I decided to write my report about agriculture in Korea. There is no chance for me to study about Korea since I started study abroad from young age. I thought it would be a great chance for me, as Korean, to learn more about my country’s history of agriculture. The origin of Korean agriculture starts from continent, that implies area of China now, to Korean peninsula. It started with primitive farming without passing nomadic age. This country’s agriculture has been affected a lot from other Asian culture such as China and Japan. It’s very complicated to say which era or which part of Korea, because Korea was divided into different countries and different era for millions of years. In this report, I focused on agriculture of Silla, one of the country in Three kingdom period (BC 47 ~ AD 935).
Korea is a country with more than 50 million years of history. For ancient agriculture, the Three Han States period can be defined as starting point. At the time, people already could raise barley, bean and sesame seeds. Even they knew how to raise silkworms and knot silk with these. After that period, the Three Kingdom of Silla, Baekje and Koguryo ruled Korean peninsula. At this age, the agriculture was markedly developed in the area because the way these three different countries compete positively affected their development in agriculture.
Silla is the country which finally won other two countries and integrated three countries into one, called “Unified Silla”. Before Silla unified all countries into one, Koguyro and Baekje already developed a lot of their agriculture. Koguryo cultivated horticulture and food crops on first century. Baekje developed fabrics, brewed livestock specification. Moreover, some skills such as sapling, weaving, dyeing and sewing had been conveyed to Japan.
At the same time, Silla experienced rapid growth in rice farming. Silla is the first era that start using irrigation in Korean peninsula. In fact, Silla, compared to two other countries, didn’t have large plains. This factor forced them to develop more efficient way to improve their skills in farming by irrigation. For irrigation system, they constructed small scale of reservoirs and weirs along the Nakdong river so that they can supply necessary water into farmland. They had considerable focus on implementing irrigation system with large size of labor force. This new system of irrigation helped Silla to make its plain fertile, even though Silla’s locational situation and size was disadvantageous compared to other two countries; other two countries had larger and more regional resources than Silla. Many people believe that this great development of irrigation in Silla affected a lot in their unification of three countries.
In my young age, this Three Kingdom period is usually taught to students. The most interesting point for me in this era was Silla’s unification of three Kingdom. As it’s explained above, all other situations that Silla had were disadvantageous. If we see the map of these three Kingdoms division at the time, size of Silla was visibly smaller than other two and the location of Silla seems might operates to their disadvantage. And before unification, Koguryo and Baekje ruled this kingdoms by chances and these two usually ruled over Silla for a long time. So Silla had never been remarked for its power over other two. But the final winner was Silla. Many believes this is because their successful development in agriculture with irrigation. This helped them to improve people’s life quality and leads to rich and powerful country with its military and international relations.
Silla also developed cultivation of mulberry trees and silk fabrics. And people in Silla also used force on herbivores and used axons for agriculture. And in the middle of century, they could accomplish two cultivation in one year. Moreover, Silla people made tool such as axial plow, hawk, hoe, sickle and hommy.
After unification, they Silla stop improve their development in agriculture. They cultivated various edible crops, fiver crops, oil crops, medicinal crops, fruit trees, vegetables, ornamental plants. Moreover, they started making farming tools in iron and using cattle in farming.
The main industry in Three Kingdom period to unified Silla is agriculture. Especially in Unification Silla era, people’s economic and social status was determined with their agriculture status. This status includes land size, number of trees owned, number of horse and cattle. This period is very long term in Korean history and is also the most important era. If there was no such period, it would be hard for Koreans to have life with current quality. And for almost a thousand years, and may be more than that, the main industry that kept people’s life in this era was agriculture. When I see people’s way of cultivation at the time, it’s amazing how could this possible with lack of modern technology. Through this report I could see wisdom of people in early ages in Korea.
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“우리역사넷.” 우리역사넷. N.P., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.
Soon-Hyuk, Lee. “History of Irrigation in Korea”. Korean National Committee on Irrigation and Drainage (KCID). Web. 2001.
“한국의 농업.” 한국의 농업. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.