Coconut Travels to Korea Part 3

 Korea is a very old country.  Korean people trace their history back around 5,000 years.  That's a really long time!

A long time ago they had kings who lived in palaces.  We visited one. It wasn't a castle like in our fairy tales.  Instead it was a lot of buildings with cool painting under the roofs and big stone lions outside to protect the people inside.  The kings must have had really big families because there were a lot of buildings in the palace and our guide said we were only seeing part of it.

The palace had guards with big swords.  Korea is a tiny country that has always had to defend itself from bigger, stronger countries that want to attack it.  All the cities had walls around them to protect them from attacks.  The palace had a wall around it too.

Korea has lots of mountains.  You can always see mountains wherever you go.  A long time ago the Koreans had a system of guarding the country from attack.  They had watch stations on the tops of mountains.  If everything was safe, the guards at the first station, close to the ocean or the boarder, would light a fire.  When the the guards on the next mountain saw the fire, they would light a fire, too.  Then the guards on the next mountain lit a fire, and on and on until the guards at the palace could see that everything was safe.  If the guards on one mountain did not light a fire, then the next station knew there was an attack and they sent out the army to protect the country.

Because Korea is so tiny, the military had to be very smart.  They had lots of inventors who made special weapons.  They made a boat with armor that looked like a turtle.  It was the first armored ship ever made.  It had big guns and other weapons that nobody else had.  They used that ship when Japan attacked Korea, and beat the Japanese.

 
            They had other peaceful inventions, too.  Korean people used to write with Chinese characters.  They were really hard to learn so not too many people knew how to read and write.  About 600 years ago, the Korean king decided that more people should be able to read so he had his inventors make an easy alphabet that everybody could learn.  Now everybody in Korea knows how to read.  The Koreans also invented the first printing press with movable type.  That meant that they could print lots of books really fast so that everyone could have lots of books to read.

Korea still has lots of inventors and other people working to make life better for everyone.  Even though they have had lots of wars and attacks, they still work hard to make their country stronger and better.  We learned a lot about what people are doing to make their country better.  I'll tell you more about some of them later.