Jo Feb 10, 2022
Sin Sa Im Dang is a famous female painter and the mother of a great scholar Ri Ryul Gok.
Sin is her last name and Sa Im Dang is her pen name. She was born into a ryangban (aristocratic) family in Kangrung, Kangwon Province.
Her father, Sin Myong Hwa, despite his excellence in learning and virtue, kept himself from the service in the government.
Instead he remained jinsa (a person who has passed the primary state examination only) all his life devoting himself to the education of the rising generation. Her mother Mrs. Ri was simple and honest, yet strict and generous in the education of her children.
Sin Myong Hwa had no sons but five daughters, the second of whom was Sa Im Dang.
Having started studying when she was a very small child, she was good at everything like composition, penmanship, painting, embroidery, etc.
Especially, she was brilliant at painting. At the age of 7, she caught people’s admiration by painting a landscape and grapes with An Kyon, a famous painter in the 15th century as her model.
This was such a progressive style of painting as a number of contemporary artists were immersed in painting exotic scenery and 4 noble characters (Japanese apricot blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum, bamboo)
Her masterpieces still found include “Eggplant”, “Grapes”, “Mallard”, “Mandarin Fish”, “Heron in a Pond”, etc.
Her paintings were so lifelike that when she put out a painting in the yard, cocks and hens flocked together to peck at the insects in it. When a woman was worried about her borrowed skirt soiled in a wedding, Sa Im Dang painted a delicious-looking bunch of grapes on it. These stories show the distinct creative personality of a fine warm-hearted woman artist who loves her life and is rich in national emotion.
Her patriotism and profound humanity were also reflected in her poems and education of her children. At the age of 19, she got married to Ri Won Su, who was working as a kamchal, a position pretty low in official rank. Soon afterwards, her father died and she moved to Hansong for a married life with her widowed mother left alone. She never forgot her native village and her mother.
One day she was pleased to visit her mother after a long time. After some days of pleasure and happiness, she had to part from her mother. With tears in her eyes, she composed a poem on Taegwan Pass (a big pass across the road from Kangrung to Hansong) looking over her native village and yearning for her mother
As a fine mother, she paid a great deal of attention to the education of her children.
She had 4 sons, all of whom she exercised strict control over with fixed quantities of study every day so as to bring them up to be talents serving their country.
Her children, under the influence of their mother, studied hard to become famous. Among them, her third son Ri I (pen name – Ryul Kok) was distinguished.
From the age of 3, he learnt to read and at the age of 8 he composed a poem, thus startling people. Having passed the primary state examination at the age of 13, he consecutively served in various government posts for over 30 years. During this period he proposed a number of patriotic measures for developing the country and strengthening the national defense. Besides this, his fame as a great scholar reached far-away Ming and Japan. Her youngest son, Ri U, who inherited delicate penmanship from his mother, was also a noted calligrapher.
Sin Sa Im Dang, a famous woman artist and a mother who brought up their children to be able talents, passed away at the age of 48.
Although she failed to produce works of art based on reality, which showed her social and class limitations, she managed to paint beautiful lifelike coloured pictures contrary to the subjective black and white drawings that reflected the hobbies of feudal rulers of that time.
This served as a notable contribution to the development of realistic Korean painting.
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Jo Feb 7, 2022
Josonjol (Korean bow) is admirable greeting etiquette whereby people can fully express mutual respect and politeness with sincerity. It is one of the good manners and customs of our people, who have had observed noble and elegant proprieties from olden times.
Chairman
The term jol (bow), which means “bend one’s back” or “lean forward”, is a pure native word of our country that is indicative of greeting etiquette peculiar to our nation.
Josonjol, the traditional greeting of the Korean nation, is divided into sonjol (a bow in standing position) and anjunjol (a bow in kneeling position).
Sonjol, which is made outdoors, is subdivided into deep, common, and half bows according to greeting partners and the degree of bending.
For a deep bow you bend your body down by almost 90 degrees in standing position, for a common bow you bend your back by about 45 degrees, and for a half bow you just bow your head slightly.
Deep bows were made to the people to whom you had to pay your greatest respect such as the elderly and older ones higher in the degree of kin relationship, common bows were exchanged between people of the same age or those including relatives by marriage who had to treat each other with due courtesy although they were not very old, and half bows were made by older people in return for the bows by younger ones.
There were no differences in the way of making sonjol for men and women, and the deeper you bent your upper body, the more courteous it was regarded as. On the contrary, if it lasted too long for courtesy, it might be considered rude as it looked like a silent tribute for the dead.
When they met on the street, Korean people used to either bend their upper bodies or bow their heads in accord with their greeting partners to show respect before they exchanged words of greeting, which shows noble praiseworthy greeting manners of their style they have observed.
Anjunjol is also subdivided into deep, common and half bows according to greeting partners and the degree of bowing heads. It is for indoors and it differs from sonjol for men and women.
As deep bows were regarded as the most courteous one, they were usually made on ceremonial occasions and to people of high social status for the greatest courtesy.
Common bows were usual in everyday life and usually made on the New Year’s Day or to the elders, the relatives in the same degree of kin relationship and the people they first met. In the case of men, however, deep bows were made on the New Year’s Day while common bows, not deep ones, were often made on their wedding days or 60th birthdays. Similarly, deep bows as well as common bows were common for children on the New Year’s Day. That is why a common bow was regarded as similar to a deep bow in terms of courtesy in the past.
Half bows were made by seniors in acknowledgement of juniors’ bows, and also between people on intimate terms. They simply bowed their heads slightly in kneeling positions .
As mentioned above, you could see that although there are many greeting manners in the world, none of them is clearer than josonjol, which is varied in different places and on different occasions.
How our country could be widely known to the world as a country of courteous people in the East is also attributable, to some extent, to the fact that Korean people had created and constantly developed such admirable greeting etiquette.
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Jo Feb 3, 2022
The contest was held in January 2022.
Until last year it started on the first Friday every month and lasted for 10 days, but from this year it is supposed to take place twice a month. In other words, the first one goes on for 3 days from the first Friday and the second one lasts for another 3 days from the second Friday.
The first one was held from 7 to 10, January. About 20 000 contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China and India took part in it. 180-odd belonged to category 1, over 2 900 to category 2 and more than 16 300 to category 3. 4 problems were set forth in category 1, none of which were challenge problems.
A total of 27 contestants in category 1 won the first place, 7 out of whom are from Kim Chaek University of Technology. 18 contestants from our country including KUT students were the winners.
Other winners include 3 from China, 2 from India, one from Peru and 3 from Japan.
Our country accounts for 66.67% of the world winners, and our university 25.93%, which rises to 38.89% in our country.
The second one went on from 14 to 17.
About 15 700 contestants from tens of countries and regions including our country, China, Russia and India took part. 120-odd belonged to category 1, over 1 500 to category 2 and more than 14 100 to category 3. 5 problems were set forth in category 1, none of which were challenge problems.
A total of 29 contestants in category 1 won the first place – 17 from our country, 2 from China, 1 from Russia, 3 from India, 2 from Vietnam, 1 from Singapore, 1 from the UK and 2 from Japan.
All of the 7 students from Kim Chaek University of Technology took the first place in category 1.
17 winners from our country constitute over half of the world winners, that’s 58.62%. In the meantime, our university amounts to 24.14% in the world and 41.17% in our country.
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Jo Jan 29, 2022
These days study on a learning method for getting a dynamic characteristic model without the knowledge of an object in the field of a hierarchical supervisory control system has been actively being conducted. However, no method of applying it to existing production processes by speeding up Q-learning convergence has been proposed yet.
Kim Song Ho, a section head at Faculty of Automation Engineering, proposed a two-layer intelligent supervisory control system to adjust the online optimum setting point of the control system and set forth a new method to improve Q-learning convergence.
Unlike previous methods, the core of his suggestion is that it helps overcome trial and error Q-learning process, the weakest point of this learning, and achieve the fastest Q-learning convergence by setting optimally the way of automatically extracting experience rules of process operation from historical operation data and the initial phase of Q-learning.
His suggestion is estimated to have great practical significance in making large-scale continuous industrial processes unmanned and intelligent as it is supposed to minimize the effect of environmental changes and to guarantee product quality and stability of process operation.
He presented his essay titled “On-line set-point optimization for Intelligent Supervisory Control and Improvement of Q-learning Convergence” to SCI journals “Control Engineering Practice”.
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