Intuition in Korean Fengshui Du-Gyu Kim (Woosuk University, South Korea)
1. Elements of Korean Fengshui
Korean Fengshui is composed with the following three elements;
First, it involves examining the Chi(氣) of a land, then determining use of the site that is suited to its Chi. What sites or areas are suitable for graves? What locations are suitable for homes, temples, or schools? What areas have the potential to become cities? Fengshui is typically applied to these three areas: Fengshui for gravesites, Fengshui for residential sites, and Fengshui for village and city -even capital of a country - sites. Second, after determining suitable use for the land, Fengshui is used to determine the spatial arrangement and structural layout of the selected site in accordance with the "native properties of Asia": Yin-Yang(陰陽), the Five Elements(五行), Eight Trigrams(八卦) and the unique theory of Fengshui. In the case of a residence, Fengshui is applied to determine the physical layout of such elements as the front gate, bedroom and kitchen. Today, this type of Fengshui is quite well known in the United States and Western Europe as well. Third, a central tenet of Fengshui calls for the alteration of sites that do not correspond with the two aforementioned principles so that they conform to Fengshui concepts. This is known as complementary and suppressive Fengshui; such that, "good" sites are complemented, "bad" sites are suppressed."1)
According to Fengshui theory, if a person lives on a good site he or she will be influenced by that site and become successful (housing site Fengshui), and if an ancestor is buried at a good site, his descendants will prosper, but if an ancestor is buried at a bad site, his descendants will suffer misfortune. A "good site" is one that satisfies the principles of Fengshui. Propitious sites are determined by the lay of the land, which requires a balance among the Blue Dragon (of the east), White Tiger (of the west), Red Phoenix (of the south), Black Tortoise (of the north) and another conditions.
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