KOREA AS PART OF THE MONGOLIAN WORLD:PATTERNS AND DIFFERENCES

Year 2017, Volume: 5 Issue: 10, 137 - 146, 15.01.2017

Paul D. Buell

https://doi.org/10.33692/avrasyad.509411

Abstract

The Mongolian world order was never a single unified, focused entity in large part
because of a strong tradition persisting to the end of communality. As time went on this included
Koryo Korea, a “son-in-law state” with strong marriage and other links to the center, in its case
Mongol China, and one which used its special position to parley economic and political power
within an expanded East Asian realm. Its relationship with Mongol China included many
resident Koreans in Daidu and elsewhere and powerful consorts such as Empress Ki who
dominated the last reign in Mongol China and whose son inherited. The present paper looks at
this special relationship between Korea and the Mongol world and also at some of the cultural
interaction involved, in this case cultural influences from the Mongol world as seen in the many
changes in Korean foodways that took place during the time, including the coming of the
national drink, distilled soju. It emerged based upon Mongol technological innovations and the
known interest of the Mongol occupiers in distilled alcohol, based in milk for the conquerors but
more typically in rice for the Korean conquered.  

Keywords

Mongol, Korea, history, culture

References

• BUELL Paul D, (1977) “Tribe, Qan and Ulus in Early Mongol China: Some Prolegomena to Yüan History”, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, BUELL Paul D, (1993) “Saiyid Ajall”, in Igor de Rachewiltz, Chan Hok-lam, Hsiao Ch'ich'ing and Peter W. Geier, editors, In the Service of the Khan, Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yuan Period (1200-1300), Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 466-479. BUELL Paul D, (1994) “Chinqai (1169-1252): Architect of Mongolian Empire”, in Opuscula Altaica, Essays Presented in Honor of Henry Schwarz, edited by Edward H. Kaplan, and Donald W. Whisenhunt, Center for East Asian Studies (Studies on East Asia, 19), Bellingham, Washington, 168-186 BUELL Paul D, (2016) “The Ethos of Sate and Society in the Early Mongol Empire: Chingiz Khan to Güyük”, with Judy Kolbas, in Timothy May, ed., The Mongols and Post-Mongol Asia: Studies in Honour of David O. Morgan, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 26, 1-2 (January, 2016), 43-64. BUELL Paul D,(2003) Historical Dictionary of the Mongolian World Empire (Lanham, Md., and Oxford, 293. DUNCAN John, (2000) The Origins of the Choson Dynasty, Seattle: University of Washington Press, and John Duncan, “The Social Background to the Founding of the Choson Dynasty: Change or Continuity,” Journal of Korean Studies 6 (1988-89), 39-79. HABOUSH Jahun Kim, (2009) Epistolary Korea, Letters in the Communicative Space of the Chosen, 1392-1910, New York: Columbia University Press, 42-49. HENTHORN William E, (1963) Korea the Mongol Invasions, Leiden, E.J. Brill, HYUNHEE Park, (2012) Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds, Cross-Cultural Exhange in Pre-modern Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, HYUNHEE Park, (2013) “Cross-cultural Exchange and Cartographic Knowledge of the World in Yuan China”, in M. Rossabi, ed. Eurasian Influences on Yuan China, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 125-158. LİGETİ Louis, (1971) Histoire Secrète des Mongols, Monumenta Linguae Mongolicae collecta, I, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, RECK Karl-Heinz, (1968) “Korea und die Mongolen”, Das Verhältnis von Bodenbauern und Viehzüchtern in historischer Sicht, Berlin, 135-144 ROBİNSON David. M.,(2009) Empire’s Twilight, Northeast Asia under the Mongols, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press,