Throughout this essay, I think it’s important to understand the concept of “China” not simply as the nation-state of the Han Chinese people (as it is mostly viewed in the modern day), but more generally as the geographic area now considered China, which was once home to many different dominating ethnic groups that each cast immeasurable influence on the trajectory of East Asian dynamics.

Part 1: Korea

I was in Korea from March 14th through March 20th, then again from March 24th to April 1st. Although I had been to Seoul several times already, this was the first time I visited with the intention of studying the culture comparatively. On the first leg of my journey in Korea, I mainly put focus into visiting cultural heritage sites such as Gyeongbokgung Palace and Gwanghwamun Square. I also visited Bukchon Hanok village, as well as some more minor palaces and cultural sites in the area (including Bukhansan Mountain). Although the highly urban setting surrounding these cultural relics are usually viewed as a testament to the successful juxtaposition of old and modern within the city, I’d argue that a lot of it also has to do with the duality that exists in Korea between the legacy Chinese influence that acted as its cultural foundation, and the modern Korea that has now sufficiently diverged from China.

Contrasting the cultural influences China had on Korea historically, with the cultural state of affairs in both China and Korea in the modern day shows the divergence that occurred within the two countries, a phenomenon that truly started taking shape after the start of the Joseon dynasty. Prior to this, the Goryeo dynasty had been a tributary vassal state to the Yuan and Ming dynasties. The lines blur even more before this, with states such as Balhae in the 8th-10th centuries consisting of a mix of Koreans and several ethnic groups that then occupied what would be considered the northeastern provinces of China. This rather large period of time was responsible for the immense cultural, religious and linguistic influx from China into Korea. The individual characters that form the basis for many korean words even in the modern day, stem from root characters from this period (many basic chinese character such as shui (water), di (land/ground), tai(yang) (sun), etc. It is estimated that around 60-70% of all korean vocabulary consists of words with Chinese origin (sino-korean words), similarly to how many words in English used in a professional context contain Latin/Greek/romance language roots. However, once the Joseon dynasty entered a centuries-long period of stability and internal growth, spearheaded by its strict isolationist policy (hence the nickname “Hermit Kingdom”), Korean culture, poetry, language, music, and general human psyche began flourishing and developing a life of its own.

One of the most interesting cultural connections I was made aware of during this leg of my trip was with how much external cultures influenced Korean food. One of my personal favorite Korean foods is gomtang (곰탕), a simple but hearty stew consisting of a bone broth (usually oxtail). In Korean cuisine in general, many cousins of this dish exist, including seolleongtang (설렁탕), another bone broth-based stew which is more milky white in color, dogani-tang (도가니탕), which features tendon as the main ingredient, among others. Although these dishes may seem as korean as it can get, the origins actually lie in Mongolia. When the Goryeo dynasty was a tributary state of the Yuan dynasty, many Mongolian officials came to be stationed at outposts in Korea, where they introduced their traditional cooking methods of boiling meats. Mongolians traditionally cooked boiled meat stews from mutton, but because this wasn’t readily available in Korea, they used beef and adapted the recipe to local tastes. In fact, one of the widely accepted theories for the etymology of the word “seolleongtang” is the combination of the mongolian word for soup, “shul”, combined with the SIno-korean “tang” (soup). All in all, it can safely be said that the modern-day version of seolleongtang and gomtang that Korean people love so dearly is sufficiently different from the initial version introduced by the Yuan over a thousand years ago; regardless, it is another example of how political entanglements between countries, although not necessarily good, inevitably leave behind pieces of culture that continue to evolve into the present day.

Another mongolian-influenced, and now famous Korean product is soju. Compared to other korean liquors like Cheongju and Makgeolli, Soju is a distilled liquor, these distilliation techniques having been brought to Korea by the Yuan Mongols (by way of the Persians and the Silk Road). This leads to a clearer color, more concentration of alcohol, and a stronger taste. Although Koreans had been brewing liquor from fermented grain for a long time, this technique was what created the iconic product known all over the world today.

In the second leg of my Korea journey, I ventured down to Jeju Island. Besides the iconic geographical formations, grilled black pork and scenic views, which I made sure to partake in, Jeju has long been a fascinating place to me, mainly because of its divergent language and history. Jeju in ancient times was home to the Tamna kingdom, and because literary records of any Korean history are few and far between, it is absolutely unknown whether the Tamna people were ethnically Korean (as described by the mainland) or a completely separate race of people that were eventually subjugated. It is really interesting to consider the possibility that the native population of Jeju may have much higher admixture with a basal lineage of an ethnic group that never even had the chance to be acknowledged by written history.

While in Jeju, I visited lots of scenic beachfronts and volcanic formations that it is so well-known for. But what struck me the most about these place names was the divergence of the evolution of language on relatively isolated, small islands such as Jeju. Jeju as a language, although pronounced similarly and presenting similar grammatical structure, is highly divergent from standard Korean in vocabulary and phrasing, and can be considered an entirely separate language (as opposed to a dialect). The main reason for this is because Jeju was much less externally influenced by the influx of Chinese literature and language, due to geographical barriers. It can thus be said that Jeju, as a member of the Koreanic language family, is a significantly more “purely Korean” language than Korean itself, as it preserves a lot of native terminology and vocabulary (whereas in standard korean, a large percentage of native vocabulary was eliminated through displacement by Sino-korean). The Korean language spoken by ancestors 1000+ years thus probably sounded much closer to the Jeju language than modern Korean. Another interesting feature of Jeju (and of the linguistics of islands in general) is the fact that any borrowed vocabulary it contains sticks around much longer, and in much more conservative forms. Due to the gradual influence from the Korean mainland, a significant portion of the original Jeju language was also displaced by Sino-korean terms, but the difference in usage is that the Sino-korean terms and phrases used in Jeju are much more akin to how they would have been used in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries than current usage. Jeju also contains a lot of Mongolian word borrowings from the Mongolian invasions of 1272. However, these words have retained their conservative, middle mongolian form whereas in standard modern mongolians, these pronunciations/words are largely obsolete. It is interesting that pieces of the linguistic past can still be observed through the results of political conflict.

Part 2: China

From March 20th to March 24th, I explored the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai. Above all the delicious food, vibrant nightlife, and beautiful architecture, I think the most interesting thing about Shanghai was the linguistic divergence the local dialects showed compared to putonghua (Standard mandarin). Shanghainese, the predominant local dialect, was extremely interesting to listen to spoken casually on the street and at just about any public establishment, although it was next to impossible to understand. At a restaurant serving crab roe noodles, a specialty dish in Shanghai, I met another visitor from Wenzhou, a city in southern Zhejiang province, who was in Shanghai on business. She gave me an extremely interesting explanation of Chinese language variations: Shanghainese is part of the Wu family of chinese languages, the speakers of which constitute a large region of southeastern china spanning the Yangtze river delta. The Wu languages are known for being particularly divergent from standard Mandarin, particularly in its preservation of conservative features (checked tones, glottal stops). Although this may seem like a fluke, as I came to find out, it is simply one data point in a larger trend in the Chinese language, which forms somewhat of a cline from North to South. The more southern in China the language is, it tends to preserve much medieval/antiquated pronunciation features, grammatical structure, and vocabulary. Lots of these languages are also highly influenced by Southeast Asian language familes (like the Kra-dai and Tai language families), which makes sense given their geographic proximity. The more northern the Chinese dialect is, the closer it tends to sound to standard Mandarin, with less tones, less tonal variability, and frequent use of er hua.

This conversation had me intrigued, and I kept this in mind during the rest of my trip in China as well as the second leg of my trip in Korea. Through comparing and contrasting commonplace Korean vocabulary through daily activities (words written on subway stations, signposts, public locations, etc), I began to draw larger generalizations on the influence of Chinese language evolution on the Korean language. Although this spectrum of pronunciation, vocabulary and structure within languages seems like a feature that is unique to only Chinese languages, these linguistic differences stemming from geographical distance can also be seen in Korean. The features that constitute the total chinese influence on the Korean language is extremely interesting, as it is essentially a combination of modern-day northeastern chinese dialect features and conservative, old chinese pronunciations that have been “Korean-ified”. For example, the sino-korean readings of words feature glottal stops (as glottal stops are a feature of the Korean language). Mandarin, at a certain point in history, got rid of glottal stops and made a shift towards palatization, but more conservative forms of chinese (southern dialects, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Fujianese) preserved this feature. This means that the Sino-korean reading of a word somewhat accurately represents how the chinese word was pronounced back when that word was imported into korean - namely, it is a Korean approximation of a medieval version of the corresponding chinese word. This explains why certain words are incidentally almost identical in conservative chinese dialects such as Cantonese, and Korean. (Mandarin xuesheng 学生 vs. Cantonese hok saang vs Korean hak saeng), (Mandarin shijian 时间 / Cantonese si gan / Korean si gan). Both of these example words 1) omit the retroflex (back palate pronounced “shi” in Mandarin vs. flat “si”), 2) omit palatization (hard “g” with tongue suspended in Korean/Cantonese vs soft “j” with tongue touching the palate), and 3) feature glottal stops (hok/hak, consonant ending vs. xue, open vowel ending). 

This was one of the more insightful trips in recent memory. Overall, my linguistic and cultural learnings from this trip really reinforced the idea in my head that any sort of study, analysis, or understanding of issues in the modern East Asian sphere must be done within a holistic context - one that doesn’t just consider the dynamic between the modern nation-states that currently occupy East Asia, but the sum of all actions from previous ethnic groups, minorities, cultures, and people that each contributed a little piece to the state of affairs of today.