Korean Chess (Juanggi)
date: label: Accession Date
content: 24 Feb 1886
name: label: Donor Name
content: Ensign U S N John B. Bernadou
notes: label: Notes
content: "Late 19th century. Canted-square wood tiles incised with ideographs painted blue or red. The ideographs on these blocks represent individual values and are painted blue or red. The game is called "game of war." The king, in this case the general (jang), is the largest, while the chariot (cha), elephant (sang), horse (ma) and cannon (po) are of medium size. The smallest are the pawns or soldiers. Other small pieces are the counselors (sa) (Culin, 1958: 83). Hough's entry mentions "Chinese chessmen," but notes that Chinese chessmen are of uniform size and that Korean chessmen are hexagonal and of various sizes. WH Wilkinson (1894: 30-31) explains, "Korean chess is admittedly a variant of Chinese, yet, there are some important differences between the two games... The men, again, have the same names in China, and, except that the King is placed in the center of his 'camp,' and that the 'horse' and 'elephant' are interchangeable, occupy the same positions at starting. But their powers and privileges in most cases differ largely" (op. cit. Culin, p. 82). The Korean government exhibited a set of circular chessmen at the Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. They are now in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Collected in Seoul. Ref: Hough Korean Catalog pl. XXIV, fig. 2; Bernadou Field Notes 15" [from: "An Ethnography of the Hermit Kingdom: The J.B. Bernadou Korean Collection 1884-1885", Chang-su Cho Houchins, 2004, number 150]
label: Record Last Modified
content: 16 Mar 2024
label: Specimen Count
content: 31
place: label: Place
content: Korea, Asia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Not Given
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 016970
label: USNM Number
content: E77025-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Chess Piece