Hello, everybody!
Welcome to Dr. Park‘s K-Cosmos part 1.
I am Dr. Park.
For those of you who are watching my videos for the first time,
I highly recommend watching my K-History part 1,
and K-Spirit part 1 first.
Do you remember the book 'Hwandangogi'?
If not, please refer to the video K-History Part 1.
The book 'Hwandangogi' says that Bokhui developed eight trigrams
along with the concept of the five elements and yin-yang.
Bokhui lived 5600 years ago
and is, simply put, the father of Eastern philosophy.
As you can see from the figure,
each of the trigrams are composed of three rows
of solid or broken lines.
The solid lines represent yang or positive energy,
while the broken lines represent yin or negative energy.
The topmost trigram containing the most solid lines
is considered to have the most positive energy,
therefore, is the heaven trigram.
It also means, it is the warmest in a sense,
and becomes a trigram for the south.
Of course,
then the bottommost trigram containing the most broken lines
is considered the most negative and the coldest,
and becomes a trigram for the north, and earth.
Since the top becomes the south
and the bottom becomes the north,
naturally, the right side would be the west
and the left side the east.
Bokhui noticed that when the sun rises in the east
the full moon sets in the west.
So he made the east trigram the sun,
and the west trigram the moon.
Bokhui also noticed a region of mountains
to the northwest of where he lived,
so he made the northwest trigram to represent the mountains.
It seemed to make more sense to him
to have the mountain trigram right next to the earth trigram.
The sea was located to the southeast,
so Bokhui named the southeast trigram, the sea.
Lightning, on the other hand, was considered an energy source
ascending from the earth,
therefore, was placed on the northeast,
right next to the earth trigram.
The wind, blowing from the heaven above,
was then placed on the southwest,
right next to the heaven trigram.
The shape of Taegeuk is based on Bokhui's 8 trigrams.
You can see here that
The circle in the middle is a divided into eight sectors.
Each sector is colored proportionally
to the number of solid lines and broken lines.
For example,
the topmost trigram includes all solid lines,
so the topmost sector is left, all white.
The upper-left trigram includes one broken line
and two solid lines, therefore,
only a third of that sector is colored in, and so on.
And finally, the bottommost trigram is all colored in.
Eliminating the 4 geographical trigrams,
we are now left with only the 4 astronomical trigrams.
Rotating this shape to fit into a rectangle
creates what is currently the national flag of South Korea,
known as Taegeukgi.
You might have seen our flag Taegeukgi before, too!
If you have ever flown Korean Airline,
you would have seen it on its tail.
If you have ever learned Taekwondo,
you would have seen it on the chest of the dobok.
This is what I suggest to use as the national flag,
when the two Koreas reunite.
The 4 existing astronomical trigrams of South Korea
and 4 new geographical trigrams representing North Korea,
will together provide a perfect picture of harmony.
Dreaming of such days,
I chose to use it as my profile picture, also.
Lastly,
you might have been wondering what this building is.
This is called Cheomseongdae,
an astronomical observatory
an astronomical observatory built approximately 1400 years ago.
Out of all validated observatories found in history,
as far as I know, this one is the oldest.
Needless to say,
Koreans are a people with a strong astronomical background,
and as an astronomer,
I am so excited to share our K-Cosmos culture with you.
I will cover more in depth in later episodes.
If you would like to know more about K-Cosmos,
please contact us at this address.
Everybody is welcome, Korean or not.
Thank you for watching my video.
If you liked it please subscribe and hold on to your seats
because I'll be back.
