Yutnori and Yutjeom Culture

"Experience Korea’s vibrant Yutnori tradition—an engaging folk game fostering teamwork and strategy. Plus, discover Yut divination, a fascinating way to predict the year ahead based on ancient hexagrams. Dive into the cultural significance behind this beloved pastime!"

In Korea, there are many games that people play together at the beginning of the new year, and among them, I will introduce Yutnori.

1 Yut nori

It is usually played from the first day of the first lunar month to the first full moon of the new year.

In modern times, it is the most well-known folk game along with tug-of-war, and unlike other folk games, it has many elements similar to modern board games.

It is also the most popular game because it is good for several people to form teams, put their heads together, cooperate, and promote harmony, and it has the advantage of a moderate play time.

There are round and square boards, but since the 1990s, when factory-made Yut boards were mass-produced, square Yut boards, which are better for mass production than round ones in terms of printing and fabric processing, have become widespread.

Before that, round Yut boards were used more often.

In fact, if you look at the Yut board patterns left as petroglyphs on dolmens and stone pillars, many of them are round.

To enjoy this game, you need a board drawn on paper and four flat, round wooden sticks (Yut) with one side flattened.

The size doesn't matter, and you don't have to use wooden sticks, as long as one side is round and the other side is flat.

Good examples include chestnuts, half a soybean, or red bean. It doesn't matter if the front and back are clearly distinguishable. The number of participants required for the game is theoretically limited to two or more, but if you do that, it will be too confusing, so if it's an individual game, about three to four people are the most appropriate.

There is an individual game, but usually several people split into teams and play. It can be said that it is a game where team and individual settings are free.

2 Introduction to Yut divination

This Yut divination is a traditional way to see your fortune for the new year. Yut fortune telling, or fortune telling, is a custom practiced nationwide, and is sometimes done individually or in groups.

Yut fortune telling on New Year's Day is a method of predicting one's fortune for the year based on the hexagrams drawn from the Yut three times.

The number of cases that come out of the Yut is divided into heads and tails, and the word drawn from the first throw is considered the upper hexagram, the word drawn from the second throw is considered the middle hexagram, and the word drawn from the third throw is considered the lower hexagram, making 64 hexagrams from hexagram 111 to 444.

The fortune for the year is predicted by reading the corresponding divination for each.

Yut words are Do, Gae, Geol, Yut, and Mo, but since Yut and Mo are played with the same hexagrams, there are four hexagrams.

When getting the hexagrams, Do is considered 1, Gae is considered 2, Geol is considered 3, and Yut and Mo are considered 4.

For example, if you roll Yut three times and all of them come out as ‘do·do·do’, you get the fortune of 111.

The fortune of this hexagram is “A young child meets a kind mother.”

If a young child meets his mother, he will be happy because he will receive his mother’s love, so this is a good hexagram.

Also, if you roll Yut three times and all of them come out as ‘do·mo·do’, this means “The tree has no roots.”

It is natural for a tree without roots to dry up and die, so this is a bad hexagram.

The rapidly changing modern society is full of unpredictable events and complex problems. Technology has advanced rapidly, but ironically, anxiety about the future is growing.

3. The modern meaning of Yut divination

Of course, we should be wary of fortune-telling that blindly predicts the future without scientific verification.

However, we need to remember that human history ultimately begins with people and ends with people. No matter how excellent a system or technology is, it is ultimately humans who operate it, and their judgment and choices determine the results.