Chosen by scholars, "mil un bul u" pretty much sums up a frustrating year
Kyosu Sinmun, or "The Professors’ Newspaper," announced Sunday it has chosen this year’s saja seongeo, or "four character idiom" in Chinese characters, after surveying a group of 208 staff writers and professors that contribute to the publication.
Mil un bul u (密雲不雨) was chosen by 48.6 percent of respondents as the four character idiom that best expresses the political, economic, and social mood for 2006.
Mil un bul u means "dense clouds but no rain" and describes a situation where the conditions for something are in place, but the occurrence is not happening. Thus, it expresses a mood in which one is on the verge of an explosion of frustration and dissatisfaction.
The term is from the I Ching, or Book of Changes, an ancient Confucian text.
Respondents appear to have chosen mil un bul u because the country seems to have had as much as it can take of things such as the lack of an ability by politicians to work together, social conflict stemming from a crisis in presidential leadership, skyrocketing real estate prices, and North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear bomb. The runner-up was gyo gak sal u (矯角殺牛), which means "trying to fix a bull’s horns but killing the bull. It was selected by 22.1 percent of recipients, who cited that the president’s campaign for reform this year was not successful, but just shook up the country politically. Man sa hyu ui (萬事休矣), which means all efforts are likely to result in nothing, garnered 11.1 percent of the vote. The phrase alludes to the fact that there is no expectation of a solution for various contradictory factors in Korean society. Dang ran geo cheol (螳螂拒轍), refering to a mantis’ futile struggle against a rolling wheel, was chosen by 9.1 percent of respondents, due to the fact that those currently in power use poor strategies to recklessly and rashly challenge the established power elite of Korean society. Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]
