Lesson 4: Korea: Land of the Morning Calm

• General categories of literature in Korean

  • Lyric poems
  • Prose
  • Oral literature
  • Literature in classical Chinese
• Early Korean literature owes a great debt to China in terms of themes or style
• Types of short stories

  • Personified story
  • Satirical tales
  • Love stories
  • Anecdotes
• Great intellectual and social milestones made their mark in the development of Korean literature
• Elements of a short story

  • Plot
  • Complication
  • Suspense
  • Crisis
  • Theme
• Korea was divided in 1945 along the 38th parallel of latitude into two separate occupation zones
• The traditional sijo consists of three brief lines with forty to sixty syllables
• Chung Cheol is one of the best-known sijo poets today
• Categories of literature written in Korean

  • Works written in han'gul
  • Works written in idu
  • Works written in classical Chinese
• Hwang Chin-i was the greatest poetess of Korea in her time
• The expression 'taken aback' is an idiom - a word or expression that is not taken literally
• Korean literature after 1900 was deeply influenced by western ideas and literary forms
• The literary output of each period was studied as a cultural legacy worthy of appreciation, recovery, and perpetuation
• Drama in Korean literature

  • Boasts of mask play called sandae
  • Examples include Haeso with seven acts and Hahoo with five acts
• Both North and South Korea seek unification through the political overthrow of the other
• The sijo, a short lyric verse, was invented in the mid-eighteenth century by the musician-singer Yi Se-ch'un
• Lyric poems


  • Originally meant to be sung rather than read
  • Sijo is a polished poem, more personal than a proverb, with its soul in its sensibility rather than in its wit, graceful and profound
• Korean vernacular had begun to replace Chinese as a literary medium
• Types of Korean novels

  • Problem novels
  • Historical novels
  • Court novels like A Record of Sorrowful Days
• The 38th parallel referred to in the story divided Korea into North Korea and South Korea
• The literary language was written in Chinese ideographs, even after the invention of the Korean phonetic alphabet until the end of the vi dynasty
• In literature, symbols often reinforce ideas
• Early sijo composers were mostly scholars, retired statesmen, and Kisang girls trained to entertain with song, dance, and poetry
• Themes of a story

  • Determination and hard work spell success
  • Man proposes, God disposes
  • Any relationship where you put yourself first won't last
  • Love begets love
  • Loyalty begets loyalty
  • Friendship has a greater force over authority in a situation where authority does not deserve respect
• A sequel is a story developed as a continuation of another story
• In-depth reading


  1. Look for main ideas in titles, subheadings, and first sentences of paragraphs

  2. Read carefully and note details such as names, dates, numbers, and reasons

  3. Understand the order in which the information is arranged

  4. Make connections between facts and ideas to get as much meaning as possible
• Correct pronunciation adds to poise and personality
• Sentence types

  • Declarative sentence - used to make a statement and ends with a period
  • Interrogative sentence - used to ask a question and ends with a question mark
  • Imperative sentence - used to express a request, a command, or give direction, always with the subject 'you' and ends with a period
  • Exclamatory sentence - used to express strong feeling or convey an emphatic fact or opinion and ends with an exclamation point
• Idiom


  A word or expression that is not easily analyzable from its grammatical construction or from the meaning of its component parts
• Idioms with 'take' as the base

  • Take a rain check - to request that an appointment be rescheduled to an indefinite time
  • Take it easy - to relax
  • Take something in stride - to accept and adjust to bad fortune or trouble
  • Take something with a grain of salt - be skeptical or cautious about believing a story or explanation
• People trained to entertain

  • Solars
  • Retired statesmen
  • Kisang girls
• Writing a sequel

  1. Prewriting - Imagine character, setting, conflict, plan beginning, middle, and end of plot

  2. Drafting - Introduce conflict early, build events towards climax, use details to build suspense and excitement, show characters' feelings through gestures and words

  3. Revising and Sharing - Read draft, put in more details, read to classmates for feedback

  4. Rewriting - Consider feedback, rewrite story with appropriate vocabulary, correct punctuation, spelling, verb forms

  5. Publishing - Put up story on bulletin board or submit to school paper staff