who ... moi?

a social butterfly: scared of much, but not of many. never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. not a fan of acronyms, snakes and angelina jolie. a HUGE fan of Fathead.


this blog is black for ENERGY-SAVING reasons.

thanks for your understanding.
if it's too dark, put your glasses on old one.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

taegeukgi

this is the name of the korean flag.  phonetically, you'd say "tay-goo-key".

it's quite a fascinating flag, and seen as i've been painting a fair amount of them on the faces of my friends and colleagues, i figured it was about time we researched what it actually symbolised.

it must be one of the most intriguingly recognisable flags in the world - and thankfully, it has quite an interesting story behind it too.

the flag first surfaced back in 1882.  it was used to symbolise resistance and independence from japan, so from 1910 - 1945 when the japanese ruled korea, the flag was banned.  during this time, ownership of the flag was punishable by death.  once korea gained independence, both north and south korea had their own versions of the taegeukgi. 

three years later, the northern half altered their flag to be more representative of soviet-inspired symbols:









with the south korean version, the white background symbolises "cleanliness of the people", and the red and blue design in the middle is "the yin and yang" (borrowed from the chinese culture), representing the balance between the negative and positive forces in life.  the blue (-ve) and red (+ve) together indicate the continuity of infinity.

the 4 sets of black striped designs are called "trigrams". together, they mean harmony, symmetry, balance and circulation.

to break it down:


courtesy of wikipedia

so there, kids, is your cultural history lesson for the month.  
soak it up, put it in your back pocket and bring it up at a dinner party.

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