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The rule of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi witnessed a significant diplomatic crisis in the fifteenth century following the invasion of Tsushima by forces from Joseon Korea and the breaking-off of diplomatic relations with Ming China. The shogun renounced the title “King of Japan,” bestowed upon his predecessor by the Ming emperor, and used shinkoku rhetoric in official correspondence with the continent. This article reveals the reasons for Yoshimochi's stance, concealed within the ceremonial and ritual aspects of his rule. First, it investigates diplomatic relations between the Ashikaga Shogunate and the Ming government, and shows how the domestic political agenda and ceremonial cycle of the Japanese imperial court influenced shogunal decisions regarding the reception of diplomatic envoys. Second, it argues that Yoshimochi's termination of diplomatic exchange with the Ming was a political reaction to the reports of divine intervention brought by the priests of the Hachiman bodhisattva syncretic cult, rather than a geopolitical measure responding to the Joseon invasion of Tsushima. The article refutes the notion that the shogun demonstrated hostility towards foreigners caused by emerging national awareness. Finally, examining visits of Korean envoys after the diplomatic crisis of 1419, this article outlines the transformation of diplomatic protocol from Ming-dominated tributary ceremonies to a framework of Buddhist cultural exchange.

This study explores the potential of remote sensing as a method for investigating North Korean cultural heritage, which remains largely inaccessible to South Korean researchers despite its critical importance for understanding the Korean Peninsula’s past. In particular, it focuses on the use of Google Earth, which provides easy and extensive access to very high-resolution satellite imagery at no cost. North Korea is home to two royal tombs of the Joseon Dynasty that are excluded from South Korea’s UNESCO World Heritage inscription. A preliminary survey using Google Earth revealed that although detailed structures were difficult to discern, key elements such as burial mounds, platforms, and their spatial layout were identifiable. These findings suggest that Google Earth can be effectively utilized as a preliminary survey tool for North Korean heritage. However, due to its limitations in identifying unknown or poorly located sites, this study proposes future research utilizing AI-based methods—specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs)—to enhance automated detection capabilities.

Objective To understand the domestication and spread of horses in history, genetic information is essential. However, mitogenetic traits of ancient or medieval horses have yet to be comprehensively revealed, especially for East Asia. This study thus set out to reveal the maternal lineage of skeletal horse remains retrieved from a 15th century archaeological site (Gongpyeongdong) at Old Seoul City in South Korea. Methods We extracted DNA from the femur of Equus caballus (SNU-A001) from Joseon period Gongpyeongdong site. Mitochondrial (mt) DNA (HRS 15128-16116) of E. caballus was amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Cloning and sequencing were conducted for the mtDNA amplicons. The sequencing results were analyzed by NCBI/BLAST and phylogenetic tool of MEGA7 software. Results By means of mtDNA cytochrome b and D-loop analysis, we found that the 15th century Korean horse belonged to haplogroup Q representing those horses that have historically been raised widely in East Asia. Conclusion The horse is unique among domesticated animals for the remarkable impact it has on human civilization in terms of transportation and trade. Utilizing the Joseon-period horse remains, we can obtain clues to reveal the genetic traits of Korean horse that existed before the introduction of Western horses.

This study is to create metadata with a ceramic visual element classification system, such as color, form, material, and pattern, and then to analyze the visual characteristics of Korean ceramics by era through this metadata statistical analysis. To achieve this, first, the visual element classification system for ceramics was established. Second, 7,346 ceramic photos were acquired and annotated using the visual element classification system to create metadata. Third, through statistical analysis of the metadata, the preferred visual elements in each era were organized, and their characteristics were analyzed. In particular, the differences in form implementation, color technology, and pattern representation, which vary depending on material properties, were identified. Through this study, the flow of visual elements of Korean ceramics and the reason for each type of appearance and production method could be comprehended more systematically.

Although Clonorchis sinensis is a parasite that still infects many people in East Asia, its genetics remain largely unknown. We conducted ancient DNA analysis of C. sinensis eggs obtained from a Joseon period mummy newly discovered in South Korea. Clonorchis sinensis DNA was amplified for internal transcribed spacer 1, cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1, and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2 and 5 genes. The results of BLAST/NCBI showed that the consensus sequences were 98.24 to 100% identical to the modern and ancient C. sinensis sequences reported from Korea, China, Japan, and other Asian countries. Our report helps to fill in the genetic profile of ancient C. sinensis strains that infected East Asian people hundreds of years ago.

This study focuses on analysing the heights of 10,953 Korean men aged 20 to 40 years who were measured during the Joseon dynasty, the Japanese colonialisation period, and the contemporary period, the latter including both North and South Korea. This study thus provides rare long-term statistical evidence on how biological living standards have developed over several centuries, encompassing Confucianism, colonialism, capitalism, and communism. Using error bar analysis of heights for each historical sample period, this study confirms that heights rose as economic performance improved. For instance, economically poorer North Koreans were expectedly shorter, by about 6 cm, than their peers living in the developed South. Similarly, premodern inhabitants of present-day South Korea, who produced a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita below the world average, were about 4 cm shorter than contemporary South Koreans, who have a mean income above the world average. Along similar lines, North Koreans, who have a GDP per capita akin to that of the premodern Joseon dynasty, have not improved much in height. On the contrary, mean heights of North Koreans were even slightly below (by about 2.4 cm) heights of Joseon dynasty Koreans. All in all, the heights follow a U-shaped pattern across time, wherein heights were lowest during the colonial era. Heights bounced back to Joseon dynasty levels during the interwar period, a time period where South Korea benefitted from international aid, only to rise again and surpass even premodern levels under South Korea’s flourishing market economy.

This study examined the records of forest fire outbreaks and characteristics over the 518 years of the Joseon Dynasty period (1392–1910) through the analysis of major historical records of Korea. The historical books used in this study were 14 major national historical books, and include the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty (朝鮮王朝實錄), the Diaries of the Royal Secretariat (承政院日記), and the literature was examined, centering on official records of the royal palace in the Joseon Dynasty period. The contents of forest fires recorded in the historical record literature include the overviews of outbreak, forest fire types, and forest fire damage. According to the results of analysis of historical records, the largest forest fire damage was in the forest fire that occurred on the east coast in 1672, in which 65 persons died and in the forest fire that occurred in the same area in 1804, in which 61 persons died and 2600 private houses were destroyed by fire. The causes of fire outbreak were shown to be unknown causes in 42 cases, accidental fires in 10 cases, arson in 3 cases, thunder strike in 3 cases, hunting activities in 2 cases, child playing with fire in 1 case, cultivating activities in 1 case, and house fire in 1 case. Forest fire outbreaks were analyzed by region and by season and according to the results, 56% (39 cases) of the forest fires broke out on the east coast and 73% (46 cases) broke out in the spring. Forest fire policies include those for general forests, those for reserved forests, those for prohibited forests, those for capital city forests, those for royal family’s graves, royal ancestral shrine, and placenta chamber, those for hunting grounds such as martial art teaching fields, and relief policies for people in areas damaged by forest fires, forest fire policies for national defense facilities such as beacon fire stations, and burning and burning control policies for pest control. In conclusion, due to the seriousness of forest fires in the Joseon Dynasty period, the royal authority and local administrative agencies made various forest fire prevention policies, policies for stabilization of the people’s livelihood damaged due to forest fires, and methods to manage major facilities in forests.

Goryeocrinus pentagrammos n. gen. n. sp. from the Jigunsan Formation of South Korea is described and is the first diplobathrid recorded from Middle Ordovician (middle Darriwilian) strata of East Gondwana. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that G. pentagrammos n. gen. n. sp. is a member of the paraphyletic Rhodocrinitidae of the Diplobathrida and most closely related to Paradiabolocrinus from the Late Ordovician (Sandbian) of Laurentia. Goryeocrinus pentagrammos n. gen. n. sp. is characterized by having a pentameral, flat bowl-shaped calyx, a conspicuous pentagrammatic ridge formed by bifurcated median ray ridge and pentagonal basal ridge, at least two interradials in the first row of regular interrays, an anitaxial ridge originating from the CD interray but close to the C ray radial, and lacking intrabrachials and interradials between secundibrachials. The occurrence of G. pentagrammos n. gen. n. sp. from South Korea (East Gondwana) drastically expands the Ordovician paleogeographic range of camerates, which otherwise have been recorded from Laurentia, West Gondwana, Avalonia, and Baltica.

The formations in the early Paleozoic Joseon Supergroup (mainly carbonates with subordinate siliciclastics) within the Taebaeksan Basin in the Danyang area, South Korea, show an apparent right-side-up homoclinal stratigraphy without repetition or omission of any formation, and it was therefore thought that the NW-dipping formation boundaries are primary depositional contacts. Our detailed examination revealed, however, that the formation boundaries are reverse-slip shear zones parallel to the second-generation foliation ( S 2 ) crenulating transposed S 0 // S 1 foliation and that WNW-dipping bedding planes ( S 0 ) are only locally preserved. The most penetrative regional planar structure in the area is the NNW-dipping first-generation foliation ( S 1 ) that is defined by compositional layering and is parallel to the axial planes of isoclinal F 1 folds. Isoclinal to close F 1 folds occur on both the mesoscopic and macroscopic scale, whereas tight to close F 2 folds occur locally only on the mesoscopic scale. D 1 deformation presumably involved a NNW-SSE horizontal contraction and resulted in the buckle folding and transposition of S 0 . D 2 deformation involved a NW-SE contraction, probably at a high angle to the S 0 // S 1 transposed layers, and produced passive shear folding of S 0 // S 1 with S 2 crenulation cleavages as discrete shear surfaces. Shearing deformation was strongly localized along some S 2 foliation planes, resulting in reverse shear zones that represent the current ‘pseudo’-formation boundaries. Based on zircons U-Pb ages, we suggest that the Okdong Fault was initiated from an unconformable boundary between the Precambrian basement gneiss and overlying sediments of the Paleozoic Taebaeksan Basin, probably during the Middle Jurassic.

The Holocene variability in the East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) based on speleothem δ 18 O records has inconsistencies in timing, duration, and expression of millennial-scale events among nearby regions, and even within the same cave. Here, we present another stalagmite δ 18 O record with multi-decadal time resolution from the temperate Korean Peninsula (KP) for the last 5500 years in order to compare with Holocene millennial-scale EASM events from Southeast Asia. Based on our new stalagmite δ 18 O record, millennial-scale events since the mid-Holocene were successfully identified in the KP, representing a noticeable cyclic pattern with a periodicity of around 1000 years. We propose that the Holocene millennial-scale events are common hydroclimatic phenomena at least in the East Asian monsoon system. Meanwhile, the shorter periodicity of millennial-scale events than that of the North Atlantic region is likely to decouple the EASM system from the North Atlantic climate system. This observation suggests that weak EASM and North Atlantic Bond events may have been induced independently by direct solar activity (and then possible feedback) and ocean–ice sheet dynamics, respectively, rather than simple propagation from the North Atlantic to the EASM regions.