Chinese influence on Korean culture
Areas controlled by the Chinese, such as the Lelang Commandery, was a channel for the introduction and spreading of advanced technology and new culture which also influenced the political and the economical development of the Korean peninsula greatly.
[4] The Goguryeo tomb murals were primarily painted in two geographical regions: Ji'an (集安) and Pyeongyang.
[5]: 15 Goguryeo accepted Sutras and Buddhist pictures from China early on, such as in 372 AD during the Former Qin dynasty period, when they were brought by a Chinese envoy named Fu Jian.
[3]: 34 In 450 AD, during the reign of Yuanjia in the Liu Song dynasty, the King of Baekje requested for the Book of Yi Lin and the Shizhan (式占), as well as waist crossbows, which were all granted by the Emperor.
[6]: 227–228 A ruler of Baekje had also requested Emperor Wu of Liang for Buddhist sutras, medical practitioners and painters in 541 AD.
[11] By the mid-7th century, the ruling class of the Silla Kingdom attached great importance to Chinese culture having inherited this tradition from the previous dynasties.
[6]: 230 In the late 7th century during the Unified Silla period, most of the Buddhist sects of the Sui and Tang dynasties had been imported to Korea.
[21][better source needed] Chinese cultural influence around the turn of the common era formed the basis for the early Korean architecture in the Three Kingdoms period.
[22][better source needed] This influence is attributed to Lelang Commandery, a Chinese colony in what is now northwestern Korea, which was founded in 109 BCE.
[27][better source needed] The wooden building style of this period also seems to have been influenced by that of Fujian in southern China.
[citation needed] In the buddhist paintings of Goryeo, the secular and mythical figures were depicted in the form of worshippers or patrons who were in an audience for the sermons of Buddha, who were witnessed of the heavenly realm or who were ritual participants.
[60] The first true-view landscape painting was created by Chinese painters and appeared in the world art history during the Song dynasty in the 10th century showing the pastoral scenes in Southern China.
[61] True-view landscape painting depicting South China scenery then spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
[64][62] The Goryeo potters also learnt their technical expertise from the Song dynasty celadon traditions and imitated certain styles from Chinese wares which included the shapes of bottles, bowls and standard decorative motives (e.g. lotus, peonies, flying parrots, and scenes of waterfowl by the pond).
[69] The aak genre, by contrast, was developed in Korea in the fifteenth century based on Chinese written sources from an earlier period, as the style had already fallen out of fashion in China.
[71] Despite Korean claims to aak retaining its "pure" Chinese form it bears marks of alteration after being imported to Korea.
[74] Later, under Unified Silla and Koryŏ, poetic and prose compositions continued to closely follow forms originating in China and characteristic of the Six Dynasties period.
[75] The Wen Xuan was extremely influential in China during the Tang dynasty, and the Korean literati of the period followed suit.
[77] The historian Kim Bu-sik (1075–1151), a Confucian,[78] adopted the historiographic style of Sima Qian in compiling his Samguk Sagi.
[79] In the Anak tomb murals of Goguryeo, for example, the crows which were depicted on the roof ridges show the influence of Chinese culture.
[80] While Korean monks training in China often played a critical part in some of these developments,[80][note 1] China's size and its geographical position on the Silk Road (which gave it stronger ties to the older Buddhist traditions of India and Central Asia) allowed it to pioneer the majority of trends in East Asian Buddhism.
[86] Starting in the Three Kingdoms period, Korean government officials were trained with a Chinese-style Confucian examination system.
It is closely associated with the 12 year cycle of the Chinese zodiac that follows in the order of rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and then pig.
