Hi! My name is Orion Bouillion and I’m a first year student at UO. My major is currently undecided, but I have interests in art, history, music, travel, nature, culture, photography, and potentially journalism. I’m from Portland, Oregon and I’ve lived there my whole life until now. The reason I wanted to come to UO was because I wanted to stay in state and I loved the beauty and greenery of the campus. My passions outside of school include listening to all sorts of music, hanging out with friends, watching shows, movies or youtube, occasionally rock climbing and sometimes reading and playing video games.

Today I’m writing about South Korea, and the reason why I wanted to write about this country is because my mom’s side of the family is Korean, and I love Korean food and would love to learn Korean and travel there in the future. 

South Korea is the southern half of a peninsula in East Asia and it is bordered by the northern half of the peninsula, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea. South Korea is also bordered by the Yellow Sea to the west and the Sea of Japan to the East. South Korea has a population of around 51.7 million as of 2020. This makes it the 28th most populated country in the world. In 2020 South Korea’s capital Seoul had over 9.5 million inhabitants, making it the 16th largest city by population in the word. South Korea also includes 3,358 islands, among the largest is Jeju with a population of 670,858 as of 2020. Jeju is the only province in South Korea with an autonomous government, and its current status went into effect on July 1, 2006. 

Due to the fact that Jeju is autonomous it can choose to disagree with mainland South Korea, which can make for an interesting case with ideas such as globalization, nationalization, and cosmopolitanism. On April 3, 1948 what started is known as the Jeju uprising. This started due to the people in Jeju having a disagreement with mainland South Korea’s new government, and it led to the South Korean government killing people in Jeju in an attempt to settle the uprising. This incident continued until it ended on May 14, 1949. 

What was once animosity and not embracing other people’s viewpoints and opinions is now in modern times positive relations with Jeju and mainland South Korea. Now cosmopolitanism is a goal of South Korea’s education system, and the foreign population is growing and the largest makeup of it is people from Japan, China, and the US.

Sources:

https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1024605

https://www.investkorea.org/jj-en/cntnts/i-1489/web.do

https://www.history.com/topics/korea/south-korea

https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Korea

https://earth.esa.int/web/earth-watching/image-of-the-week/content/-/article/seoul-south-korea/index.html

https://www.citypopulation.de/en/southkorea/cities/?cityid=7709