우리 한민족(韓民族)의 기원과 형성과정에 관한 재고찰 - 고조선의 실체와 문화적 동화과정에 대한 논의를 중심으로 -

A Critical Review on the Emergence of the Korean Ethnicity

The contemporary Koreans, the people of the Korean Peninsula, have a homogeneous culture and they are surely classified as one ethnic group. So most Korean share the myth that the ethnic group of Korean people emerged a few thousand years ago. But they should understand that different ethnic groups existed before they had been acculturated and fused into one ethnic group of Korean people. Archaeological and historical evidence shows that a number of ethnic groups lived in the Korean Peninsula before the acculturation. Gojosean(古朝鮮) was not the first kingdom of Korean, because the Korean ethnic group had not emerged until the Shilla's unification. As the people living in the peninsula during the Three Kingdom Period(三國時代) had different languages, religions, and customs, they had not yet been fully acculturated and unified in one ethnic group of Korean. The most important event in the process of acculturation was the Shilla's unification of the peninsula. During the late Goreo Dangun Joseon was created symbolically for the unification of Korean peoples in the peninsula. The most important thing for us to understand, when we study the origin and history of Korean ethnicity, is that a number of ethnic groups had been acculturated and fused into the Korean, the single ethnic group in the Korean Peninsula(韓半島). And the contemporary Korean have ethnic people have emerged in the historical process of the last thirteen hundred years.