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Specific Techniques

The fabric was hand-woven. The stitching is very fine hand sewing.

Iconographic Meaning

The flag symbolizes Korea as an independent country. The central yin-yang form “Tae-guk” symbolizes the harmony of the universe, of male and female, of positive and negative. The broken bars of the trigrams “Gyae” signify negative, while the solid bars signify positive. The three solid bars signify sky (“Gun”), solid-broken-solid signifies earth (“Kon”), broken-solid-broken signifies moon and water (“Kam”), and broken-broken-broken signifies sun and fire (“Lee”).

History Of Use

Korea first developed a national flag in 1882 under the Emperor Go-jong, when it began to open to the outside world and trade with the United States. For this the country needed a national flag. The Qing Dynasty government of China said that Korea should use a dragon flag, but the emperor wanted a new flag for Korea. This was designed by Park, Young-hyo in 1882. Originally it had eight trigrams, but Park then changed the design to four trigrams, and the emperor declared this the national flag in 1883. From 1910, the occupying Japanese government did not allow the Korean flag to be shown. In March of 1919 there was an extraordinary event, a clandestinely-organized peaceful rebellion against the Japanese occupiers following the death of the last free emperor. At 2:00 on March 1, copies of a proclamation of independence were simultaneously read out at many locations throughout the country. Flags that had been secretly hand-made at home were suddenly pulled out and shown. Peaceful demonstrations, organized clandestinely despite the presence of Japanese secret police, were held throughout Korea. People of all ages and social classes marched peacefully together shouting their national cheer. In one incident, schoolboys suddenly pulled out Korean flags in front of Japanese officials. The demonstrations were brutally suppressed. In 1948, the Korean flag was standardized in its present form.

Description

Handmade rendition of the Korean flag. Square flag of cream coloured silk-like fabric, with two ties in each corner. Designs are formed of coloured fabric inset into cut-out areas of the flag. At the centre is a disc with an S shape division at centre, dividing the disc into two swirls, one red and one dark blue, each tapering to a point at one end (yin-yang symbol). Radiating out from the disk towards the four corners are four sets of three dark blue bars, some broken and some solid. Clockwise from the top, the first is broken-solid-broken, the second is solid-solid-solid, the third is solid-broken-solid, and the fourth is broken-broken-broken.