The Korean worldview is underlined by a deliberate making of space to improvise; space for spontaneity, the spirit of which I will refer to with the Korean adjective, mahk. This spirit permeates the original food, music, writing, dance, and other arts in Korea. But "mahk" is not an elevated term in Korean vernacular. It can infer crudeness, appearing in the beginning of words such as mahkgulli, an unfiltered rice wine long associated with old school working-class culture. Though in some contexts, it can even go so far as to imply carelessness, at its core, mahk is simply a lack of embellishment, a matter-of-fact departure from the overwrought in general. Mahk is an unapologetic rejection of refinement for the sake of refinement, of ostentation that gets in the way of practicality or honesty. In the indigenous architecture of Korea, mahk begins its influence in the initial site planning stages, and resurfaces again and again, indeed, is the driving force behind, the processes of design, material selection, and construction. -Byoungsoo Cho