The architecture of ideology

Description:

**Cheju Island**, Korea's historic island of exile, with a harsh natural environment, early developed a negative image as human habitat. The author challenges this perception and shows how Neo-Confucian state ideology during the Yi dynasty (A.D. 1392-1910) created and conserved the island as a viable habitat by using feng-shui--a powerful medieval science of surveying--to shape the island's built environment and quality of life. The outcome, reflecting sustained political commitment to the philosophical concept of enlightened undervelopment, was a sincere landscape inhabited by a virtuous people. Cheju Island, Korea's historic island of exile, with a harsh natural environment, early developed a negative image as human habitat. The author challenges this perception and shows how Neo-Confucian state ideology during the Yi dynasty (A.D. 1392-1910) created and conserved the island as a viable habitat by using feng-shui--a powerful medieval science of surveying--to shape the island's built environment and quality of life. The outcome, reflecting sustained political commitment to the philosophical concept of enlightened undervelopment, was a sincere landscape inhabited by a virtuous people.

subjects: Jujudo,  feng-shui (Korean p'ungsu),  cultural landscape,  Neo-Confucian ideology,  Hallasan,  Neo-confucianism,  Geomancy,  Korea, religion,  Civilization,  History

People: Chu Hsi

Places: Cheju-do,  Cheju-do (Korea),  Korea (South)

Times: 1972