South Korea or Republic of Korea?

The official name of the country to which this website is dedicated is the Republic of Korea. However, in Russian-language media, it is usually referred to as South Korea due to its location in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. Russia does not border South Korea, unlike North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), with which it shares a short border of just 39,4 kilometers.

What do Russians associate South Korea with?

What does our average compatriot know about the Republic of Korea? What associations does it evoke in our fellow citizens?

First of all, there is a Korean diaspora living in Russia (148,000 according to the 2002 census), and it is with this diaspora that our ideas about Korean culture are associated. It is probably difficult to find a person in our country who is not familiar with the names of Yuli Kim and Viktor Tsoi. However, it is important to understand that Koreans migrated to Russia as early as the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent "impenetrability" of the USSR's borders, the mass forced resettlement of Koreans from the Far East to Central Asia in 1937, the Second World War, and then the Cold War led to the distancing of the culture of the Korean diaspora from the indigenous culture. Suffice it to say that a Korean from Russia who speaks "his" Korean language will have difficulty understanding an interlocutor in SeoulAnd the tasty, spicy "Korean" carrots, cut into long slices and ubiquitous in our supermarkets, simply don't exist in Korea: this invention originated in the USSR and hasn't yet made its way back to Korea. However, it probably will, since after the well-known events of the early 1990s, cultural ties between our countries have strengthened and continue to develop.

Many of our fellow citizens drive Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo cars and use electronics from Samsung and LG. Everyone has heard of these brands, and we have a strong perception of the "great technological leap" South Korea has made in recent decades.

Of course, everyone also knows about the existence of two Korean states and how different their socio-political systems and ways of life are. They also know about Korean War Between North and South. But few realize that approximately 3 million people died during this war (data is contradictory, some sources say even more): the scale of the tragedy is little known in our country, despite the active participation of the USSR in these events.

What else? The country is associated with something yellow-green, blooming, crooked pine trees on the seashore. Perhaps our "advanced" fellow citizens are familiar with the films of Kim Ki-duk, remember the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, have heard that Korea is called the "land of the morning calm," and that thereeat dogs", and taekwondo was born. But for most people, this is where their ideas and associations end.

Why do we need another website about South Korea?

Russia and Korea have long had close ties. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, which played a major role in Russian history, was in no small part due to the rapprochement between Russia and Korea and Japan's resistance to this rapprochement. The large Korean diaspora in our country has always facilitated and continues to facilitate the rapprochement of our cultures.

We want this site to be gradually "built" by those who are interested in and familiar with Korean culture and have visited the Republic of Korea. We would be happy if the site could help people planning to go to South Korea on a tourist trip or business trip, so that it could dispel myths and create an adequate understanding of life in the country of "people in white clothes." Any visitor, observing regulations, Maybe sign up and add your impressions, knowledge, warnings, photographs, etc. to the site's content.

Diplomatic relations between our countries were established only in 1990. As of this writing, only one small guidebook to South Korea in Russian is available in bookstores. The vast majority of Russian-speaking tourists to South Korea come from the Russian Far East. In short, there's still some work to be done.

Ignorance divides, knowledge brings us together. We invite everyone to participate in the project!

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