Boye Lafayette De Mente - The Korean Way In Business: Understanding and Dealing with the South Koreans in Business

APPENDIX 1

Management Titles and
Their Korean Equivalents

APPENDIX 2

Guide to Korean Pronunciation

Pronunciation Guide to Vowels

Note that the third syllable in the top line (O) is pronounced more like an a than an o. For example oje (yesterday) is pronounced ay-jay. Odiso (where) is pronounced ah-deesoe. I have attempted to account for this factor in the phonetics following each word and sentence.

Pronunciation Guide to Multiple Vowels

Pronunciation Guide for Syllables

CHAPTER ONE

A Historical
Profile

T he Korean Peninsula has been inhabited for at least 30,000 years, and perhaps for tens of thousands of years longer. Prior to 1,000 B.C., family clans lived in villages, tilled the fields around them, hunted, and fished. Their religion consisted of shamanism, in which natural objects such as trees, rivers, and rocks were believed to have spirits. (These religious practices survive today in some rural areas.)

Koreas Bronze Age began around 1,000 B.C., lasted for about a thousand years, and was followed by an Iron Age, which ended in approximately A.D. 935. In 350 B.C. the first tribal league, Chosun, centered in northern Korea, was at the apex of its power. Other tribal groups that existed on the Korean Peninsula at that time included the Chinhan, Pyonhan, and Mahan.

In 108 B.C. China sent a large expeditionary force to Korea and established a kind of vassal relationship with the tribal leagues, which soon thereafter coalesced into three competing kingdomsSilla (57 B.C. to A.D. 935), Paekche (18 B.C. to A.D. 600), and Koguryo (37 B.C. to A.D. 668). By the first century A.D., the people of the three Korean kingdoms had developed a sophisti cated lifestyle based on patterns long established in China. This development continued during the next several centuries, with Buddhism and Confucianism being added to native shamanistic religious practices.

The Korean kingdoms adopted Chinas social and political systems, dividing the people into classes, with the royal families, elite government administrators, and educators at the top. The Chinese system of writing was also adopted. Those wishing to enter governmental service competed in annual examinationsanother import from China.