Gyeongpo: Poeun

In my first post about Gyeongpo, I mentioned the shrine I visited, dedicated to Jeong Mongju (aka Poeun). Below is the shrine, including a frontal view of the gate to the shrine. Apparently the shrine contains a portrait of Jeong Mongju; unforunately, the gate was locked. I went back on Sunday in the hope that it might be open, but alas, it was not. The portrait might be the one below, which I retrieved from Wikipedia.Org.

As I mentioned in the other post, one of ITF Taekwon-Do's patterns is named after Poeun; hence my interest in him, apart for him being a poet. Ironically, I find the pattern Poeun to be unusually difficult to perform. The pattern is not that difficulty, really; I just have a strange mental block to it. It started a couple of years ago, I think in 2005 at the National ITF Taekwon-Do Championships, in Pretoria. It was the last time I participated in a Taekwon-Do tournament as a competitor. (I've retired from Taekwon-Do tournaments for two reasons, the one mostly to do with the fact that they are usually on Sabbaths.) The night before the competition I was quite sick. I had a serious fever, shivering the whole night. The next day I had to perform the customary two patterns. One, a chosen pattern. I chose Juche. The other, the assigned pattern. The umpires assigned my competitor and I Poeun. Somewhere during the performance of Poeun I got stuck, and ever since then I always get stuck doing it. I lost against Ricky Dias, who I must say, did a splendid performance at these patterns. Recently I have been practicising Poeun again, and if ever it should happen that I come out of retirement from Taekwon-Do competitions, and I perform in the pattern category again, and I'm assigned to do Poeun, I hope to do a much better job at it. Those are many ifs.