Han is a fairly recent term in an ethnographic sense. Dating about 1500 years back. The term for the ethnic group of the majority in Japan (Yamato) is supposed to start with people that arrived in Japan 2000 years ago. (Yamato is also a super loaded term like Han.) I can't find much about the Koreans having a specific term for this, but there were definitely people on the Korean penisula before Han was a term.
It's absolutely fair to say that all of these peoples have a common origin dating somewhere around 2500 years back in roughly the area of China. But I doubt either the Japanese or the Koreans would be happy to simply be subsumed into the term Han. Especially since that term is loaded with a lot more assumptions about culture and beliefs through Chinese propaganda.
Edit: The Koreans use the term Han, but Han just means something equivalent to Kingdom in Korean and they conceptualise their nation as the descendants of a period of three Kingdoms in the area. Thus they are the people of these Han, which refers to a different Han than the Han Chinese. This also apparently helps the South Koreans to currently distinguish themselves from the North Koreans, who use Joseon.
last edited at Aug 31, 2024 6:04AM