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Intuitive Seo Jung-joo

Posted November. 30, 2018 07:39,   

Updated November. 30, 2018 07:39

한국어

Seo Jung-joo, the representative poet and a great literary figure of Korea, developed the culture and emotions of Koreans using a unique language. His outstanding linguistic sense, abundant production of 15 books of poems, spectacular completeness of work, and use of traditional materials go down into history. His work such as "From the Chrysanthemum Side," "Self-portrait," "Scops Owl," and "Eastern Sky" are still loved by many. He has been criticized as an opportunist, however. He wrote some 10 poems, novels, and reviews praising Japan as well as making an appearance at a television show at the advent of the Chun Doo-hwan administration to support him. His life was not as beautiful as his poems. The result of analyzing his calligraphy shows the reason why he became a conspicuous poet but also tells us the reason why he did not live a good life.

The characteristic of his writing is strongly shown in the way his writes the Korean alphabet "ㄹ," which shows that he is sensitive and intuitive but it crosses the line and is impulsive. At age 80, Seo Jung-joo wrote his poem "Crane" in his own handwriting. In the poem, there are nine "ㄹ"s. Most of the alphabet, however, are disconnected in the middle, demonstrating illogicalness and intuition. His writings show that he has a characteristic of identifying a subject directly without going through the reason for action of decision-making or reasoning. Moreover, as the space of three horizontal lines that consist "ㄹ" is different, it can be seen that Seo prioritized feelings and sentiment over logic. Such analysis is backed by irregular size and space of letters.

Other traits of Seo Jung-joo’s handwriting is related to his anti-nation and anti-democracy actions. First of all, the space between letters is wide. People who tend to have a handwriting of this sort is generous of him or herself and adapts easily to new or different environments. In addition, the letters, the first letters in particular, is big. This tells us that the poet is a broad-minded, exhibitionist, bold, and extroverted. These kinds of characteristics are frequently shown in pro-Japanese collaborator or renegades. Seo Jung-joo’s sentiment, intuition, expressions and aspirations to become the very best made him a great literary figure but at the same time reveals the difficulties in protecting himself at the age of turbulence due to his illogicalness, overly excessive intuition, and lack of will.