GojoseonGojoseon ( ko.dʑo.sʌn), also called Joseon ( tɕo.sʌn), was the first kingdom on the Korean Peninsula. According to Korean mythology, the kingdom was established by the legendary founder named Dangun. Gojoseon possessed the most advanced culture in the Korean Peninsula at the time and was an important marker in the progression towards the more centralized states of later periods. The addition of Go (고, ), meaning "ancient", is used in historiography to distinguish the kingdom from the Joseon dynasty founded in 1392 CE.
Korean ethnic nationalismKorean ethnic nationalism, or Korean racial nationalism, is a racist, chauvinist and ethnosupremacist political ideology and a form of ethnic and racial identity that is widely prevalent by the Korean people in Korea, particularly in South Korea. It is based on the belief that Koreans form a nation, a race, and an ethnic group that shares a unified bloodline and a distinct culture. It is centered on the notion of the minjok (), a term that had been coined in Imperial Japan ("minzoku") in the early Meiji period.
DangunDangun or Tangun (; tan.ɡun), also known as Dangun Wanggeom (; tan.ɡun waŋ.ɡʌm), was the legendary founder and god-king of Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom, around present-day Liaoning province in Northeast China and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. He is said to be the "grandson of heaven" and "son of a bear", and to have founded the kingdom in 2333 BC. The earliest recorded version of the Dangun legend appears in the 13th-century Samguk Yusa, which cites China's Book of Wei and Korea's lost historical record Gogi (; 'Ancient Record').
History of KoreaThe Lower Paleolithic era on the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria began roughly half a million years ago. The earliest known Korean pottery dates to around 8000 BC, and the Neolithic period began after 6000 BC, followed by the Bronze Age by 2000 BC, and the Iron Age around 700 BC. Similarly, according to The History of Korea, the Paleolithic people are not the direct ancestors of the present Korean people, but their direct ancestors are estimated to be the Neolithic People of about 2000 BC.
