Ungsangnongcheongjangwon Folk Game

Ungsangnongcheongjangwon Folk Game, handed down in Myeonggok-ri, Ungsang-eup, is a play in which villagers who have jointly finished the year's farm work select the household with the best harvest as the jangwonga, or "champion household"; the whole village then shares the wine and food the champion household provides as jangwondeok, a champion's treat, and for several days relieves the hardships of the year's farming while celebrating a bountiful harvest. The episode is dramatized in three-dimensional form, with song accompanying the sequence of situations and movements. The play vividly shows both the process by which villagers together carried out the heavy labour of farming and the agricultural rites of the time. Ungsangnongcheongjangwon Folk Game had been on the verge of disappearing because of industrialization, but was revived mainly by villagers in their sixties to eighties. Because these elders took part in it directly, the play, though simple, is well structured and its songs reach a high standard, having been faithfully recreated in its original form, which gives it a clear line of transmission. It is also fortunate for the continuity of Korean culture that, even though the Ungsang area has become urbanized, the nongcheong, a traditional rural farming cooperative, survived in Myeonggok village until the 1980s. Ungsangnongcheongjangwon Folk Game won the grand prize at the 30th Gyeongsangnam-do Folk Arts Contest in June 1999 and an encouragement award at the 40th Korean Folk Arts Festival that September.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yangsan, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Intangible Heritage · 시도무형유산