On Chuseok -- Ganggangsullae

[samedi]

Having been busy over the past two days I missed the chance to write about a few Chuseok-related things that caught my interest. One of these is Ganggangsullae - 강강술래 (姜降戌來) or 강강수월래 (强羌水越來) in Korean* - a type of circular dance that is commonly associated with Chuseok and the region of Jeollanam-do. There are basically two stories of how the

Comments

[samedi]

Thanks! I saw the dance mentioned in two books about seasonal customs in Korea and had contemplated writing about it; when I came across news that it had been recognized by UNESCO that added to the appeal even more.

The Hanja

[anonymous]

Hrm.. That's an interesting question about the Hanja. Could it be a Korean equivalent of a backronym/retronym? :)

Re: The Hanja

[samedi]

That would certainly be interesting to encounter a retronym! :)

I don't know why I didn't think of doing this earlier (probably because it was late), but checking the Korean version of the Wikipedia page gives a different set of Hanja - 巡羅 - for 순라. The 'Jeolla' spelling (순라) is different from the 'standard' spelling given in the article title (술래) ... which might explain why the English page has the incorrect Hanja associated with it. (I also note that the Korean page doesn't list a Hanja name -- only the English page.) From those 'new' characters 巡 is "patrol; go on a circuit" and 羅 means "catch in a net; gauze; the surname Luó". Much closer in meaning!

[storysinger81]

Great entry, as usual. :)

[samedi]

Thanks, Diana! :)

There don't seem to be many recent photos of Gagngangsullae on Google, so I am curious how common it is to see in Jeolla-do these days ...

[anonymous]

Whether it is purely a korean word or it comes from Chinese is still uncertain but I wish to believe that it is purely korean.

There are many pure korean words but some people misunderstand if they came from Chinese words and put Chinese characters as they are pronounced.

In fact, before Hangeul was invented some 600 yrs ago, people use Hanja as the alphabets to write Korean words. For example, 생각하다 to think is a pure Korean word, but in old days, like my grandparents used to write this word in Hanja as 生覺 which could be "interpreted" as "create feeling" or something like that as they brought in the Hanja as it is pronounced.
There are some confusions to some words like 점심 lunch as most people believe it is a pure korean word but some thinks it is 點心 also pronounced 점심 jeomsim, which is in Chinese Dimsum.

KOC

[samedi]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it comes from 'pure Korean' and the Chinese characters were mistakenly added later.

Verbs like 이다 and politeness markers like ~습니다 and ~시다 always interested me in that I'm very curious how they were written using only Hanja.

[anonymous]

Thanks for an awesome article. I just posted some video of the Ganggangsulae dancing for Daeboreum this year in Gyeonju on my blog (http://www.sherwinvjones.com/gyeongjublog/2010/04/daeboreum-ganggang-sullae-folk-dancing/). I referenced your post, so I hope that's okay. Anyhow, I thought you might find it interesting.

Thanks again,

Sherwin