'Could telepathy be applied to fifth-generation smartphones?', 'What information is contained in the taegeuk and trigrams on the Taegeukgi?', 'Why are Westerners' noses higher than those of East Asians?', 'What information and mathematical theories are embedded in Arirang?'

A book presenting various discourses on these topics—topics that are intriguing and sometimes even absurd—has been published and is attracting attention.

Professor Moonho Lee of our university, a world authority in the field of jacket matrices, addresses these diverse and original questions in his book Pushkin and the Taegeuk, resolving them through mathematical analysis and presenting them in an engaging manner.

The book is highly engaging, ranging from behind-the-scenes stories of research by figures such as Fourier, Gauss, Einstein, Shannon, and Euler in mathematics and information and communications, to essays that interpret Arirang, telepathy, the Taegeukgi, and the noses of Western and East Asian people through mathematical theory. Through these, the book helps readers understand the archetypes and roots of information and communications.

This volume collects essay papers that Professor Lee previously serialized in journals such as the Journal of the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences, the Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Journal of Information Science, and Technology Review.

In particular, the mathematical and statistical analysis of the amount of information contained in Arirang, which is listed as a World Cultural Heritage, and in Korea's Taegeukgi is the first attempt of its kind in the country and has received high praise.

In the book, Professor Lee explains that Arirang establishes a Markov chain in which the phrase 'Arirang, Arirang, Arariyo' is repeated. He also suggests that, given Arirang's status as what is sometimes called the country's second national anthem, there is a need at the national level to develop stronger storytelling and to build a systematic archive.

The book also contains an interesting account that the mathematician Markov discovered the mathematical theory of Markov chains through analysis of the vowels and consonants and the contextual flexibility of phrases and lines in the poem 'Even If the World Deceives You' by the Russian poet Pushkin.