(55) Kite battles in Joseon

By Roberf Neff

For two weeks, following the Lunar New Year, the hazy gray skies of Joseon were filled with kites. These square-shaped kites were constructed of thin pieces of bamboo and covered with tough paper with a hole in the center and were generally tail-less.

While some were quite colorful, many — particularly the fighting kites — were relatively plain with only a large black or red dot to indicate their topside.

During the late 1880s, the three American teachers at the English school in Seoul looked on with amusement at the “antics

and gestures” of their students in keeping their kites in the air.

The American teachers, confident in skills they had honed as young boys in the United States, decided to try their own hands at flying the Korean kites.

They had fully expected to impress their students with their skill but instead provided them with entertainment through “the loss of several kites, which by their plunging were cast down into neighboring grounds and became the prey of the ubiquitous small boy.”

The teachers were forced to agree that it was much easier to fly an American, English, Japanese or Chinese kite than a Korean one.

But kites weren’t only toys — they were agile weapons in elaborate dances of aerial combat.

Boys and young men often coated their kite strings with pieces of powdered glass and then, with great dexterity, attempted to sever their opponents’ kite strings.

These battles were popular spectator events and, according to one early Western observer, “shopkeeper (would) often stop serving a customer and risk losing a sale, though as a rule the customer (was) as eager as anyone to see the fun.”

Sometimes hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators gathered and looked on “in breathless excitement and with (the) keenest interest, which they show by their ejaculations and cries of encouragement or dismay” as the winner would cut the string of his opponent allowing the kite to fall to the ground in disgrace.

Horace Allen said that when one of the kites fell there was so much excitement in the chase to recover it “that even old men caught the contagion and hobbled off in search of the unlucky kite — finders being keepers.”

On the 15th day of the New Year, the kite owners would write their names, birthdays and misfortunes on slips of paper and, when their kite was flying as high as it could, set it free. It was hoped that the kite would fly far away and take with it whatever misfortune that would have plagued its owner that year.

Some kite fliers apparently didn’t put all of their hopes in the wind.

They added small coins to the paper in hopes that some poor boy, compelled by the need for money, would pick up their kite and thus accept the former kite owners’ ill-fortune for the coming year.

According to a young Western boy, Foster Beck, it was acceptable to keep the Korean kites that fell into his yard but if he attempted to fly the kites after the last day of the season the former owner “would be very much afraid that the kite had not taken away the evil spirit from him, and that his house would be destroyed, and that his parents would die.”

Robert Neff is a contributing writer for The Korea Times.