[Korean Culture & Language] Think three times before you act

Hello, this is Uptempo!

Suppressing one’s feelings, whether it’s anger, sadness, grief, or frustration, can put one’s body under stress. It may have an impact on blood pressure, memory, and self-esteem.

In the clinical field, anger has usually been studied in terms of aggressive behavior. Asians, on the other hand, tend to suppress their anger more frequently than they express it. 화병(Hwabyung) is a culturally specific anger syndrome that is known to happen in Korea as a result of the continued repression of anger.

There is a Korean idiom, ‘참을 인 세 번이면 살인도 면한다’. It is directly translated to ‘Suppressing your emotions three times will keep you from committing murder’. What it really means is that ‘you can even avoid committing murder if you think three times before you act’. Thinking before acting is important when making a decision because it helps one to act more rationally rather than emotionally.

The idiom originated from a story of an uneducated farmer whose wife was well-educated. His wife has always advised him to think three times before expressing his feelings. 

One day, he returned home earlier than usual after working in the woods and saw a pair of man’s straw shoes outside the door. He peaked into the room and saw his wife lying next to a bald man. The farmer got angry and was about to kill the man with an axe. However, he recalled what his wife had always said: “Think three times before you act.”

He cleared his throat before entering the room instead of storming in swinging an axe. Both his wife and the ‘man’ were  awakened by the noise. The farmer only then realized that it was a Buddhist nun and not a man. 

Has ‘참을 인 세 번 (Thinking three times before acting)’ ever saved you from regretting your decisions?