I decided to devote this past week to preparing for my final presentation. For a while I was unsure of what I was going to present on. In class two weeks ago, we broke up into Zoom breakout rooms to brainstorm some ideas. My classmates had some good ideas but I debated between various ideas, with the main topic I was leaning towards being something related to health, in light of COVID-19. One of my majors is Healthcare Studies, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about South Korea’s healthcare system and the cultural effects of the outbreak. I ultimately decided not to because my vocabulary is still not that advanced and I wanted to invest my time in something that would be somewhat challenging but still manageable. After considering a few more ideas, I ended up selecting something that meant a lot to me personally, the Korean flag.
To me, flags are a great way to represent one’s culture, especially because of the symbolism that flags often hold. Even though I was born and raised in the United States, I personally identify strongly with my Korean background whether it be through my music or food or personality. The flag means a lot to me, so much that I have one hanging in my dorm back in Richmond and a symbolic tattoo on my back. I had done some research on the Korean flag before, but I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn even more about its history as well as become familiar with the associated terms.
For starters, the Korean flag is called taegeukgi 태극기. Its design is minimal but the meaning behind it is very philosophical. The foundation is a clean white background, which represents peace and purity. For this reason, many Koreans in the past have fondly worn the color white. In each corner, there is a black trigram– starting from the top left corner and going clockwise, they are geon 건, ri 리, gon 곤, and gam 감. They are derived from Chinese characters and each represents multiple different things. Some examples are seasons, celestial bodies, cardinal direction, virtues, natural elements, and members of a family. In the center lies a red and blue yin-yang symbol, which is known as taeguek 태극. The red is on top and called yang 양, representing positive cosmic forces. The blue is called eum 음 and represents negative cosmic forces. Similar to Chinese culture, the taegeuk is supposed to represent balance in the universe. The taegeukgi has a lot of meaning and is inspiring to me, especially with the values of justice, vitality, wisdom, and fruition behind the trigrams. When I reflect back to one of our earlier lessons in culturals, a lot of what I learned back then is clearly shown in the flag and physically manifested in the Korean people. While I am grateful to be an American citizen and for my Western upbringing, I am also extremely proud to embrace my Korean-American identity. I am glad that I chose to research something that made me feel more connected to my culture while also being very educational.
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