Professor Emeritus Heeha Sohn of Chonnam National University Sheds New Light on the Spirit of Unity in "Honamga"

Professor Emeritus Heeha Sohn gave a presentation titled "Honamga's Honam, the World Painted by Honamga: Singing of Positivity, Abundance, Peace, and Harmony" at the 1st Honamga Academic Conference held on the 18th at Yongbong Hall, Chonnam National University. Photo by Chonnam National University

Professor Emeritus Heeha Sohn of Chonnam National University presented the view that Honamga should be reinterpreted as an epic of hope and harmony and further developed as a cultural heritage that can foster regional pride.

According to Chonnam National University on October 23, Professor Emeritus Heeha Sohn gave a presentation titled "Honamga's Honam, the World Painted by Honamga: Singing of Positivity, Abundance, Peace, and Harmony" at the 1st Honamga Academic Conference held on the 18th at Yongbong Hall, Chonnam National University. In this presentation, he focused on the linguistic aesthetics and toponymic value of Honamga.

This academic conference was co-hosted and organized by the Cultural Heritage Research Institute of Chonnam National University and the Seoseok Hanshi Association, with sponsorship from Handul Co., Ltd. and the Mujin Traditional Culture Research Society.

Professor Sohn conducted a comparative study of different versions of Honamga, centering on the earliest version, the Cheonggye Edition (1911, designated as a cultural heritage of North Jeolla Special Self-Governing Province). He analyzed the language and compared the texts, evaluating Honamga as an outstanding work in both form and content for its transformation of regional place names into positive language and its playful use of words.

He defined this song as a song of hope encompassing the themes of positivity, abundance, peace, harmony, and unity, and analyzed that it reveals linguistic harmony through its structure of parallelism, rhyme, and circular composition.

Professor Sohn explained that Honamga is a work that embodies the collective hope of the people, sung by commoners in the late 19th century amid social turmoil and foreign invasions, expressing their longing for an egalitarian and peaceful world.

He further analyzed that the place names of Honam are languages of positivity and hope derived from the region's broad fields and abundant landscape, and that such language has shaped the peaceful and inclusive character of Honam people.

In this context, Professor Sohn interpreted Honamga as the origin of today's "spirit of peace and unity," emphasizing that each place name symbolizes the generous character of living together in harmony. He also suggested that if the positive and hopeful messages of Honamga are utilized in early childhood education or in schools, children will naturally develop a positive attitude and pride in their region.

Professor Sohn emphasized, "The language of Honam is a philosophy of life and the spirit of the community," and added, "Efforts are needed to carry on the traditional positive language culture of Honamga into today's education and regional culture."

Meanwhile, Professor Sohn received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Who's Who, a global biographical publisher, and is recognized as an authority in the fields of place names, dialects, the history of the Korean language, and island studies. He personally designed and named the route of "Mudol-gil" in Mudeungsan, a UNESCO Global Geopark, and has led efforts to promote and protect the prestige of Mudeungsan.

His major publications include "The Place of Words," "Malmoi," "Our Ship Terminology Dictionary," "The Origins of Korean Place Names: Jeolla and Jeju Edition," "People, Places and Place Names in the Republic of Korea," "A Thousand Letters, A Thousand Years of Culture," "The Value of a Polycentric Society and Regional Language and Literature," and "Traditional Knowledge of Islands and the Sea."

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