Person1489 – 1546
Seo Gyeong-deok (Hwadam)
Also called: Hwadam
Neo-Confucian scholar of Gaeseong who never took office and stressed qi in a monism of material force
He built a study by the Hwadam pool in Gaeseong and spent his life in learning without ever taking office. Holding that all things are made of a single qi that merely gathers and disperses, he put qi before li, and his thought later influenced Yi I's qi-centred school. Tradition counts him with Hwang Jini and the Bagyeon Falls as the "three wonders of Songdo".