The Korean peninsula is located at the eastern end of the Asian continent and extends about 1,020 km length. At the narrowest point, Korea is 175 km wide. The peninsula belongs to the mountainous areas of the world and has a very attractive landscape.

It is surrounded by some 3000 islands. Mountains and hills drag on the entire east coast and cover about 70% of the surface. The border between South and North Korea runs along the 38th Latitude. Korea is bordered to the Yellow Sea in the West, the East Sea in the East and the Tsushima Waterway in the South. South Korea has an area of 99,392 square kilometres, the population is around 49 million. The official language is Korean, the Korean currency is Won.

Climate

Korea has continental climate with cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers. The average temperature in winter is at -3 ° C. Low temperatures of -20 ° C are not uncommon. In summer, 25 ° C is measured in average. Spring and autumn are pleasantly mild. The most rain falls from late July to early August. From October to March it rains very seldom. Only in the eastern part of the country there is snow in winter. Best time to travel: April/May and September/November.

Today's Korean is likely to be part of the Altaic languages (such as Mongolian). It has emerged of three languages, spoken on the peninsula in the 7th Century.

It is part of the agglutinating languages. That means, among other things, that it has no declensions or conjugations and the word stem is not changed, in contrast to most European languages. Instead, grammatical relationships such as different cases, temporary stages, singular/plural are produced by attaching extensions to the word stem. The sentence structure follows the rule that the modifying element always comes before the item that is modified. Similarly, the predicate is always at the end of a sentence. A single verb can be a complete sentence. While North Korea tries to use purely Korean vocabulary, in South Korea many words are adopted from other languages. Many words have their origin in Chinese, some modern words derived from English. An important part of Korean language are the different levels of politeness. The use of politeness levels in conversation depends on the status of the speaker, the listener and those mentioned in the dialog. This status depends on age, social rank, sex, group affiliation, etc. Likewise, familiarity, place, time, etc. play a role. Naturally, using an appropriate speech level is not specifically Korean, but the Korean language demands for very sophisticated use.

Hangeul

In the beginning, the languages spoken in ancient Korea were written with Chinese characters, brought to Korea with the introduction of Buddhism in the 4th Century. However, the use of Chinese characters caused many problems: Korean lute and grammatical elements could not always be displayed clearly, and the Chinese characters did not always match the sound of the Korean language. Therefore, King Sejong, ruling 1419 - 1450, instructed a commission to develop an original Korean alphabet. The Korean alphabet was completed in 1443 and presented to the public after a test phase within the palace area in1446. For this purpose, King Sejong published the book "Hunmin Jeongeum" in which he explained the new Korean characters and alphabet. Among other things, it says: "That's why a clever man can understand it before the end of a morning. A stupid man can learn it within ten days."

Hangeul has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. While the consonants are based on the form of the mouth when it produces the sound, the vowels are based on the Ying/Yang theory and the idea of man as an intermediary between heaven and earth. The writing is very logical structured. The characters are first put together to syllables, then these syllables are put together to words. Read the writing from left to right, each syllable from left to right and from top to bottom.

The colonization of the Korean peninsula began about five hundred thousand years ago. In the first century BC, three empires emerged: Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla. Silla defeated his two rivals and united the peninsula first time in 676.

In the following Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), an aristocratic form of government was developed and Buddhism as state religion exerted a strong influence on politics and administration. In the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), Confucianism became state ideology. The last dynasty ended with the Japanese invasion. After the liberation, the country was divided in the democratic South Korea and communist North Korea. Three years later the Republic of South Korea was proclaimed in the south and it came to a 3 years lasting war with North Korea on June 25, 1950. After the war, South Korea reached a strong economic growth. Today, after nearly 50 years, South Korea has become one of the most progressive countries in Asia.