The questions that come up whenever you watch a period drama

Same Era, Different Worlds is a personal project that began with a question raised while watching historical films and series: what was happening elsewhere in the world at that moment? Textbooks teach Korean history and world history separately, but the actual past unfolded at the same time on a single axis. This site tries to show that simultaneity at a glance.

What can you do here

The timeline app lays out 225 Korean, 144 world, and 102 Christian-history entries (biblical narrative and church history) — 471 in all — side by side in chronological order. Click an event card and what was happening on the other side of the world is highlighted with it; directly related events, such as the Imjin War and Toyotomi's unification of Japan, are joined by arrows so the connection is immediately visible. You can also search by year or event name to jump straight to a period.

Beyond the timeline, the articles section takes two eras and two regions and tells them together in prose. If the timeline is the data, the articles are the story.

Where does the data come from

The Korean timeline draws on the Korean History Chronicle published by the National Institute of Korean History, and the world timeline follows the scope of the South Korean high school world history curriculum. It is not a transcription of those sources but a study reference, summarized and rearranged so that a general reader watching a period drama can follow the context. Interpretations of particular events differ between sources and schools of thought, and nothing here claims to be the single scholarly consensus. If you find an error or a different reading, please tell us through the contact page.

Who made it

The site was planned and built as a hobby by one person with an interest in history, and particularly in the comparative question of what was happening elsewhere at the same time. There is no team or company behind it; one person organized the data and built the interface. Advertising revenue covers the server and domain costs, and any time left over goes into steadily expanding the timeline data.