Guatemala

A country located southeast of Mexico in Central America . The capital is Guatemala City (Ciudad Guatemala, Guatemala City), the same as the country's name . The country's area is 108,889㎢.[4] , the population is approximately 19 million ⁽²⁰²⁶⁾ . As of the second half of 2014 , it is estimated that there are more than 8,000 Koreans living in Guatemala .

It is one of the descendants of the Mayan civilization in the past , and many of its residents are Mayan . And among the Mayan pyramids , there are many pyramids in Guatemala. The Maya are commonly known to the outside world as a lowland civilization in Mexico.[5] There are still many shares left in this country.

The name Guatemala is from Cuauhtēmallān, which means that it means 'land with many trees' or from the word 'many trees' . Pedro de Alvarado, a Spanish conquest of the Spanish Empire, was named and named by the soldiers who performed him when they conquered the area.

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Guatemala has 22 departments (Departamento) and 334 municipalities (Municipios) as lower administrative districts.

Spanish is designated as the official language and is the native language of Guatemalans . The Spanish spoken in Guatemala is a North and Central American dialect of Spanish.[6] As in the central/southern dialects, there are expressions that are different from those in mainland Spain and are greatly influenced by the Mayan language . It is even different from the Spanish of Mexico City . However, it is very similar to the Mexican Spanish spoken in southern Chiapas , Cancun , and Yucatan . That's why Guatemalans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans, and Nicaraguans sneaking into Mexico say to themselves , "We are southern Mexicans!" There are also cases where people insist.

In addition, due to the high proportion of Native Americans, various indigenous languages, including Quiche, are widely used, and because it was once part of the Mayan civilization, Mayan language and its related languages ​​are widely used.

Although soccer is popular , there is not much to boast about the World Cup or other competition results.

As a professional soccer league, there is the Guatemalan First Division (GUA D1), and the league schedule is operated in two seasons, the Apertura season from July to November and the Clausura season from January to April. Twelve teams play 22 rounds, and the top six teams advance to the playoffs to determine the league championship. The 1st and 2nd teams that automatically advance to the playoffs and the 2 teams that went through the semi-playoffs will play the semifinals again to determine the team that advances to the final championship match.

For national soccer team, please refer to the Guatemala national soccer team .

In the case of baseball, football is pushed, but not very popular, but since 2019, domestic professional baseball has eventually emerged. It consists of four teams and has 44 games for two months from the end of October/early November to December. There is no word about salary, but if you guess through the salary level of the Guatemala basketball league, it looks like about $ 2 to 3,000, and the general players want to earn $ 1,000. Literally, Latin American players are just Alba. For reference, there are several minories of Guatemala nationality, but no players have stepped into the major leagues yet.

Other sports such as basketball are popular, and the Olympic Games are popular international competitions other than the World Cup. The only Olympic medal was a silver medal won in the track and field event at the 2012 London Olympics , but Adriana Ruano won Guatemala's first ever gold medal in the women's trap shooting event at the 2024 Paris Olympics .

The flag with the coat of arms is used for official purposes and is hoisted on government flags and government offices, while the flag without the coat of arms is used separately in the private sector.

According to the 2018 census, Ladino, the Spanish- speaking population, accounts for the largest proportion at 56.0%, followed by Mayans such as the Keychain and Cakchikel people at 41.7%, Xinca at 1.8%, and Gari at 1.8%. Punain accounted for 0.1%. A small number of blacks (0.2%) and foreigners (0.2%) also live here, of which about 5,000 Koreans also live.

Compared to other Latin American countries, Guatemala is one of the few countries where Native Americans make up the majority. There are only three Latin American countries with more Native Americans than Guatemala: Peru , Bolivia , and Mexico .[7]

It is a country with a fairly high birth rate compared to its small territory . In 1980 , the birth rate was recorded at 5.9, which was high even by the standards of the time, and the birth rate was in the 5 range until 1995 , but it fell sharply after that , breaking 3 for the first time in 2015 . In 2025, it fell to 1.9. Still, the birth rate is higher than neighboring countries such as Mexico and Cuba . So, the population, which was only 9.3 million in 1994, has now surpassed 20 million.

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Guatemala's urbanization rate is the lowest in the region. Like other countries, it is increasing over time, but the pace is noticeably slow. Although the urbanization rate exceeded 50% in 2016, almost half of the people still live in rural areas . What promoted urbanization was the Guatemalan civil war that occurred from 1960 to 1996. In addition to being poor, the Guatemalan civil war, and the government army's massacres and scorched-earth operations that took place during that process, resulted in a rural migration phenomenon in which residents flock to the cities to escape the rural areas that had become a living hell, and many of them live barely in slums on the outskirts of the city.[8]

The illiteracy rate is the second highest in Latin America after Haiti . According to the World Bank, the literacy rate for people over the age of 15 in 2021 was 83%. That is, 1/6 of the adult population is illiterate. Honduras, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, which are much poorer than Guatemala, are also not in this situation.

Like many countries in Central America, economic difficulties, the gap between the rich and the poor, and political instability are severe here, and security is not only a mess, but literally abysmal .

Many different countries located in Central America[9] In Mexico, the country right next door, the influence of drug cartels is so great that you only need to avoid the dangerous areas mentioned in the Mexico/Policy document.[10] In the case of Guatemala, the security situation changes quickly, and there is no guarantee that you will be safe outside of famous tourist destinations such as Antigua, Lake Atitlan, or Tikal.

In particular, in the case of Guatemala City, the capital , it is so dangerous that Koreans who are considering immigrating to Guatemala are discouraged from coming there. In Guatemala City, there is a case of Koreans being robbed by robbers on a random day .

The occurrence of murder crimes is also serious, with as many as 6,000 people being murdered every year, and six Koreans were murdered in 2009 alone. This level of murder rate is one of the highest in the world. Moreover, unlike Mexico and Brazil , which have high murder rates due to drug cartels fighting among themselves , here, like neighboring Central American countries and Venezuela , the murder rate is caused by poor public safety, especially robbery and murder , and violence is rampant, so in most cases, if you mess up, you will be shot .

But still, Honduras is competing for first or second place in murder rate and has hellish security.[11] Compared to others, the security is a bit better. In particular, famous tourist destinations such as Tikal's Mayan civilization ruins and Antigua have good security. Of course, this means that it is safe by Central and South American standards, but if you never think about East Asian countries, including Korea, you could be in big trouble.

The capital, Guatemala City , or the city's slums, is a dangerous place that is almost like a lack of security. In a booklet dealing with immigration to Guatemala, based on the experience of Koreans living there, it is advised not to go to the overpass in the city if possible. It is said that when you go to an overpass, thugs appear from both sides and rob you of all your money and other valuable items. One Korean-American said that he hired a local tutor for his children, but had difficulty finding one because the time zone did not match. It was so dangerous that we couldn't save it because we couldn't adjust the time zone.

Fortunately, Koreatown has been under development near Zone 7 since December 2014 , and the surrounding roads have become safer to the point where you don't have to worry about riding a bicycle or walking. There is a Korean church nearby, and there are many supermarkets and stores run by Korean residents, so if you need help, you can go there and ask for it. Don't worry, most big stores have one or two security guards with guns.

Due to the severe vacuum in social security, the problem of private sanctions among citizens is also serious. When murderers or robbers are caught by citizens, they are often mass lynched and in extreme cases even burned at the stake . In other words, it is a country that does not need laws (...). It is said that at least 250 people are lynched by citizens every year, and 40 of them die. It is also said that more than 300 people die by burning or flogging each year . When people try to burn themselves at the stake, the police stop them, but security is so bad that they cannot enter because citizens do not make way. 2015 In May , a scene of a 16-year-old girl murdering a taxi driver, running away, being caught by citizens, being lynched and burned at the stake was posted on YouTube , causing controversy.

Most people living in rural Guatemala are Native Americans . They have a village chief in each village , so they traditionally have something called flogging . If a crime is committed in the village, they gather the villagers together, explain the crime, and hit their back with a whip or cane . Although this practice is a clear violation of human rights, the problem is acknowledged to some extent by the government, and the police do not stop it or intervene. Even more seriously, this type of whipping has developed in Guatemala City and other large cities, and when a criminal is caught in a village, the criminal is not handed over to the police and the criminal is summarily judged in the village without even being tried. The bigger problem is that even if the criminal dies from such assault, he or she is not punished. There may be people who think that it shouldn't be done in the first place, but if you watch the video, you can see the villagers, who are said to be doing justice, pour gasoline on a criminal whose sentence has not been confirmed and burn him at the stake, and cheer like devils even as the criminal screams and burns to death. In the mass psychology of the majority, the sense of guilt has disappeared and people have become even more terrible than the criminal who committed the crime.

Violence has become so commonplace that many of the pictures drawn by children in this country are related to violence. However, the level of violence revealed in the pictures drawn by young children is truly beyond imagination. # This picture casually depicts terrible scenes such as killing a person while laughing openly, injecting drugs in a park , or a father engaging in domestic violence .[12]

Unlike neighboring countries in similar situations, such as Honduras and Mexico , which are showing signs of worsening rather than improving, this country's situation is fortunately improving little by little. In particular, there appears to be a trend to demolish structures and signboards on overpasses or at the corners around them, and now there are no signboards covering overpasses , making it safer to walk. Most of the robbers on the overpass have disappeared, and occasionally the robbers who were committing robberies have come to their senses and become security guards to stop their crimes.

Because it is a land route for drugs from South America to Mexico and the United States , the activities of Mexican drug cartels linked to Guatemalan gangs are also active.

Especially in 2022 On July 30th , the Jalisco New Generation Cartel entered Mexico. There was also an incident in which shots were fired at the motorcade of President Alejandro Giammattei, who was visiting the border area . Although President Giammattei was safe because he was 2km away, it was interpreted as a show of force by the CJNG, which is expanding its influence in Guatemala. # This expansion of CJNG had a huge negative impact on Tabasco and Chiapas , which had previously had stable security, because these two states are close to Guatemala.

They are 50% Catholic and 41% Protestant , about the same age. #[13]

In addition, due to the immigrants from Eastern Europe and West Asia , the Greek Orthodox and Orient Orthodox Church , the Syrian Orthodox Church, is 3%of the population.[14] Indians serve not only Catholic adults but also indigenous religions at the same time.

Guatemala is a presidential system, a democratic republic with a multi-party system, where the president is the head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government and legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. It is a single country and has a democracy index of 94th out of 167 countries.

In the 2019 presidential election, 19 presidential candidates ran, and Sandra Torres and Alejandro Giammattei of the National Hope Alliance advanced to the runoff with 25.54% and 13.95% of the votes, respectively. In the first round of voting, candidate Sandra Torres was ahead, but this happened due to the division of the right wing, and when the actual votes were converted, the sum of the pan-right candidates was higher than the sum of the pan-left candidates. So, in the second round of voting, candidate Hiamatei defeated candidate Torres by a large margin. It was approximately 57 to 43, but the Alliance of Hope is taking some consolation by saying that it is better than 15 years ago when the score was 60 to 30.

However, there were many bad things behind these elections. First, Mario Esterda, a candidate for the right-wing National Change Movement, was arrested on suspicion of receiving money from a drug cartel . Moreover, public opinion was a mess for both candidates. Candidate Sandra Torres was the wife of former President Alvaro Colom, who was arrested on corruption charges in 2018, and candidate Alejandro Hiamattei had experience as a prison warden and was himself arrested on corruption charges during his tenure as prison warden, so public opinion was that both were the same.

In the end, the voter turnout in the runoff election was only around 40%. Even though it was a presidential election, it was an election that received so little attention.

When looking at the political party structure alone, Guatemala's politics are among the most chaotic among Latin American countries. As many as 19 political parties are represented in the National Assembly, which has only about 160 seats . (...) Of course, the multi-party system is not negative from a democratic perspective, but with so many political parties in a small country with a population of only about 17 million, the National Assembly is quite confusing.

For example, during the 2019 general election, the division between political parties was so severe that the Union for National Hope (UNE) , which received the most votes, received only 17.92% of the vote. The third party, the National Change Alliance , also received only around 5% of the votes. What is more serious is the merger and rapid collapse of political parties. The Front for National Convergence (FCN), which became the ruling party in the 2015 general election, lost 27 seats, a 77% decrease in the number of seats compared to before the election. (...) It is an added bonus that 6 of the 19 parties in the National Assembly were founded just before the election. It's like looking at the Weimar Republic.

Guatemala is unusual in that right-wing parties often merge and merge, and left-wing parties always appear more unified than right-wing parties. The left is united around the Alliance for National Hope, but the right is currently divided into 14 political parties. Of course, 'relatively' the left is less divided than the right, and the left is also divided into five, so division is at a serious level.

Because of these characteristics, the National Hope Alliance and the left always have an advantage over the right in general elections, but the National Hope Alliance has not won a presidential election since 2007 .

Unlike other Latin American countries, corruption is rampant.

In relation to this, something ridiculous happened. Jimmy Morales, a former comedian , was elected president with an overwhelming vote of over 70% in the presidential runoff held on October 25, 2015 . #(YTN News YouTube) The presidential election campaign slogan was , “I am not corrupt and I am not a thief,” but it remains to be seen whether politics can be as honest as the campaign slogan. Of course, some were concerned that an unproven rookie with no political experience was not a good choice, and there were also voices that worried that the president was no joke, so why should he do this?

The promises made by Morales were also absurdly poor. He made promises that were realistically impossible or had many loopholes, such as providing smartphones to poor children and requiring teachers to wear GPS devices. Moreover, because he has no political experience and the opposition party occupies most of the seats in the National Assembly, he is not able to exert proper power in the National Assembly.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before I started to hear a creaking sound.[15] Since several allegations of corruption have come to light, locals are ridiculing him for thinking he was just a comedian, but in reality his actions were that of a comedian . So, due to low approval ratings, there were several protests calling for his resignation, but since general and presidential elections are held in Guatemala at the same time,[16] It seems unlikely that he will be impeached.

Anyway, since 2017, when Donald Trump came to power as President of the United States , he has shown pro-American and pro-Trump actions and is not receiving much positive feedback from the local community, saying he will move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem . So far, he has shown a pragmatic centrism and has received support from the moderates, but has shown a right-wing move.

Alejandro Giammattei was elected president in the 2019 election and is currently in office.

In the 2023 presidential election, Bernardo Arecalo , the progressive party seed movement , was elected president and joined the Guatemal Pink Tide .[17]

Guatemala's topography is largely divided into three parts: the northern plains, the highlands, and the Pacific lowlands. The Northern Plains borders Mexico and Belize and touches the Caribbean Sea, occupying one-third of the country's land area. The densely populated area is sparsely populated with heavy rainfall and tropical rain forests cover the plains. The remains of several city-states of the Maya civilization, such as Tikal, have been discovered buried in the tropical rainforests of this northern plain. The highlands are located in the central and southern regions and cross the country from east to west. Mount Tajumulco (4,211 m), the highest peak in Central America, is to the west of here. Most of the people live here because the climate is relatively pleasant and fertile thanks to the volcanic ash. The capital, Guatemala City, is also halfway here. However, due to the nature of the volcanic zone, earthquakes and volcanic activity are active, causing disasters from time to time. Finally, the Pacific lowlands refer to the southern coastal areas. There are many large farms and ranches that grow plantation crops here. In the highlands and the Pacific lowlands, rainfall is moderate and heavy, usually from May to November, the rainy season.

It was once a heavily forested country, but much has been destroyed by poverty due to civil war and political turmoil, and logging for agriculture and livestock. Because it is a tropical rainforest area at high altitude, there are many cloud forests in the mountains, and endemic species live here, but there are many areas that are very dangerous to visit.

At the center of the highlands is Lake Atitlan, the deepest lake in Central America. It is located about 150km west of Guatemala City and is 1,562m above sea level, making it the world's most beautiful caldera lake. Volcan San Pedro (3,020m), Volcan Toliman (3,158m), and Volcan Atitlan (3,535m) are spread out around the lake, creating a spectacular view. There is also a Native American village on the shore of Lake Atitlan. It is a lake with a deep connection to the ancient Mayans, and it is so beautiful that even Che Guevara said when he visited here that he wanted to forget politics and live near the lake. The Atitlán grebe , which lived only in Lake Atitlán, became extinct in 1989 due to being eaten by exotic fish such as bass introduced in the 1960s, and water pollution and habitat destruction as the lake was developed as a tourist destination.

Jaguars , Baird's tapirs , and macaws currently live mainly in the northern plains adjacent to Belize and Mexico.

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