Welcome to the homepage I created to help get everybody ready, organized, educated and excited about our missionary trip to Korea.  I'm already very excited and I can't wait to go.  Rose found out about this really cool language teaching website that is very helpful.  I'm not very bright and am not a very good researcher, so if you find any mistakes in my literature please feel free to let me know.  Better yet, if you do some research of your own and create a complete document.  Feel free to send it to me and I will try to add it to my site.  If you have links to great places to go then send those too!!!

    Probably the first thing you will want to check out is the Korean flag.  As with any culture, there can be a lot to learn from it's flag.

 

 

The Korean Flag
What it means

The Blue House of Korea describes the Korean Flag as follows:

     " The Korean flag is called taegukki. Its design symbolizes the principles of the yin and yang in Oriental philosophy. The circle in the center of the flag is divided into two equal parts. The upper red section represents the positive cosmic forces of the yang. Conversely, the lower blue section represents the negative cosmic forces of the yin. The two forces together embody the concepts of continual movement and the balance and harmony that characterize the sphere of infinity. The circle is surrounded by four trigrams, one in each corner. Each trigram symbolizes one of the four universal elements: heaven, earth, fire and water. "

In Korean martial arts, we utilize many principles and theories represented by the Korean flag. For example, the dynamic balance and harmony of "Uhm-Yahng"(Yin-Yang) should be present in each technique we perform. Among other things, the 4 trigrams symbolize 4 main directions of movement, namely, advance, retreat, right, left. In the future, we'll provide the meaning of each of the 4 trigrams in more detail, as well as some of the Eastern philosophical concepts represented by the flag, significant to Korean martial arts.

The Korean Flag
How old it is

The Korean flag was used for the first time in 1882 by Mr. Young-Hyo Park when he was sent to Japan as a diplomat. In 1883, the flag was officially adopted and proclaimed as the national flag of Korea. In 1887, the Korean flag was used again by Mr. Jung-Yang Park when he was on the way to the United States. Many people had thought Mr. Young-Hyo Park designed the flag on the way to Japan. However, it was later found out that Emperor Go-jong of Korea originally designed the flag and ordered Mr. Park to use it as the national flag of Korea. This fact was confirmed in 1997 by the discovery of an article published on October 2nd, 1882 by the Japanese daily neswpaper in Tokyo. The article detailed the background story of the making of the Korean flag.

It was thought that the symbolism used in the Korean flag was originated from China by the metaphysical philosopher of the Sun dynasty named, Chou Fung-i (1016 - 1073), who was known to have designed the Tai-Chi or Yin-Yang symbol. However, it was found out that the symbol was originally used in Korea a few centuries earlier. This was confirmed by the discovery of a large piece of stone with the symbol on it. This piece of stone was discovered at a Buddhist temple site, where Kam-Eun Temple was built in the year 682. Therefore, the symbol was already in use in Korea as early as 682, while Chou Fung-i published his theory of Tai-Chi in the year 1070.