Korean Job Discussion Forums

[captain kirk]

I visited a Korean museum today and saw a display that was hard to figure but I THNK it said that during the Imjin War (invasion of Korea by Japan in the 1500's these were the national populations of Northeast Asia;

Japan 1,000,000 to 1.2 million

Korea 750,000

China 6,000,000

If this is indeed the case it's pretty awesome to think about. Nowadays what's the South Korean population, 45 million? I've heard folks scoff at the description, 'Land of the morning calm' of Korea. But if it was the year 1500, with Korean population 750,000, it would have been a very different environment.

Does anyone know the population of Korea for other eras in history?

Paleolithic (old stone age)

Neolithic (new stone age)

Bronze age

Iron age

I don't know, but am interested in finding out. I remember reading that during the Ice Age the human population worldwide was so low that mankind almost died out. That would have been the Paleolithic. I wonder how many people were in Korea at that time?

[Suwon23]

Modern hunter-gatherers in fertile areas have a population density around 0.2 people per square kilometer, but this varies tremendously from place to place and from group to group. If south Korea had a similar population density, at 98,000 square kilometers, it would have had around 20,000 people. Paleolithic Japan had a higher population density, perhaps the highest in the world for hunter-gatherers, so Korea may also have had a high population. Either way though, before agriculture I can't see South Korea having more than, say, 40,000 people max, probably less.

[captain kirk]

That's amazing, 40,000 people before farming. Tribes which met for bride exhange periodically (how I hear the Clovis people in North America lived, maybe it's the same(?)), groups of 25 people! Gotta have been some tigers around the edges back in those days.

In the book by Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) he says that agriculture in Japan didn't catch on until a bit later than Korea and China because the coastal living was particularly good there with shellfish, fishing. Maybe they surfed, too^^.

Did Korea, during the Pleistocene, have super sized animals such as the Mammoth. I don't know, do you?

[Oreovictim]

Speaking of Korean history, over a year ago, someone on here posted some old pictures of Korea. Some of them were as old as the early 1900s. There were pictures of Seoul from the '40s and '50s, pics of Koreans who would paint or write on the feet of people who were ill. (The Japanese introduced medicine to them - gasp!) I'll look for the post and send it, if I can find it.

[Miles Rationis]

The Japanese and Chinese stole all their ideas from the Koreans.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

England's population around the same time was only about three million. I don't see what's so hard to believe about it.

[jkelly80]

China hit 125 million before the Mongols in 1250. By 1395 there was 65 million. Chinese scholars claim the Mongols killed these 60 million, others think it was the plague. Either way, 6 million in China is way off, and I would imagine the other figures are as well. Probably much higher.

[samd]

[ajgeddes]

[captain kirk]

A quick google and nothing specific about Korean pops throughout history. Or China.

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm