Seesawing is one of the excellent folk games of the Korean nation with a long history.
People play it at both ends of a long board with a wooden prop placed at the centre. They jump up and land on the board alternately by using the elastic force and compete to see who jumps up higher.
Since olden times, women in national costumes have enjoyed the play on New Year’s Day and Jongwoldaeborum (the fifteenth day of the first month by the lunar calendar), or the first full moon day.
There are sayings, “If you do seesawing in January, you will not get your feet pricked by thorn that year” and “If you do seesawing frequently in your girlhood, you will give birth to a son after marriage”. This shows that if women do seesawing, they will be able to build up their bodies and minds and be healthy.
Seesaw was invented in the past by imitating the principles of a mill worked by treading, which was used to hull grains.
The Korean women who used the foot mill as a tool for dietary life in the period of the Koguryo Kingdom contrived a novel seesawing apparatus for jumping up alternately by installing a wooden prop at the centre of a board of certain size by introducing the principle of the mill.
According to folk tales, the game was derived from the fact that a woman did seesawing to see the face of her beloved in prison, and the fact that women, with a feeling of dislike toward feudal restrictions, jumped up from the seesaw to look out of the courtyard.
There are various ways of doing seesawing, including jumping high and performance of feats.
Among the performance of feats there were a high jump and somersault before landing, a high jump and bending back before landing and a high jump and free movements of hands before landing by setting the legs apart backward and forward or right and left.
Players also competed to drop their opponents from the board.
The Korean people have carried forward seesawing associated with the wisdom and talents of the nation and developed it into part of national acrobatics by preserving the charm and taste peculiar to the nation.
The national acrobatic piece “Seesawing” of the DPRK is admired at world acrobatic festivals for the combination of the highly skilful stunts of acrobats, deep national sentiment and unique form.
Seesawing, which pulsates with courage and stamina and implants national sentiment and spirit into the people, was registered as an element of national intangible cultural heritage in 2024.
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