Yut Nori Game
Yut Nori (윳놀이) is a traditional Korean game usually played during the Korean Lunar New Year (설날). It is considered a fun traditional game to build bonds with families and spend some time with them. It could be individuals playing against each other or in teams. In each game, there are usually four players or four teams sharing the same game board. Each team has four of its own distinct tokens, or mals (“말”, means “horse”) and starts the game with its mals at the home position of the team. As the game goes on, they win if they are the first to have all four pieces getting back to home.
There are four wooden yuts (윳) in the game. The wooden yut sticks are specially made for the game. While one side of a yut is made flat, another side has a round curve. For each round, a player throws the yuts into the air at once, and the yuts should land on the board. If not, they have to throw it again. Then, the player counts the number of yuts with the flat side up. The number of yuts with flat side up decides the number of moves the person’s mal is going to move on the board.
If the mals have one facing up, the player moves once. If two mals are facing up, the player moves twice. Similarly, when three mals have their flat sides up, the player moves three times. The interesting part comes when the player has four flat sides up when the player can move one of his/her mals for four steps. After that, he/she gets to throw the yuts again. If all the yuts are thrown to be facing downwards, then the player can move a mal for five steps and throw the yuts again as well. The names for the results from one to five are pig (도 ), dog (개 ), sheep (걸 ), cow (윷 ), and horse (모 ).
The rules for the mals on the board are very interesting too. If a mal from another team comes to the same position as a mal of your team, then that mal of yours will be taken from the board and start from home again. If two mals of yours meet on the board, they can move together as one mal, which will make you go back to your home position faster, but it is also risky that someone else’s mal might take both of them off the board at the same time. In addition, if a mal lands at the corner of the board, then the player can choose to go from the central shorter routes to go back home faster.
People play Yut Nori (윳놀이) in many Korean variety shows and I have been wondering for years what the rules are and how they know how many steps they get. When I tried to learn it from what they threw, it was really confusing because they called each throw different names and such. I’m glad that I now have a chance to really learn the rules and understand the game. It would also be really interesting to see Koreans playing this game with their own strategies.
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Comments
Maggie, thanks for sharing this post about yut nori. I love playing this game with my family (although I need a refresher of the rules each time I play)! We always get so competitive and place "punishments" on the losing team. I didn't know that the names of the results stood for animal names. I guess I always played without really knowing the background of this game. It's definitely a game to bring people together, and anyone can play!
Yut Nori sounds like a wonderful game! After reading your post, I was intrigued to see a video of it on Youtube. While I am confused with the rules, I love that it's a family game bringing everyone together. I do wonder if the way the game is played varies in different regions of South Korea. Thanks for sharing this.