Why is Mongolia in and not Korea

[Wuzetian]

I've met some Asian graduate students where they don't question professor's teaching. I was shocked when one person responded to my question "why don't you guys ask questions in class" with "why? won't the professor get upset?" This is from someone who went to a prestigeous undergraduate school back in Asia. I explained that while I was in undergraduate, more than one professor, some in math/science, some in social science feel "depressed" when there are no questions in class. When students ask no question in class, it means either the professor's class is too easy, which is no good, or the professor is not clear or material too hard so the students don't understand, which is also no good.

I'm afraid this is far more than just a matter of independent thinking.
The problem behind it is something about "Challenging authority" IMO.
Challenging authority is not welcomed in East Asia (or at least in China), and this could trace back to some of Confucius's theory which took deep roots in East Asia (or at least Chinese) culture.
Be it a college professor or a high school teacher, or even an elder in the family, challenging them is strongly discouraged through out history and even in some cases nowadays.

 

[Thormodr]

I quoted GDP per capita for 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita If you mean adjusted for purchasing power their best ranking is still number 26.

I agree that South Korea is a rich country with high productivity, but because the development has been so recent the entire population hasn't been brought up to western income rates yet, which I believe is the reason why they are a little behind the top dogs.

I believe the article was forecasting for the year 2050.

Of course, for the reasons I stated earlier, I find it to be a bunch of bunk.

 

[Vordeo]

I'd suggest that you ignored statistics provided by Chinese authorities.
I have no idea where did they get the unemployment rate numbers but I doubt that any foreign groups are allowed to investigate in China about this issue. So my best guess is that the numbers are provided by Chinese authorities, and if so those numbers are quite undependable.

Then again I am just talking common sense, so count me out if you want. I have to admit that I can not provide any proof about what I said.

Assuming you're Chinese? I'm well aware that the official Chinese numbers aren't exactly accurate, and are likely inflated, but these are from the EIU, a branch of the Economist, which is generally regarded as a very respectable magazine. don't know exactly how they calculated unemployment rates, granted.

 

[Blitz47]

Assuming you're Chinese? I'm well aware that the official Chinese numbers aren't exactly accurate, and are likely inflated, but these are from the EIU, a branch of the Economist, which is generally regarded as a very respectable magazine. don't know exactly how they calculated unemployment rates, granted.

I know official Chinese inflation is most likely way undercounting inflation. about 2-3 years ago, I was with some Chinese students who are studying here. They were shocked by how cheap chicken and pork cost here compare with the prices they pay in China. Given the fact they earn less in China and pay more for meat, ouch. Oh, not sure if this is still true, but 2-3 years ago, there was a worldwide food price inflation, I know China had pork price crisis, so keep that in mind when I found out from those Chinese students that they pay more for chicken + pork in China than here. They don't eat much beef so....not sure how beef and other prices compare.

 

[Wuzetian]

Assuming you're Chinese? I'm well aware that the official Chinese numbers aren't exactly accurate, and are likely inflated, but these are from the EIU, a branch of the Economist, which is generally regarded as a very respectable magazine. don't know exactly how they calculated unemployment rates, granted.

Yes I am Chinese.
I believe you're right that foreign sources are more reliable than domestic ones.
But as I outlined above, foreign magazines have to get their statistics somehow, and I do not think they have the right to investigate on such issues freely in China. As to where and how they formulate their numbers remains a mystery to me.

 

[Wuzetian]

I just have to look at the price of a gallon of milk or a dozen large AA eggs to see that. You can hide inflation in some area as I notice cereal packaging and some other food packaging changes, you get less per container but you might pay the same price or even less, just there are less stuff inside compare with before You can't hide inflation in milk & egg as they are counted by gallon, or dozen, which packaging change can't really hide inflation

I know official Chinese inflation is most likely way undercounting inflation. about 2-3 years ago, I was with some Chinese students who are studying here. They were shocked by how cheap chicken and pork cost here compare with the prices they pay in China. Given the fact they earn less in China and pay more for meat, ouch. Oh, not sure if this is still true, but 2-3 years ago, there was a worldwide food price inflation, I know China had pork price crisis, so keep that in mind when I found out from those Chinese students that they pay more for chicken + pork in China than here. They don't eat much beef so....not sure how beef and other prices compare.

The same things are taking place in China right here and right now.
The case with pork is just a tip of the iceberg. It is true that pork price is stabling now compared to 2-3 years ago, but hilariously, the price of everything else is skyrocketing. Vegetables, fruits, beans ,not to mention housing and so on.

 

[Blitz47]

I'm afraid this is far more than just a matter of independent thinking.
The problem behind it is something about "Challenging authority" IMO.
Challenging authority is not welcomed in East Asia (or at least in China), and this could trace back to some of Confucius's theory which took deep roots in East Asia (or at least Chinese) culture.
Be it a college professor or a high school teacher, or even an elder in the family, challenging them is strongly discouraged through out history and even in some cases nowadays.

I think it's fine not to challenge authority in the early part of education. You need to learn the fundamentals and rote memorization and believe in whatever your teacher say is fine. However, as you dive deeper into some fields where you are going or trying to go to territory that is not "explored" yet, you cannot be docile and obedient, you need to explore possibilities, investigate those possibilities carefully and hopefully you can discover something new.

Part of PhD training is the requirement to contribute something new in your field. It's harder to do that if you don't question and/or challenge existing theories.

 

[Vordeo]

Yes I am Chinese.
I believe you're right that foreign sources are more reliable than domestic ones.
But as I outlined above, foreign magazines have to get their statistics somehow, and I do not think they have the right to investigate on such issues freely in China. As to where and how they formulate their numbers remains a mystery to me.

Yep, I understand the concern, but the Economist is generally reliable, and not the kind of publication to just take the country's word for things like this. I think, anyway. Ah well.

 

[Wuzetian]

Yep, I understand the concern, but the Economist is generally reliable, and not the kind of publication to just take the country's word for things like this. I think, anyway. Ah well.

Of course. I know the famous Economist. I read it from time to time.

 

[Dizzy75]

There are lies, damn lies, statistical lies.

USA statistics on some subject is subject to....err...."interpretation."

As someone who spent time study statistics, I had issues with 2 US number, they are inflation & unemployment.

I know from personal experience inflation in USA is not that low for the past 10 years. I just have to look at the price of a gallon of milk or a dozen large AA eggs to see that. You can hide inflation in some area as I notice cereal packaging and some other food packaging changes, you get less per container but you might pay the same price or even less, just there are less stuff inside compare with before You can't hide inflation in milk & egg as they are counted by gallon, or dozen, which packaging change can't really hide inflation

Unemployment counts people who are actively looking for job. People who are too discouraged and gave up looking for job are not counted. Err, hello, what do you mean by that?

Keep inflation low will keep social security payment adjustment low, perhaps that's the incentive to keep inflation statistics low based on that "basket of goods" and excluding "volatile" food & energy prices. No offense, we gotta eat and use energy to heat up home, cool down home, cooking, transportation, etc. I can see the rationale for keeping food + energy price out but in reality, they should be included in inflation count.

unemployment is higher than official statistics, I can see the signs everywhere with for lease signs in office buildings, restaurants closing down or change owner, etc. etc.

The consensus among economists is that the traditional "basket of goods" (Laspeyres-type) CPI overestimates inflation because it ignores substitution effects. The price of steak may rise 20%, but if the price of pork or chicken rises less, then you'll just buy less steak and more pork or chicken. So keeping your eye on a small set of prices isn't a good way to "guess" what inflation is really like. The current CPI is adjusted downward for this reason, so it's not going to track the basket of goods you're watching.

Unemployment though is always underestimated. They need to make a blanket assumption about when people exit the workforce. So they just set it to be the length of time they're eligible for unemployment benefits. It's a pretty crappy measure, but even if the absolute number isn't accurate, there's a good chance the "direction" and relative sizes across time are reflective of the "real" story.

In any case, inflation is a pretty necessary evil. You don't want deflation, where people can increase their buying power just by stuffing their money in a mattress. Inflation encourages investment, which is the lifeblood of capitalism. And capitalism rules.

 

[UknowsI]

I believe the article was forecasting for the year 2050.

Of course, for the reasons I stated earlier, I find it to be a bunch of bunk.

Oh, sorry. I just read "korea gdp/capta is second only to us and some other tiny countries no one cares about" and assumed it meant today. I still stand by my claim that it was a careful pick of a source, although I agree that their GDP will increase significantly the next 20 years. Difficult to predict 40 years ahead, anything could happen in that amount of time, especially in a region like Korea.

 

[Thormodr]

Interesting enough, one of the things that Koreans take great pride in is their written script called Hangul. Very likely though, it was inspired by the Mongols who had commisioned their own script called Phags-pa to rule their vast empire and especially China. This was created by a Tibetan monk in the 1260s. The Mongols ruled Korea for over a century and Koreans were exposed to this script. The Koreans undoubtedly thought that that was a brilliant idea and copied it so that they could have their own script as well, separate from the Chinese script.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Phags-pa_script

Ledyard's theory of consonant letters
(Top) ’Phagspa letters ꡂ [k], ꡊ [t], ꡎ [p], ꡛ , ꡙ [l], and their supposed hangul derivatives ㄱ [k], ㄷ [t], ㅂ [p], ㅈ [ts], ㄹ [l]. Note the lip on both ’Phagspa ꡊ [t] and hangul ㄷ [t].[8] (Bottom) Derivation of ’Phagspa ꡯ w, ꡤ v, ꡰ f, used for Chinese, from variants of the letter ꡜ [h] (left) plus a subscript Mongol ꡧ [w],[9] and analogous composition of hangul ㅱ w/m, ㅸ v, ㆄ f, also for Chinese, from variants of the basic letter [p] plus a circle.

Although the Hunmin jeong-eum haerye (hereafter Haerye) explains the design of the consonantal letters in terms of articulatory phonetics, it also states that Sejong adapted them from the enigmatic 古篆字 "Gǔ Seal Script". The identity of this script has long been puzzling. The primary meaning of the character 古 gǔ is "old", so 古篆字 gǔ zhuānzì has traditionally been interpreted as "Old Seal Script", frustrating philologists because hangul bears no functional similarity to Chinese 篆字 zhuānzì seal scripts. However, Gari Ledyard, Sejong Professor of Korean History Emeritus at Columbia University, notes that the character 古 gǔ also functions as a phonetic component of 蒙古 Měnggǔ "Mongol". Indeed, records from Sejong's day played with this ambiguity, joking that "no one is older (more 古 g&#468 than the 蒙古 Měng-gǔ". Ledyard deduces from palace records that 古篆字 gǔ zhuānzì was a veiled reference to the 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì "Mongol Seal Script", that is, a formal variant of the Mongol ’Phagspa alphabet of Yuan dynasty that had been modified to look like the Chinese seal script, and which had been an official script of the empire. There were ’Phagspa manuscripts in the Korean palace library from the Yuan Dynasty government, including some in the seal-script form, and several of Sejong's ministers knew the script well. If this was the case, Sejong's evasion on the Mongol connection can be understood in light of the political situation in the current ethnically Chinese Ming Dynasty. The topic of the recent Mongol domination of China, which had ended just 75 years earlier, was politically sensitive, and both the Chinese and Korean literati considered the Mongols to be barbarians with nothing to contribute to a civilized society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_hangul

Interestingly enough, with the influence of the Mongols, there may be a connection between ancient Phoenician script and Hangul. The Latin alphabet of course is derived from Greek which came from Phoenician so in a way, the Latin Alphabet and the Korean script Hangul are related.

As a final piece of evidence, Ledyard notes that, with two exceptions, hangul letters have the regular geometric shapes expected of invention: ㄱ [k] was the corner of a square, ㅁ [m] a full square, ㅅ a chevron, ㅇ a circle. In the Hunmin Jeong-eum, before the influence of the writing brush made them asymmetrical, these were purely geometric. The exceptions were ㄷ [t] and ㅂ [p], which had more complex geometries and were two of the forms adopted from ’Phagspa. For example, ㄷ [t] wasn't a simple half square, but even in the Hunmin Jeong-eum had a lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as ’Phagspa ꡊ d did, and as Tibetan ད d did before that.[13]

If Ledyard is correct, hangul is part of the great family of alphabets that spread from the Phoenician alphabet, through Aramaic, Brāhmī, and Tibetan, though this core is only one component of its derivation.

(sorry for the awkwardness of the chart.)

Edit: Aw crap. It doesn't display the Phoenician script.

Cognates of core hangul letters 1) Hangul 2) ’Phagspa 3) Tibetan 4) Phoenician 5) Greek 6) Latin

1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

ㅂ ꡎ བ �� Β B
ㄱ ꡂ ག �� Γ C, G
ㄷ ꡊ ད �� Δ D
ㄹ ꡙ ལ �� Λ L
ㅈ ꡛ ས �� Ϻ —


Finally, you can see some of the similarities here:

 

[eoc]

In the future Civ6, I think, there shall be only 4 civilizaitons in vanilla version with on arguments ---- America, China, English and Rome.
More civilizations will be voted on the net to decide whether fill in the vanilla version.

 

[pi-r8]

In the future Civ6, I think, there shall be only 4 civilizaitons in vanilla version with on arguments ---- America, China, English and Rome.
More civilizations will be voted on the net to decide whether fill in the vanilla version.

Change it to China, India, and Rome and I could totally go along with this. Maybe egypt too.

 

[Vordeo]

More civilizations will be voted on the net to decide whether fill in the vanilla version.

Consider how the internet tends to vote, the winner of that poll would probably be Sealand.

 

[Wuzetian]

Part of PhD training is the requirement to contribute something new in your field. It's harder to do that if you don't question and/or challenge existing theories.

This is true. I agree that independent thinking plays an essential part in the acquiring of new knowledge.
But have you give it a slightest thought this way, maybe, just maybe these students are not there to seek true knowledge.
Instead, a diploma of any kind will satisfy quite some of them just fine.

 

[UknowsI]

Part of PhD training is the requirement to contribute something new in your field. It's harder to do that if you don't question and/or challenge existing theories.

I'm doing my PhD in Korea. It was quite a transition to what I'm used to, but has it's advantages and disadvantages like everything else. It's great to have a different background from the people I work with since I will almost always have a different perspective on the problem than the others, that is however not an advantage when you are answering standardized exams...

Even though some might wonder how the lack of questioning affects research, it seems to work well for engineering intensive industry such as Samsung and LGs. Maybe Korea's civ should have a bonus to high tech production instead of a bonus to research

 

[Vordeo]

Just saw this on Time.com and thought some of the people on here might be interested.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2027165,00.html

It's a short photoessay on the life of Kublai Khan, and it does briefly discuss his reign and influence.

 

[Wuzetian]

Model of a Stage with Five Actors
The Mongols are often characterized by the savagery of their warfare, but the Yuan era saw the refinement and crystallization of a number of Chinese artistic traditions that all linger to this day. This is especially true for theater — represented by this 13th century ceramic display. Over nine hundred plays were produced during the Yuan period, and its tales of fairy spirits and corrupt officials still circulate in current productions of Peking opera.

Landscape, After a Poem by Wang WeiYuan period rulers were generous patrons of the arts, and Chinese scholars and painters were often present in the courts of Yuan kings and nobles. Tang Di, who hailed from China's south, ranked among the era's best artists. This masterful ink painting on a scroll of silk shows the depth and richness of the artistic moment: it's inspired by a couplet from a poem written nearly five hundred years earlier, which reads, "I walk to where the water ends / And sit and watch as clouds arise."

These are some of the quotes from the link above.
It seems that quite some of these culture achievements in Yuan Dynasty are accomplished by Chinese people under Mongolian reign.
I would like to know under such circumstances, should these achievements be attributed to Mongolians or rather Chinese?

I have no intention of promoting anything about China or Chinese cultures here. I'm just raising a simple question.
Similarly, I think we could raise some other questions ,like should achievements accomplished by occupied France be attributed to France or the Third Reich during the time of WWII?

 

[Vordeo]

These are some of the quotes from the link above.
It seems that quite some of these culture achievements in Yuan Dynasty are accomplished by Chinese people under Mongolian reign.
I would like to know under such circumstances, should these achievements be attributed to Mongolians or rather Chinese?

I have no intention of promoting anything about China or Chinese cultures here. I'm just raising a simple question.
Similarly, I think we could raise some other questions ,like should achievements accomplished by occupied France be attributed to France or the Third Reich during the time of WWII?

Yep, it's a very tough question, really. I'd go with both generally having a hand in them, but that's just me.