時
si
時 is not a clock, it is a finger pointing at 'when'
The picture A finger landing on one spot of an endlessly moving line and saying: about here. 時 is one spot on the moving line; 間 is the gap opened up between two spots.
Where the picture shows up in 時
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the length between two spots
오늘은 시간(時間)이 없어요.
o-neu-reun si-ga-ni eop-seo-yo
I have no time today.
Sand streaming out between the fingers, the pile getting shorter and shorter
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spots chopped into notches
시계(時計)가 멈췄어요.
si-gye-ga meom-chwo-sseo-yo
The clock has stopped.
A hand on the wall that used to step from notch to notch, now stuck on one
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landing on the same spot
두 사람이 동시(同時)에 말했어요.
du sa-ra-mi dong-si-e ma-rae-sseo-yo
They both spoke at the same moment.
Two voices rising off the very same mark on the line
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that spot on the line behind you
당시(當時)에는 저도 몰랐어요.
dang-si-e-neun jeo-do mol-la-sseo-yo
I didn't know either, back then.
Looking back down the road travelled and pressing a finger on one far spot
You see the you who stood at that spot, not the you of now.
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the right spot
지금은 적절한 시기(時期)가 아니에요.
ji-geu-meun jeok-jeol-han si-gi-ga a-ni-e-yo
Now is not the moment.
A window that opens only briefly — reach out now and your hand meets the closed pane
All of it in one picture
時 is a finger pressed onto a line that keeps flowing. Measure between two spots and you have time; chop the spots into notches you can look at and you have a clock. When two fingers land on the same spot, that is simultaneously; when you look back and press one spot on the line already travelled, that is back then. And when the question becomes which spot on the line is the right one, that is timing.