The Korean spa has everything: dry and steam saunas, three temperature of pools, the Jade Room, the Salt Room, and the Charcoal Room. And then there's the lounge with its stacks of bad magazines, a couple of computers, and a board game table with one board on it. On one side of that board is the game of Go, and on the other side is Korean Chess.
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| This is wrong. Don't set up your board this way. |
I sat there, trying to remember how to set up the pieces, still struggling with the characters. Thinking that I maybe had it right, I showed my friends who'd never seen the game, and I explained the rules as I knew them. They pointed out that I'd mixed two characters up on the Blue side, and so I switched them, but kept switching them the wrong way round. It was as if I had a western chess set but couldn't tell the difference between Rooks and Bishops, and so set up the board with both Rooks on the Queen's side and both Bishops on the King's, and then made it so that they alternated Rook / Bishop / Rook / Bishop instead of having Rooks in the corners and Bishops toward the middle.
Turns out I'd got it wrong for other reasons, one being that Korea's game of Janggi is a little different from
the Chinese game Xiangqi that I grew up with. Some characters on the pieces are different, as is their movement and placement andon the board. Here are the boards with the starting setups for both games. China's Xiangqi is on the left, and Korea's Janggi on the right:
Are these differences subtle to the normal western eye, or just to one that has difficulty seeing in general?
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Chinese Xiangqi pieces for both Red and Black sides:
Generals, Guards, Elephants, Horses, Chariots, Cannons, Soldiers. |
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| The same pieces from Korean Janggi. |
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