok), Japan (Zainichi) and the former Soviet Union (Koryo-saram).
^Due to the country's isolationist policies, North Korea is presumed to be almost entirely homogeneous.
^This includes South Korean and North Korean people in China. Korean with Chinese citizenship is referred to in China as Joseonjok in Korean and Chaoxianzu in Mandarin Chinese.
^Koreans of Uzbekistan are part of the wider Koryo-saram identity.
^Koreans of Russia are part of the wider Koryo-saram identity.
^Koreans of Kazkahstan are part of the wider Koryo-saram identity.
^Koreans of Ukraine are part of the wider Koryo-saram identity.
^South Korean: 한민족/한국인/한국사람, 韓民族/韓國人/韓國사람, Han minjok (Han ethnic group), Hanguk-in (persons of the Han country), Hanguksaram (Han country people), North Korean: 조선민족/조선인/조선사람, 朝鮮民族/朝鮮人/朝鮮사람, Joseon minjok (Korean ethnic group), Joseon-in (Joseon persons)/Joseonsaram (Joseon people); see Names of Korea
^재외동포 현황 [Current status of overseas Koreans]. oka.go.kr. Office of Overseas Koreans, Republic of Korea. 2023.
^재외동포 본문(지역별 상세). Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 15 July 2011. p. 64. Archived from the original on 8 September 2021. Retrieved 25 February 2012.
^Janhunen, Juha (2010). "RReconstructing the Language Map of Prehistorical Northeast Asia". Studia Orientalia (108). ... there are strong indications that the neighbouring Baekje state (in the southwest) was predominantly Japonic-speaking until it was linguistically Koreanized.
^Vovin, Alexander (31 December 2013). "From Koguryǒ to T'amna: Slowly riding to the South with speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics. 15 (2): 217–235. doi:10.1075/kl.15.2.03vov.
^"Vovin, Alexander (2008). From Koguryo to Tamna: Slowly Riding to the South with Speakers of Proto-Korean". Korean Linguistics. 15. Linguistic evidence indicates speakers of
While pottery styles clearly differ between northeast China and the Korean Peninsula, an influx of northeast Chinese pottery styles into Korea has not been detected, and the styles of the two areas remain distinct long after the appearance of millet with little change in Chulmun pottery styles over time. ...
However, as outlined above, because the Korean Peninsula was already occupied by Chulmun hunter–fisher–gatherers since at least 6000 BCE, a key to evaluating the millet hypothesis is determining whether millet was adopted by the Chulmun foragers (diffusion) or whether it was brought along as a part of a large-scale migration of farmers from Liaoning. If millet was introduced as a result of a large-scale migration of farmers from Liaoning, an archaeologically detectable influx of Liaoning culture and changes in material culture after the introduction of millet should be expected, because vessel shape, manufacturing technology and the design layout and motifs of Korean Chulmun pottery markedly differ from those of Liaoning pottery. However, there is no detectable appearance of elements of Liaoning material culture that accompanies the arrival of millets. ...
Even if millet was brought by some migrants from northeast China to Korea, archaeological evidence demonstrates that the scale of migration was probably not large enough to lead to a fundamental linguistic change or the dispersal of a linguistic family.
^Wang, Rui; Wang, Chuan-Chao (8 August 2022). "Human genetics: The dual origin of Three Kingdoms period Koreans". Current Biology. 32 (15): R844–R847. Bibcode:2022CBio...32.R844W. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.044. ISSN0960-9822. PMID35944486. The northern East Asian ancestry was suggested to be related to the Neolithic West Liao River farmers in northeast China, who were an admixture of ANA and NYR ancestry3. The finding indicated that West Liao River-related farmers might have spread the proto-Korean language as their ancestry was found to be predominant in extant Koreans. Proto-Korean groups, in turn, introduced West Liao River-like ancestry into the gene pool of present-day Japan5.
^Hua Zhong, Hong Shi, Xue-Bin Qi, Chun-Jie Xiao, Li Jin, Runlin Z Ma, and Bing Su, "Global distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup C reveals the prehistoric migration routes of African exodus and early settlement in East Asia." Journal of Human Genetics (2010) 55, 428–435. doi:10.1038/jhg.2010.40
^Hua Zhong, Hong Shi, Xue-Bin Qi, Zi-Yuan Duan, Ping-Ping Tan, Li Jin, Bing Su, and Runlin Z. Ma (2011), "Extended Y Chromosome Investigation Suggests Postglacial Migrations of Modern Humans into East Asia via the Northern Route." Mol. Biol. Evol. 28(1):717–727. doi:10.1093/molbev/msq247
^Kim, Young Jin; Jin, Han Jun (2013). "Dissecting the genetic structure of Korean population using genome-wide SNP arrays". Genes Genom. 24 (3). Cambridge: The Genetics Society of Korea (published 2014): 360. doi:10.1007/s13258-013-0082-8. S2CID256065429.
^Eugene Y. Park, from the 7:06 mark of the YouTube video to the 7:38 mark of the YouTube videoArchived 5 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, said, "Secondly, on the one hand, so many Koreans seem to talk, to be able to tell, one, something about his or her Gyeongju Kim ancestors, of a Silla kingdom two-thousand years ago. And yet, such a person is unlikely to be able to tell you something about his or her great-great-grandparents, what they were doing hundred years ago, what their occupations were, where they were living, where their family graves are. In other words, a memory blackout, before the twentieth century."
^Eugene Y. Park, from the 16:54 mark of the YouTube video to the 18:54 mark of the YouTube videoArchived 5 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine, said, "So, from this point on, then, I would like to survey, how the Koreans descended. Koreans, depending on their ancestors' status category, have dealt with genealogy and ancestry consciousness, in the last, differently, in the last two centuries. And, of course, most Koreans are not descendants of aristocrats, but, the, but what happened in the last hundred fifty, hundred to hundred fifty years, is that those Koreans, the vast majority of Koreans have lost memory of their actual history, in the sense where now, any outside observer who might ask a Korean person about ancestry, would be left with the impression that every Korean is now of aristocratic descent. So let me begin with the aristocracy. In the early modern era, the kind of a master narrative, stories that purport to explain a particular surname-ancestral seat combination's history, crystallize, they became set in stone, through inventing tradition. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, many, all families devise such a stories, to the extent where, now today in Korea, anybody who is interested in tracing his or her ancestry, has to deal with such master narratives, but at the same time it is next to impossible to look beyond master narratives. In other words, in Korea, today, there's little sense of doing the kind of doing the genealogical research that you and I would do in the United States, by looking at Census documents, and other types of documentation, that have been passed down through generations, or, have been maintained by the government."
^Eugene Y. Park, from the 28:32 mark of the YouTube video to the 29:21 mark of the YouTube videoArchived 5 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, said, "This is an example. Here we see records that gives us a better sense of what inventing tradition was like. Here, a page from an eighteen seventy-three Miryang Pak family genealogy. Here's a man, indicated inside the circle named, Ju (冑). He had three sons: Eun-gyeong, Hyeon-gyeong, Won-gyeong (子恩慶, 子賢慶, 子元慶). But the edition that was published a bit later in the nineteen twenty, so we see the same man, Ju, and, under him, we see sons: Eun-gyeong, Hyeon-gyeong, Won-gyeong and, the extra, the fourth son, out of nowhere, Tōkhwa (子徳華). Actually, this is my family. So, this was commonly done in the modern era, the children, son out of nowhere or claims that we were left out centuries ago, and please include us."
^Eugene Y. Park, from the 18:55 mark of the YouTube video to the 19:30 mark of the YouTube videoArchived 1 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, said, "And, these master narratives, genealogically connect all descent lines of a same surname and ancestral seat, to a single, common, ancestor. And, this was the pattern that was, that became universal by the nineteenth century. Whereas, genealogies published in the seventeenth century, actually, frankly admit that we do not know how these different lines of the same surname or ancestral seat are related or connected at all. So, all these changes took place only in the last two hundred years or so."
^Eugene Y. Park, from the 46:17 mark of the YouTube video to the 47:02 mark of the YouTube videoArchived 5 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, said, "At any rate, so, once, so, based on one's surname Kim, let's say, and the ancestral seat, Kimhae, which is the most common ancestral seat among Kim surname Koreans, one can then look up, consult reference books, encyclopedias, go online to, find all these stories about different branches, famous individuals who are Kimhae Kim. But the problem is, of course, before the early modern era, only a small percentage of Koreans had surnames and the ancestral seat to begin with. In other words, the rest of the population had adopted these identities in the last two-three hundred years, so where does one go from there? And, this was definitely my challenge when I was a child."
^"Korean". ethnologue. Archived from the original on 18 September 2008. Retrieved 1 January 2013.
^Kim, Si-joong (2003). "The Economic Status and Role of Ethnic Koreans in China"(PDF). The Korean Diaspora in the World Economy. Institute for International Economics. pp. Ch. 6: 101–131. Archived(PDF) from the original on 27 March 2009. Retrieved 5 February 2008.
^Lie, John. (2008). Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 89. Retrieved 31 May 2017, from link.
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