How were Chinese characters introduced into ancient Korea? Text/Wang Xiong-Notes on Hanshui Culture (33) According to the recently published Phoenix Weekly, Chinese characters have experienced ups and downs in North Korea, but their fate has changed today. With the increasing use of Chinese characters, there is a strong Chinese fever in South Korea. Urban traffic arteries, restore the use of Chinese characters and Chinese character signs that have disappeared for many years. Middle schools around the country began to implement "1800 compulsory education for commonly used Chinese characters". The most influential newspaper in South Korea, Chosun Ilbo, showed in its first page that applicants who failed the Chinese character exam would be eliminated. Experts believe that South Korea has embarked on a new era in which Chinese characters are widely used. Culturally, South Korea is the closest country to China. Before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, important historical and cultural books in ancient Korea were basically recorded in Chinese characters. Until 1945, newspapers and government documents in the north and south of the Korean peninsula were still mixed with Korean characters and Chinese characters, about half of which were square Chinese characters. After the recovery of the Korean peninsula, in order to strengthen the Korean language, South Korea automatically broke away from the cultural circle of Chinese characters and interrupted or even abolished the use of Chinese characters. After the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, it is the common voice of all walks of life in South Korea to resume Chinese character education. This can be analyzed from two aspects: vertically, if the education and use of Chinese characters are not resumed, Koreans will not be able to read their own historical and cultural classics, let alone inherit Korean culture and history. Horizontally, China is South Korea's largest commodity export market, with annual bilateral trade volume exceeding 1000 billion US dollars. Nearly 20% of Korean merchandise exports are exported to China, and 40% (including China) are exported to national and regional markets in the Chinese character cultural circle. Geography determines history. Looking at the Korean map, the place names of China are almost all over the country, such as Jiangling, Xiangyang, Huangzhou and Lichuan in Hubei, Dongting and Changsha in Hunan, Nanyang and Huaiyang in Henan, Danyang in Jiangsu and so on. Even now Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was called Seoul (also called Hanyang) more than a year ago, just like Hanyang in the lower reaches of Hanshui River in China. Like the Han River in China, the Han River runs from east to west, and its birthplace is called Taibai Mountain. Regarding the historical and cultural origins of South Korea and China, the author once wrote in Why does South Korea want to compete with us for the Dragon Boat Festival? "The article made a superficial discussion. Here I want to discuss: how did Chinese characters flow into ancient Korea? It is intended to re-explore the origin of Hanshui culture in Korea, China and South Korea. As early as the 1930s, Mr. Qian Mu, a master of Chinese studies, put forward: "Li Zhishui, a Xiang Yuan in the pre-Qin Dynasty, was located in present-day Hubei Province and distributed in the Hanshui River Basin. Later, the Chu people moved south, and the place names moved with them. "According to historical records, the great changes in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River occurred in 555~56 1 year, mainly because a large number of ancient place names originally on both sides of the middle reaches of the Hanshui River moved south to both sides of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The same is true of the occurrence and inheritance of ancient place names and modern folk customs in gangwon, ancient Korea. Only the former occurred in China and the latter occurred in South Korea; The former is the north-south migration, while the latter is the east-west migration. Tracing back to the source, in the 7th century BC, there were two small Miao countries in the hinterland of Jingchu in the middle reaches of Hanshui River, namely Luo and Lu. Luo, surnamed Xiong, is of the same origin as Chu. When Luo was annexed, the country died, taking the country as its surname, and the descendants changed from bears to Luo. Become a vassal state of Chu. Lu and Luo belong to Miao people, but they come from different sources. In the 7th century BC, the people of the State of Lu went south along the upper reaches of the Han River, not far from Jialing River, and reached the west of Xiangyang County in the middle reaches of the Han River, thus establishing the State of Lu. Chu people invaded, and Lu and Luo destroyed the country at the same time. According to historical records, in 2 15 BC, Luo and Lu ethnic groups followed an alchemist named Han Zhong across the sea to South Korea. Han Zhong, like Xu Fu of his contemporaries, sought medicine for Qin Shihuang. Xu Fu went to Japan and Han Zhong went to Korea. Han eventually made an alchemy, collected herbs and cultivated into an immortal. Some scholars believe that eight years after Qin destroyed Chu, Han finally fled Qin with Luo Shi, Lu Shi and other Chu dead people and crossed the sea to the southeast of the Korean Peninsula. The time when Chinese characters were introduced into Korea was from the Warring States to the early Han Dynasty, which coincided with the time when Han Zhong's family arrived in Korea. According to experts' analysis, Han Zhong may be the prototype of Xiong Huan in the myth of Danjun, South Korea. According to Records of the Historian, Han Zhong has cultivated into an immortal and may be regarded as a god by later generations. Han Zhong led 3,000 subjects, mainly Luo and Lu, to settle in Taibai Mountain, which was suitable for living. In mythology, the Dan Gen born to Xiong Huan and the bear girl should be the Silla leader with the bear as the totem. Silla took the lead in unifying the peninsula, and created and recorded the founding myth by virtue of its skillful use of Chinese characters. At this time, the language of South Korea belongs to Altai language family, which is not the same as the Sino-Tibetan language family in China. However, the ancient culture of South Korea is backward and it has never had its own writing. As a vassal state of China, ancient Korea used Korean and Chinese at the same time. They can only communicate verbally, but they can't fully express people's thoughts and feelings, and their life knowledge, accumulated agricultural farming experience and farming methods can't be passed down for a long time. The arrival of Han Zhonghe's 3,000 subjects has brought the Chinese character culture and the dawn of a new life to Koreans. Of course, at the earliest, only nobles and officials in ancient Korea could use Chinese characters, which was called "official reading". By the time of King Sejong of ancient Korea, that is, the Ming Dynasty in China, ancient Korea had made certain progress in politics, economy, culture, science and technology, and military affairs, so the Korean people's desire to have their own national language was even stronger. Sejong, as a korean king who wants to develop national culture and promote national independence, insists on creating a unique and easy-to-understand Korean native language. Inspired by music and northern nomadic phonetic symbols, a group of outstanding scholars conceived a 28-letter Korean script. Sejong specially sent a well-known scholar from ancient Korea to China for more than a dozen times to study and study the essence of Chinese characters, which lasted for 30 years and finally invented and created Korean characters in 1446. After using China Chinese characters for nearly a thousand years, ancient Korea finally had its own national characters. It is ridiculous that some time ago, Koreans actually preached that Chinese characters were invented by Koreans. 10, 2006 Chosun Ilbo reported that Park Jung-soo, a professor of history at Seoul National University in South Korea, told reporters a few days ago that after ten years of research and textual research, it was believed that the Korean people first invented Chinese characters, and then the Koreans moved to the Central Plains and brought Chinese characters to China, thus forming the present China culture. According to Zibo Daily, "former South Korean President Lu Taiyu traced back to his roots and said that Jiang Ziya was his ancestor." As a result, the root-seeking craze in Shandong Province was triggered in South Korea. In fact, this is a historical misunderstanding. Because South Korea's Lu should be a descendant of Lu Rong, the Chu State in Hanshui River Valley, and his ancestral home should be Xiangyang, Hubei. According to Henan Business Daily, Korean media reported that Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who has been appointed as the Secretary-General of the United Nations, was originally from Xingyang, Henan. Xingyang was a place where Chu and Han fought in ancient times. Obviously, Koreans regard themselves as the inventors of Chinese characters, which is a kind of inferiority. South Korea's territory is pitifully small, and it was once a protectorate of China. Most of its culture comes from China, which makes Koreans feel ashamed. Korean used to be written in Chinese. Its library is full of China's ancient books, and China's story is circulated among the people. Many festivals celebrated are in China, and the great men commemorated are also great men in ancient China. Look at Korean surnames. Most of them are China surnames. In fact, the degree of Korean assimilation by Han nationality is very high, even exceeding that of many ethnic minorities still in China. There is no doubt that the main body of Korean culture is South China culture, and it is directly influenced by Hanshui culture. Although there is a certain historical basis for the Korean saying about Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese characters, printing and Korean medicine, it ignores or covers up earlier historical facts. At the recent seminar on the relationship between Korean culture and Chu culture in China, experts concluded that Korean culture has a profound influence on Hanshui culture in China. This conclusion is realistic.