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Four yut sticks, and everyone has a strategy
Yutnori is a Korean board game played by throwing four wooden sticks and moving pieces around a board. At Seollal, the lunar New Year, adults and children sit down on the same teams. One person throws, and everyone weighs in on the next move.
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.
Sources & context
2026-10-09T02:09:29.769Z
Cultural Heritage Administration via Korea.net ↗K-influencer · YouTube ↗korea.kr ↗