The Korean Empire

In 1516, the publication of one small book would coin a new word and give rise to centuries of literature, theory, and thought. In his most influential work, the lawyer and Tudor politician Thomas More (1478-1535) described a seemingly perfect – but entirely fictional – island ca ...  Show more

Misha Glenny chooses the first of his archive picks - bringing back classic conversations from the In Our Time archive, every Monday. Humans have tried to calculate, regulate, and measure time for thousands of years: from systems based on tracking sunrise and sunset, to the inven ...  Show more

Whilst we know the Korean Peninsula is split into two quite separate countries, North Korea and South Korea, that has not always been been the case. Korea was an independent, singular nation until the Japanese colonised it at the start of the 20th century. This collapsed after th ...  Show more

In the Imjin year of 1592 the Japanese orchestrated a blitzkreig invasion of Korea. Within just two months they had captured both Seoul and Pyongyang. However, conquering Korea and holding Korea turned out to be two very different propositions. The victories of the Korean navy an ...  Show more

Bro History Korean History 101 Today we kick off a multi-part series on the Korean War. We provide a high level overview of Korean history over the past 3,000 years and identify conditions that led to a bloody civil war in the 20th century. Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon ...  Show more

Today Korea is divided between North and South, but the founding of the Koryo Kingdom in the 10th Century was the first time the peninsula was truly united and when a sense of nationhood emerged. The Koryo Kingdom is remembered for some of the finest cultural achievements in the ...  Show more