Hope everyone had a great Monday.
During this weekend, I've done some researches for my project about Korean culture.
As a part of this project, I found some interesting stories about taboos in Korea, and I’d like to share a few of them.
Taboos that I read clearly fell into two categories. One category consists of the taboos that are backed with logical evidence (but which may not be a fact).This type of taboo can be explained by a Korean taboo that discourages writing our names in red. Such taboo exists as back in past, King was the only person who could write his name down in red. So when a person wrote his name in red, he or she was considered as a potential rebel, and therefore was punished.
On the other hand, there were some taboos which do not have any logical evidence to support themselves. They were rather based on superstitions. One good example would be a taboo on Koreans not stepping on the thresholds of their houses. This is because threshold represents a boundary between a room and outside. Our ancestors believed that by stepping on the threshold, the boundary that protects the room from evil spirits gets weak, and those spirits invade into the room by taking that chance.
As far as I know, more taboos in Korea are based on superstitions than logical or historical evidence.
Does anyone know about more taboos that are based on clear (or logical) evidence?
Please share your ideas!
Thanks.
This is very interesting. But as we know those are only superstition, we don't do such things.
ReplyDeleteI knew the first taboo of writing a name in red and it is still considered as a taboo for many Koreans. But I thought the reason behind it is that name in red signifies death. I wonder where that came from. I never knew about the second taboo. To me, taboos sound unreasonable, it shouldn't be taken seriously^^
ReplyDeleteI think most taboos are not based on logical evidence, but on 'the appearance' and 'manners'.
ReplyDeleteFor example, in Korea when someone has a habit of shaking his or her legs the seniors tell them
to stop doing that because it will 'make good luck go away' (in other words, 'brings bad luck').
It has no logical explanation but to prevent oneself from appearing in 'rude manner' to someone in front of you. Or it could be understood to save other from 'shallow appearance' - Certainly, shaking one's legs distractingly DO NOT seem so elegant.
Same goes for the saying 'to avoid clipping your fingernails at night'. It's just said to prevent you from distracting others at quiet night-No ghost will REALLY haunt you if you do that :b
I also thought that the reason way Koreans are discouraged writing names in 'red' is because writing names in 'red' is for only those who are dead. I think I might had a wrong information about it... But as Kimsun said I also don't care about taboos a lot too :)
ReplyDeleteI mean we already know these are only superstitions. So many peolple don't care of them. They write names with red pens and sometimes step on a threshold of house easily.So I think we don't have to investigate such logical evidences.
ReplyDelete