Choiryang wegwan jeongyeong
"What was the meaning of leaving in a painting a trading port bordering a neighboring land?"
📝ONGO's Reflection
This is an ink painting in which the Joseon painter Byeon Bak rendered the full view of the Choryang Japanese trading post, where Joseon and Japan exchanged goods. The harbor, the buildings, and the coming-and-going roads spread out with composure. I see, in this scene, a passage for meeting another world. The trading post was a boundary and, at the same time, a place of exchange. Where different things collide there is always tension, yet there new goods, news, and learning passed back and forth. When a boundary is opened in orderly fashion rather than closed, that place becomes not a severance but a gate of meeting.
🌱Apply It Today
Do not close the place where you border on difference with a wall; keep it open as an orderly gate.
