人中
Injung (Philtrum, 人中)
The shallow vertical groove running from under the nose to the upper lip is the injung. Its name, ‘the middle of the person’ (人中), compresses a whole old understanding of the body into one word.
Here is how tradition loaded even longevity stories onto this small groove, next to the famous 1949 experiment that explains why such readings sound so plausible.
Editorial markA plate for examining the names a culture placed on the face.
Location plate
A small valley between nose and mouth
Korea's standard dictionary defines the injung as ‘the hollow groove between the nose and the upper lip’. Anatomy calls it the philtrum, a trace left where the face's left and right prominences meet at the midline before birth.
On the plate's vertical midline the injung sits right below the jundu (nose tip), above the lips. Short and shallow as it is, the old charts respected it enough to give it its own thirteen-part label.
- Plate label
- 人中
- Anatomical term
- philtrum
Name and tradition
‘The middle of the person’
The customary gloss goes like this: above it the nose, where heaven's breath passes; below it the mouth, where earth's food enters; between the two, the middle of the person. In traditional East-Asian medicine the acupoint here is called sugu (水溝) or the injung point.
The old physiognomy is said to have promised long life to a long, well-carved philtrum, but its length is not used to judge health or lifespan. It reads more naturally as the symbol of a passage between above and below turning into a wish for longevity.
Psychology in contrast
The trap of lines that fit everyone
In 1949 psychologist Bertram Forer handed students the identical vague personality sketch, told each it was written just for them, and nearly all felt it was ‘so me’. That tendency is the Barnum (Forer) effect.
It is the same mechanism that makes ‘a philtrum like this means a person like that’ feel uncannily right. A line that fits everyone tells you nothing specific about you; that single sentence is the psychology worth taking from this spot.
Texts and research
Sources for this plate
- Standard Korean dictionary entry for injung (人中)
- The sugu (水溝) / injung acupoint name in traditional East-Asian medicine, as customarily transmitted
- Forer (1949), Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology: the personal-validation experiment
Terms and further reading