Each modern nation in the world has something that makes it unique when compared to the others, but in the same way, many similarities can be drawn between two countries when they are placed side by side. In this paper, the two modern countries of the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom will be compared. Both these nations have a rich and distinct history, and when looked at together, one can see how, while they do share similarities, their histories are practically inverted, though what is commonly known about their histories began at a similar point in time. This makes them easier to compare than, say, Korea and the United States, which is a relatively young nation at less than three hundred years old compared to Korea’s two thousand or so. In the case of Korea, in its earliest known history it was a small but distinct country with a past of fighting off outside invaders—though its kingdoms were also contenders in terms of influence with its neighbors. It went through a period of colonization, war, and military rule, and at one time was one of the poorest nations on earth. Today it has overcome its previous troubles and is, for all intents and purposes, a very strong nation on its own, able to extend its bounties to lesser nations today. Similarly, the United Kingdom began as a small, island nation prone to foreign invasion and made up of several smaller, distinct kingdoms of its own. In contrast to Korea, however, its natural resources allowed it to spearhead the Industrial Revolution in the West, and it became a major world power that created an Empire of its own, and over time its influence subsided. Today it is a small but influential constitutional monarchy that remains important on the world stage, and has left its legacy on the world for sure, but is hardly as worthy of fear as it was on its own.
The Essay on Nations Peace Peoples World
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER AUGUST 14. 1941 The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world. First, their countries ...
The Republic of Korea as it is known today was not considered particularly formidable until very recently, neither by its Asian neighbors nor by the West. By the time it was even beginning to look towards a modern national identity, it was facing colonization from the modern Japanese Empire. And long before that, when it consisted mostly of separate kingdoms; notably during its Three Kingdoms period of the Silla, Koguryo, and Baekje states, it was considered a tributary by China, which at the time was the center of the universe. All outside nations were barbarians. Koguryo in particular, being the northernmost of these kingdoms, often fought hostile takeover from the Chinese Sui and Tang dynasties, and the occasional invasion attempts from Japan came and went. In spite of this, or perhaps due to it, the people on the Korean peninsula maintained a separate cultural and ethnic identity from either of its larger, more powerful neighbors.
During this time, Buddhism was the dominant religion. And while it is still commonly believed that the great bastion of Buddhist culture in East Asia was located in China, and that the religion spread to Korea and Japan directly from there, Korea itself has been revealed as an important hub of Buddhist culture itself. Korean monks traveled to China to study in the famous monasteries, and many traveled along trade routes on pilgrimage to India itself, where the religion began. A great number of Korean monks were influential on modern Buddhist thought all across Asia, and much of contemporary Tibetan Buddhist doctrine came out of Korean monks’ commentaries. Those Korean monks who moved and stayed in China, while not considering themselves so much “Korean” due to the concept of a nation-state not having been invented yet, still maintained a distinct identity from that of their Chinese colleagues, who often viewed them as different from them anyway. And many of them helped influence Buddhist study at famous schools. Korean Buddhism also spread to Japan through Baekje, which at one time had diplomatic relationships with the island neighbor.
The Essay on Buddhist religion
The Four Noble Truths are the foundations of the Buddhist religion. From these emanate the rituals and beliefs still practiced today. The Buddhist philosophy centers on the basic truth that with the existence of life, the presence of suffering comes along with it. So, it is a primary aim of a Buddhist to alleviate oneself from the suffering of life. Hence, this contemporary Buddhist practices ...
For all that, Korea continued to be targeted due to its size, and as World War II began in Asia, it was colonized by Japan in 1910, which had invented a story in which one of its mythical figures, Susanoo, had once conquered the peninsula. In the latter years of colonization, Japan attempted to stamp out Korean culture entirely, forcing children to learn Japanese in schools as it intended its colonies to assimilate into one larger empire. When liberation came in 1945, things did not look up as Koreans may have hoped. The United States and United Soviet Socialist Republic were allies at the time, but just barely, and the country was divided into two halves at the 38th parallel. This was only intended to be a temporary measure as the larger powers helped the former colony get back on its feet, but the Cold War soon followed, and the communist USSR and democratic US led to the two halves of Korea eventually going to war against one another in 1950. This left Korea as the most impoverished country in the region, and over time it has regained much of its former strength, if not more than—though at the cost of its unification and today it remains a divided nation.
At around the same time as the Three Kingdoms periods, the British Isles consisted of more primitive clans, Picts, Bretons and Scots, that also faced invasion from outsiders, notably Vikings from the northeast and the Romans from continental Europe. However, arguably the defining moment in its history comes in 1066 with the invasion of Normandy, and from then on its history with France has been closely intertwined and its culture was influenced drastically. A prime example is the country’s greatest legacy on the world; the English language. Previously Old English was more closely related to Germanic languages such as Anglo-Saxon, but when it was introduced to the Latin-derived French it became nearly unrecognizable from its older form.
Also similarly to Korea’s Buddhism, it was an old hub of early Christianity, particularly Catholicism, until the reign of Henry VIII, who famously was excommunicated by the Catholic Pope after he started his own Church of England in order to divorce his first wife. As this was right at the time of the Protestant Reformation, this allowed the new Protestantism to get a foothold in the country, and from then on monarch after monarch would come to power announcing his or her own religion as the only truth, and persecuting those who practiced the other one. Unlike in Korea where a certain amount of religious compatibility existed between Buddhism, Confucianism, and occasionally even Christianity, in the United Kingdom even following a different branch of the same Christian religion than what you were officially allowed was considered heresy.
The Essay on Raw Materials Countries Colonies World
... Countries: dominate world markets, dictate prices, act as if the developing countries still were colonies. 1 st world: waste, affluence, overproduction 3 rd world: ... the disruption of the First British Empire. The Victorian Empire: the existing colonial possesions in Canada, ... rd world: almost all countries in the southern hemisphere = > developing countries; borderline cases: Taiwan, South Korea, ...
As an island country, the United Kingdom found its niche on the world scene early on in its famous fleets, and by the 19th Century had the world’s largest and most formidable navy. It also did not have much territory or resources to call its own and believed that the English monarch had divine right to rule and spread its divine influence over the rest of the world. These two things combined led to one thing: empire. The Koreans have a mythical figure of Tang-gun, who was devised in response to its need for a cultural identity in the face of colonization. In the case of the United Kingdom, the divine influence was used as a reason for colonizing other nations. Both were done arguably out of necessity, but for opposite reasons.
The famous phrase when speaking of the British Empire was that the “sun never set” on it, because that is how global its territories were at the height of its power—so large that it was daytime somewhere in a British colony. Initially its empire was spurred by a desire to compete with Spain, who in the 16th Century was the leading power and Britain’s biggest rival. The Caribbean islands were an important resource, and in 1607 the first permanent English settlement in North America was established—eventually this was expanded to the Thirteen Colonies that would become the United States of America after they declared independence.
Interestingly, this was indirectly due to the Empire’s conflict with another world power, China. The Empire desired trade with China, especially trade of tea, but the middle kingdom saw the English as barbarians and did not need anything from them. So the Empire turned to its other major colony of India for something that the Chinese did not have already: opium. The Opium Wars successfully crippled the Chinese economy, but were expensive for Britain and led to the taxation of the Empire’s colonies, and that led to the American colonists rebelling against the crown’s unfair tax raises, ending in the colonies declaring independence and forming the United States of America.
The Essay on Super Power Empire Economy World
During the early twentieth century, the world was predominantly controlled by seven super powers: Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. Therefore, the global economy rested largely on the shoulders of these controlling empires. Britain's empire gave it status as the world's greatest power, as it covered around one quarter of the earth's surface, ranging from ...
The British Empire continued its vast influence until Germany and its former colony the United States began to catch up towards the beginning of the 20th Century. After World War II it was practically bankrupt, and unlike Korea, was never able to recover to its former glory, as each of its colonies rapidly gained independence, finally ending in 1982 when it was agreed that Britain would hand Hong Kong over to China again in 1997.
In these instances one can see how one nation, once the most powerful empire in the world, was reduced to the small European country it is today, although it has left its legacy on the world in terms of language and culture. While Korea, still struggling after suffering from a similar colonization that the United Kingdom imposed on other countries, is on the rise, though still struggling through division and surrounded by tension with its neighbors.