I’m going to ramble for a bit but stay with me.

In Korean, we sometimes say to others, “Dangshin mutcho.” Translated roughly, the meaning is something like, “You’re so cool” or “you’re alright,” depending perhaps on the parlance of the day.

If we look at the same words written in ancient Veda writing, we find a very powerful phrase. Veda is the holy script of the ancient Indian Brahman, and these few words were thought to be the word of truth. It was said that the Brahman priests would read them out loud repeatedly and, when they did so, they could even manipulate the gods. Even the Buddhists have a similar phrase that is known as the ultimate truth. When the word “sacca” was spoken aloud, people believed it had some mystical power.

When I was a child and my stomach hurt, my mother would rub my belly and say in soothing tones over and over how her hands had “the healing touch.” Magically, the stomachache would go away. Later, I came to realize that what she had been repeating was also “the truth,” which, in a sense, had its own mystical power.

Our Korean colleagues will remember the famous singer, Song Dae-kwan, who sang “my shiny day.” Well, he finally got what he asked for. And then there’s that other singer, Cha Joong-rak. He sang about how we lose love like leaves fall and he also disappeared quickly at an early age. It wasn’t much different than the song. (Just as an aside, keep in mind that Elvis sang the original and he left us at an early age, too!)

Let me get to the point. I want to ask you to come up with some kind of slogan or saying that we can use at work to keep us going. Something that we can make our mantra, if you will. Nothing is coming to mind, I suppose, but if you think about it, you might stumble across all those toasts that Koreans use when we drink. There are so many reasons why we drink, aren’t there? Sometimes because the weather is bad, sometimes because the weather is good. Sometimes when business is bad, sometimes when it flourishes. In Korea, we often use a standard toast that sounds like “We ha yeo,” and it is basically a catchall toast for everything. Like saying, “lets drink to ____, and you fill in the blank. You’ll often hear those words if you go out after work with your colleagues. But besides the run-of-the mill ones, there are also some special sayings that use word play by abbreviating the initial sounds of certain words and putting them together to make a new one that takes on new meaning beyond the original conception. Almost like an acronym.
There are ones using flower names (Jin Dal Rae!, which means Azalea) to toast for a great next day. Another one (Gae Na Ri!, which means Korean Forsythia) tells us to kick back and relax all our social rules about ages and positions, and just have fun. Then there is Sa Woo Na!, which sounds like sauna but is really just a juxtaposition of two words telling us to share our love and friendship. And another, Dan Na Gui!, tells us to raise our glasses to the fact that we’re all together.

But the one I like the best is still “Dang Shin Mut Cho!” The real meaning is that you live a great and exciting life, one that you can be proud of. But it includes the notion that we don’t always win. To me, this is like a splash of cool water on a hot summer day, especially in this day and age when everything in our world is so competitive, where even a string of wins isn’t enough to satisfy us. Sometimes, it's good to admit that we can lose. Sometimes, losing is in fact winning. Soft can be hard and living can also be dying, or vice versa.

Let’s turn our thinking upside-down: when you say “losing is winning,” then hot becomes cool. In advance, let me raise my glass to you: “Dang Shin Mut Cho!”


Kim Nak-hoi