Paradox of South Korean Flag

[sparhawk]

Nice article about the South Korean flag.

Tai Chi's eight principles are yet further subdivided into sixty-four oracles, as symbolized by the mathematical combination of its eight trigrams into sixty-four hexagrams. Which brings us to "I Ching," or "The Book of Changes." The sixty-four chapters of "I Ching" describe Tai Chi's sixty-four oracles. It considers the sixty-four hexagrams to be the sixty-four permutations of situational fate. They are like the sixty-four squares of a chess board, which chart all of the positions possible to a chesspiece. "Where should I move?" asks the chessplayer. "What should I do?" asks the Confucian. (http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=4699)

L

[cassius_clay]

Thanks for this. Peace.

[bruce_g]

Beautiful article. This is an interesting statement:

"They render every event to be true or false as surely as every coin toss is heads or tails. True and false are digital, like the 0s and 1s of a computer, for they are absolute values. But yang and yin are analog, like degrees of a sphere."

Digital Yi verses analog Yi. That's interesting fodder for thought. I think we frequently see examples of each approach, and sometimes a mixture of both.

[sparhawk]

But yang and yin are analog, like degrees of a sphere A great quote from the article, indeed. One that I agree with wholeheartedly.

L

[denis_m]

Why only four trigrams rather than eight?
I think it's a design feature, so the flag won't be too crowded. The trigrams are in the right places around the taiji symbol. Qian corresponds to the fully red area, just before the blue tail phases in. Kun corresponds to the fully blue area. Kan and Li occur at zones where red and blue are balanced. The four cardinal trigrams are rotated to non-cardinal positions, to keep away from the edge of the design. There's more room at the corners.

Wind, Marsh, Thunder and Mountain can be inferred in the spaces around the taiji symbol, so they needn't be visually represented as trigrams. Nevertheless the importance of the cardinal trigrams is confirmed by this design. By choosing the cardinal trigrams only, the design reminds us of an affinity between Yijing cosmology and the four-element cosmology of Buddhism and Western mystery traditions.

Denis M.