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Post by ajk on Mar 8, 2016 21:23:52 GMT -5
Wow that old princess is a real battleaxe--reminds me of King Gongmin's mother in Shin Don.
We got a real good look at the illusion-painted screen in this episode, the one behind the king. That thing is amazing! Would really like to know if it's authentic because I've never seen anything remotely like it in a historical. The style is so unusual--the color scheme and the lack of fine details.
Was glad to see Youngsil daydreaming about the planets during that confrontation scene in the construction yard. At least I wasn't the only one bored silly by it.
So not only are they jumping the gun on Copernicus with the heliocentrism, but now they're questioning circular orbits? Ahead of Kepler by 200 years? Ugh! But let's save it for a post-series rant if they don't abandon it.
Well at least JYS learned something from that arson fire in his shack. Copying all of those records, what a pain but hey, smart move.
Anybody know what the significance is of those thin wooden sticks they lay at right angles and the characters the guys are writing down based on the sticks? I don't know what that is.
"Yes, your majesty, you sure are thick!" Geez, those could have been Hwang Hui's last words! I'm surprised Sejong let him get away with that. Maybe Hwang had more than the one drink we saw him swallow.
That scene with Hwang Hui and Yi Cheon talking during the evening snowfall...we couldn't see their breath. Fake snow! Fake snow! Oops.
Ha Yeon did a real nice job of presenting the other side of things to JYS; that was a good scene. But JYS is only doing what the king tells him; who does Ha expect him to obey? And JYS begging Ha to let the work continue, who does he think makes the call on that? Weird.
Where did this story angle about the coins come from? It never came up during GKS, not at all. Apparently it was real, though, and was kind of a big deal. I wish they had introduced it better because from what I've been able to scrape together online it's a very interesting story. (I'm not sure what we saw about it in this episode is entirely accurate; it may not have been. But not sure.)
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Post by sageuk on Mar 8, 2016 22:28:51 GMT -5
WIth the officials wanting the king to reject science and focus more on neo-Confucian teachings, I couldn't help but think of the anti-science group of Republicans in COngress. Whether the writer meant to parallel this modern problem with this, I have no idea; I don't even know if the conservative party in Korea is anti-science, so I could be overthinking things. Besides, the main reason Ha Yeon is against science is mostly out of fear of retaliation from Ming, though he does bring up the whole Neo-COnfucian excuse.
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Post by truth on Mar 9, 2016 0:12:07 GMT -5
WIth the officials wanting the king to reject science and focus more on neo-Confucian teachings, I couldn't help but think of the anti-science group of Republicans in COngress. Whether the writer meant to parallel this modern problem with this, I have no idea; I don't even know if the conservative party in Korea is anti-science, so I could be overthinking things. Besides, the main reason Ha Yeon is against science is mostly out of fear of retaliation from Ming, though he does bring up the whole Neo-COnfucian excuse. Ironic since Jeong Dojeon, who basically founded Joseon and instituted neo-Confucianism as the state ideology of Joseon, was a radical atheist. The conservative party in Korea isn't anti-science. Unlike America, Korean parties don't really have religious colors and religions aren't even important issues in Korean elections. I mean, nobody in Korea have to prove their profound faith in Jesus or God in order to gain candidacy or votes. Many of the candidates are often Christians, in fact, the current Korean president is a Catholic and the former was an Evangelist. Both are from the conservative party as well, but neither of them ever mentioned their faith during their campaign nor during any speeches as presidents. The view in Korea is that religion simply has no place in politics. People expect politicians to focus on issues that actually matter in enriching the lives of people and leading the country forward, not religions. I think being a neo-Confucian country for 500 years might have affected such view. By the way, the conservative party in Korea leans more towards the left than the American liberals, and yet, they too refer to Korean progressives as "commies" and "socialist" just as the American Republicans would say to the Democrats. Either the Korean conservatives aren't really conservative enough or the American liberals aren't "commies" as the Republicans would love to call them.
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Post by simisteve on Mar 13, 2016 0:17:00 GMT -5
For those keeping score, the LA station cut out the entire scene with the king and princess, YC & Hwang Hee, among others....it went from Sejong saying, after they saw the dead bodies removed "there is someone i have to see..." to Hwang & Yi walking in the street at night. THANKS A LOT.
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Post by mikey on Mar 13, 2016 20:23:20 GMT -5
So not only are they jumping the gun on Copernicus with the heliocentrism, but now they're questioning circular orbits? Ahead of Kepler by 200 years? Ugh! But let's save it for a post-series rant if they don't abandon it. I also have to admit that I’m getting a little concerned about these seemingly fast-and-loose assertions that JYS somehow made such monumental scientific discoveries fifty, a hundred, even two-hundred years before his European counterparts. Now, I’m certainly not trying to be “Eurocentric” about this, and if there’s actual historical documentation that JYS really did accomplish these things, then he rightfully deserves to be moved to the top of the list amongst the world’s greatest scientists of his era. But, in the absence of proof, it seems as if it’s nothing more than silly feel-good nonsense to (inaccurately) puff up the Korean public’s sense of self-esteem. Sure hope this trend doesn’t continue, or we’ll all likely be treated to the next KBS historical/science drama, where we discover that some 19th century Joseon physicist came up with “E=mc2” a hundred years before the birth of Albert Einstein …
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Post by mikey on Mar 13, 2016 20:32:57 GMT -5
For those keeping score, the LA station cut out the entire scene with the king and princess, YC & Hwang Hee, among others....it went from Sejong saying, after they saw the dead bodies removed "there is someone i have to see..." to Hwang & Yi walking in the street at night. THANKS A LOT. Back when I lived in SoCal (has it really been eleven years since I left?) I remember them doing the same thing. A 58 minute show would invariably be pared down to 50 minutes or so, each and every week. It wouldn't have been so bad had they been careful about what they edited, but it always seemed as if the edited parts were almost always randomly chosen. Often really critical portions went missing, leaving the viewer scratching his head and wondering "what the heck happened?"
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Post by ajk on Mar 14, 2016 2:11:57 GMT -5
Yeah, I've had the exact same suspicions, mikey--are they doing this for pro-Korean reasons. Am saving the matter for after the series but you make a very good point. They did very conveniently eliminate the it-didn't-really-happen argument in the subsequent episode (won't post a spoiler but they did). So why go in this direction in the first place? Hmmmmm....
The cuts to episodes are one of the best things about getting uncut episodes on YouTube. I sure hope they post JYY there when it airs.
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Post by bird11 on Mar 21, 2016 13:00:45 GMT -5
Finished this episode today and I am going to force myself to get up out of this chair before I get sucked into the next one, really am enjoying this drama. I really like reading all the posts here and looking at the information given to delve into more about Korean History. In one of them, I remember seeing a painted screen that had books painted on it, like the one in this drama, though differnt that most screens it made sense since this King is so pro science,learning, ect. The link was in ajk's post of ep12. I have to say I was happy to see ajk ask about the sticks, I was thinking maybe I just haven't watched enough of these types of dramas to know what they are. My thought was that they were using them to calculate things-- like a type of abacus? It made my head hurt to think of what they had to go thru to copy all those records! Writing Hangul looks difficult as it is, not to mention using a brush and ink! I remember when I showed my daughter a multiple page report I did on Japan waaaay back in 6th grade and her comment was "What about all the mistakes and scatched out words?" --- yeah, hard to tell her that back in the day we didn't have spell check, white out or computers!! (hey, at least I got an "A-" on it! and lead me on a long love of Japan and Korean culture) That guy who is the head on the Ming envoy? He looks more like a comedian than someone to take seriously! Just totally rubs me the wrong way-- more of a jerk than anything else. (still not wanting to move after a long work weekend, I googled "Did Koreans ever use sticks to calculate" and came up with something called "counting rods" on Wikipedia that was used in China, Korea, ect. -- so maybe my guess of them using it to calculate wasn't so far off ?!?!?!??)
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Post by ajk on Mar 21, 2016 15:38:08 GMT -5
Wow, bird, you put me to shame--great job! You found the answer, 100% nailed it. Here's the Wikipedia link with some basic information about the counting rods: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rodsThere's a lot more to be found here and there in other Google hits, but this is good enough for us. I owe you one! After the series ends I'll take all of the informational links we've posted in this board and put them all in one reference thread. We've found a lot of great stuff.
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Post by bird11 on Mar 21, 2016 17:50:22 GMT -5
Thanks, ajk! It's almost embarrassing to say that the first thing that came to mind was that they were making letters/hangul with the sticks (why would they do that? I don't know) when it dawned on me that they were moving the sticks like someone counting......and then I was off to search google!
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