For fun, fortune and even fame: ‘Yut-nori’
상태바
For fun, fortune and even fame: ‘Yut-nori’
이 기사를 공유합니다

A longtime island resident describes Jeju’s version of a festive Korean game

Korean yut (pronounced “yoot”), known even in foreign countries, is a Parcheesi-type game where each team or individual moves tokens around a square board according to the throw of, er, dice. Yut-nori (yut-game) uses — instead of dice as we know them — four round sticks typically 12 to 15 centimeters-long and slightly tapered toward each end, shaved flat lengthwise along one section of the round.

Tossed in the air (above eye level, please), the four sticks always land in one of five possible patterns: three flat sides down and one up (do, pronounced doe), two flat sides down and two up (gye, pronounced gyay), three flat sides up and one down (geol, pronounced between girl and gull), four flat sides up (yut), or four round sides up and no flat sides up (mo, pronounced moe).

A score of one is awarded do, two for gye, three for geol, four for yut, and five for mo. Tokens are moved around the square or across diagonals in correspondence with the score.

Opponents’ tokens can be bumped back to the start, and friendly tokens can be doubled or tripled up. Whoever gets all tokens back to the beginning point first wins. Some people play with the flat area of one of the sticks marked with a black spot. If that particular stick lands face up alone, it means move back one space.

Pretty simple, but the playing can often become very rowdy, with team members cheering at the top of their lungs for a specific desired point count. Also, money is often wagered. Families play during New Year or Chuseok holidays, alumni reunions, etc. Any kind of gathering, formal or informal, can be occasion for a lively round of yut-nori.

But the Jeju Island variety of the game, while in principle identical to its mainland cousin, looks radically different. The sticks are tiny little things, usually less than two centimeters long and as big around as a pencil. They are sliced virtually in half longitudinally instead of being merely shaved flat on one side, like half cylinders instead of oblong sticks.

In Jeju they are also always thrown onto a big straw mat with a line drawn across the halfway point. Players must throw the sticks across this line, using a cup to hold the little sticks while tossing.

This horizontal black line extends from edge to edge of the mat, and at one end the yut board is marked off. However, it only barely resembles a mainland yut board.

Its form is almost unrecognizable, like an optical illusion of black and white reversal, until one sees that the tokens do not move along diagonal lines of a square, but rather jump from line to line along an imagined square set catty-corner along the half-mark.

One thing is the same between mainland and Jeju forms of yut-nori: gambling! Sometimes the bet is serious money, sometimes a bottle of soju, sometimes a nominal sum, but there are always stakes.  <Jeju Weekly>

<Eugene Campbell  contributor@jejuweekly.com ⓒ Jeju Weekly All rights reserved>


댓글삭제
삭제한 댓글은 다시 복구할 수 없습니다.
그래도 삭제하시겠습니까?
딥페이크등(영상‧음향‧이미지)을 이용한 선거운동 및 후보자 등에 대한 허위사실공표‧비방은 공직선거법에 위반되므로 유의하시기 바랍니다.(삭제 또는 고발될 수 있음)
댓글수정
댓글 0
0 / 400
댓글쓰기
계정을 선택하시면 로그인·계정인증을 통해
댓글을 남기실 수 있습니다.