Suyeong Nongcheong Folk Game

In Suyeong, farmers formed a self-governing body called a nongcheong to raise their farming skills and cooperative spirit and so increase production. As rapid urbanisation caused not only the customs of the nongcheong but also the farming songs (nongyo) that went with them to disappear, its members turned the farming process into a piece of theatre, playing farmers' music (nongak) and singing the old work songs. In Suyeong Nongcheong Folk Game, the members gather at a signal and line up in the order of the farming banner, the farmers'-music band, an ox, the farmers and the married women; a man and a woman take turns singing the grass song, after which everyone dances to the farmers'-music rhythm and enters the playing ground that stands for the workplace. Following the stages of farming, songs are sung in turn — the earth-turning song, the seedling-pulling song, the transplanting song and the flail-threshing song — and once the transplanting is finished the male members weed the paddies, then divide into east and west sides for a bull fight, sing the chingching song, enjoy one last round of play, and depart. Re-enacting, in dramatic form, the work once carried out by the nongcheong members of an now-urbanised Suyeong, centred on their farming songs, is valuable not only for handing down the folk songs of the Busan region but also for transmitting the spiritual legacy of cooperation, unity and diligence embodied in the nongcheong's communal labour.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Suyeong-gu, Busan

Designation

Provincial Intangible Heritage · 시도무형유산