Korean Culture Explained: Life, History, Music & Language | NowHitz · 8

From Seollal to the first full moon

Yutnori has traditionally been played from Seollal through Jeongwol Daeboreum, the first full moon of the lunar year. Families played at home and neighbours formed teams in their villages.

Some farming communities believed the winning side would have a good harvest. The game belonged to a season of gathering and talking about the year ahead.

Four sticks, five results

Each stick has a flat side and a rounded side. Their landing combinations produce do, gae, geol, yut or mo, worth one to five spaces respectively. Yut and mo earn another throw.

In a common version, each side has four pieces and must bring all four home to win. Getting one piece to the finish first is only part of the job.

Capturing, stacking, shortcuts

Landing exactly on an opponent’s piece sends it back to the start and earns another throw. A side’s own pieces can stack and travel together, which is faster but means they are captured together.

Reaching a junction can open a shortcut. Deciding which piece to move gives teammates plenty to debate, so everyone around the board takes part, not only the thrower.

Garak-yut and jongji-yut

Long wooden garak-yut are the familiar form, but smaller sticks were also shaken out of a little cup. In a 2021 National Folk Museum essay, folklorist Jang Jang-sik describes this jongji-yut practice in southern Korea.

Rules varied too. Back-do, for example, uses a marked stick to make a particular one-space result move backward. Players adapted the equipment and rules to their own gatherings.

What the records show

Early accounts of a game called jeopo are sometimes linked to yutnori, but the two cannot simply be treated as identical. Joseon-era records use names such as sahi and cheoksa, and the 18th-century writer Sim Ik-un described the sticks, board and play in detail.

Those records give a firmer picture of how people played than claims that the game has gone unchanged for thousands of years.

Heritage designation in 2022

In November 2022, yutnori was designated a National Intangible Cultural Heritage item with no single master or preserving group. The designation recognizes the communities that teach and play it.

The National Folk Museum’s 2026 Seollal program included a kiosk for yut-based New Year divination. Fortune-telling and the board game serve different purposes, but both tie the sticks to hopes for the year ahead.

A Seoul neighborhood becomes a song title

“Hyehwa-dong” appeared on Dongmulwon’s second album in 1988 and was written and composed by Kim Chang-gi. The place name opens into memories of friends and time.

Why it stayed with Korean listeners

The song turns a Seoul place name into a doorway to memories of old friends and neighborhood life. The original, later remakes and live stages have kept that route open for newer listeners.

Original and performance dates

Original recording: 1988. Performance below: broadcast by MBN on September 21, 2026. The two dates are shown plainly so the original release and later stage are easy to follow.

A defining song from his first solo album

Kim moved into his solo career in 1983, with “A Flower That Never Bloomed” among the songs that established the album. The lyrics, music and arrangement are credited to Kim Soo-chul.

Why it stayed with Korean listeners

The song held No. 1 on KBS Gayo Top 10 for five consecutive weeks in 1984. It is a useful doorway into an artist whose work later stretched across rock, popular song, film music and Korean traditional-music composition.

Watch the 1984 KBS stage

The video below is KBS archive footage from a December 30, 1984 performance. Its later YouTube publication is kept separate from the original broadcast date.

The 2019 ONSTAGE performance

The performance puts LEENALCHI’s vocals and Ambiguous Dance Company’s choreography in the same frame. It was originally posted in 2019.

Official video and sources

The official YouTube video is embedded; full lyrics and translations are not reproduced. Background on the band at the time comes from an SBS interview.

A 1982 song on a 2026 stage

KBS Legend K-pop publishes the official Yoon Suil Band performance.

Why it stayed with Korean listeners

The song connects band-oriented rock sound with familiar Korean popular-song rhythm and remains a cross-generational standard.

How the tool works

A tteoksal is a mold or stamp used to press patterns onto rice cakes such as jeolpyeon. They were made in wood or ceramic, in round, rectangular and other shapes.

The carved lines and motifs transfer directly onto the cake’s surface.

Meaning in the motifs

Museum interpretation notes that floral, character and geometric motifs could express wishes as well as serve as decoration.

Whether the central motif on accession 신수15969 represents a specific symbol has not been confirmed.

Before Kim Dong-ryul’s solo career, there were two musicians

Kim Dong-ryul and Seo Dong-wook won the grand prize at the 1993 MBC College Musicians Festival with “In a Dream,” then began their formal career as Exhibition. They released their first album in 1994 and three albums before the duo disbanded in 1997.

Why it stayed with Korean listeners

“Etude of Memory” is a 1994 song with lyrics, music and arrangement by Kim Dong-ryul. For listeners who first encountered Kim through his solo work, it remains a clear route back to the duo where that musical story began.

Return through the official audio

NowHitz uses the official Exhibition - Topic audio supplied by Danal Entertainment. The original 1994 release is kept distinct from the 2016 YouTube upload, and the song is not presented as a new release or a reunion.

The hexagonal barrel

Monami says the BP 153 launched on May 1, 1963, and consists of five parts. Its hexagonal barrel is designed to keep it from rolling off desks or slipping from the hand.

153 DIY KIT

The official 153 DIY KIT offers color combinations for the tip section, body, knock and ink, with a 0.5 mm point. Monami’s official video shows a 153 being assembled.

Current stock and prices were not confirmed.

The doubled curve

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture’s photograph of the left arch under Cheongungyo shows wedge-shaped stones forming a semicircular arch, with another curved stone course following the line above it. A Maeil Shinmun field feature describes this layered curve at Baegungyo as “ssang-hongye.”

No official basis was found for claims that the technique was the first or only one of its kind in the world.

How a hongye works

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture defines a hongye bridge by its semicircular underside. Horizontal reactions at the supports act as compressive force through the span, a principle suited to stone, which resists compression well.

The Bulguksa bridges are presented among Korea’s early eighth-century hongye examples, built during the temple’s rebuilding, which began in 751 and lasted about 24 years.

Verified facts and viral claims

In the viral “1,300-year secret” story, claims that an elementary-school student first discovered the secret, that scholars were stunned, or that the bridge can never fail in an earthquake were not substantiated by the heritage and reference sources checked.

What is established: these are Unified Silla stone stair bridges, they use semicircular hongye arches, and their layered curved stonework is visible and has been described in field reporting. There is no separate engineering evidence on seismic intent or performance.

A mountain-shaped lid

The lid rises as overlapping sacred peaks associated with a Daoist realm of immortals, with a phoenix at the summit. Small holes between the peaks let incense smoke escape.

Five musicians

Buyeo National Museum describes five musicians playing strings, pipes and a drum among sages, birds, animals and plants. The object brings Baekje aesthetics and several religious ideas together in one detailed form.

The tiny drawers

A wall of small labeled drawers let shop workers separate many materials and retrieve them quickly. The museum recreates a traditional shop in its ‘Yakjeon Han-yakbang’ exhibit, alongside historical medical tools.

A market shaped in the 1960s

VisitKorea says the modern Seoul Yangnyeongsi took shape around Jegi-dong in the mid-to-late 1960s, as medicinal materials from across the country moved through the Cheongnyangni transport hub. Together, the market and museum show the trade’s urban history.

Culture, not treatment

This story does not recommend specific herbs for any condition or personal use. It focuses on the material culture of Korean medicine: drawers, packets, tools, distribution routes and the market streets.

“A Little Girl” was released in 1985, with both lyrics and music by Lee Young-hoon. Its melodic lines leave plenty of space around Lee Moon-sae’s conversational delivery, so the emotional contour of the song comes through before any vocal display.

Why it stayed with Korean listeners

The song did not remain sealed inside one generation’s memory. In 2015, Oh Hyuk remade it for the Reply 1988 soundtrack, introducing the melody to a younger audience while keeping the original song’s restrained, wistful character recognizable.

Hear it through an official live performance

Lee Moon-sae’s official channel carries his performance of the song from 2018 LEE MOON SAE the BEST at KSPO DOME in Seoul. It is a useful way to hear how a 1985 song functions in a large modern concert without replacing the original recording with an unrelated clip.