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History of Korea Culture in the Choson Dynasty
The roots of a nation's politics, economics, and society can often be seen as inexorably connected to culture. The culture of a people, society, or nation will affect it's behavior and reactions toward outside forces; seeing a situation or problem through the eyes of a certain culture can bring into existence certain options or answers which may be overlooked from another cultural perspective. Likewise, culture can often blind us to the possibility of certain courses of action.
The ideology of 'sadae-juûi,' or 'Serving the Great,' was instrumental in shaping both Korea's political foreign policy and arguably Korea�s cultural identity. 'Sadae-juûi' sought basically to pay tribute to China-�accordingly Korea's position in the relationship was in theory reduced to vassal status (in relative position but not in function). During the course of approximately 500 years of the Choson dynasty's history, many aspects of Chinese culture, such as Confucianism , and so on, were adopted or adapted into Korean society.
But it would be wrong to say that Choson Korea's culture was not changing autonomously of China. Many specific styles of Choson thoughtwere developed, as well as literature and arts. The former idu writing system, which used Chinese characters to represent sounds rather than ideas to form a very limited alphabet, was replaced with the invention of han'gûl, an alphabet which could perfectly transcribe all the sounds of the Korean language, whose creation was sponsored by King Sejong. With the fall of the Koryô dynasty, the kol'pum, or bone rank class system disappeared and was replaced with an aristocratic lineage system known as yangban. Only Yangban generally had the prerequisite education and knowledge to take and pass the Confucian examinations which led to official government positions. Thus, it was the yangban elite which controlled most of Choson Korea's political, economic, and social policy.