holy cow, now they are saying Samurai actually from Korea?

[kawa]

"The Samurang, under the command of general Uel Ji Moon Duk, fended off 2 million soldiers during the invasion of the Sui Dynasty. They also defeated 600,000 Tang soldiers at the Ahn Shi battle under the command of general Yang Man Choon. Some of the Samurang moved to Japan and they were known as Samurai as the pronunciation has been altered to accommodate the Japanese alphabet" ......

http://www.hdgumdo.com/

under intro > President Greetings>

[yamaguchi]

According to DNA, We are all from Africa. So Samurai is from Africa too.
That's I want to say now, just hearing this news. but I am not mad. But I am getting tired to hear this kind things.
yamaguchi.

[Yoshito]

"The Samurang, under the command of general Uel Ji Moon Duk, fended off 2 million soldiers during the invasion of the Sui Dynasty. They also defeated 600,000 Tang soldiers at the Ahn Shi battle under the command of general Yang Man Choon. Some of the Samurang moved to Japan and they were known as Samurai as the pronunciation has been altered to accommodate the Japanese alphabet" ......

http://www.hdgumdo.com/

under intro > President Greetings>

I guess the guestion is, what is "NOT" from Korea...

[GrandCentral9]

Before you dismiss this paragraph as more Korean "propaganda," ask yourself this question:

What is a samurai?

The romanticized version springing from the Tokugawa Shogunate is a far cry from the bow and spear wielding horseman of the pre-bakufu days.

This is not to say that samurai originated in Korea or anything of that sort. However, if the first warrior ever to set foot in Japan was from Korea, doesn't the statement have some element of the truth? (Again, not to suggest that the first soldier in Japan was Korean... just playing out a hypothesis)

[Haowen]

According to DNA, We are all from Africa. So Samurai is from Africa too.
yamaguchi.

I wanted to say that the other time people were arguing if the Japanese came from Korea or from China. We all came from Africa! Or we could say we all had gills once upon a time so we all came from the ocean

I don't care if Ronald McDonald invented the samurai. I'd rather save the energy for concentrating on my own practice.

[mero]

The cited history is actually not that preposterous. Migration of warriors and people from the Korean peninsula to Japan over the course of history is documented and acknowleged by korean/japanese scholars. Japan and Korea share similarities in language root, food, genetics, heck even their dogs look alike.

BUT, using modern notions of nations to what happened that long ago is foolish. There was no "japan" and there was no "korea" that long ago. There were multiple nations and kingdoms appearing and disappearing over the centuries all over Asia.

Being obsessed with what came from where and which modern nation gets the credit for it is an exercise in futility.

[DanDan]

^their dogs look the same? do they taste the same too? i wanna try bo shin tang (dog soup) some day b4 i die

[mero]

You can't eat jindos dude. Some old men got sued for 8 thousand US dollars or something for eating a female Jindo dog in Korea a month or two ago! Plus indigenous Korean dogs are protected by law as Cultural Treasures. You can eat noorungees, yellow medium sized mutts grown for human consumption. But even noorungees go for like 2 thousand us dollars.

^their dogs look the same? do they taste the same too? i wanna try bo shin tang (dog soup) some day b4 i die

[007]

wait... but how come japanese have some chinese characters and korean doesn't??

[taganahan]

not too sure....but i think that the japanese people once bowed to the emperor of china. at least that's what my mandarin teacher told us.

~taganahan

[Lloromannic]

wait... but how come japanese have some chinese characters and korean doesn't??

I think they do (at least they have the ones for Kumdo)

[DanDan]

^they do use chinese characters in korean. it's called hanja. they don't use it much though. that's why 劍道 is read kumdo in korea and kendo in japan.

[007]

i think i read it somewhere that the japanese people (not the native ones) originally migrated from china. the emperor of the chin dynasty(the one who has fake soldiers in his tombs) forced a group of people to explore this "new territory"... and of course to escape the terrible rule of this emperor, they never came back and so....

dunno, this might be bogus

[Hisham]

I always thought that the warrior class in old Korea was called the Hoarang class.

[Lucien]

As has been mentioned, Koreans did and still do use Chinese characters. However, their script, Hangul, is one of the few wholly invented scripts in the world. I can't remember the time period now, but it was constructed by Korean courtiers.

Not wishing to fan the flames, but it is worth remembering that the Japanese culture is heavily influenced by Korea and other Asian countries. To give an extreme example, the Japanese royal family may well be Korean in origin. (Japanese scholars point to the keyhole graves used to bury royalty in both countries.)

One could also mention that Japanese pottery owes a debt to the potters abducted from Korea, its Confucian and Buddhist thought came from China, and that's just the beginning of the list.

Of course, Japan has its own traditions and culture, and we are lucky enough to benefit from it. But as a student of East Asian Studies, and lived for two years in Japan, I can't buy into the popularly expoused myth that Japan is unique, seperate and ultimately superior.