A Formal Ontology of Korean Traditional Dance
The emotional-aesthetic arc at the heart of Kim Ji-won's theoretical framework — from affective bond through grief and its digestion to transcendent collective energy.
The eight named dance traditions in the ontology, each encoding unique aesthetic principles, heritage designations, and relational structures.
The philosophical cosmology underpinning Korean traditional dance — from the primordial polarity of Taegeuk through the five transformative phases.
The supreme ultimate (太極) and its primary polarity into Yin and Yang (陰陽). In dance, expressed as the perpetual interplay of stillness and motion, tension and release, the masculine and feminine qualities of movement.
The five transformative phases governing material and cosmic change. In taepyeongmu (태평무), the five colors and directional qualities of ohaeng are embodied through choreographic spatial patterning.
The triad of Heaven, Earth, and Human (天地人) anchors Korean cosmology. The circular form (圓形, wonhyeong) — embodied in ganggangsullae — enacts this cosmic completeness through collective circular dance.
Breath as the generative rhythm of movement. In seungmu, the entire choreographic structure is organized around cycles of inhalation and exhalation, making hoheup both technique and philosophy.
Resonance of vital energy — borrowed from classical East Asian aesthetics and applied to the living quality of dance: the sense that motion emanates from an internal, animated force.
Three generations of Korean dance — from the founding modern choreographer through the master teacher to the present researcher.
Pioneer of modern Korean dance; synthesized traditional forms with modern choreographic techniques in the early 20th century.
Direct lineage inheritor and teacher; the crucial transmission link connecting the founding generation to contemporary scholarship and practice.
Researcher, performer, and theorist. Originator of the sakim concept; creator of the han–heung framework; developer of the Korean dance notation system.
Force-directed visualization of all 53 nodes and ~60 edges. Drag nodes to rearrange. Hover to inspect connections. Click to highlight neighborhoods.
Six thematic groupings organizing Kim Ji-won's scholarly contributions across philosophy, aesthetics, semiotics, and regional traditions.
Kim Ji-won's dance notation system represents a formalization of the embodied knowledge encoded in Korean traditional dance — translating the ephemeral into a reproducible symbolic system.
The notation captures not merely positional and spatial data, but the qualitative dimensions of movement: the breath-rhythm of hoheup, the emotional valence of han and heung states, and the dynamic qualities that differentiate Korean dance from generic movement description.
Crucially, the system is built to encode the han–heung framework directly into its notation conventions, making the philosophical arc legible at the level of individual movement phrases. This positions the notation system as both a practical archival tool and a theoretical instrument.
The system has been applied to salpurichum, seungmu, and taepyeongmu, and forms a core component of Kim Ji-won's academic cluster on semiotics (cluster_semiotics).
The raw ontology specification file — node types, edge list, text diagram, and full node index — as authored.