Among the intangible cultural heritage items of the Korean people is kite-flying. It is a folk game that flies a kite high by using wind.
From olden times, the Korean people played the game from late autumn to the period before warm weather set the following year. Its peak period was from the lunar New Year’s Day to the First Full Moon Day (fifteenth day of the first month by the lunar calendar).
The game was played in such a brisk and extensive way in this period that the period was called a kite-flying season.
The kite was made with paper, lath and thread. The lath was made mainly with bamboo and sometimes with reed, bush-clover or other materials.
Kite-flying has a long history in Korea. A historical record says that when a battle was going on, the combatants flied kites fixed with burning jackstraws in the sky. This indicates that kite-making technique and kite-flying skills of the Koreans were very high at that time. Another old book says that the Korean people took an enemy fortress by using kites in the period of Koryo, a feudal state of Korea that existed between 918 and 1392.
The Korean kite varied in shape. The typical kites handed down till today are rectangular and stingray-shaped ones.
Its size differed according to the customs and wind strength in regions.
As the round hole with the diameter of a third of the kite’s length in the central part of the paper, the chord and the supporting lines play an important role, they were regarded as three major factors in making and flying the kite.
Main methods of the game included high flying and showing off stunts, kite fighting, and flying the kite away.
Today the kite-flying is widely disseminated among students and other children as one of the folk games conducive to their intellectual and physical development. Last year a kite-flying contest of schoolchildren was held on the occasion of the lunar New Year’s Day.
Kite-flying is on the national intangible cultural heritage list.
Ko Jong Chol
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