About Yutnori, a traditional Korean game

Lunar New Year is a traditional Korean holiday. Lunar New Year is also a precious time to share stories and have a good time. Our ancestors also spent time sitting around playing fun games with family and friends whom they rarely met. Among them, Yutnori is a simple game that can be played with just a yut stick, a yut board, and a yut horse, and is a representative traditional game enjoyed in agricultural societies to pray for a good harvest.

 

Today, we will take the time to learn about Yutnori, a game that people of all generations can play together during the Lunar New Year.

 

The ‘horse’ hidden in Yutnori

 

In Yutnori, Do, Gae, Geol, Yut, and Mo mean pig, dog, sheep, cow, and horse. You can move the horse according to the number of times the yut stick is flipped.

One do, two dogs, three geols, and four yut sticks are all turned over, and in the case of mo, you can advance five spaces without all the yut sticks being turned over.

You can see that the number of spaces that can advance varies depending on the animal. Among them, the horse, which means horse, can move the most forward, showing that horses were the most useful livestock in agricultural society. Horses were large and had great transportation capacity, which was of great help to our ancestors.

 

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Enjoy Yutnori to the fullest!

 

Yutnori is a game in which players are divided into teams, and the team that gets the four pieces assigned to each team out of the yutboard first wins. When throwing a yut, the stick of the yut must be higher than the person's sitting height. What you need to be careful about at this time is to make sure that the yut does not fall out of the yut board. If even one falls outside the yutboard, it is considered a failure and becomes invalid. In this case, the opportunity passes to the other party.

 

The reason why Yutnori is simple but thrilling is because of the rule that allows players to catch each other's pieces and get caught. Depending on the position of the thrown horse, if there is an opponent's piece where the piece lands, you can catch it. The horse caught at this time must return to the starting point and start again. If you catch the opponent's piece like this or if Mo or Yut comes out, you will be given another opportunity to throw Yut. When a piece moves around the board and returns to the starting point, it is called dongnanda, and the team that gets all four pieces out first wins.

 

Therefore, the most important thing in Yutnori is horses moving. This is because no matter how well you throw the yut stick, the game can turn over when it comes to speaking. One of the most commonly used methods in horses moving is carrying. Carrying is a method of moving two or more horses together. When using carry-on, the advantage is that you can move quickly because two or more horses are moved at once. However, the disadvantage is that if you are caught, all horses you carry will have to start from the beginning, so you must use it with caution.

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Some people think that Yutnori is a boring and uninteresting game. However, Yutnori is an easy and simple, yet thrilling game to enjoy. This Lunar New Year, why not spend some time getting closer to your family and relatives through Yutnori?