Perception of the ocean throughout the history of mankind has been fairly passive. This is because the 500-year history of the Joseon Dynasty that consistently prohibited ocean activities sets off an alarm in our mindset. Starting from the 2000s, our humanities-based perception of the ocean has broadened its horizons. With keener international attention on the ocean, foundations to support the ocean’s history and research on the oceanic culture have been formed. Not only that, the current trend of post- modernism has brought about reflection on existing land-focused perceptions.
The world’s oceans are all united, which is a departure from the land which is disconnected by mountains, deserts and rivers. Therefore, perception of the ocean provides an open perspective to integrate the world into one. This is evidenced by the fact that those living in a society that actively utilizes the ocean are open-minded while their counterparts in an environment that prohibits access to the ocean are close-minded.
All in all, the maritime history in which the history has delved into regarding the views of the ocean, can be a prevailing option to overcome the land-oriented closed historical mind set, and bring in the open-minded one that corresponds to globalization. In this aspect, a paradigm to perceive the organically-linked world history can be proposed through the maritime history. This can be interpreted to mean a new paradigm to identify the world’s history as a process of broadened perception towards sea areas.
In ancient times, perception of sea areas was segmented to a great extent. This can be referred to as “the age of the Mediterranean-style perception of sea areas.” Since then, perception of sea areas has gradually expanded. It has developed from the “Age of the Indian Ocean”, where the perception was first expanded into the Indian Ocean, moving onto the “Age of the Atlantic Ocean”, and further onto the “Age of the Pacific Ocean. Such a categorization of different ages can serve as a new framework to organically streamline the world’s history in the perspective of the ocean. Furthermore, each age can be connected to four periods in the maritime history of Korea in conformity. Therefore, these can be telling standards to look into the Korean history in the perspective of the global one.
The attempt to newly categorize different ages based on the ocean’s history implies the post-modernistic reflection on the division of the modern periods, that is, the ancient, medieval and modern times.