A History of Korea (4 page)

Around 2000
BC
a third pottery culture, originating in central China, spread into the Korean peninsula from Manchuria, and was characterized by painted designs marked by waves, lightning, and skeins on the outer surface and the flat bottom. Much of this newly introduced pottery has been found in the western and southern coastal regions and the river basins. Stone plowshares, stone sickles, and stone hoes have been discovered with carbonated millet at the remains of this new pottery culture, indicating that stone implements and harvested grains were stored in pottery.

Like previous Paleolithic settlers, these Neolithic people first lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering. By about 4000
BC
, however, people had learned to plant grains, especially millet, using horn or stone hoes to dig and stone sickles to harvest. An incipient farming culture appeared in which small-scale shifting (“slash-and-burn”) cultivation was practiced in addition to various other subsistence strategies. Carbonated millet found at the remain at Chit’am-ni (Pongsan county in Hwanghae province) attests to this early farming culture. These Neolithic people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life, organized into familial clans. They also domesticated and raised livestock such as dogs and pigs. They used nets to catch fish and learned to fish with hook and line.

These Neolithic people turned animal skins to good account for clothing. They scraped away flesh for food with stone knives and then sewed skins together using bone needles made of deer horns. People later wove cloth from animal fur or plant fibers, especially hemp, with primitive spindles, and their clothes were often adorned with shells or beads.
¹

Once they began farming, the growing need to spend more time and labor tending crops required more localized dwellings, and so Neolithic men increasingly
moved from a nomadic to a sedentary existence. As a result, permanent or seasonally inhabited settlements appeared. Mainly living in pit dwellings, they built huts in round or rectangular dugouts, with posts set up to support a straw thatch covering to protect against the wind and the rain. The rough ground was covered by platforms, mats, and skins on which residents slept. One to several hearths were placed in the center of the floor of the dwelling and used for cooking and heating. Storage pits for storing grains and instruments were located beside the hearth or near the entrance, which faced south to benefit from the sunlight. Five or six family members inhabited a dwelling pit.

The basic unit of Neolithic society was the clan, which was bound together by its distinct bloodline. Economically independent and self-sufficient, each clan formed its own village. Economic activities within territories claimed by other clans were prohibited, and such a violation would incur either punishment or compensation. Despite this tight-knit economic life, exogamous marriage was common, and spouses were invariably sought from other clans. Neolithic society, in a word, was relatively simple and egalitarian.

Neolithic clans held totemic beliefs in which they worshiped objects in the natural world, namely certain animals or plants, as their ancestors. In its worship of a specific totemic object with which it closely identified, a clan differentiated itself from others. Neolithic men also had animistic beliefs, as they were convinced that every object in the natural world possessed a soul. They therefore worshiped mountains, rivers, and trees. Foremost among natural objects to be worshiped was the sun, considered the greatest being in the universe, which they called
han
ŭ
nim,
or heavenly god. Man, too, was believed to have an immortal soul which would ultimately return to heaven where God resided. Thus, when a man died, he was said to “return” to nature and, in burying the man’s body, his corpse was laid with its head facing eastward, in the direction of the sunrise.

The cult of heaven and the spirits caused Neolithic men to look upon a shaman, who was believed to have the ability to link human beings with heavenly god and the spirits, as the greatest figure. Neolithic people believed that, by virtue of his authority and on behalf of God, a shaman could drive off evil spirits and evoke good spirits so as to produce positive results, such as fecundity, longevity, and the complete cure of diseases. It was these shamans who filled the roles of clan and tribal leader in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. The Neolithic Age is worthy of examination, since men of this early period were the ancestors of present-day Koreans.

In the first millennium
BC
the tribal peoples of Korea passed from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age began in Manchuria between approximately the fifteenth and thirteenth centuries
BC
and on the Korean peninsula in the tenth century
BC
. Because Korea’s Bronze culture was closely linked to the founding of Old Chos
ŏ
n, whose territory included southern Manchuria, the Bronze culture in Manchuria must be examined along with that on the Korean peninsula. By the tenth century
BC
people in Manchuria and the Korean peninsula had learned to fashion tools, utensils, and weapons of bronze. They also learned to cultivate rice, developed new forms of political and social organization, and constructed great tombs of stone. These were initiated by new settlers, who were differentiated from the native Neolithic people.

Toward the end of the Neolithic Age a new wave of migration from the north arrived in Manchuria and the Korean peninsula, increasing the region’s population and bringing with them Bronze Age technology and undecorated pottery. Numerous Bronze sites have been found in southern Manchuria and throughout the Korean peninsula, particularly in the southern tip of the Liaodong peninsula and the river basins of the Tumen, Taedong, Imjin, Han, K
ŭ
m, Y
ŏ
ngsan, and Naktong rivers.

Two typical instruments representing Korea’s Bronze culture are the mandolin-shaped copper dagger and the multi-knobbed coarse-patterned mirror, neither of which have not been discovered outside southern Manchuria and the Korean peninsula. In the fourth century
BC
the mandolin-shaped copper dagger, used mainly for rites, evolved into a more sophisticated finely wrought bronze dagger, and the multi-knobbed coarse-patterned mirror, also used in rituals, developed into a more polished multi-knobbed fine-patterned mirror. Still using comb-pattern pottery, Bronze Age men also manufactured a new type of pottery,
mumun t’ogi,
or undecorated pottery. Far more refined than comb-pattern pottery, this type of pottery has thicker walls and displays a wider variety of shapes, indicating improvements in kiln technology. This new un-decorated pottery represents Korea’s Bronze Age pottery. It has been unearthed only in southern Manchuria and the Korean peninsula.

Remains of Korea’s Bronze culture are predominantly found on higher ground overlooking wide and fertile flatlands along river courses, which suggests
that the Bronze Age settlers mainly engaged in agriculture. These people plowed fields with stone plowshares, hoes, and wooden plows, cultivating millet, Indian millet, barnyard millet, barley, and beans. By the eighth century
BC
rice cultivation had begun in some warm regions. A large amount of carbonated rice, excavated at Hunam-ni in Y
ŏ
ju city in the South Han River basin, at Songgung-ni in Puy
ŏ
county in the K
ŭ
m River basin, and in shell heaps in Kimhae city in the lower reaches of the Naktong River, suggests that rice was brought into Korea’s southern and western coastal areas from China’s Yangtze River valley. Crescent-shaped stone knives seem to have been used at harvest time to cut rice stalks, and grooved stone axes served to cut down trees and turn over the soil preparatory to planting.

In the Bronze Age round pit dwellings, or dugouts, gradually went out of use and were replaced by huts. The huts, rectangular in shape and built on stone foundations with supporting pillars, were partitioned into rooms serving different purposes. Dwelling sites were grouped into settlements. A cluster of dwelling sites has been found in a single location, suggesting that settlements increasingly grew.

Bronze Age men used delicately polished stone swords and arrowheads as well as bronze swords and spears to hunt animals or conduct wars. The existence of these bronze weapons implies that conquest by warfare was common in this period and that Bronze Age people could presumably gain easy ascendancy over Neolithic men who were armed with stone weapons. At the same time, as a small number of influential individuals monopolized bronze farming implements and weapons, they were able to produce more plentiful agricultural products and seize greater spoils from war. In these ways they commanded greater power and wealth, and gradually emerged as chieftains. These chieftains were armed with bronze spears and mounted horses decorated with bronze ornaments. To demonstrate their authority, these privileged individuals were ornamented with mandolin-shaped copper daggers, multi-knobbed coarse-patterned mirrors, and bronze bells. These articles, which lent prestige and authority to the personages who wielded great power, were used as ritual symbols of authority for the chieftains, who fancied themselves as the sons of heaven.

When these chieftains died, their bodies were buried in megalithic tombs such as dolmens or in stone cists, which were underground burial chambers lined with stones. Because these tombs were reserved for the ruling class,
burial practices reflected increasing social stratification. Dolmens, which have been found in great numbers in almost every part of the Korean peninsula, are mainly constructed in two basic forms—the table style and the board style. The table style, often called the northern style because of its distribution predominantly in the areas north of the Han River, was constructed by placing several upright stones in a rough square to support a flat capstone. The board style, often known as the southern style because of its widespread discovery in areas south of the Han River, employed a large boulder as a capstone placed atop several smaller rocks. A third type of dolmen tomb, distributed throughout the Korean peninsula in larger numbers, has no supporting stones, and the capstone is placed directly atop the underground burial chamber. Corpses were buried in dolmen tombs together with bronze daggers and pottery that the men had used during their lifetime.

Along with numerous menhir, or large upright stone monuments, these dolmen tombs represent the megalithic culture in Korea. Some dolmen tombs weigh dozens or even hundreds of tons. The individuals who were buried in these gigantic tombs clearly wielded great authority to command the labor services of vast numbers of people to construct the tombs, and are therefore considered to have been tribal chieftains.

The appearance of dolmen tombs is unique. The round, flat capstone presumably symbolized heaven and the square upright stones represented the earth; people at the time believed that the souls of their chieftains reposed where heaven and earth met. The Bronze Age chieftains, who, as noted, believed they were the sons of heaven, dominated their people with the mandate of heaven.

Small-scale states, dominated by these chieftains, emerged in various parts of the Korean peninsula and southern Manchuria during the Bronze Age. The rulers of these petty states built the earthen fortifications begirded with moats on hillside plateaus and controlled the agricultural population that farmed the plains beyond the fortifications. Because of their physical appearance, these political units have been generally termed
s
ŏ
ng
ŭ
p kukka,
or walled-town states. Although the states were tribal in character, they were also territorial in that they controlled populations beyond their own tribal domains. Walled-town states were the earliest form of state structure in Korea. The Bronze Age may be considered particularly important in Korean history, as the Korean people, during this period, developed more advanced technology and implements, practiced rice farming, and witnessed the appearance of the first political units.

The possibility of a biological link between Paleolithic people and present-day Koreans has not yet been clearly explored, partly because both archeological and anthropological evidence is lacking. Scholars do agree, however, that modern Koreans do not descend directly from Paleolithic men but instead from the Neolithic people who succeeded them. The ethnic stock of these Neolithic men has continued unbroken to form one element of the later Korean race. It is believed that in the course of a long historical process these Neolithic people merged with one another and, together with new ethnic settlers of Korea’s Bronze Age, eventually constituted Koreans of today.

Because the population increased so rapidly at the point when the Neolithic Age became the Bronze Age, Bronze Age settlers in southern Manchuria and the Korean peninsula are also believed to have constituted the Korean race. In fact, these Bronze Age men, who had migrated on a large scale and subjugated Neolithic natives, were to become the mainstream of the Korean people.

The ancient Chinese thought that these Korean ancestors belonged to
dongyi
(
tongi
in Korean), or eastern barbarians, and often divided them into two groups: the northern people, called
Ye, Maek,
or
Yemaek,
and the southern people, called
Han.
This classification is meaningless, however, as these two branches of the Korean people all spoke the same language, Korean, and shared the same culture and customs. For several thousand years they joined forces to create unified Korean kingdoms.

The Bronze culture on the Korean peninsula shared many things in common with the cultures of southern Manchuria and eastern China. For example, the dolmen tombs, the undecorated pottery, and the mandolin-shaped copper dagger have been unearthed only in these areas. It is not accidental, therefore, that from ancient times the Chinese have called the populations of these regions dongyi and distinguished these people from themselves. According to tradition, the Chinese and the dongyi people had fiercely competed for supremacy in central China before the Qin and Han empires unified China in the late third century
BC
. China’s Yin (Shang) dynasty (1751–1122
BC
) is known to have been founded and ruled by the dongyi people. As the Zhou dynasty, founded in the Wei River valley, began to wield influence over eastern China in the twelfth century
BC
, the dongyi people in the region massively migrated eastward to southern Manchuria and the Korean peninsula. When Yin fell to Zhou in 1122
BC
, a group of the dynasty’s ruling class came to the east and became the ruling
elite because of their advanced culture. Thus the legend of Jizi, in which Jizi, a member of royalty of the Yin dynasty, came to Old Chos
ŏ
n to found Jizi Chos
ŏ
n, has been handed down through the generations.