중앙데일리

An artistic saint remembered

There are few honorifics like "chihwaseon," the title given to Jang Seung-up, a late Joseon Dynasty painter who lived from 1843 to 1897. The term translates roughly as a painter whose craftsmanship is equal to that of a divine being and who can draw paintings even better when he is drunk. Painters were sometimes degraded and called a "painting fellow," but also respected as a "saint of painting." The painter who reached the stage of a "divine bei…

Aug 30,2002
Lies, damned lies and...

"I surveyed the average annual income of lawyers in Chicago in 1947. On average, lawyers who had graduated from university made $11,000, but the income of lawyers without college degrees, only high school diplomas, was $12,000. So is it true that the more lawyers study, the less money they make?" That was the question thrown out by Robert Hooke, a statistician. The statistics were "true" at that time, when a legal practitioner required only a …

Aug 30,2002
Lies, damned lies and...

"I surveyed the average annual income of lawyers in Chicago in 1947. On average, lawyers who had graduated from university made $11,000, but the income of lawyers without college degrees, only high school diplomas, was $12,000. So is it true that the more lawyers study, the less money they make?" That was the question thrown out by Robert Hooke, a statistician. The statistics were "true" at that time, when a legal practitioner required only a …

Aug 29,2002
Friends few and far between

In 1578, the Tibetan monk believed to be the reincarnation of the Buddha, Sonam Gyatso, traveled to what is now China's Qinghai province on the invitation of the Mongolian leader, Altan Khan, who bestowed the title of Dalai Lama on Sonam Gyatso. Dalai is Mongolian for "ocean" and Lama is "spiritual teacher." That was the origin of the title Dalai Lama, used to refer to the leaders of Tibet since 1642 who are believed to be successive rein…

Aug 28,2002
Leaders must study leadership

When the political situation becomes chaotic, as it now is in Korea, people wonder how their leaders will demonstrate their leadership. This is only natural: During tumultuous economic times, people focus on the leadership skills of chief executive officers. When a country is facing war, people wonder who will command their military forces and what the person's character is like. This is because their country's future depends on his leadership. …

Aug 27,2002
Summer is a-winding down

"July is the beginning of fall, when the season enters ipchu or cheoseo. Summer may still have one last burst of heat, but how long can it hold off autumn's progression? Rain does not pound, but falls in gentle drops, and the wind feels different. And with what foods did those cicadas fill their stomachs / So they can burst with song in the clean air?" That is how the lunar month of July is described in a Korean folk song, the Nonggaw…

Aug 26,2002
Lessons from a flooded river

East Germany is suffering from disastrous floods, said to be the worst in a century. In the historic city of Dresden, the Elbe River has reached 9.4 meters, far above the previous record of 8.8 meters set in 1845. Considering that the water level is ordinarily two meters, it is easy to see how serious the recent flooding has been. In fact, German media have even referred to the current deluge as "Noah's floods." Obviously, there is enormou…

Aug 24,2002
The game of the sinseon

The game of baduk (go) is called an amusement of the sinseon, an immortal half-god, half-human who is usually depicted as an old man with a long white beard and long white robe living deep in the mountains. Taoism considered sinseon an ideal goal that only those who transcended worldly desires could achieve. Baduk is widely enjoyed in China, Japan and Korea. A Chinese legend has it that more than 4,000 years ago, the mythical King Yao visited his…

Aug 23,2002
The Vietnamese solution

"It was a boundless ocean. I was snatched from the jaws of death. I just do not want to think of it again anymore," said a Vietnamese refugee who arrived on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula in May 1989 after a desperate voyage that lasted more than 50 days. Anyway, he is a lucky person; he survived the harsh aftermath of the Vietnam War, which ended on April 30, 1975. Jean-Paul Sartre, a prominent intellectual of the 20th century, said …

Aug 22,2002
The true value of zero

The Arabic numeral 0 was invented in India. When we translate 0 into Chinese, we often use ryeong, which literally means zero. But sometimes it is translated into gong, which means void. To be exact, however, the Chinese character gong does not originate from 0 but from the Sanskrit word sunya, which means both zero and void. Sunya in the broad sense denotes the meaning of lacking or nothing carried in the Chinese character ryeong and also the…

Aug 21,2002

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