Divided Yet Shared Emotions on Semiotic Colours and Shapes Between the Flags of South Korea, North Korea, and Korea Unification

This paper aims to find the commonness in tangible-intangible cultural heritage among the three flags (South Korea, North Korea, Unification) as a means for uniting Korea. Accordingly, theories of emotions, colours and shapes, including semiotic interpretations are its methodology. Semiotics offers flexibility in finding the commonness between the three flags in different situations and describes the process of encoding and decoding as an interpretative framework. Decoding interprets and evaluates the meaning concerning the relevant signs, which are systems of related conventions for correlating signifier and signified in specific domains. (i) The South Korean flag has three parts composed of a white rectangle, a red-blue circle, Taeguk, and four black trigrams. White is a traditional colour of representing peace and purity; the red-blue circle in the middle is the Yin-Yang philosophy of the universe. The red half is positive forces and the blue half negative ones. In 1882, King Kojong of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) instructed a circle which combines the red/king, blue/officer and white/people. (ii) The North Korean flag consists of a red panel, bordered by a white stripe and a blue stripe. The red panel contains a red star, a symbol of communism and socialism within a white circle. The red expresses revolutionary traditions; the blue for sovereignty, peace and friendship; the white for purity. (iii) The Unification flag represents a united Korea as one team in sports events. On the white background, a blue silhouette of the Korean peninsula appears in the centre.

[IVI.CID] 70d7799b-57c7-4e99-9d5e-f5423e9426a3