After the fall of the Mongols, the Ming dynasty took control of Korea as a vassal state. Paper money that had already been in widespread use in China now came to be used in Korea.

The Korean kingdom then founded the Joseon dynasty ➚ 1392-1897 and was known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ and from the Chinese characters for this dynasty : 朝鲜 Cháo xiǎn this became translated into English as ‘morning calm’ and so became known as the ‘The Land of the Morning Calm’. Korea's new found sense of independence moved it away from slavishly adopting Chinese culture, this was evident when in 1443 Korea adopted 24 phonetic letters (Hangul) to replace the Chinese script of thousands of characters.