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(July 2007)| - Not to be confused with the South Korean singer,
Choi Siwon. |Revised Romanization||Choe Chiwon| |Revised
Romanization||Hae(-)un, Goun| Choe Chiwon (857-10th century) was
a noted Korean Confucian official, philosopher, and poet of the
late Unified Silla period (668-935). He studied for many years
in Tang China, passed the Tang imperial examination, and rose to
high office there before returning to Silla, where he made
ultimately futile attempts to reform the governmental apparatus
of a declining Silla state. In his final years he turned more
towards Buddhism and became a hermit scholar residing in and
around Korea's Haeinsa temple. Early life and study in Tang
Choe Chiwon was born in the Saryang district of the Silla
capital of Gyeongju in 857. He was of the so-called "head rank
six" (yukdupum 六頭品) class, a hereditary class in Silla's
stringent bone rank system affixed to those of mixed
aristocratic/commoner birth. As a member of head