 Hello everyone! So today I'm going to talk about this book, classic Korean literature. I am, first of all, I decide I'm not going to talk about the books I read anymore. I know I did a couple book calls or book kind of summaries of everything I've been reading and I decide not to do that anymore because it doesn't really tie into this. The only time I'm going to talk about books is when they have to deal with like literature and linguistics, you know, language in some way or entrepreneurship or being a freelancer, you know, so one of those aspects of freelance translation because they tie into what we do and so they're more relevant. And this one, I was debating back and forth where I should talk about this one. In the end I decided to do so because it would be quite interesting. It's about classical Korean literature. It's basically an overview of Korean literature from the very beginning until about a hundred years ago and you'll see why in a second. And the reason I'm doing it is because, well, I'm, first of all, I'm probably not the best person to talk about this stuff because this is, I'm not an expert by any means. Let's just put it that way. But on the other hand, if you're interested in it, this could be a good primer. Even if you're not interested in it, you probably won't hear about this anywhere else. This isn't stuff that you hear just randomly on the street. So it might be interesting for you just to get a basic primer on Korean literature. So anyway, let's go. First of all, again, I'm not an expert in this. I just read this book, but I have been interested in it for a while. I lived in Korea for two years, years ago. And so I've kind of always had this interest in it. And that's why I bought the book and why I read it. The reason why, by the way, I find it interesting is because in order for there to be literature at all, it needs to be written down. I mean, we need to have it written down because otherwise we have no way of bringing it back from those times. But Korea had a big problem with writing their things down. It's the same problem that you encountered in Japan and I think also in Vietnam in that they used Chinese characters to write things down. But the Chinese characters did not suit their own language at all. And so they had to find a way to compensate and it was very odd. And so they went in different directions. In Japan, as many people know, they still use many Chinese characters, the kanji they call them, but they also have the two alphabets, hiragana, katakana, and they will use them in conjunction together. While in Korea, what happened was they were just using these Chinese characters and during the 1300s, they had one of their kings, King Sejong. All the Koreans know King Sejong. He's the most famous king they had. And he was the one who invented or he set up a committee, but he was very involved in it as well to set up a new Korean alphabet from scratch. And it's extremely interesting. It's not an alphabet, it's a syllabary, I guess they're called. And like the Japanese kanas are syllabaries, but they're very different in Korea because you can combine them and the vowel sounds and the consonant sounds and it's very methodical. It's very mathematical. I've heard it described that I've heard it described as the most mathematical of languages and an alphabet. And so it's extremely interesting, I feel. But there's a whole history to it as well. I'll go through it briefly. So until then, they'd only use Chinese characters. They had some extra script that they added here and there, similar to what they use in Japan, but by and large, it was, you know, the educated elite said, no, Chinese characters is the only way to go. King Sejong invented this new type of alphabet, but no one wanted to use it. They said, no, this is not the proper way. We can't have that. We're not going to use it. And so it was relegated to A, the Buddhists, because he showed it to the Buddhists. The Buddhists loved it because it made it easier for them to spread all their Buddhist sutras and stuff like that. So they really embraced it. But the Buddhists were kind of on the outs in Korea at this time. Korea was very Confucian and the Confucians and the Buddhists were clashing a lot. And so, yeah, they were kind of doing their own thing. And the other group of people who used it quite a bit back then were the women. And it became a way for the women to communicate. Because once again, being a Confucian society, the men were on top and the women below. And they didn't get as much of an education. So the men had to write in Chinese characters because that was the way to do it. While the women, when they wrote, wrote in this Korean hangul, in the Korean alphabet. Now, to bring it all back, it really affects the literature because we have all this Korean literature written by women. And in the Korean alphabet, which was much better at expressing the Korean words and Korean mannerisms and the way that people spoke and everything. So in order to write stories, while men could write decrees or laws or stuff like that, it was a lot harder for them to write things that were expressive. Obviously, they did anyway. We have plenty in Chinese that was written all throughout the ages by men. But we do have quite a bit by women. Actually, I shouldn't say that. We have actually not much at all by women, because a lot of it was then burnt or destroyed because it was bad to show a woman had an education very often, especially during the Chosun dynasty. So anyway, it means that what we have now of Korean literature is so scattered and out there that it's very interesting to me. So it starts off with here, the hyangga, which is apparently started during the Shilla dynasty, one of the dynasties way back when. And then it just goes through all the different songs and poems that we had throughout the dynasties. I just wanted a brief mention of shijo. Shijo is a type of poem. It's basically think of it as Korea's answer to the haiku. The way it puts it here is a comparison between the shijo and the haiku. Both the shijo and the haiku are short three line poems, three line poems. The shijo normally having 45 syllables and the haiku 17. Everything else about them, however, seems very different. So we can, and he has an example, an example of each, both on similar topics. And obviously, a comparison like this is going to be arbitrary because it's comparison of poems, but it's a good way to see the distinct qualities of each form. So we'll start with the haiku. This was written by Basho, apparently it's a well-known haiku. And obviously these are translations as well, so it loses even more. But just to give an idea, the haiku by Basho goes, the summer grasses of brave soldiers' dreams to aftermath. Okay. And this is the shijo, which again covers a similar topic. This is by Inche, the name of the writer. So green grass covers a valley. Do you sleep? Are you at rest? Or where is that lovely face? Can mere bones lie buried here? I have wine, but no chance to share it. Alone I pour it, sadly. So these both have to do with the aftermath of war of, you know, missing your comrade in arms, I guess, or something like that. And, but I feel, you know, the shijo is a lot more expressive, I guess because you have more room to play with rather than the short haiku. And it's interesting here because the author had his students write their own shijo, basically following these rules, obviously in English. And it was, anyway, it's interesting. He also does comparisons with Shakespeare and stuff. The reason I said it stops about 100 years ago is because that's when the Korean language started being used by everyone. But there's a specific reason for this because this is also when the Japanese started taking over Korea and Taiwan, you know, in China and stuff like that. And they were trying to force everyone to speak Japanese. And this brought about a more fervent patriotism, let's say, and love of, you know, Koreans for their own language and including their own alphabet. Say, no, we have our own language and our own alphabet. We really want to be using this and be real Koreans. And so suddenly it became, you know, the suddenly the Chinese characters were kind of on the outs and the Korean characters were being used more and more. And nowadays, in fact, they're used all the time. Chinese characters are used, I mean, I think, hardly at all. Basically people's names. And I guess in the paper, sometimes you see them like dealing with legal stuff and, you know, you see them in the ministry of something, something on the building. I might be wrong here, but it seems, you know, from what I've seen in Korea that, yeah, you hardly ever see Chinese characters anymore. I only touched on what was going on here. There's obviously a lot more into it. I do recommend reading it. If you are interested at all in classical Korean literature, I do wish it had continued a little bit. So it had gone from a hundred years ago when they started using more Korean until more modern times because contemporary Korean fiction, the literature, I have a couple books out there. Anyway, it's very odd. It's very dark. It's very, well, not dark, but dreary, maybe, but it's also kind of fantastical. And it's very interesting for those of you who've read The Vegetarian, it's a best-selling book and stuff like that. You know what I mean? And so it would have been interesting to read how that process came about, you know, and how we got to that point. That's all I have to say about this. I know it was kind of a long video, but hopefully you found it interesting as a brief introduction to Korean literature. And that's about it for now. Let me know if you have any other recommendations of books dealing with literature, Korean literature I'm interested in, but, you know, any type of literature, feel free to let me know because I'm interested in this type of thing. But that's about it for now. And I guess I'll talk to you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.