Option 1:
I learned a lot throughout this course, but the main thing that stuck out was the colonial time period in Korea. The reason I learned the most about this topic probably related to the fact that I did my final project on colonial Korea and spent the most time on the particular time period. I think it was important to understand this time period to understand how Korea is operating today. In the colonial time period, the Japanese took over and instituted policy after policy and enforcement of the policies to dominate Koreans. The system in which the Japanese ran was built a lot on the fear that Koreans had for stepping out of their boundaries and fighting back against Japan to regain their country. I can see this same fear in North Korea today. After reading about North Korea and watching a documentary, I realized that the citizens are scared of their government which is so powerful. The people are scared to break laws that confine them such as limited internet access and the inability to speak their minds. This current trend can be seen in the colonial time period when the Japanese government demolished Korean history books and hand-picked what people were allowed to know in hopes that the Korean people would become one with Japan. Korea was able to take back their country eventually, but it required plenty of protests and support from other nations. Maybe North Koreans today will be able to break out from the fear that is held over them and take back their lives just as the Koreans of the colonial time period did. I will share this trend with others because not a lot of people know about Korean history. Many people think that they do not need to know about it, but here in the United States we seem to have our hands on many major conflicts around the world so it would not hurt for people to understand the history of the countries that we are either assisting or have tensions with.