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ASIAN STUDIES

Introduction
This module is intended for CTE students of BastateU Main I who are enrolled during the
first semester of the AY 2020-2021. Each module contains the corresponding topics from the
following;

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1. Physical and Social Environment of Asia

2. China, World’s Largest Nation
3. Japan, From Terror to Industrial giant
4. Korea-Enclave of Christianity in East Asia
5. Indian Civilization
The students are given freedom to manage their own learning at their own pace so long as
they would be able to accomplish and submit as told the learning tasks for each chapter from
August to December 2020.
Each chapter is divided into the following sections:

Learning Tasks
Objectives

Lesson Proper Learning Activity

Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Demonstrate factual knowledge on the physical, political, economic and socio-cultural
diversity in Asia.

2. Use knowledge learned from each Asian country to make valid analysis and
arguments in defending a truth claim regarding present physical, political, economic
and social conditions.

3. Apply course materials along with techniques and procedures covered in this course to
analyze important societal issues

4. Demonstrate specific skills, competencies and thought processes sufficient to support

further study or work in this course or related fields.

5. Demonstrate reasoned argument to the solution of familiar and unfamiliar problems

relevant to the course.

Asia and its Countries in the East

This chapter will first introduce Asia as a continent including its sub-regions, natural
resources, natural and man- made wonders, Asian characters, and religions. The historical
development of countries comprising East Asia will be traced. Indian civilization will also be
discussed in this chapter.
Objectives

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1. Recognize in the map of Asia all the sub-regions and boundaries separating them
from each other’s regional territory.
2. Discuss country’s development and root out reasons of its present conditions today.
3. Explore the different and various contributions of countries coming from the east
including India to the world.
4. Create a topic diary using a comic strip style expressing the learning acquired from
this chapter.

Lesson Proper

Physical and Social Environment of Asia

Sub-Regions of Asia

South Asia
With a population of 1,870,640,803, South Asia is Asia’s largest sub-region. It is
home to some of the most populated cities in the world, including Delhi and Mumbai in
India, Karachi in Pakistan, and Dhaka in Bangladesh.
East Asia
Second with a population of 1,624,853,705 is East Asia. Some of the largest cities in
the world are located within East Asia, including Tokyo in Japan, and Seoul in South
Korea.One of the most successful and developed economies in the world, East Asia’s
financial situation is thriving.
South East Asia
It comprises a population of 647, 589,953. This sub-region of Asia is geographically divided
again, into Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as “Indochina” and Maritime Southeast
Asia.
West Asia
This sub-region is estimated to have a population of 266,169,673.
Central Asia
Asia’s smallest sub-region with a population of 69,241,030
North Asia
Comprises Siberia and Russian Far East, which is located in the Asian part of Russia
Also home to the Ural Mountain. The major cities that are located in North Asia are Irkutsk,
Omsk, Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and Barnaul. Languages that are spoken in
North Asia are Russian, Mongolic, Turkic, Ainu, and Eskima-Aleut. Forestry, the
management of trees and other vegetation in forests, is an important but threatened industry
in a select group of Asian countries. During the past 10 years, Asia has increased its forest
cover by 30 million hectares to create forest plantations where trees can be intensively

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managed for higher yield production. Asia represents the most important region for fisheries
and aquaculture production in the world.
In 2008, Asia’s marine fishing areas produced roughly 50% of the global fish capture. Six of
the top 10 world producers of fish are found in Asia.
Mining and Drilling
Extractive activities are an important part of the economies of many Asian countries.
China, it is the world’s largest producer of aluminum, gold, tin and coal.
India, it is also a major producer of aluminum and iron ore, along with other minerals such as
barite, chromium and manganese.
Russia, is a major producer of coal, tungsten, diamonds, iron, and steel. It is also world’s
largest supplier of natural gas to Europe.
Indonesia, is a major producer of coal, gold, copper and tin.
Countries on the Arabian Peninsula have the world’s largest deposits of oil and natural gas. In
2010, Saudi Arabia was the world’s largest manufacturer of petroleum liquids producing
10.07 million barrels of liquids fuels every day.
Natural and Man Made Wonders
Raja Ampat Islands, Indonesia

Inle Lake, Burma ( Myanmar)

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The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

Great Wall of China, China

Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma

The Himalayas

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Distinct Asian Characters

Culture is an important determinant of ways and behavior of any group of people. It
determines the manner of interaction among people and the frame of mind with which to
view the world and one's life. Some of the value and practices common among Asian peoples
are respect for elder, respect for the collective interest, being helpful to others and respectfor
the environment.
Asians have straight, black hair and dark eyes. They also tend to have less body hair, less
facial hair, flatter faces, smaller noses, wider cheekbones, and "shovel-shaped" incisor teeth
(slightly scooped out shape of back side of the front teeth).

Religions in Asia
Hinduism
It is the oldest of several religions that originated in South Asia. It remains a unifying
force of Indian culture and the social caste system which Hindu tradition sees as a reflection
of the relative spiritual purity of reincarnated souls.
Jainism and Buddhism
Emerged in reaction to prevailing Hindu practices in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE.
Buddhism arose in northeastern India as a “universal” alternative to hierarchal religion,
offering nirvana or “enlightment” to individuals regardless of culture or social station.
Buddhism gave rise to two main divergent schools:
 Theravada
 Buddha and Mahayana
Sikhism

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A monotheistic Indian religion was founded in the Punjab in the late 15th century CE
and has fueled that regions modern demands for independence.
Judaism
It is founded in the Eastern Mediterranean region some 4,000 years ago posits a
covenant relationship between God – the source of Divine Law and human kind.
Christianity
After it was adopted by the Roman and Byzantine empires, Christianity became
predominant in Europe and in European derived cultures. It is practiced by sizable minorities
in many Asian countries and by Roman Catholic majorities in East Timor and the
Philippines. Islam dominates as the state religion of most Southwest Asian countries and a
substantial majority of Muslims live in Asia.
Zoroastrianism
It is an ancient religion that survives in Iran and India and contains both monotheistic
and dualistic elements.
Daoism/Taoism
It is the stressing mystical experience and the individuals harmony with nature .
Confucianism
Emphasizing the duty of the individual in society and government.

Shinto
Encompasses the indigenous religious belief and practices of the Japanese people.
Animism
It is particularly common among some ethnic minorities of South and Southeast Asia
Mystical Shamanism
Remains characteristic of numerous North and Central Asia people.
CHINA, WORLD’S LARGEST NATION
Land and People
China stretches for about 3,250 miles (5,250 km) from east to west and 3,400 miles
(5,500 km) from north to south. Its land frontier is about 12,400 miles (20,000 km) in length,
and its coastline extends for some 8,700 miles (14,000 km). The country is bounded by
Mongolia to the north; Russia and North Korea to the northeast; the Yellow Sea and the East
China Sea to the east; the South China Sea to the southeast; Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar
(Burma), India, Bhutan, and Nepal to the south; Pakistan to the southwest; and Afghanistan,
Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan to the west. In addition to the 14 countries that
border directly on it, China also faces South Korea and Japan, across the Yellow Sea, and the

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Philippines, which lie beyond the South China Sea.

Broadly speaking, the relief of China is high in the west and low in the east;
consequently, the direction of flow of the major rivers is generally eastward. The surface may
be divided into three steps, or levels. The first level is represented by the Plateau of Tibet,
which is located in both the Tibet Autonomous Region and the province of Qinghai and
which, with an average elevation of well over 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) above sea level, is
the loftiest highland area in the world. The western part of this region, the Qiangtang, has an
average height of 16,500 feet (5,000 metres) and is known as the “roof of the world.”

Xinjiang, China: Kyrgyz mosque in the Pamirs

The second step lies to the north of the Kunlun and Qilian mountains and (farther
south) to the east of the Qionglai and Daliang ranges. There the mountains descend sharply to
heights of between 6,000 and 3,000 feet (1,800 and 900 metres), after which basins

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intermingle with plateaus. This step includes the Mongolian Plateau, the Tarim Basin, the
Loess Plateau (loess is a yellow-gray dust deposited by the wind), the Sichuan Basin, and the
Yunnan-Guizhou (Yungui) Plateau.

The third step extends from the east of the Dalou, Taihang, and Wu mountain ranges
and from the eastern perimeter of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau to the China Sea. Almost all
of this area is made up of hills and plains lying below 1,500 feet (450 metres).
The most remarkable feature of China’s relief is the vast extent of its mountain
chains; the mountains, indeed, have exerted a tremendous influence on the country’s political,
economic, and cultural development. By rough estimate, about one-third of the total area of
China consists of mountains. China has the world’s tallest mountain and the world’s highest
and largest plateau, in addition to possessing extensive coastal plains. The five major
landforms—mountain, plateau, hill, plain, and basin—are all well represented. China’s
complex natural environment and rich natural resources are closely connected with the varied
nature of its relief.
The topography of China is marked by many splendours. Mount Everest
(Qomolangma Feng), situated on the border between China and Nepal, is the highest peak in
the world, at an elevation of 29,035 feet (8,850 metres; see Researcher’s Note: Height of
Mount Everest). By contrast, the lowest part of the Turfan Depression in the Uygur
Autonomous Region of Xinjiang—Lake Ayding—is 508 feet (155 metres) below sea level.
The coast of China contrasts greatly between South and North. To the south of the bay of
Hangzhou, the coast is rocky and indented with many harbours and offshore islands. To the
north, except along the Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas, the coast is sandy and flat.
China is prone to intense seismic activity throughout much of the country. The main
source of this geologic instability is the result of the constant northward movement of the
Indian tectonic plate beneath southern Asia, which has thrust up the towering mountains and
high plateaus of the Chinese southwest. Throughout its history China has experienced
hundreds of massive earthquakes that collectively have killed millions of people. Two in the
20th century alone—in eastern Gansu province (1920) and in the city of Tangshan, eastern
Hebei province (1976)—caused some 250,000 deaths each, and a quake in east-central
Sichuan province in 2008 killed tens of thousands and devastated a wide area.
China’s physical relief has dictated its development in many respects. The civilization
of Han Chinese originated in the southern part of the Loess Plateau, and from there it
extended outward until it encountered the combined barriers of relief and climate. The long,
protruding corridor, commonly known as the Gansu, or Hexi, Corridor, illustrates this fact.
South of the corridor is the Plateau of Tibet, which was too high and too cold for the Chinese
to gain a foothold. North of the corridor is the Gobi Desert, which also formed a barrier.
Consequently, Chinese civilization was forced to spread along the corridor, where melting
snow and ice in the Qilian Mountains provided water for oasis farming. The westward
extremities of the corridor became the meeting place of the ancient East and West.
Thus, for a long time the ancient political centre of China was located along the lower
reaches of the Huang He (Yellow River). Because of topographical barriers, however, it was
difficult for the central government to gain complete control over the entire country, except

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when an unusually strong dynasty was in power. In many instances the Sichuan Basin—an
isolated region in southwestern China, about twice the size of Scotland, that is well protected
by high mountains and is self-sufficient in agricultural products—became an independent
kingdom. A comparable situation often arose in the Tarim Basin in the northwest. Linked to
the rest of China only by the Gansu Corridor, this basin is even remoter than the Sichuan,
and, when the central government was unable to exert its influence, oasis states were
established; only the three strong dynasties—the Han (206 BCE–220 CE), the Tang (618–
907CE), and the Qing, or Manchu (1644–1911/12)—were capable of controlling the region.
Apart from the three elevation zones already mentioned, it is possible—on the basis of
geologic structure, climatic conditions, and differences in geomorphologic development—to
divide China into three major topographic regions: the eastern, northwestern, and
southwestern zones. The eastern zone is shaped by the rivers, which have eroded landforms
in some parts and have deposited alluvial plains in others; its climate is monsoonal
(characterized by seasonal rain-bearing winds). The northwestern region is arid and eroded
by the wind; it forms an inland drainage basin. The southwest is a cold, lofty, and
mountainous region containing intermontane plateaus and inland lakes.
Ethnic groups
China is a multinational country, with a population composed of a large number of
ethnic and linguistic groups. The Han (Chinese), the largest group, outnumber the minority
groups or minority nationalities in every province or autonomous region except Tibet and
Xinjiang. The Han, therefore, form the great homogeneous mass of the Chinese people,
sharing the same culture, the same traditions, and the same written language. For this reason,
the general basis for classifying the country’s population is largely linguistic rather than
ethnic. Some 55 minority groups are spread over approximately three-fifths of the country’s
total area. Where these minority groups are found in large numbers, they have been given
some semblance of autonomy and self-government; autonomous regions of several types
have been established on the basis of the geographic distribution of nationalities.
The government takes great credit for its treatment of these minorities; it has
advanced their economic well-being, raised their living standards, provided educational
facilities, promoted their national languages and cultures, and raised their literacy levels, as
well as introduced a written language where none existed previously. It must be noted,
however, that some minorities (e.g., Tibetans) have been subject to varying degrees of
repression. Still, of the 50-odd minority languages, only 20 had written forms before the
coming of the communist regime in 1949; and only relatively few written languages—e.g.,
Mongolian, Tibetan, Uighur, Kazakh (Hasake), Dai, and Korean (Chaoxian)—were in
everyday use. Other written languages were used chiefly for religious purposes and by a
limited number of people. Educational institutions for national minorities are a feature of
many large cities, notably Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Lanzhou.
Religion
China is one of great centres of world religious thought and practices. It is known
especially as the birthplace of the religio-philosophical schools of Confucianism and Daoism
(Taoism), belief systems that formed the basis of Chinese society and governance for
centuries. Buddhism came to China perhaps as early as the 3rd century BCE and was a

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recognized presence there by the 1st century CE. The country became an incubator for many
of the great present-day Buddhist sects, including Zen (Chan) and Pure Land, and, by its
extension into Tibet, the source of Tibetan Buddhism. In addition, hundreds of animist, folk,
and syncretic religious practices developed in China, including the movement that spawned
the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-19th century.
The political and social upheavals in China during the first half of the 20th century
had a disintegrating effect on Confucianism, Daoism, and (outside Tibet) Buddhism, and
traditional observances of these were greatly weakened. From 1949 the country became
officially atheist, although state-monitored religious practices continued to be allowed.
However, some religions were persecuted, notably Tibetan Buddhism after China assumed
military control of Tibet in 1959. The Chinese government has gradually relaxed many of its
earlier restrictions on religious institutions and practices, but it still curtails those it considers
threats to the social and political order (e.g., the spiritual exercise discipline called Falun
Gong, or Falun Dafa).
About one-half of China’s people claim that they are nonreligious or atheist.
Adherents to various indigenous folk religions, collectively about one-fifth of the total
population, comprise the largest group of those professing a belief. Many Chinese who are
identified as adherents of folk religions also embrace aspects and rituals of other religions.
Members of non-Han minorities constitute the bulk of those following Buddhism and Islam.
Christians are a small but significant and growing minority, many of them converts to
Evangelical Protestant denominations.

China: Religious affiliation

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Population growth
Historical records show that as long ago as 800 BCE, in the early part of the Zhou
dynasty, China was already inhabited by about 13.7 million people. Until the last years of the
Xi (Western) Han dynasty, about 2 CE, comparatively accurate and complete registers of
population were kept, and the total population in that year was given as 59.6 million. This
first Chinese census was intended mainly as a preparatory step toward the levy of a poll tax.
Many people, aware that a census might work to their disadvantage, managed to avoid
reporting, which explains why for centuries all subsequent population figures were
unreliable. In 1712 the Qing emperor Kangxi declared that an increased population would not
be subject to tax; population figures thereafter gradually became more accurate.
During the later years of the Bei (Northern) Song dynasty, in the early 12th century,
when China was already in the heyday of its economic and cultural development, the total
population began to exceed 100 million. Later, uninterrupted and large-scale invasions from
the north reduced the country’s population. When national unification returned with the
advent of the Ming dynasty, the census was at first strictly conducted. The population of
China, according to a registration compiled in 1381, was quite close to the one registered in 2
CE.
From the 15th century onward the population increased steadily, growth being
interrupted by wars and natural disasters in the mid-17th century and slowed by the internal
strife and foreign invasions in the century that preceded the communist takeover in 1949.
During the 18th century China enjoyed a lengthy period of peace and prosperity,
characterized by continual territorial expansion and an accelerating population increase. In
1762 China had a population of more than 200 million, and by 1834 that population had
doubled. It should be noted that during that period the amount of cultivable land did not
increase concomitantly, and land hunger became a growing problem from that time on.
After 1949, sanitation and medical care greatly improved, epidemics were brought
under control, and subsequent generations enjoyed progressively better health. Public hygiene
also improved, and, as a result, the death rate declined faster than the birth rate, and the
population growth rate increased. China’s population reached 1 billion in the early 1980s and
had surpassed 1.3 billion early in the 21st century.
The continually growing population has been a major problem for the government. In
1955–58, with the country struggling to obtain an adequate food supply and saddled with a
generally low standard of living, the authorities sponsored a major birth-control drive. A
second attempt at population control began in 1962, when the main initiatives were programs
promoting late marriages and the use of contraceptives. The outbreak of the Cultural
Revolution in 1966 interrupted this second family-planning drive, but in 1970 a third and
much stricter program was initiated. The attempt this time was to make late marriage and
family limitation obligatory, and it culminated in 1979 in efforts to implement a policy of one
child per family.

Other developments affected the rate of population growth more than the first two
official family-planning campaigns, notably the disastrous effects of Chinese leader Mao
Zedong’s Great Leap Forward economic program of 1958–60. The policies of the Great Leap

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caused a massive famine in China, the death rate surpassed the birth rate, and by 1960 the
overall population was declining. By 1963 the country was recovering from the famine, and,
even though the second birth-control campaign had already begun, a soaring birth rate
produced an annual population growth rate of more than 3 percent, the highest since 1949.
Since 1970, however, when the third family-planning program was launched, state
efforts have been much more effective. China’s population growth rate is now among the
lowest for a developing country, although, because its population is so huge, annual net
population growth is still considerable. About one-sixth of the population is younger than 15
years of age.

Dynasties of China

Timeline of Chinese Dynasties and Other Key Events

ca. 2100-1600 BCE Xia (Hsia) Dynasty

Capitals: near present-day

ca. 1600-1050 BCE Shang Dynasty
Zhengzhou and Anyang

Capitals: Hao (near present-day

ca. 1046-256 BCE Zhou (Chou) Dynasty
Xi'an) and Luoyang

Western Zhou (ca. 1046-771 BCE)

Spring and Autumn Period

Eastern Zhou (ca. 771-256 BCE)
(770-ca. 475 BCE)

Confucius (ca. 551-479 BCE)

Warring States Period

(ca. 475-221 BCE)

221-206 BCE Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty Capital: Chang'an, present-day Xi'an

Qin Shihuangdi dies, 210 BCE

206 BCE-220 CE Han Dynasty

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Western/Former Han (206 BCE-9

Capital: Chang'an
CE)

Confucianism officially established

as basis for Chinese state by Han
Wudi (r. 141-86 BCE)

Eastern/Later Han (25-220 CE) Capital: Luoyang

Period of disunity and instability

220-589 CE Six Dynasties Period following the fall of the Han;
Buddhism introduced to China

Three Kingdoms (220-2965 CE) Cao Wei, Shu Han, Dong Wu

Jin Dynasty (265-420 CE)

Period of the Northern and Southern

Dynasties (386-589 CE)

581-618 CE Sui Dynasty Capital: Chang'an

618-906 CE Tang (T'ang) Dynasty Capitals: Chang'an and Luoyang

907-960 CE Five Dynasties Period

960-1279 Song (Sung) Dynasty

Capital: Bianjing (present-day

Northern Song (960-1127)
Kaifeng)

Capital: Lin'an (present-day

Southern Song (1127-1279)
Hangzhou)

The reign of the Mongol empire;

1279-1368 Yuan Dynasty
Capital: Dadu (present-day Beijing)

Re-establishment of rule by Han

1368-1644 Ming Dynasty ruling house; Capitals: Nanjing and
Beijing

Reign of the Manchus; Capital:

1644-1912 Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty
Beijing

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Capitals: Beijing, Wuhan, and

1912-1949 Republic Period
Nanjing

1949-present People's Republic of China Capital: Beijing

Annotated Chronological Outline of Chinese History

10,000-2,000 BCE Neolithic Cultures

ca. 2100-1600 BCE Xia (Hsia) Dynasty

ca. 1600-1050 BCE Shang Dynasty

One of the Three Dynasties, or San Dai (Xia, Shang, and Zhou), thought
to mark the beginning of Chinese civilization: characterized by its writing
system, practice of divination, walled cities, bronze technology, and use of
horse-drawn chariots.

ca. 1046-256 BCE Zhou (Chou) Dynasty: Western Zhou (ca. 1046-771 BCE), Eastern Zhou
(771-256 BCE)

A hierarchical political and social system with the Zhou royal house at its
apex: power was bestowed upon aristocratic families as lords of their
domains or principalities. Although often compared to European
"feudalism," what actually gave the system cohesion was a hierarchical
order of ancestral cults. The system eventually broke down into a
competition for power between rival semi-autonomous states in what
became known as the Spring and Autumn period (ca. 770-475 BCE) and
the Warring States (ca. 475-221 BCE) period. It was during these
tumultuous times that Confucius (551-479 BCE) lived.

221-206 BCE Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty

Created a unitary state by imposing a centralized administration and by

standardizing the writing script, weights and measures. Known for its
harsh methods of rule, including the suppression of dissenting thought.

206 BCE-220 CE Han Dynasty: Western/Former Han (206 BCE-9 CE) and Eastern/Later

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Han (25-220 CE)

Modified and consolidated the foundation of the imperial order.

Confucianism was established as orthodoxy and open civil service
examinations were introduced. Han power reached Korea and
Vietnam. Records of the Historian, which became the model for
subsequent official histories, was completed.

220-589 CE "Period of Disunity" or Six Dynasties Period

The empire was fragmented. The North was dominated by invaders from
the borderland and the steppes. The South was ruled by successive
"Chinese" dynasties. Buddhism spread.

581-618 CE Sui Dynasty

China reunified.

618-906 Tang (T'ang) Dynasty

A time of cosmopolitanism and cultural flowering occurred. This period

was the height of Buddhist influence in China until its repression around
845. Active territorial expansion until defeated by the Arabs at Talas in
751.

960-1279 Song (Sung) Dynasty: Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song
(1127-1279)

An era of significant economic and social changes: the monetization of the

economy; growth in commerce and maritime trade; urban expansion and
technological innovations. The examination system for bureaucratic
recruitment of neo-Confucianism was to provide the intellectual
underpinning for the political and social order of the late imperial period.

1279-1368 Yuan Dynasty

Founded by the Mongols as part of their conquest of much of the world.

Beijing was made the capital. Dramas, such as the famous Story of the
Western Wing, flourished.

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1368-1644 Ming Dynasty

The first Ming emperor, Hongwu, laid the basis of an authoritarian

political culture. Despite early expansion, it was an inward-looking state
with an emphasis on its agrarian base. Gradual burgeoning of the
commercial sector; important changes in the economy and social relations
in the latter part of the dynasty; also a vibrant literary scene as represented
by publication of the novel Journey to the West.

1644-1912 Qing (Ch'ing) Dynasty

A Manchu dynasty. Continued the economic developments of the late

Ming, leading to prosperity but also complacency and a dramatic increase
in population. The acclaimed novel Dream of the Red Chamber was
written in this period. Strains on the polity were intensified by a rapid
incorporation of substantial new territories. Its authoritarian structure was
subsequently unable to meet the military and cultural challenge of an
expansive West.

1912-1949 Republic Period

Weak central government following the collapse of the dynastic system in

1911-12; Western influence was shown by the promotion of "science" and
"democracy" during the New Culture Movement. The attempt of the
Nationalist government (est. 1928) to bring the entire country under its
control was thwarted by both domestic revolts and the Japanese
occupation (1937-45). The Nationalists fled to Taiwan after defeat by the
Communists.

1949-present People's Republic of China

Communist government. The drive for remaking society ended in

disasters such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Economic reform and political retrenchment since around 1978.

Prepared by Michael Tsin, previously assistant professor of Chinese history, Columbia University; currently
associate professor of Chinese history, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Text ©1995 Columbia University, Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching,

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(Ainslie Embree and Carol Gluck, eds., Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp Inc. 1995).

China’s Contribution to the World

Ancient China has many contributions to the modern world. Ancient China had started to
contribute to the modern world since 1600BCE.Their most contribution was their inventions
that were created and some had been made by accident. Their inventions were paper,
compass, silk, gunpowder and fireworks. The ancient Chinese civilisation had a huge impact
on the modern world. But mostly was all about their inventions.

Paper was their most proudest contribution, because it is still used today. Paper was once
made very thick, until someone figured out a way to make a fine thin paper. First they cut
dried bamboo, squash it into powder, mix it with water and then use a very thin slice of
material to lay it on and let it dry. Ancient Chinese paper was invented because the thick hard
paper had taking forever to write on. Paper had made a contribution to the modern world
because it is still used today.

The ancient Chinese compass was also another great invention. The compass was mostly a
type of magnetic metal all around with a spoon like figure on top to point a direction. The
Chinese first used the compass to help build the house to make it straight and in line together.
The Chinese then figured a way to take the compass sailing with the sailors to give them
directions on where to go.

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SILK
Silk was an important fabric in ancient china. Silk was always traded from china to another
country. Silk was made out of silk worms or silk cocoons. Many things like clothes, Chinese
fans and kites were made out of this soft fabric. Many inventions that was made and
mentioned was a worlds great contribution to the modern world.

Ancient China has had many contributions to the modern world, especially their inventions.
They have made inventions like porcelain, paper money, compass, gunpowder and fireworks.
China today still are inventing things, something's that have been created before was made by
accident like the gunpowder.
Invention from ancient china had been a contribution because some we still use today. Their
contribution were mostly about the inventions and some from the civilisation. Ancient china
was a great place to make many inventions and are still figuring out how to make more
inventions today
Sun Yat Sen and the 1911 Revolution
Sun Yat-sen (generally known as Sun Zhongshan 孫中山 or Sun Wen 孫文 in Chinese)
plays a central role in the national narratives of both the Republic of China on Taiwan and the
People’s Republic of China, which lionize him as a “national hero” of gigantic proportions
and the determined revolutionary who brought low the Qing dynasty. Sun’s formative and
early revolutionary years were spent overseas studying or in exile to avoid arrest by Qing
authorities, exposing him to foreign contacts, ideals, and funding. Although a stalwart patriot,
Sun spent little time in China itself, viewed the world through Christian lenses, and routinely
sought foreign aid. In 1911, Sun’s Tongmenghui, or Revolutionary Alliance, overthrew the
Qing dynasty, ending two millennia of imperial rule and propelling China into a new stage of
sociopolitical development under the Republic of China.
The earliest literature on the 1911 Revolution narrated revolutionary events and
explained the Qing’s fall as the result of Sun’s foreign connections. Subsequent explanations
turned inward, examining factors, figures, events, changes, and participants within China
itself. By 1971, studies on local and provincial connections to the 1911 Revolution became
popular, spiking every decade. In 2011, the centenary of the 1911 Revolution, interest
exploded, producing waves of symposia, document collections, exhibitions, monographs, and
articles. Unfortunately for Sun, his 1911 Revolution failed to produce the society of his
dreams. He served as the Republic of China’s provisional president in 1912, but soon found
himself exiled again, banished by the usurper Yuan Shikai and his military dictatorship.

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Sun spent years planning a comeback, first against Yuan and then against the
disastrous warlord regimes that followed. Sun’s semi-exiled life in the French quarter in
Shanghai and mounting failures vis-à-vis warlord regimes, however, dimmed his
international reputation. Newspapers and foreign ministry documents alike portrayed Sun as a
fallen figure. Nevertheless, these years in the wilderness drove Sun to carefully rethink
China’s state-building challenges. He wrote extensively, meticulously planning China’s
future political and economic development. Moving to Guangzhou at the invitation of
reformist warlord Chen Jiongming, Sun tried to build a movement that could unify China.
Chen, however, preferred provincial development over national unification and drove Sun
from Guangzhou, Desperate, Sun opened negotiations with Soviet agents in 1923. Mercenary
troops helped Sun regain a foothold in Guangzhou, whereupon Soviet advisors and Chinese
communists alike helped him launch another revolution. Accounts from the period painted
Sun as a leftist radical or “Bolshevik.” Criticisms haunted Sun until his death from liver
cancer in 1925.
Communist Revolution
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC). The announcement ended the costly full-scale civil war
between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang
(KMT), which broke out immediately following World War II and had been preceded by on
and off conflict between the two sides since the 1920’s. The creation of the PRC also
completed the long process of governmental upheaval in China begun by the Chinese
Revolution of 1911. The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United
States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades.
The Chinese Communist Party, founded in 1921 in Shanghai, originally existed as a study
group working within the confines of the First United Front with the Nationalist Party.
Chinese Communists joined with the Nationalist Army in the Northern Expedition of 1926–
27 to rid the nation of the warlords that prevented the formation of a strong central
government. This collaboration lasted until the “White Terror” of 1927, when the Nationalists
turned on the Communists, killing them or purging them from the party.
After the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, the Government of the Republic of China
(ROC) faced the triple threat of Japanese invasion, Communist uprising, and warlord
insurrections. Frustrated by the focus of the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek on internal
threats instead of the Japanese assault, a group of generals abducted Chiang in 1937 and
forced him to reconsider cooperation with the Communist army. As with the first effort at
cooperation between the Nationalist government and the CCP, this Second United Front was
short-lived. The Nationalists expended needed resources on containing the Communists,
rather than focusing entirely on Japan, while the Communists worked to strengthen their
influence in rural society.
During World War II, popular support for the Communists increased. U.S. officials in China
reported a dictatorial suppression of dissent in Nationalist-controlled areas. These
undemocratic polices combined with wartime corruption made the Republic of China
Government vulnerable to the Communist threat. The CCP, for its part, experienced success
in its early efforts at land reform and was lauded by peasants for its unflagging efforts to fight
against the Japanese invaders.

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Japanese surrender set the stage for the resurgence of civil war in China. Though only
nominally democratic, the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek continued to receive
U.S. support both as its former war ally and as the sole option for preventing Communist
control of China. U.S. forces flew tens of thousands of Nationalist Chinese troops into
Japanese-controlled territory and allowed them to accept the Japanese surrender. The Soviet
Union, meanwhile, occupied Manchuria and only pulled out when Chinese Communist forces
were in place to claim that territory.
In 1945, the leaders of the Nationalist and Communist parties, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao
Zedong, met for a series of talks on the formation of a post-war government. Both agreed on
the importance of democracy, a unified military, and equality for all Chinese political parties.
The truce was tenuous, however, and, in spite of repeated efforts by U.S. General George
Marshall to broker an agreement, by 1946 the two sides were fighting an all-out civil war.
Years of mistrust between the two sides thwarted efforts to form a coalition government.
As the civil war gained strength from 1947 to 1949, eventual Communist victory seemed
more and more likely. Although the Communists did not hold any major cities after World
War II, they had strong grassroots support, superior military organization and morale, and
large stocks of weapons seized from Japanese supplies in Manchuria. Years of corruption and
mismanagement had eroded popular support for the Nationalist Government. Early in 1947,
the ROC Government was already looking to the island province of Taiwan, off the coast of
Fujian Province, as a potential point of retreat. Although officials in the Truman
Administration were not convinced of the strategic importance to the United States of
maintaining relations with Nationalist China, no one in the U.S. Government wanted to be
charged with facilitating the “loss” of China to communism. Military and financial aid to the
floundering Nationalists continued, though not at the level that Chiang Kai-shek would have
liked. In October of 1949, after a string of military victories, Mao Zedong proclaimed the
establishment of the PRC; Chiang and his forces fled to Taiwan to regroup and plan for their
efforts to retake the mainland.
The ability of the PRC and the United States to find common ground in the wake of the
establishment of the new Chinese state was hampered by both domestic politics and global
tensions. In August of 1949, the Truman administration published the “China White Paper,”
which explained past U.S. policy toward China based upon the principle that only Chinese
forces could determine the outcome of their civil war. Unfortunately for Truman, this step
failed to protect his administration from charges of having “lost” China. The unfinished
nature of the revolution, leaving a broken and exiled but still vocal Nationalist Government
and Army on Taiwan, only heightened the sense among U.S. anti-communists that the
outcome of the struggle could be reversed. The outbreak of the Korean War, which pitted the
PRC and the United States on opposite sides of an international conflict, ended any
opportunity for accommodation between the PRC and the United States. Truman’s desire to
prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south led to the U.S. policy of protecting the
Chiang Kai-shek government on Taiwan.
For more than twenty years after the Chinese revolution of 1949, there were few contacts,
limited trade and no diplomatic ties between the two countries. Until the 1970s, the United
States continued to recognize the Republic of China, located on Taiwan, as China’s true
government and supported that government’s holding the Chinese seat in the United Nations.

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JAPAN, FROM TERROR TO INDUSTRIAL GIANT

Japan is the only nation bombed with nuclear weapons, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
American bomber drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, the United States
became the first and only nation to use atomic weapons during wartime when it dropped an
atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Japan is the second largest economy in the world and the third largest purchasing power.
Japan's economy was the world's second largest (behind the US) from 1968 until
2010, when it was overtaken by China. Its gross domestic product GDP (Gross Domestic
Product ) in 2016 was estimated to be USD 4.7 trillion, and its population of 126.9 million
enjoyed a high standard of living, with per capita GDP of just below USD 40,000 in 2015.
Japan is also the factory to the world for cars, ships, electronics, cameras, gadgets, toys,
games and robots.
Land and People
Japanese call their Nation, Nippon or Nihon, "Land of the rising Sun". Japan is
an archipelago of 4,233 islands in East Asia. It extends over 3,000 km (1,900 mi)[1] from the
Sea of Okhotsk southwest to the Philippine Sea south along the northeastern coast of the
Eurasia continent. Its social welfare system is one of the best in the world, but one of its most
urgent problems is how to take care of its aging population. Mixed Shinto-Zen Buddhist, 2%
Christians, Many do not really practice religions. Climate is temperate 17% of the land is
arable. Also, Mt. Fuji is the tallest holiest mountain in Japan. 60 active volcanoes. Lies within
the ring of fire of the Pacific. Tokyo, the capital of Japan has a population of 30 million and
is the largest city in the world.
Creation and Story
Amaterasu is the great and glorious goddess of the sun. She is the center of Shinto and
Japanese spiritual life. Daughter of creator deities Izanagi and Izanami, and central to the
Shinto religion. It is from her the Japanese nobility claims descent and their divine right to
rule. Jimmu Tenno was the first Emperor of Japan. He was the descendant of the sun goddess
Amaterasu.
Chinese Influence and History
Pre- 1600 BC China is charted mainly by legend and pre-historic evidence. The name China
comes from the Sanskrit China (derived from the name of the Chinese Qin Dynasty,
pronounced Chin) which was translated as Cin by the Persians and emsem to have become
popularized through trade along the silkroad from China to the rest of the world. The
Roman's and the Greek knew the countryas seres", the land where the silk comes
from.
The Influence of China on Japan is as deep as it is long. Buddhism, Chinese language
literature and the technology of government proved at a glance to be more powerful than their
Japanesse equivalents. The Buddhist religion came with rest of early Chinese culture and
made an impact.Confucian concepts of government and society also arrived in Japan.
Classical Japan Contribution in the Civilization

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Japan’s classical period, like that of other civilizations, Is the period in which the foundation
for later historical development is laid. In particular Buddhism, Confucian social and political
values and literary Chinese and its writing system. Japanesse proceed to study and
consciously borrow and adapt elements of Chinese civilization to Japan. Japan use written
and spoken language as an official language of government.
War with China and Russia
First Sino- Japanese (China- Japanese War).
They grew out of conflict between the countries for supreme act in Korea.
Korea had a long been China’s most important client state, but its strategic opposite the
Japanese
Islands and Its Natural Resources Of Coal And Iron attracted Japan’s interest.In 1875, Japan
had begun to adopt Western Technology, forced Korea to open itself to Foreign , especially
to Japanese, trade and to declare itself Independent from China’s in its foreign relations.
Japan became more radical modernizing forces within Korean government while China
continue to sponsor conservative official gather around the royal family. I 1884, a Group Of
Pro- Japanese Reformers attempted to overthrow the Korean Government but Chinese troops
under General Yuan Shikai rescued several Japanese Legation guards in the process. War was
avoided between Japan and China by signing of the " Li-Ito Convention" , In
which both Countries agreed to withdraw troops from Korea.

Russia- Japanese War (1904-1905)

It is a Military conflict fought between The Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan .In 1904
The Russian Empire which was ruled by The Autocratic Czar Nicholas II was one of the
Largest territorial powers in the world . Czar Nicholas set his insights on the Korean and
Liaodong peninsulas The latter located in present day China, they wanted to have a base of
operations firmly under its control, with Russians history of military aggressions The
Japanese initially sought a deal offering cede control of Manchuria (NortheasternChina)
Under the terms of the proposal , Japan would have maintained influence over
Korea.However Russia refused Japan’s offer and demanded That Korea north of the 39th
parallel serve as a Neutral Zone. As negotiations broke down, The Japanese opted to go to
Wars staging a surprise attack On The Russian Navy At Port Arthur on February 08,1904.
The attack by the Japanese Imperial Navy against the Russian Far Fleet at Port Arthur was
designed to neutralize the Russians. Under the leadership of Admiral Togo Heihachiro, The
Japanese Imperial navy sends torpedo boats to Russian’s naval vessels significantly
damaging three of the largest: Tsesarevich,Retvizan, And Pallada.
Japan’s New Greatest Power
Powerful Military - survey published In 2015 ranked Japan as the world fourth most powerful
military behind United States , Russia, and China. Advancement Of Technology – Japan
undoubtedly become a leader in innovation and technology, they progress in automation ,use
of robots and integration of artificial intelligence with daily living.
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Example of there inventions are :

Blue Light LED, Calculator,DVD’s, Video Camera and etc.
Economic Development - Japanese government sees itself as a great power with economic
clout as well being an enforcer of international rules and regulations. The country also moved
up she scale as the world's second largest economy in 1968.- They are Ranked 3 In the
Top 50 richest country in the world . With a GDP of $ 4.9 trillion in 2018 japan is No. 3 in
the world but its average income of $ 40,753 drops it to No.4 on the wealthiest country.
Japan and Industrial power
Japan achieve sustained growth in per capital income between the 1880s and 1970 through
industrialization. Moving alone in an income growth trajectory through expansion of
manufacturing is hardly unique. Japanesse growth was investment-led, not export- lef.
Shifting out of low- productivity agriculture into high productivity manufacturing, mining,
and construction contributed to total factor productivity growth.

KOREA, ENCLAVE OF CHRISTIANITY

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Land and People

South Korea, officially Republic of Korea (2015 est. pop. 50,594,000), 38,022 sq mi (98,477
sq km), formally proclaimed on Aug. 15, 1948, has its capital at Seoul , the largest city.
Busan , the second largest city, is the country's chief port, with an excellent natural harbor
near the delta of the Nakdong River. Other important cities are Daegu and Incheon . South
Korea is divided into nine provinces and seven independent metropolitan cities. Syngman
Rhee , who had established a provisional Korean government in exile in 1919, was elected
South Korea's first president in 1948.
Traditionally the agricultural region of the Korean peninsula, South Korea faced severe
economic problems after partition. Attempts to establish an adequate industrial base were
hampered by limited resources, particularly an acute lack of energy resources; most industry,
prior to 1948, had been located in the North. War damage and the flood of refugees from
North Korea further intensified the economic problem. The country depended upon foreign
aid, chiefly from the United States, and the economy was characterized by runaway inflation,
highly unfavorable trade balances, and mass unemployment.

The increasingly authoritarian rule of President Syngman Rhee, along with government
corruption and injustice, added to the discontent of the people. The elections of Mar., 1960, in
which Rhee won a fourth term, were marked by widespread violence, police brutality, and
accusations by Rhee's opponents of government fraud. A student protest march in Apr., 1960,

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in which 125 students were shot down by the police, triggered a wave of uprisings across the
country. The government capitulated, and Rhee resigned and went into exile.
Under the leadership of Dr. John M. Chang (Chang Myun), a new government was unable to
correct the economic problems or maintain order, and in May, 1961, the South Korean armed
forces seized power in a bloodless coup. A military junta under Gen. Park Chung Hee
established tight control over civil freedoms, the press, and the economy, somewhat relaxing
restrictions as its power solidified. Park was elected president in 1963, reelected in 1967, and,
following a constitutional amendment permitting a third term, again in 1971.
Park's government was remarkably successful in fighting graft and corruption and in reviving
the economy. Successive five-year economic development plans, first launched in 1962,
brought dramatic changes. Between 1962 and 1972 manufacturing was established as a
leading economic sector and exports increased dramatically. At the same time however,
significant industrial control was concentrated in a number of family-run conglomerates that
came to be known as chaebols. In Oct., 1972, President Park proclaimed martial law and
dissolved the national assembly, asserting that such measures were necessary to improve
South Korea's position in the reunification talks with North Korea. In Dec., 1972, President
Park was elected to a new six-year term, under a revised constitution, by a national
conference. In 1974, a Korean resident of Japan unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Park
in Seoul, fatally wounding Park's wife.
A second assassination attempt on Park, in 1979, was successful, and he was succeeded by
Choi Kyu-hah, who instituted military rule. After a period of internal turmoil, Chun Doo
Hwan was elected president (1980). Reforms were made to shift power to the national
assembly, and the country's dynamic, export-oriented economy continued to grow. Labor
unrest and general dissatisfaction with the government, however, led South Korean leaders to
draw up a new constitution in 1987, which mandated popular election of the president and a
reduction of the presidential term to five years.
Roh Tae Woo, who was elected president and took office in 1988, fought rising inflation
rates brought on by South Korea's growing economy Roh attempted to improve relations with
opposition politicians and with the North, also establishing diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union (1990) and China (1992). In 1992, Kim Young Sam , a former opposition
leader who had merged his party with Roh's, was elected president, becoming the first
civilian to hold the office since the Korean War. President Kim launched a campaign to
eliminate corruption and administrative abuse and began to encourage economic cooperation
with the North.

In 1996 former presidents Chun and Roh were put on trial on corruption charges and also
tried, with 14 former generals, on charges in connection with the 1979 coup following Park's
death and the 1980 massacre of prodemocracy demonstrators in Gwangju (Kwangju). Both
received prison sentences. Along with other Asian countries, South Korea experienced a
financial crisis in late 1997, forcing it to seek assistance from the International Monetary
Fund.
In December, voters elected Kim Dae Jung , who had been a prodemocracy dissident during
the country's period of military dictatorship, as South Korea's new president. The economy

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began to recover slowly from the effect of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis in 1999, and
economic reforms promoted sustained growth. Kim worked to open relations with the North,
and in 2000 he traveled there for a historic meeting with Kim Jong Il. Subsequent progress in
inter-Korean relations, however, was slow, leading many in the South to feel that too many
concessions had been made
Kim Dae Jung's government was hurt by a series of corruption scandals in 2001 and 2002,
some of which involved the president's family. The government suffered further
embarrassment in 2002 when two nominees for prime minister were rejected by the national
assembly. Despite these setbacks, the ruling party's candidate for president, Roh Moo Hyun ,
won the election in Dec., 2002. Following the election, when North Korea moved to resume
its nuclear weapons program, the South pursued a more conciliatory course than that of the
United States, and strongly opposed any military action against the North.
A political party funding scandal in 2003 implicated the main South Korean parties and many
businesses, but it was overshadowed in early 2004 by the impeachment of the president over
a relatively minor election law violation, which involved his public support for the new Uri
party (the president is required be politically neutral). The impeachment, which also accused
Roh of incompetence, was reversed by the Constitutional Court, which restored him to office
in May. In the meantime, Prime Minister Goh Kun was acting president, and the Uri party
gained a majority of the National Assembly seats in an April election that amounted to a
repudiation by the public of the impeachment. The election was the first in which a liberal
party had won control of the South Korean legislature. Roh officially joined the party in May.
In Aug., 2004, Roh announced that executive and administrative functions of the government
would be moved to a new capital carved from portions of Yeongi co. and Gongju city in
South Chungcheong prov., with construction to begin in 2007 and the relocation to be
completed by 2030. Intended to reduce Seoul's economic dominance and overcrowding, the
proposal provoked constitutional challenges from its opponents. In October the constitutional
court ruled that a referendum or a constitutional amendment would be required before the
move could be made. Construction of Sejong City continued, however, as a government
center, and the city was officially inaugurated in 2012.
The South revealed in Aug. and Sept., 2004, that its scientists had twice conducted
experiments to enrich nuclear materials. Although the amounts of enriched plutonium and
uranium were small, the admissions were embarrassing internationally and did not help the
campaign against the North's nuclear program. Relations with Japan were strained in early
2005 over the ownership of the Liancourt Rocks (a perennial source of friction) and over
Japanese school history textbooks that downplayed Japan's actions during World War II.
The Uri party, which had been hit by a number of scandals and ministerial resignations since
winning control of parliament, lost its narrow majority in that body in Mar., 2005. In Apr.,
2006, Han Myung-Sook, a member of the Uri party, became the first woman to be elected
prime minister of South Korea; real power in the South Korean government, however, resides
with the president. Local elections in May, 2006, resulted in significant losses for the Uri
party. After the North's nuclear test in Oct., 2006, South Korea imposed some sanctions and
supported the UN-adopted military sanctions, but remained committed to its policy of
engagement with the North and the significant economic trade involved.

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In early 2007, after the Uri party had suffered significant defections in the National Assembly
Roh resigned from the party in an attempt to avoid further losses. Prime Minister Han
resigned in March, and in April a free-trade agreement was reached with the United States. In
October the leaders of the North and South met in a second summit in Pyongyang. The Dec.,
2007, presidential election was won easily by Grand National party candidate Lee Myung
Bak , the conservative former mayor of Seoul. Lee pursued a harder line than his predecessor
in relations with the North, calling for it to make progress on human rights and nuclear
disarmament. As a result, the North escalated tensions with South Korea.
In Apr., 2008, Lee's party won a majority in the parliamentary elections. That month South
Korea agreed to resume imports of U.S. beef, banned five years before over concerns about
mad cow disease. The news provoked weeks of antigovernment protests, which forced Lee to
reconstitute his government and to renegotiate the agreement. The killing of a South Korean
tourist by the North Korean military at Mt. Kumgang in North Korea led South Korea to
suspend tourist visits to the site and increased tensions with the North, and by the end of 2008
the North had reacted to Lee's tougher approach to relations by closing the rail line between
the two nations.
Tensions with the North continued into 2009, aggravated by actions that included the North's
temporary closure of access to South Korean factories in the North and subsequent demands
for wage and rent increases for those factories, the launches of a number of rockets by the
North including a long-range missile, and a second nuclear test. Lee's government also was
confronted by the opposition, whose legislators occupied the parliament for two weeks at the
turn of the year to prevent passage of government bills and ratification of the free-trade treaty
with the United States, and the suicide of former president Roh (May, 2009) after the
government began investigating him for corruption.
Relations with the North improved a little in Aug., 2009, but Lee emphasized that the North
must adhere to the 2007 six-party agreement, and relations generally remained difficult. The
Mar., 2010, sinking of a South Korean warship near a maritime border disputed by the North
led to new tensions between the two nations. A multinational investigation determined that
the ship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, and South Korea cut trade links with the North
and took other action; unofficial food shipments to the North did not resume until mid-2011.
In Nov., 2010, the unprovoked shelling of Yeonpyeong island, Southern territory off the SW
coast of North Korea and near the same maritime border, further escalated tensions, and the
failure of the government to respond more forcefully than it did led to the resignation of the
defense minister.
A new free-trade agreement was signed with the United States in Dec., 2010 and was finally
ratified in Nov., 2011. In the Apr., 2012, parliamentary elections the ruling New Frontier
party (the former Grand National party) narrowly won a majority of the seats; both major
parties had been tainted by corruption scandals. The December elections for president
resulted in a narrow victory for Park Geun Hye , the New Frontier party candidate and the
daughter of former president Park Chung Hee. She became South Korea's first woman
president.
In Jan., 2013, the South successfully launched a satellite; it was the third launch attempt since
2009. Park's government was hit by a series of scandals involving allegations concerning
several prime minsterial selections in 2015, and her reputation was also damaged by the

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government's handling of a ferry sinking in 2014 in which more than 300 people died and a
MERS outbreak in 2015 (see coronavirus ). In early 2016, in response to North Korea's
revived rocket launchings and nuclear tests led the South to suspend operations at the jointly
run industrial complex at Kaesong, and in July, 2016, it and the United States agreed to
deploy a missile defense system against a missile attack from the North.
In the Apr., 2016, parliamentary elections, New Frontier lost its majority, due in part to
discontent with the president's conservative economic policies, and the opposition
Democratic (Minjoo) party, a successor of the Uri party, narrowly won a plurality. President
Park faced a political crisis beginning in October when it was revealed that a friend and
spiritual adviser had also advised Park on government policies and solicited foundation
donations that allegedly were then embezzled. Park was named by prosecutors as a criminal
suspect and accomplice in the affair, and was impeached by the National Assembly in Dec.,
2016. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn became acting president; Park was removed from
office after the constitutional court upheld her impeachment in Mar., 2017, and she was later
convicted (2018) of corruption and abuse of power. In the May presidential election, Moon
Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer and the candidate of the Democratic party who had lost
to Park in 2012, won with 41% of the vote. Tensions between North and South eased in 2018.
however, after direct talks resumed.
The Korean peninsula is largely mountainous; the principal series of ranges, extending along
the east coast, rises (in the northeast) to 9,003 ft (2,744 m) at Mt. Paektu (Baekdu), the
highest peak in Korea. Most rivers are relatively short and many are unnavigable, filled with
rapids and waterfalls; important rivers, in addition to the Yalu and Tumen, are the Han, the
Geum, the Taedong (Daedong), the Nakdong, and the Seomjin. Off the heavily indented
coast (c.5,400 mi/8,690 km long) lie some 3,420 islands, most of them rocky and uninhabited
(of the inhabited islands, about half have a population of less than 100); the main island
group is in the Korean Archipelago in the Yellow Sea. The climate of Korea ranges from dry
and extremely cold winters in the north to almost tropical conditions in parts of the south.
Many Koreans are Buddhists or Confucianists, although the people tend to be eclectic in their
religious practices. Korean Confucianism, for example, has developed into more of an ethical
system than a religion, and its influence is wide and pervasive. Of the various indigenous
religions, Chondogyo (a native mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism) is the most
influential. South Korea has a large number of practicing Christians, roughly a quarter of the
population. (Roman Catholicism was introduced in the late 18th cent., and Protestantism in
the late 19th cent.) The North Korean government has actively suppressed religion as
contrary to Marxist belief. Korean is spoken in both countries, and English is widely taught in
South Korean schools.
Government
South Korea is governed under the constitution of 1987. The president, who is head of state,
is popularly elected for a single five-year term. The government is headed by the prime
minister, who is appointed by the president. The unicameral legislature consists of the 299-
seat National Assembly, whose members are popularly elected (245 directly, 54 on a
proportional basis) for four-year terms. Administratively, South Korea is divided into nine
provinces and seven metropolitan cities.

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North Korea is governed under the constitution of 1948, which has been extensively revised.
The chairman of the National Defense Commission is the nation's supreme leader and de
facto head of state because the title of president was reserved for Kim Il Sung after his death.
The premier, who is the head of government, is elected, unopposed, by the Supreme People's
Assembly. The unicameral legislature consists of the 687-seat Supreme People's Assembly,
whose members are popularly elected to five-year terms. Although nominally a republic
governed by the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea is actually ruled by the Korea
Workers party, the North Korean Communist party. The ruling party approves a list of
candidates who are generally elected without opposition. Administratively North Korea is
divided into nine provinces and four municipalities.
Early History to Japanese Rule
The Koreans, descended from Tungusic tribal peoples, are a distinct racial and cultural group.
According to Korean legend, Tangun established Old Choson in NW Korea in 2333 BC, and
the Korean calendar enumerates the years from this date. Chinese sources assert that Ki-tze
(Kija), a Shang dynasty refugee, founded a colony at Pyongyang in 1122 BC, but the first
Korean ruler recorded in contemporaneous records is Wiman, possibly a Chinese invader
who overthrew Old Choson and established his rule in N Korea in 194 BC Chinese forces
subsequently conquered (c.100 BC) the eastern half of the peninsula. Lolang, near modern
Pyongyang, was the chief center of Chinese rule.
Koguryo, a native Korean kingdom, arose in the north on both sides of the Yalu River by the
1st cent. AD; tradition says it was founded in 37 BC By the 4th cent. AD it had conquered
Lolang, and at its height under King Kwanggaet'o (r.391–413) occupied much of what is now
Korea and NE China. In the 6th and 7th cent. the kingdom resisted several Chinese invasions.
Meanwhile in the south, two main kingdoms emerged, Paekche (traditionally founded 18 BC,
but significant beginning c.AD 250) in the west and Silla (traditionally founded 57 BC, but
significant beginning c.AD 350) in the east. After forming an alliance with T'ang China, Silla
conquered Paekche and Koguryo by 668, and then expelled the Chinese and unified much of
the peninsula. Remnants of Koguryo formed the kingdom of Parhae (north of the Taedong
River and largely in E Manchuria), which lasted until 926.
Under Silla's rule, Korea prospered and the arts flourished; Buddhism, which had entered
Korea in the 4th cent., became dominant in this period. In 935 the Silla dynasty, which had
been in decline for a century, was overthrown by Wang Kon, who had established (918) the
Koryo dynasty (the name was selected as an abbreviated form of Koguryo and is the source
of the name Korea). During the Koryo period, literature was cultivated, and although
Buddhism remained the state religion, Confucianism—introduced from China during the
Silla years and adapted to Korean customs—controlled the pattern of government. A coup in
1170 led to a period of military rule. In 1231, Mongol forces invaded from China, initiating a
war that was waged intermittently for some 30 years. Peace came when Koryo accepted
Mongol suzerainty, and a long period of Koryo-Mongol alliance followed. In 1392, Yi
Songgye, a general who favored the Ming dynasty (which had replaced the Mongols in
China), seized the throne and established the Choson dynasty.

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The Choson (or Yi) dynasty, which was to rule until 1910, built a new capital at Hanseong
(Seoul) and established Confucianism as the official religion. Early in the dynasty (15th
cent.) printing with movable metal type, which had been developed two centuries earlier,
became widely used, and the Korean alphabet was developed. The 1592 invasion by the
Japanese shogun Hideyoshi was driven back by Choson and Ming forces, but only after six
years of great devastation and suffering. Manchu invasions in the first half of the 17th cent.
resulted in Korea being made (1637) a tributary state of the Manchu dynasty. Subsequent
factional strife gave way, in the 18th cent., to economic prosperity and a cultural and
intellectual renaissance. Korea limited its foreign contacts during this period and later
resisted, longer than China or Japan, trade with the West, which led to its being called the
Hermit Kingdom.
In 1876, Japan forced a commerical treaty with Korea, and to offset the Japanese influence,
trade agreements were also concluded (1880s) with the United States and European nations.
Japan's control was tightened after the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and the Russo-
Japanese War (1904–5), when Japanese troops moved through Korea to attack Manchuria.
These troops were never withdrawn, and in 1905 Japan declared a virtual protectorate over
Korea and in 1910 formally annexed the country. The Japanese instituted vast social and
economic changes, building modern industries and railroads, but their rule (1910–45) was
harsh and exploitative. Sporadic Korean attempts to overthrow the Japanese were
unsuccessful, and after 1919 a provisional Korean government, under Syngman Rhee , was
established at Shanghai, China.
A Country Divided
In World War II, at the Cairo Conference (1943), the United States, Great Britain, and China
promised Korea independence. At the end of the war Korea was arbitrarily divided into two
zones as a temporary expedient; Soviet troops were north and Americans south of the line of
lat. 38°N. The Soviet Union thwarted UN efforts to hold elections and reunite the country
under one government. When relations between the Soviet Union and the United States
worsened, trade between the two zones ceased; great economic hardship resulted, since the
regions were economically interdependent, industry and trade being concentrated in the North
and agriculture in the South.
In 1948 two separate regimes were formally established—the Republic of Korea in the South,
and the Democratic People's Republic under Communist rule in the North. By mid-1949 all
Soviet and American troops were withdrawn, and two rival Korean governments were in
operation, each eager to unify the country under its own rule. In June, 1950, the North Korean
army launched a surprise attack against South Korea, initiating the Korean War , and with it,
severe hardship, loss of life, and enormous devastation.
After the war the boundary was stabilized along a line running from the Han estuary
generally northeast across the 38th parallel to a point south of Kosong (Kuum-ni), with a no-
man's land or demilitarized zone (DMZ), 1.24 mi (2 km) wide and occupying a total of 487
sq mi (1,261 sq km), on either side of the boundary. The western border in the ocean, though,
was not defined, and fighting has occasionally occurred at sea. Throughout the 1950s and 60s
an uneasy truce prevailed; thousands of soldiers were poised on each side of the demilitarized
zone, and there were occasional shooting incidents. In 1971 negotiations between North and
South Korea provided the first hope for peaceful reunification of the peninsula; in Nov.,

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1972, an agreement was reached for the establishment of joint machinery to work toward
unification.
The countries met several times during the 1980s to discuss reunification, and in 1990 there
were three meetings between the prime ministers of North and South Korea. These talks have
yielded some results, such as the exchange of family visits organized in 1989. The problems
blocking complete reunification, however, continue to be substantial. Two incidents of
terrorism against South Korea were widely attributed to North Korea: a 1983 bombing that
killed several members of the South Korean government, and the 1987 destruction of a South
Korean airliner over the Thailand-Myanmar border. In 1996, North Korea said it would cease
to recognize the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, and North Korean troops made
incursions into the zone. In 1999 a North Korean torpedo boat was sunk by a South Korean
vessel in South Korean waters following a gun battle, and another deadly naval confrontation
following a North Korean incursion in 2002.
In early 2000, however, the North engaged in talks with a number of Western nations,
seeking diplomatic relations, and South and North agreed to a presidential summit in
Pyongyang. The historic and cordial meeting produced an accord that called for working
toward reunification (though without specifying how) and for permitting visits between
families long divided as a result of the war. Given the emotional appeal of reunification, it is
likely that the North-South dialogue will continue, despite the problems involved; however,
the tensions that developed in late 2002 have, for the time being, derailed any significant
further reunification talks. Economic contacts continued to expand, however, and South
Korea became a significant trade partner for the North. The North also received substantial
aid from the South.
In 2007 a rail crossing through the DMZ was symbolically reopened when two trains made
test runs on the rebuilt track; regular rail service, over a short line, began late in the year. A
second North-South presidential summit in Pyongyang occurred in Aug., 2007; both leaders
called for negotiations on a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice that ended the
Korean War. Relations between the two nations subsequently soured, as a result of the
election (2007) of Lee Myung Bak as president of South Korea and the sinking (2010) of a
South Korean naval vessel by the North. Most joint projects came to an end, and trade
between the two nations greatly decreased by 2010. Kim Jong Un's succession in the North in
2011 further worsened relations, which were increasingly strained by the North's ongoing
development of missile and nuclear technology. Many U.S. troops still remain in the South,
though their numbers have decreased since the 1960s and the number of U.S. bases has been
greatly reduced.
North Korea
North Korea, officially Democratic People's Republic of Korea (2015 est. pop. 25,244,000),
46,540 sq mi (120,538 sq km), founded on May 1, 1948, has its capital at Pyongyang , the
largest city. North Korea is divided into nine provinces and three special cities.
North Korea, although nominally a republic governed by a representative assembly, is
actually ruled by the Communist party (known in Korea as the Korea Workers' party). Until
his death in 1994, all governmental institutions were controlled by Kim Il Sung (widely
known as The Great Leader ), who had been premier and then president since the country's

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inception in 1948. A personality cult had glorified Kim, but by the mid-1990s the rapid
economic growth of North Korea's early years had given way first to stagnation and then to
hardship, and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the repressive totalitarian regime.
Increasingly, Kim's son, Kim Jong Il, had assumed the day-to-day management of the
government and, at Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, the son took over leadership of the country
and, like his father, became the object of a personality cult. He was named secretary of the
Communist party in 1997 and consolidated his power with the title of National Defense
Commission chairman in 1998. Under Kim Jong Il, diplomatic relations were established
with a number of Western nations.
After the Korean War, the Communist government of North Korea used the region's rich
mineral and power resources as the basis for an ambitious program of industrialization and
rehabilitation. With Chinese and Soviet aid, railroads, industrial plants, and power facilities
were rebuilt. Farms were collectivized, and industries were nationalized. In a series of
multiyear economic development plans, the coal, iron, and steel industries were greatly
expanded, new industries were introduced, and the mechanization of agriculture was pushed.
By the mid-1990s more than 90% of the economy was socialized and 95% of the country's
manufactured products were made by state-owned enterprises. A serious postwar population
loss, resulting from the exodus of several million people to the South, was somewhat offset
by the immigration of Chinese colonists and Koreans from Manchuria and Japan.
North Korea maintained close relations with the Soviet Union and China (military aid treaties
were signed with both countries in 1961) but preserved a degree of independence; the Sino-
Soviet rift facilitated this. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, China became North
Korea's most important ally. The country's large expenditures on its military and centralized
control have been drags on the economy, as has been the nation's inability (since the 1990s)
to produce or import enough food to feed its people, which has resulted in chronic
malnutrition and, at times, famine. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as two million,
are believed to have died from starvation in the mid-1990s.
Relations with the United States remained tense throughout the late 20th cent. because of the
U.S. military presence in Korea and its economic assistance to South Korea. In 1968, North
Korea seized the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo and imprisoned its crew for 11 months, and in
1969 it shot down an American reconnaissance plane. More recently, the United States
imposed (1988) sanctions on North Korea for alleged terrorist activity and expressed concern
over reports that North Korea was building a nuclear weapons plant. In 1991 both Koreas
joined the United Nations after the North dropped its opposition to such a move.
New tensions mounted on the peninsula in 1994 after confirmation that the country had
developed a nuclear program. After direct talks with the United States, North Korea agreed to
freeze its nuclear program in return for shipments of oil and the construction of two new
light-water reactors for power (the latter were not built, however). North Korea launched a
medium-range missile over Japan in 1998; in 1999, the United States agreed to ease trade
sanctions against the country in exchange for North Korea's agreement to suspend its missile
testing. In a further easing of tensions, high-level visits by U.S. and North Korean officials
were exchanged during 2000, and the South's president, Kim Dae Jung, paid a visit to the
North. Relations were slow to improve, however, as the North increased its demands for
economic aid while failing to fulfill its own pledges.

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Continuing economic deterioration in the North led in 2002 to a number of reforms and plans
for the establishment of special economic zones in Sinuiju and Kaesong . The North also was
accused of attempting to earn hard currency through the illegal drug trade, the counterfeiting
of U.S. currency and cigarettes, and (later) insurance fraud. In 2003 a North Korean cargo
ship was seized by Australia after the crew was observed unloading heroin. Moribund
negotiations with South Korea and the United States were also revived, while talks with
Japan led to an agreement to began normalizing diplomatic relations. Late in 2002, however,
oil shipments under the 1994 agreement were halted after revelations that North Korea had a
nuclear weapons program; food aid was also reduced. An economically desperate North
ended UN supervision of its nuclear facilities, withdrew from the nonproliferation treaty, and
made other moves toward the development of nuclear weapons.
Tensions and concerns over the North's pursuit of nuclear weapons continued into 2005.
Meanwhile, the United States indicated that it believed that the North had sold enriched
uranium to Libya when the latter had been attempting to develop nuclear weapons, while
Korea publicly acknowledged that it had nuclear weapons and later stated that it would
increase its nuclear arsenal. In Sept., 2005, talks involving the Koreas, the United States,
Japan, China, and Russia produced an agreement in which the North said it would abandon
its nuclear programs and weapons in return for aid and security commitments. Ambiguities in
the agreement, however, led the parties to contest its terms almost immediately when North
Korea demanded that it be given a light-water reactor, but U.S. officials said that they had
agreed only to discuss doing so (and only after the North had done what it had committed to
do).

Also in 2005, the U.S. government imposed sanctions on a Macau bank accused of
laundering North Korean earnings from illegal activities, including counterfeiting U.S.
money. The move, which came after a four-year investigation and appeared to have been
undertaken in part in attempt to force North Korea to make nuclear concessions, led other
international banks to limit their transactions with North Korea. In 2006 North Korea called
for the sanctions to be lifted before it would engage in further six-party negotiations.
In July, 2006, the North again launched several tests missiles, provoking international
condemnation and drawing strong reactions from both the United States and Japan; the UN
Security Council adopted some limited military sanctions in response. Then, in October, the
North conducted a small underground nuclear test. Widely and strongly condemned
internationally, including by China, the North's closest ally, the test resulted in additional,
largely military sanctions. Japan and a number of other nations adopted more extensive
sanctions, but China and South Korea, the North's largest trade partners, both largely avoided
placing restrictions on trade, out of concern over a possible military confrontation or
economic and political collapse in North Korea.
In Feb., 2007, resumed six-party negotiations led to an agreement that called for the North to
shut down its reactor in 60 days in exchange for aid; implementation of the agreement was
held up, however, by the North's insistence on regaining access to its funds in Macau, which
did not occur until June. The agreement also called for additional aid when further
denuclearization steps were achieved. Japan was not a party to the aid agreement because of
issues relating to the North's kidnapping of its citizens in the past. In July, the shutdown of

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the North's main nuclear facilities was confirmed by the International Atomic Energy
Agency.
Flooding in the North in Aug., 2007, left some 300,000 homeless and ruined a tenth of the
nation's farmland. Kim and South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun held a summit in
Pyongyang in Oct., 2007. In addition to the facility shutdown, North Korea agreed to supply
a declaration of its nuclear facilties and activities by the end of the 2007; it asserted it had
done so, but the United States said that the declaration was not complete. Relations with the
South became strained in 2008 when newly elected President Lee Myung Bak insisted that
the North show progress on human rights and nuclear disarmament as a condition for aid and
improvements in relations.
In May, North Korea released documents relating to its nuclear programs; also that month the
United States announced that it would resume food aid to North Korea. The following month
North Korea finally submitted a declaration of its nuclear weapons activities to the
participants in the six-party talks, and the talks resumed in July. The next month, however,
North Korea said it was stopping its disabling of its nuclear facilities because the United
States had not removed it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism. After an agreement
relating to verification in Oct., 2008, however, the North was removed from the list and
resumed the disabling process. By the end of the year, however, there were again contentions
over the verification process.
North Korea continued its provocative actions against the South in 2009. It declared its
agreements with South Korea to be scrapped, and it temporarily closed access to South
Korean–run factories in Kaesong. In April it launched a rocket that it claimed put a satellite
into orbit, but the United States said nothing had been placed in orbit. South Korea, the
United States, and Japan denounced the launch, seeing it as a thinly disguised missile test that
was a violation of UN resolutions, and the UN Security Council condemned the launch. The
North responded by saying it would end talks on its nuclear program and restart its disabled
reactor, and it ordered international nuclear inspectors to leave the country. In subsequent
months it conducted several short-range missile tests, a second nuclear test (May), and called
for renegotiating the Kaesong industrial park agreement. The nuclear test was condemned by
the Security Council, which imposed additional sanction on North Korea. Since 2009 the
North also has been accused of a number of cyberattacks against South Korean government
and commerical computer systems and other targets.
Relations with South Korea and the United States thawed some in Aug., 2009, after former
U.S. president Clinton visited to obtain the release of two U.S. journalists who had been
seized for crossing the North's border with China; a North Korean delegation also attended
the funeral of former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung. In September severe limitations
on South Korean travel to Kaesong were eased and other moves were taken, but during the
same month an unannounced dam release by the North caused a flood that killed several
people in the South, provoking an angry response.
In Dec., 2009, the North revalued its currency and limited the amount of old currency that
could be converted, leading to panic buying and inflation as the North Koreans sought to use
up as much of their unconvertable savings as possible; there were also reports of unrest in
areas as a result of the change. Tensions subsequntly increased between North and South, as
the two failed to reach an agreement on Kaesong. The North later (Apr., 2010) said it would

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take control of the South Korean–built resort at Mt. Kumgang, but it did not seize it until
Aug., 2011.
North Korea shelled near a disputed maritime border in Jan., 2010, and in March a South
Korean warship was sunk near the same border; an investigation determined a North Korean
torpedo was the cause. As a result of the sinking, the South severely reduced its links with the
North, though it continued minimal humanitarian aid. In June a number of changes were
made in the North's government that appeared to be intended to assure the Kim family's
control over the government and secure the leadership succession for Kim Jong Un, Kim
Jong Il's youngest son. The younger Kim was subsequently (September) made a general and
vice chairman of the Communist party's central military commission. Relations with the
South worsened further in November when the North shelled a South Korean island off its
SW coast (and near the disputed border).
Kim Jong Il died in Dec., 2011, and his son was named as his successor. Kim Jong Un
assumed the party leadership and other ranking posts in 2012. He made improving the
country's economy (mainly through tolerance of limited market-oriented changes) and
developing nuclear weapons his main goals. In Apr., 2012, the North attempted a satellite
launch that other nations condemned as a cover for a banned test of a ballistic missile; the
rocket failed shortly after launch. The launch led to tightened UN sanctions against the North.
In July, the army chief was removed from office and Kim was promoted to marshal in a move
that appeared intended to secure Kim's control over the military. North Korea achieved a
successful rocket launch in Dec., 2012, although the satellite appeared to be tumbling in orbit.
This launch also led to the imposition of additional UN sanctions.

In Feb., 2013, the North carried out its largest nuclear test to date, which was widely
condemned and led to a new round of sanctions. In response, the North engaged in an
escalating series of actions, voiding the armistice, cutting all communications channels with
the South, announcing the restart of its nuclear reactor, and closing the Kaesong industrial
zone. In June, however, the North reopened its hotline with the South, and moves toward
talks began; Kaesong was reopened in September. Kim Jong Un's uncle and most prominent
adviser, Jang Song Thaek, was accused of acts of treachery, purged, and executed in Dec.,
2013, in what was regarded by many observers as a consolidation of Kim's power; in the
following years there were reports of the executions of a number of senior officials. A UN
report in 2014 accused North Korea of human rights abuses and atrocities including
systematic murder, abduction, and torture.
In early 2016 the North claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb, an assertion that was met
with skepticism internationally; observers believed that the nuclear explosion that took place
was too small to be thermonuclear. A second nuclear test was conducted in September; both
tests were widely denounced. The North also continued to conduct missile tests into 2017. In
response, the South ended its operations at the Kaesong industrial facility in North Korea, and
the United States placed additional sanctions on the North, including sanctions on Kim Jong
Un and other senior officials for human-rights violations. In late 2016 the UN imposed new
sanctions on North Korea that limited or banned its coal and mineral exports.

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Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Un's estranged brother, was murdered in Malaysia in Feb., 2017,
in what was believed to have been an assassination orchestrated by North Korea. In July,
2017, the North successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles for the first time, and it
subsequently tested a much stronger nuclear weapon, possibly a hydrogen bomb, in
September, and made a third such missile test in November. The events led to additional UN
economic sanctions and increased tensions, particularly with the United States. In 2018,
however, tensions eased after direct North-South talks resumed. Subsequently, U.S. President
Trump met with Kim in Singapore in June, and the North agreed to work toward total
denuclearization, though what that included and how it would be achieved was not specified.
Economy
Korea once had large timber resources. In the North, reforestation and conservation programs
have helped reverse the effects of excessive cutting during the Japanese occupation (1910–
45). Predominant trees are larch, oak, alder, pine, spruce, and fir. Forests in the South were
depleted as a result of illegal cutting after 1945 and damage during the Korean War (1950–
53), but reforestation programs have helped to remedy the loss.

Korea has great mineral wealth, most of it (80%–90%) concentrated in the North. Of the
peninsula's five major minerals—gold, iron ore, coal, tungsten, and graphite—only tungsten
and amorphous graphite are found principally in the South. South Korea has only 10% of the
peninsula's rich coal and iron deposits. Its minerals are widely scattered, and mining
operations are generally small scale, although tungsten is an important export item. North
Korea is especially rich in iron and coal and has some 200 different minerals of economic
value. Some of the other more important minerals that are produced are lead, zinc, copper,
uranium, manganese, gold, silver, and tungsten.

Because of the mountainous and rocky terrain, less than 20% of Korean land is arable. Rice is
the chief crop, with wet paddy fields constituting about half of the farmland. Paddies are
found along the coasts, in reclaimed tidal areas, and in river valleys. Barley, wheat, corn,
soybeans, and grain sorghums are also extensively cultivated, especially in the uplands; other
crops include potatoes, pulses, cotton, tobacco, vegetables, fruits, and sweet potatoes. Cattle,
pigs, and chickens are raised. Before the country was divided (1945), the colder and less
fertile north depended heavily upon the south for food. Agricultural self-sufficiency became a
major goal of the North Korean government, and mechanized methods were introduced there
in and in the South. Both governments expanded irrigation facilities, constructed numerous
dams, and initiated land reclamation projects; however, the North has suffered severe food
shortages. Livestock previously played a minor role in Korean agriculture, especially in the
North, where the steep and often barren hills are unsuitable for large-scale grazing, but since
the end of the Korean War beef has become a significant component of the diet in the South.

The fishing waters off Korea are among the best in the world; the long coastline and
numerous islands, inlets, and reefs provide excellent fishing grounds, and the presence of
both a warm and a cold current attracts a great variety of species. Korean deep-sea fishing

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ships range into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, and species are also raised in aquaculture
facilities.

The Korean economy was shattered by the war of 1950 to 1953. Postwar reconstruction was
abetted by enormous amounts of foreign aid (in the North from Communist countries and in
the South chiefly from the United States) and intensive government economic development
programs. The greatest industrial advances were made during the 1960s; in that decade the
South experienced an 85% increase in productivity and a 250% rise in per capita gross
national product. Economic development throughout Korea has been uneven, with the South
showing significantly greater gains. The per capita gross domestic product of the South is
more than 15 times that of the North. In the South such consumer goods industries as textiles,
garments, and footwear have given way to heavy industry, consumer electronics, and
information industries. A great variety of products are now manufactured; these include
electrical and electronic equipment, automobiles, chemicals, ships, steel, and ceramic goods.
South Korea exports semiconductors, wireless telecommunications equipment, motor
vehicles, computers, steel, ships, and petrochemicals. Imports include machinery, electronics,
oil, steel, transportation equipment, organic chemicals, and plastic. The main trading partners
are China, Japan, and the United States.

The North, too, has changed from a predominantly agricultural society (in 1946) to an
industrial one. With abundant mineral resources and hydropower, 70% of its national product
is now derived from mining, manufacturing, and services; about 30% still comes from
agriculture. Development was impeded, however, by the rigid economic system, and the
economy severely affected by a loss of trading partners after the collapse of East European
Communism. The amount of resources devoted to the military, one of the world's largest, has
been a burden on the economy as well. In 2002 the government instituted a series of limited
economic reforms, including letting markets set prices of many goods and services and
permitting private traders; since 2010 the importance of these reforms to the economy has
increased, leading to gradual economic growth. Major North Korean industries include
mining (coal, iron ore, limestone, magnesite, graphite, copper, zinc, lead, and precious
metals), food processing, and the manufacture of military products, machines, electric power,
chemicals, and textiles (synthetics, wool, cotton, silk). Exports include minerals (especially
coal), metallurgical products, armaments, and textiles, though the sanctions against the
country for its nuclear and missile programs has limited or made illegal trade in some of these
items. Petroleum, coal, machinery and equipment, textiles, and grain are the main imports.
The chief trading partners are China, South Korea, and Thailand. Also important to the
country's income are illegal trading in drugs, cigarettes, ivory, and other items; profits from
cybercrime, especially from ransomware and the hacking of the international banking system
and cryptocurrency trading; counterfeiting; and skimmed wages from North Koreans working
overseas.
The industrialization of both North and South has been accompanied by improved
transportation. By the end of the Korean War the rail system had been destroyed, and paved
highways were almost nonexistent. The railroads have been extensively rebuilt, and in the
South high-speed lines connect Seoul with Daegu and Busan in the southeast and Gwangju in

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the southwest. The South Korean government also has completed a series of superhighways
connecting Seoul with numerous major cities. There is domestic air service, and international
airports are located at Seoul, Busan, and Pyongyang. The expansion of port facilities at Busan
and Incheon has vastly increased their capacity.

INDIAN CIVILIZATION
South Asia and Geography
South Asia is one of the four early places where human civilization began—similar to Egypt
(Nile), China (Yellow), and Iraq (Tigris and Euphrates). Civilization in South Asia began
along the Indus River. The land of South Asia is dominated by three main types of physical
features. Mountains, rivers, and the massive triangular-shaped peninsula of India.

50 or 60 million years ago India slowly smashed into Asia and formed the Himalaya and
Hindu Kush Mountains that nearly block off India from the surrounding area. Except for the
coast, there are only a few narrow passes through the mountains such as the Khyber Pass that
have allowed people to enter this land. The other main physical features are the Indus River
in modern day Pakistan and the Ganges River in modern day India. The Indus River is in a
very dry area called the Thar Desert--this Arid climate is the site for another of the world's
first human civilizations.
The water in the Indus River mainly comes from melting glaciers and natural springs from
the mountains that surround it. As the water runs down the mountain it picks up fertile silt.
This area would flood at least one time every year and provide irrigation water for farmers.
When the flood waters went away the left a thin layer of fertile silt. Today, much of South
Asia experiences an annual change of wind direction called monsoon that usually brings
massive amounts of rain. Some historians claim the Indus Valley received two annual floods.
Early History
Some of the oldest human remains in South Asia date back to around 75,000 years ago. These
early humans made tools and lived a nomadic hunter/gatherer life. Artifacts indicate that
around 5000 BCE, farming developed in South Asia. Slowly, people began to live in
permanent places and villages slowly developed—eventually these villages turned into cities
and created one of the earliest human civilizations in the world. This civilization is known by
many names: Ancient India, Indus Valley, and Harappan Civilization. Historians and
archeologists believe the Indus Valley Civilization began around 3000 BCE. There is
evidence of trade between Ancient India and Mesopotamia as early as 3200 BCE. This
another evidence suggests Ancient India relied on trade in a larger way than other early
civilizations.
The archeologist have found the remains of cities to be incredibly well planned out.
Historians estimate that each major city could support as many as 80,000 people, so Ancient
India was by far the largest early civilization. The buildings were made from mud-bricks that

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had been fired in a kiln to make it harder. A kiln is a hot oven or furnace to bake clay
pottery. City planners started by digging water wells and water drainage systems with main
roads and small roads laid out in a square grid. Finally homes were built along the roads,
sometimes with multiple stories. It appears that most urban homes had water drain systems
in the their home--a technology that wouldn't be matched in history for over 3000 years.
However, most people didn't live in the urban areas. Most people lived in farming villages in
rural areas.
Farmers domesticated several plants including melons, wheat, peas, dates, sesame seeds, and
cotton, as well as many animals. Archeologists have discovered what food the Ancient
Indian people ate by examining the teeth of skeletons and food storage areas. Another
example of how well planned the Indus Valley civilization was is their grain storage building.
Some historians believe they have discovered a massive granary nearly 200 feet long to store
and dry wheat. However, there is no evidence of grain in this building, so once again,
historians are uncertain about the mysterious Indus Valley civilization.

Ancient India was different from the Egyptians and Mesopotamians in several ways. One
way they are different is that there appear to be very few large structures in Ancient India.
One of the largest structures that has been discovered is called the Great Bath. Basically its a
public pool that is over 40 feet long, 20 feet wide, and nearly 10 feet deep. If large temples
or palaces once existed they are gone today. This leads to a curious question--did Ancient
India have kings or high ranked religious leaders? What did the social pyramid look like?
The remains of the civilization suggests they were a very egalitarian society. Egalitarian
means everyone in society was basically equal. Another difference is in military and
weapons. There is very little evidence of weapons and military culture in the Indus Valley.
Another difference is that astronomy seems to be less important in India than in other
civilizations unless the text has been lost.
The Indus Valley religion is also mysterious because the language hasn't been translated.
Historians believe they may have worshiped a Mother Goddess. They believe the Great Bath
could have been used for some type of baptism. A small artifact has been found that some
historians think may be a priest (right), but archeologists have yet to find a temple of any
kind. Some of the Indus Script symbols are related to the images of the modern religion of
Hinduism (left), but historians don't all agree about the symbols. The image to the left shows
a three-faced person sitting in the lotus position. The lotus positions is a Yoga position of
meditation where a person sits upright with their legs folded in their lap. Yoga is a spiritual
practice of meditation, breathing, and body position used in many religions, especially
Hinduism.
By 1500 BCE, the once vast and powerful civilization began to decline at some point it
suddenly ended. Historians are uncertain why this area’s power declined. There are some
theories that a great earthquake crumbled cities and changed the path of rivers, which caused
them to move to a new location. Another theory claims the climate may have changed, which
forced them to move. Yet another theory suggests invading armies destroyed some cities and
forced most people to move. One thing we know for sure is that the civilization that once
lived in this area ended and new people moved into this area.

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The Vedic Period

Around 1500 BCE, Indo-European people migrated to India. These people came from the
area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea (purple on the map on the left). Between
4000 and 1000 BCE, Indo-Europeans migrated all over Europe and Asia. Some went to
Europe and influenced the Romans and the Greeks; some settled in Turkey and became the
Hittites, others migrated southeast instead. Some stopped in Iran, later becoming Persian,
while others continued southeast to Pakistan and India. The slow migration did not arrive in
northern India until about 1500 BCE. In India, the Indo-Europeans are sometimes called the
Aryans.
Some people have disputed this arrival of the Indo-Europeans, however, the spoken language
that these Indo-European people brought to India, recorded in Sanskrit, is very similar to
other Indo-European languages such as Greek and Latin. There are many examples of similar
words between the languages spoken in these areas. In addition, some DNA evidence
supports the arrival of the Indo-Europeans to these regions. However, this is a theory of
history that some historians don’t agree with.
In addition to their spoken language, the Indo-Europeans brought their religious beliefs with
them to India. The story and beliefs of Hinduism were recorded in a collection of stories and
songs called the Vedas. There are many historians that believe the Hindu religion actually
began in the Indus River Valley civilization. The Vedas were first written down in a
language called Sanskrit. Sanskrit was a spoken language that was written down in different
writing systems that developed later on such as Devanagari--the early form of Hindi (picture
on right), India's main language today. Indo-Europeans also brought the domesticated horse
into South Asia—this suggests the Indo-Europeans were at least semi-nomadic.
The Indo-Europeans first settled along the Indus River, in the same place where the Indus
Valley people had lived. They settled down and mixed with the local Indian people. They
lived there and eventually expanded throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It was at this time
that the caste system got started in India. It is believed that the Indo-Europeans had a similar
division of their society, but historians don’t agree about how the caste system originated.
The caste system is the permanent division of people into certain levels within society. Each
level or caste has particular jobs such as merchant, warrior, or priest.
Castes were very important to people's identities. There were four castes, but there was
another group below the four castes known as Dalits or Untouchables. Untouchables usually
did the worst jobs, like cleaning up people's poop from the gutters, collecting garbage, and
dealing with dead bodies. The lowest of the castes was the Sudras - the servants and
farmhands who did not own their own business or their own land, and who had to work for
other people. The largest number of people belonged to this caste. Above them were the
Vaisyas, or farmers and traders, who owned their own farms or businesses. Above these
people were the Kshatriyas, or warriors. The most powerful caste was the Brahmins (pictured
below), the priests and other leaders. Many historians believe that when the Indo-Europeans
arrived they treated the native Indus Valley people as the Untouchables.
There were also dozens of smaller groups within each castes. People who came from
different castes could not eat together. Usually people from one caste did not marry or make
friends with people from another caste. Untouchables were not allowed in temples and were

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seen as “polluted” compared to Brahmins who were “pure”. Today, the caste system is
outlawed by the modern Indian constitution, and in urban areas most people ignore the caste
traditions. However, in traditional rural areas caste divisions still exist. The developing Indian
culture of the Indo-European mixed with native Indus Valley people began to grow quickly.
Their civilization spread from the Indus River Valley to the Ganges River. Similar to other
civilizations, kingdoms developed as the territory expanded.

Indian Kingdoms and Foreign Invasions

For about 1000 years the Indo-Europeans and native Indians mixed and migrated throughout
the the northern part of the region. Cities began to grow in number, and size and by 600 BCE
these slowly developed into 16 different kingdoms called Maha Janapadas. It was during this
time period that Siddhartha Gautama gave up his title as a prince to search for truth and an
end to the suffering. On his rare trips out of the royal palace, Siddartha noticed most people
suffering through life. He also grew tired to the priests who dominated society. He gave up
his royal life and started a quest to find real truth. After years of searching, he achieved
“enlightenment” and became known as the Buddha or “enlightened one”. The Buddha
traveled throughout South Asia and taught others his new ideas—these teachings became
known as the religion of Buddhism.
Another religion called Jainism also developed during this time. Both of these new religions
clearly developed from Hinduism in the same way Christianity and Islam clearly developed
from Judaism. These new religions were a rebellion against cultural ideas such as the caste
system and importance of priests in religion. Some of the first significant architecture in
South Asia also came from these new religions. Since many of the building of the Indus
Valley have been lost to erosion, Buddhist architecture has become India's most famous
architecture. The first development is called a stupa. A stupa (below, left picture) is a
mound-like structure that contains the ashes and relics of a loved Buddhist leader. Later, the
stupa transformed into a new Buddhist structure called a pagoda. A Pagoda (below, right
picture) usually has many levels or "tiers" of roofs. It is also a Buddhist temple. Today
Buddhist pagodas can be found all over China, Japan and Southeast Asia.
n 520 BCE, the Persians invaded and took control of northern Indian subcontinent. This
conquest was under the mighty Persian leader Darius the Great. Persia controlled this region
for about 200 years until Alexander the Great invaded South Asia. Alexander and his army
were far from home and completely exhausted from years of constant war as they rampaged
toward the east. It was in India that Alexander’s army finally refused to fight, and Alexander
the Great was forced to return to Greece. The pattern of Persia conquest followed by Greek
conquest occurred in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia), and Ancient India. The
only ancient civilization that didn't suffer from the Persian and Greek conquest is ancient
China. This is mainly due the the barriers of geography. Ancient China is separated from

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these other areas of civilization by vast deserts and high mountains. These obstacles are very
difficult to pass even in today's society. This is the main reason that China developed in a
unique way. The Silk Road trade route between China and the the rest of the world, over a
1000 years later would finally link all four major civilization areas.
The Persians and Greeks entered South Asia through the Khyber Pass, as did the Indo-
Europeans, during their migration into South Asia. The Persians greatly influenced the style
of government in India and some Greeks remained in northwest Pakistan and influenced the
culture to this day, although the religion of Hinduism has had the greatest influence in India.
The impact of the Indus Valley is not completely understood, but surely time and archeology
will tell.

Gandhi and Nationalism

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, (born October 2, 1869, Porbandar, India—died January 30,
1948, Delhi), Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of
the nationalist movement against the British rule of India. As such, he came to be considered
the father of his country. Gandhi is internationally esteemed for his doctrine of nonviolent
protest (satyagraha) to achieve political and social progress.
In the eyes of millions of his fellow Indians, Gandhi was the Mahatma (“Great Soul”). The
unthinking adoration of the huge crowds that gathered to see him all along the route of his
tours made them a severe ordeal; he could hardly work during the day or rest at night. “The
woes of the Mahatmas,” he wrote, “are known only to the Mahatmas.” His fame spread
worldwide during his lifetime and only increased after his death. The name Mahatma Gandhi
is now one of the most universally recognized on earth.
Gandhi was the youngest child of his father’s fourth wife. His father—Karamchand Gandhi,
who was the dewan (chief minister) of Porbandar, the capital of a small principality in
western India (in what is now Gujarat state) under British suzerainty—did not have much in
the way of a formal education. He was, however, an able administrator who knew how to
steer his way between the capricious princes, their long-suffering subjects, and the headstrong
British political officers in power.
Gandhi’s mother, Putlibai, was completely absorbed in religion, did not care much for finery
or jewelry, divided her time between her home and the temple, fasted frequently, and wore
herself out in days and nights of nursing whenever there was sickness in the family.
Mohandas grew up in a home steeped in Vaishnavism—worship of the Hindu god Vishnu—
with a strong tinge of Jainism, a morally rigorous Indian religion whose chief tenets are
nonviolence and the belief that everything in the universe is eternal. Thus, he took for granted
ahimsa (noninjury to all living beings), vegetarianism, fasting for self-purification, and
mutual tolerance between adherents of various creeds and sects.
The educational facilities at Porbandar were rudimentary; in the primary school that
Mohandas attended, the children wrote the alphabet in the dust with their fingers. Luckily for
him, his father became dewan of Rajkot, another princely state. Though Mohandas
occasionally won prizes and scholarships at the local schools, his record was on the whole

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mediocre. One of the terminal reports rated him as “good at English, fair in Arithmetic and
weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting.” He was married at the age of 13
and thus lost a year at school. A diffident child, he shone neither in the classroom nor on the
playing field. He loved to go out on long solitary walks when he was not nursing his by then
ailing father (who died soon thereafter) or helping his mother with her household chores.
He had learned, in his words, “to carry out the orders of the elders, not to scan them.” With
such extreme passivity, it is not surprising that he should have gone through a phase of
adolescent rebellion, marked by secret atheism, petty thefts, furtive smoking, and—most
shocking of all for a boy born in a Vaishnava family—meat eating. His adolescence was
probably no stormier than that of most children of his age and class. What was extraordinary
was the way his youthful transgressions ended.
“Never again” was his promise to himself after each escapade. And he kept his promise.
Beneath an unprepossessing exterior, he concealed a burning passion for self-improvement
that led him to take even the heroes of Hindu mythology, such as Prahlada and Harishcandra
—legendary embodiments of truthfulness and sacrifice—as living models.
In 1887 Mohandas scraped through the matriculation examination of the University of
Bombay (now University of Mumbai) and joined Samaldas College in Bhavnagar
(Bhaunagar). As he had to suddenly switch from his native language—Gujarati—to English,
he found it rather difficult to follow the lectures.
Meanwhile, his family was debating his future. Left to himself, he would have liked to have
been a doctor. But, besides the Vaishnava prejudice against vivisection, it was clear that, if he
was to keep up the family tradition of holding high office in one of the states in Gujarat, he
would have to qualify as a barrister. That meant a visit to England, and Mohandas, who was
not too happy at Samaldas College, jumped at the proposal. His youthful imagination
conceived England as “a land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilization.” But
there were several hurdles to be crossed before the visit to England could be realized. His
father had left the family little property; moreover, his mother was reluctant to expose her
youngest child to unknown temptations and dangers in a distant land. But Mohandas was
determined to visit England. One of his brothers raised the necessary money, and his
mother’s doubts were allayed when he took a vow that, while away from home, he would not
touch wine, women, or meat. Mohandas disregarded the last obstacle—the decree of the
leaders of the Modh Bania subcaste (Vaishya caste), to which the Gandhis belonged, who
forbade his trip to England as a violation of the Hindu religion—and sailed in September
1888. Ten days after his arrival, he joined the Inner Temple, one of the four London law
colleges (The Temple).

Emergence as a Political and Social Activist

Gandhi was quickly exposed to the racial discrimination practiced in South Africa. In a
Durban court he was asked by the European magistrate to take off his turban; he refused and
left the courtroom. A few days later, while traveling to Pretoria, he was unceremoniously
thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and left shivering and brooding at the rail
station in Pietermaritzburg. In the further course of that journey, he was beaten up by the
white driver of a stagecoach because he would not travel on the footboard to make room for a
European passenger, and finally he was barred from hotels reserved “for Europeans only.”

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Those humiliations were the daily lot of Indian traders and labourers in Natal, who had
learned to pocket them with the same resignation with which they pocketed their meagre
earnings. What was new was not Gandhi’s experience but his reaction. He had so far not been
conspicuous for self-assertion or aggressiveness. But something happened to him as he
smarted under the insults heaped upon him. In retrospect the journey from Durban to Pretoria
struck him as one of the most-creative experiences of his life; it was his moment of truth.
Henceforth he would not accept injustice as part of the natural or unnatural order in South
Africa; he would defend his dignity as an Indian and as a man.
While in Pretoria, Gandhi studied the conditions in which his fellow South Asians in South
Africa lived and tried to educate them on their rights and duties, but he had no intention of
staying on in South Africa. Indeed, in June 1894, as his year’s contract drew to a close, he
was back in Durban, ready to sail for India. At a farewell party given in his honour, he
happened to glance through the Natal Mercury and learned that the Natal Legislative
Assembly was considering a bill to deprive Indians of the right to vote. “This is the first nail
in our coffin,” Gandhi told his hosts. They professed their inability to oppose the bill, and
indeed their ignorance of the politics of the colony, and begged him to take up the fight on
their behalf.
Until the age of 18, Gandhi had hardly ever read a newspaper. Neither as a student in
England nor as a budding barrister in India had he evinced much interest in politics. Indeed,
he was overcome by a terrifying stage fright whenever he stood up to read a speech at a social
gathering or to defend a client in court. Nevertheless, in July 1894, when he was barely 25, he
blossomed almost overnight into a proficient political campaigner. He drafted petitions to the
Natal legislature and the British government and had them signed by hundreds of his
compatriots. He could not prevent the passage of the bill but succeeded in drawing the
attention of the public and the press in Natal, India, and England to the Natal Indians’
grievances. He was persuaded to settle down in Durban to practice law and to organize the
Indian community. In 1894 he founded the Natal Indian Congress, of which he himself
became the indefatigable secretary. Through that common political organization, he infused a
spirit of solidarity in the heterogeneous Indian community. He flooded the government, the
legislature, and the press with closely reasoned statements of Indian grievances. Finally, he
exposed to the view of the outside world the skeleton in the imperial cupboard, the
discrimination practiced against the Indian subjects of Queen Victoria in one of her own
colonies in Africa. It was a measure of his success as a publicist that such important
newspapers as The Times of London and The Statesman and Englishman of Calcutta (now
Kolkata) editorially commented on the Natal Indians’ grievances.
In 1896 Gandhi went to India to fetch his wife, Kasturba (or Kasturbai), and their two oldest
children and to canvass support for the Indians overseas. He met prominent leaders and
persuaded them to address public meetings in the country’s principal cities. Unfortunately for
him, garbled versions of his activities and utterances reached Natal and inflamed its European
population. On landing at Durban in January 1897, he was assaulted and nearly lynched by a
white mob. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary in the British Cabinet, cabled the
government of Natal to bring the guilty men to book, but Gandhi refused to prosecute his
assailants. It was, he said, a principle with him not to seek redress of a personal wrong in a
court of law.

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Emergence as a Nationalist Leader

For the next three years after arriving to Bombay in 1915 from London, Gandhi seemed to
hover uncertainly on the periphery of Indian politics, declining to join any political agitation,
supporting the British war effort, and even recruiting soldiers for the British Indian Army. At
the same time, he did not flinch from criticizing the British officials for any acts of high-
handedness or from taking up the grievances of the long-suffering peasantry in Bihar and
Gujarat. By February 1919, however, the British had insisted on pushing through—in the
teeth of fierce Indian opposition—the Rowlatt Acts, which empowered the authorities to
imprison without trial those suspected of sedition. A provoked Gandhi finally revealed a
sense of estrangement from the British Raj and announced a satyagraha struggle. The result
was a virtual political earthquake that shook the subcontinent in the spring of 1919. The
violent outbreaks that followed—notably the Massacre of Amritsar, which was the killing by
British-led soldiers of nearly 400 Indians who were gathered in an open space in Amritsar in
the Punjab region (now in Punjab state), and the enactment of martial law—prompted him to
stay his hand. However, within a year he was again in a militant mood, having in the
meantime been irrevocably alienated by British insensitiveness to Indian feeling on the
Punjab tragedy and Muslim resentment on the peace terms offered to Turkey following
World War I.
By the autumn of 1920, Gandhi was the dominant figure on the political stage, commanding
an influence never before attained by any political leader in India or perhaps in any other
country. He refashioned the 35-year-old Indian National Congress (Congress Party) into an
effective political instrument of Indian nationalism: from a three-day Christmas-week picnic
of the upper middle class in one of the principal cities of India, it became a mass organization
with its roots in small towns and villages. Gandhi’s message was simple: it was not British
guns but imperfections of Indians themselves that kept their country in bondage. His
program, the nonviolent noncooperation movement against the British government, included
boycotts not only of British manufactures but of institutions operated or aided by the British
in India: legislatures, courts, offices, schools. The campaign electrified the country, broke the
spell of fear of foreign rule, and led to the arrests of thousands of satyagrahis, who defied
laws and cheerfully lined up for prison. In February 1922 the movement seemed to be on the
crest of a rising wave, but, alarmed by a violent outbreak in Chauri Chaura, a remote village
in eastern India, Gandhi decided to call off mass civil disobedience. That was a blow to many
of his followers, who feared that his self-imposed restraints and scruples would reduce the
nationalist struggle to pious futility. Gandhi himself was arrested on March 10, 1922, tried for
sedition, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. He was released in February 1924, after
undergoing surgery for appendicitis. The political landscape had changed in his absence. The
Congress Party had split into two factions, one under Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru
(the father of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister) favouring the entry of the party
into legislatures and the other under Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai
Patel opposing it. Worst of all, the unity between Hindus and Muslims of the heyday of the
noncooperation movement of 1920–22 had dissolved. Gandhi tried to draw the warring
communities out of their suspicion and fanaticism by reasoning and persuasion. Finally, after
a serious outbreak of communal unrest, he undertook a three-week fast in the autumn of 1924
to arouse the people into following the path of nonviolence. In December 1924 he was named
president of the Congress Party, and he served for a year.

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Return to party leadership

During the mid-1920s Gandhi took little interest in active politics and was considered a spent
force. In 1927, however, the British government appointed a constitutional reform
commission under Sir John Simon, a prominent English lawyer and politician, that did not
contain a single Indian. When the Congress and other parties boycotted the commission, the
political tempo rose. At the Congress session (meeting) at Calcutta in December 1928,
Gandhi put forth the crucial resolution demanding dominion status from the British
government within a year under threat of a nationwide nonviolent campaign for complete
independence. Henceforth, Gandhi was back as the leading voice of the Congress Party. In
March 1930 he launched the Salt March, a satyagraha against the British-imposed tax on salt,
which affected the poorest section of the community. One of the most spectacular and
successful campaigns in Gandhi’s nonviolent war against the British Raj, it resulted in the
imprisonment of more than 60,000 people. A year later, after talks with the viceroy, Lord
Irwin (later Lord Halifax), Gandhi accepted a truce (the Gandhi-Irwin Pact), called off civil
disobedience, and agreed to attend the Round Table Conference in London as the sole
representative of the Indian National Congress.
The conference, which concentrated on the problem of the Indian minorities rather than on
the transfer of power from the British, was a great disappointment to the Indian nationalists.
Moreover, when Gandhi returned to India in December 1931, he found his party facing an
all-out offensive from Lord Irwin’s successor as viceroy, Lord Willingdon, who unleashed
the sternest repression in the history of the nationalist movement. Gandhi was once more
imprisoned, and the government tried to insulate him from the outside world and to destroy
his influence. That was not an easy task. Gandhi soon regained the initiative. In September
1932, while still a prisoner, he embarked on a fast to protest against the British government’s
decision to segregate the so-called untouchables (the lowest level of the Indian caste system)
by allotting them separate electorates in the new constitution. The fast produced an emotional
upheaval in the country, and an alternative electoral arrangement was jointly and speedily
devised by the leaders of the Hindu community and the untouchables and endorsed by the
British government. The fast became the starting point of a vigorous campaign for the
removal of the disabilities of the untouchables, whom Gandhi referred to as Harijans, or
“children of God.” (That term has fallen out of favour, replaced by Dalit; Scheduled Castes is
the official designation.)
In 1934 Gandhi resigned not only as the leader but also as a member of the Congress Party.
He had come to believe that its leading members had adopted nonviolence as a political
expedient and not as the fundamental creed it was for him. In place of political activity he
then concentrated on his “constructive programme” of building the nation “from the bottom
up”—educating rural India, which accounted for 85 percent of the population; continuing his
fight against untouchability; promoting hand spinning, weaving, and other cottage industries
to supplement the earnings of the underemployed peasantry; and evolving a system of
education best suited to the needs of the people. Gandhi himself went to live at Sevagram, a

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village in central India, which became the centre of his program of social and economic
uplift.

The last phase

With the outbreak of World War II, the nationalist struggle in India entered its last crucial
phase. Gandhi hated fascism and all it stood for, but he also hated war. The Indian National
Congress, on the other hand, was not committed to pacifism and was prepared to support the
British war effort if Indian self-government was assured. Once more Gandhi became
politically active. The failure of the mission of Sir Stafford Cripps, a British cabinet minister
who went to India in March 1942 with an offer that Gandhi found unacceptable, the British
equivocation on the transfer of power to Indian hands, and the encouragement given by high
British officials to conservative and communal forces promoting discord between Muslims
and Hindus impelled Gandhi to demand in the summer of 1942 an immediate British
withdrawal from India—what became known as the Quit India Movement.
In mid-1942 the war against the Axis Powers, particularly Japan, was in a critical phase, and
the British reacted sharply to the campaign. They imprisoned the entire Congress leadership
and set out to crush the party once and for all. There were violent outbreaks that were sternly
suppressed, and the gulf between Britain and India became wider than ever before. Gandhi,
his wife, and several other top party leaders (including Nehru) were confined in the Aga
Khan Palace (now the Gandhi National Memorial) in Poona (now Pune). Kasturba died there
in early 1944, shortly before Gandhi and the others were released.
A new chapter in Indo-British relations opened with the victory of the Labour Party in Britain
1945. During the next two years, there were prolonged triangular negotiations between
leaders of the Congress, the Muslim League under Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and the British
government, culminating in the Mountbatten Plan of June 3, 1947, and the formation of the
two new dominions of India and Pakistan in mid-August 1947.
It was one of the greatest disappointments of Gandhi’s life that Indian freedom was realized
without Indian unity. Muslim separatism had received a great boost while Gandhi and his
colleagues were in jail, and in 1946–47, as the final constitutional arrangements were being
negotiated, the outbreak of communal riots between Hindus and Muslims unhappily created a
climate in which Gandhi’s appeals to reason and justice, tolerance and trust had little chance.
When partition of the subcontinent was accepted—against his advice—he threw himself heart
and soul into the task of healing the scars of the communal conflict, toured the riot-torn areas
in Bengal and Bihar, admonished the bigots, consoled the victims, and tried to rehabilitate the
refugees. In the atmosphere of that period, surcharged with suspicion and hatred, that was a
difficult and heartbreaking task. Gandhi was blamed by partisans of both the communities.
When persuasion failed, he went on a fast. He won at least two spectacular triumphs: in
September 1947 his fasting stopped the rioting in Calcutta, and in January 1948 he shamed
the city of Delhi into a communal truce. A few days later, on January 30, while he was on his
way to his evening prayer meeting in Delhi, he was shot down by Nathuram Godse, a young
Hindu fanatic.

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Place In History
The British attitude toward Gandhi was one of mingled admiration, amusement,
bewilderment, suspicion, and resentment. Except for a tiny minority of Christian missionaries
and radical socialists, the British tended to see him at best as a utopian visionary and at worst
as a cunning hypocrite whose professions of friendship for the British race were a mask for
subversion of the British Raj. Gandhi was conscious of the existence of that wall of prejudice,
and it was part of the strategy of satyagraha to penetrate it.
His three major campaigns in 1920–22, 1930–34, and 1940–42 were well designed to
engender that process of self-doubt and questioning that was to undermine the moral defenses
of his adversaries and to contribute, together with the objective realities of the postwar world,
to producing the grant of dominion status in 1947. The British abdication in India was the
first step in the liquidation of the British Empire on the continents of Asia and Africa.
Gandhi’s image as a rebel and enemy died hard, but, as it had done to the memory of George
Washington, Britain, in 1969, the centenary year of Gandhi’s birth, erected a statue to his
memory.
Gandhi had critics in his own country and indeed in his own party. The liberal leaders
protested that he was going too fast; the young radicals complained that he was not going fast
enough; left-wing politicians alleged that he was not serious about evicting the British or
liquidating such vested Indian interests as princes and landlords; the leaders of the
untouchables doubted his good faith as a social reformer; and Muslim leaders accused him of
partiality to his own community.
Research in the second half of the 20th century established Gandhi’s role as a great mediator
and reconciler. His talents in that direction were applied to conflicts between the older
moderate politicians and the young radicals, the political terrorists and the parliamentarians,
the urban intelligentsia and the rural masses, the traditionalists and the modernists, the caste
Hindus and the untouchables, the Hindus and the Muslims, and the Indians and the British.
It was inevitable that Gandhi’s role as a political leader should loom larger in the public
imagination, but the mainspring of his life lay in religion, not in politics. And religion for him
did not mean formalism, dogma, ritual, or sectarianism. “What I have been striving and
pining to achieve these thirty years,” he wrote in his autobiography, “is to see God face to
face.” His deepest strivings were spiritual, but unlike many of his fellow Indians with such
aspirations, he did not retire to a cave in the Himalayas to meditate on the Absolute; he
carried his cave, as he once said, within him. For him truth was not something to be
discovered in the privacy of one’s personal life; it had to be upheld in the challenging
contexts of social and political life.
Gandhi won the affection and loyalty of gifted men and women, old and young, with vastly
dissimilar talents and temperaments; of Europeans of every religious persuasion; and of
Indians of almost every political line. Few of his political colleagues went all the way with
him and accepted nonviolence as a creed; fewer still shared his food fads, his interest in
mudpacks and nature cure, or his prescription of brahmacarya, complete renunciation of the
pleasures of the flesh.

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Gandhi’s ideas on sex may now sound quaint and unscientific. His marriage at the age of 13
seems to have complicated his attitude toward sex and charged it with feelings of guilt, but it
is important to remember that total sublimation, according to the best tradition of Hindu
thought, is indispensable for those who seek self-realization, and brahmacarya was for
Gandhi part of a larger discipline in food, sleep, thought, prayer, and daily activity designed
to equip himself for service of the causes to which he was totally committed. What he failed
to see was that his own unique experience was no guide for the common man.
Scholars have continued to judge Gandhi’s place in history. He was the catalyst if not the
initiator of three of the major revolutions of the 20th century: the movements against
colonialism, racism, and violence. He wrote copiously; the collected edition of his writings
had reached 100 volumes by the early 21st century.
Much of what he wrote was in response to the needs of his coworkers and disciples and the
exigencies of the political situation, but on fundamentals he maintained a remarkable
consistency, as is evident from the Hind Swaraj (“Indian Home Rule”), published in South
Africa in 1909. The strictures on Western materialism and colonialism, the reservations about
industrialism and urbanization, the distrust of the modern state, and the total rejection of
violence that was expressed in that book seemed romantic, if not reactionary, to the pre-
World War I generation in India and the West, which had not known the shocks of two global
wars or experienced the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler and the trauma of the atom bomb. Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s objective of promoting a just and egalitarian order at home and
nonalignment with military blocs abroad doubtless owed much to Gandhi, but neither he nor
his colleagues in the Indian nationalist movement wholly accepted the Gandhian models in
politics and economics.
In the years since Gandhi’s death, his name has been invoked by the organizers of numerous
demonstrations and movements. However, with a few outstanding exceptions—such as those
of his disciple the land reformer Vinoba Bhave in India and of the civil rights leader Martin
Luther King, Jr., in the United States—those movements have been a travesty of the ideas of
Gandhi.
Yet Gandhi will probably never lack champions. Erik H. Erikson, a distinguished American
psychoanalyst, in his study of Gandhi senses “an affinity between Gandhi’s truth and the
insights of modern psychology.” One of the greatest admirers of Gandhi was Albert Einstein,
who saw in Gandhi’s nonviolence a possible antidote to the massive violence unleashed by
the fission of the atom. And Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist, after his survey of the
socioeconomic problems of the underdeveloped world, pronounced Gandhi “in practically all
fields an enlightened liberal.” In a time of deepening crisis in the underdeveloped world, of
social malaise in the affluent societies, of the shadow of unbridled technology and the
precarious peace of nuclear terror, it seems likely that Gandhi’s ideas and techniques will
become increasingly relevant.

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Learning Tasks

Do the following as asked for by the statements.

1. Explain the reasons why an Asian should be proud of the race they belong. Should
you be given the chance to choose as to where to live together with your family,
where is it and why?
2. State the reasons why religions in Asia differ in its contribution to the development of
the country where they exist?
3. What is your objective take on the reasons why China, Japan, Korea, and even India
become as great as they are now as compared to Philippines? Support your answers.
4. Make a position paper whether the invasions that took place in India had helped
advance the economic and political life of Indian people.

Learning Activity. Creating a Topic Diary – Comic Strip Style.

1. Make a summary in digital or printable comic strip of a particular learning acquired

from the topics that were presented and discussed above. Using own sketching skills
or subscribing to Make Beliefs Comix, create a topic diary of the said summary –
comic strip style in not less than 6 panels or not more than 18 panels.

2. Make an asynchronous oral testament why Gandhi was hailed as a hero in India.

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