Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of the total, with most foreign brides and grooms coming from other Asian nations such as
China, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
During the Joseon Dynasty, Korea was a highly class-conscious and inequitable place, with
the royal family and
yangban
nobles enjoying lives of leisure on the backs of those not
fortunate enough to be part of the bureaucracy. But the ensuing decades of Japanese col-
onization and war all but wiped out the former gentry and their landholdings, and by the
time modern South Korea took shape, having noble lineage no longer commanded much re-
spect. Most South Koreans can still trace their families back for generations and take some
pride in doing so, but with the exception of a few famous clans—the Pyeongsan Shins, for
example—having
yangban
blood doesn't confer any special advantages or even raise any
eyebrows.
If anyone has replaced the
yangban,
it is the families who control the country's great
chaebol
or conglomerates and therefore a massive chunk of the nation's wealth. Their des-
cendants regularly pop up in top schools (if they're not packed off to study abroad) and the
pricey boutiques of Seoul's Apgujeong district. Concerns about inequality, particularly in
terms of educational and job opportunities, have snowballed in recent years, exacerbated by
economic uncertainty and the government's relatively low social spending.
Korean family names provide a good indication of just how homogenous the country is.
Around half the population shares one of the three most common surnames—Kim, Lee, and
Park—and there are only about 250 surnames in use. The vast majority of surnames are de-
rived from Chinese characters that are also common last names in China; this is, however,
seen as a result of past Korean leaders adopting and distributing Chinese-style names, rather
than evidence of blood relations.
Within each surname group there are dozens of different clans or roots (
bon
), each usu-
ally associated with a particular town or geographic area. Women generally keep their fam-
ily names after marriage, but any children will adopt the father's.
Standardized education and the development of a national identity have done much to
blunt regional enmities in South Korea, but they still exist. The most pronounced are those
between the people of the east (Gyeongsang) and southwest (Jeolla) areas, a division that
