China, Japan, and Korea
East Asia consists of China, Japan and Korea. All three countries claim written histories of 1,300 years or more. China is one of the four most ancient civilizations in the world, along with ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and India, with a written history of almost 4,000 years and a continuous pictographic writing system. Japan and Korea, on the other hand, both have more phonetic writing systems than Chinese. Historically, the three countries were influenced by the Chinese writing system, Confucianism and Buddhism.
