Yeonsanbaekjung Folk Game

Baekjung Nori refers to the merrymaking held by farmhands, worn out from heavy field labour, on their one day of rest on Baekjung Day, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month; this day is also commonly called Meoseumnal, "Farmhand's Day". Yeonsanbaekjung Folk Game has been handed down mainly in Wangdae-ri, Duma-myeon, Nonsan, and throughout the wider Yeonsan-myeon area. It is said to have originated when people visited the grave of Kim Guk-gwang — who had served as left state councillor under King Seongjong of Joseon (r. 1469–1494) — on Baekjung Day to honour his achievements and hold a day of festivities there; later, as members of the Gwangsan Kim clan moved into the Yeonsan area, they gathered at Yeonsan marketplace to hold the game. Yeonsanbaekjung Folk Game re-enacts, in the form of play, the customs of the time: holding a ritual, deciding rewards for filial sons and devoted daughters-in-law and punishments for the unfilial, and choosing and rewarding the farmhand who had worked the fields best that year. The performance proceeds through a march in which flag-bearers advance from four directions to converge at the centre of the play-ground; a rite to the farming god, in which an altar is set up and an exorcism gut is performed; and a judgement ground, where filial sons and daughters-in-law and unfilial offspring are rewarded or punished and the hardest-working farmhand of the year is honoured. The closing festivities are enlivened with nongak (farmers' music), together with a dance of the yangban and the comic dances of clowns. Yeonsanbaekjung Folk Game has been handed down in this region for some 500 years; it prays for the peace of the village and a bountiful harvest, and is a distinctive folk game embodying the values of loyalty and filial devotion and the social hierarchy of the time.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Nonsan, Chungnam

Designation

Provincial Intangible Heritage · 시도무형유산