Justice.
Courtesy.
The trained stillness of the hand.

The highest art of combat
is not the flourish of steel
but the discipline that tempers it—
a grace learned slowly,
without announcement.

For the sword is only an object,
and technique a language
too often spoken in anger.
Mastery begins elsewhere:
after the long schooling of restraint,
after the heat has cooled,
when the heart has been instructed.

Then—
not the counterblow,
but the offering.
A spoon held out
to the one who grips the blade.

Not weakness.
Not surrender.
But resonance:
the quiet force that reaches
where violence cannot.

Information, understood.
Meaning, transferred.

This—
and nothing louder—
is the true weapon.

—Yoon Tae-Hun, August 17, 1998