The white background remained, but the most notable change is that the lines of red and blue within the circle are much more simplified in the current South Korean flag than before 1910. Originally the blue in the yin-yang circle was also a darker shade, although interestingly enough, the red has remained mostly the same, though sometimes a little more muted in the shade. In the initial version, the bars were black, but in some other versions, they have been varied shades of blue, usually a dark navy shade, but also bright blue for a brief period of time. However, some changes to the colors and ratio have occurred throughout time. The basic design has changed mostly the same, or nearly identical, since its inception. Between 18, Korea’s flag came under some slight changes. The flag didn’t immediately appear like how the current flag looks like. A newspaper from Japan in 1882 credited the original flag, which by then had been used as Korea’s national flag on at least one occasion, as the design of the king of Joseon, Kojong. The task was further delegated to Lee Eung-Jun as well as a Chinese official Ma Jianzhong. With this, the king of Joseon ordered the government officials named Sin Heon and Kim Hong-Jip. However, the need for a flag arose in the late 1800s during the Japan-Korea Treaty in 1876 when the Japanese flag was presented, while Korea at that time didn’t have a flag. In the history of Korea, the country did not have any national flag until 1882, while still under the Joseon dynasty. These four black trigrams represent the movement and harmony of the forces in the Korean flag. The three solid bars are 건 (geon), meaning “ sky,” and the three bars set apart in the middle are 곤 (gon), meaning “earth.” The bars on the upper right corner is 리 (ri), which represents “fire,” and the bars on the lower-left corner are 감 (gam) which symbolizes “ water.” The four groups of black bars also follow Confucian ideologies. So where yang ends, yin (or eum in Korea) starts, and then where yin ends, yang starts, and so on. The thicker part of yin and yang represents the beginning, and the slimmer part expresses the ending. Specifically, the red half represents positive cosmic forces, while the blue half is a symbol of negative cosmic forces.īut put together like this, the shape is a symbol of the opposing elements complementing each other. Separately they represent elements opposite of each other, like good vs. The red and blue taegeuk is divided into two parts, decidedly in the shape of yin-yang, which was derived from old Chinese philosophical ideologies. The red and blue colors alone are named 태극 (taegeuk), which are essentially what the whole flag was named after, with the meaning “supreme ultimate” in English. Even today, white often appears in Korean hanboks. The white background itself represents purity and peace. The color white is seen as a traditional color in Korean culture, commonly used in daily clothing in the 19th century. Below are the specific symbols associated with each of the colors and elements in the South Korean flag. The South Korean flag bears four colors with symbolic meaning. The circle is then surrounded by four trigrams with the color black, placed in each of the four corners. In the middle, a yin-yang circle is formed, minus the spots, with the color red on the upper half and blue on the lower half. It has a plain white background forming a rectangular shape. Korea’s flag is composed of four colors: white, red, blue, and black. This became the national flag of South Korea in August of 1948. The flag of South Korea is called 태극기 (taegeukgi) in Korean.
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