From left, Lee Han-su, mayor of Iksan City, Jeong Se-hyun, president of Wonkwang University and Kim Seung-hwan, superintendent of Education for Jeollabukdo, pose after signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the university in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, Wednesday. / Courtesy of Research Center of the Mind Humanities

By Chung Ah-young

The Research Center of the Mind Humanities of Wonkwang University in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Jeollabukdo Office of Education and Iksan City Government, Wednesday.

After being selected as the beneficiary to receive support for the “Humanities Korea” project of the National Research Foundation of Korea on Dec. 1 last year for mind humanities, the institute will conduct research on humanities with 10 billion won from the foundation and the university for the next 10 years.

To effectively fulfill the purpose of the research center, the MOU is expected to facilitate the exchange of research staff, support of joint research and various academic events, the center said.

The institute officially opened the center by hanging a sign at the office with some 15 research staff on the same day.

“Now, the research center is open to the public and is fully geared up to conduct research projects,” Park Kwang-soo, director of the center, said.

The mind humanities is a new discipline focusing on researching the minds of human beings by combining various human studies both from the East and the West and apply it in everyday life.

It is based on an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach that encompasses traditional Western and Eastern philosophies and religions including Korean traditional values, along with medical sciences such as psychology and neurology.

The study consists of four fields — thoughts (philosophy); healing the body and mind; education (nurturing humanity through practices); and social networks.

The thought fields delve into traditional philosophies from the ancient, medieval and modern times of the East and West, and reconstitutes them into a new paradigm. The healing field adopts joint research by Western psychology and neurology specialists and Oriental medicine experts to seek harmony in the body, mind and spirit.

The education field is designed to create mind-healing programs through practices such as yoga and meditation to be used as part of curriculums in schools and universities. The social network field is to digitalize the content related to the mind humanities and make it available for more people to share and create a digitalized cultural atlas, which consists of a cultural database, operating system and service programs.

The mind humanities feature the values and virtues of traditional Korean religions and philosophies such as Won-Buddhism, Confucianism, Jeungsangyo, Chondogyo, Taoism and other indigenous beliefs.