Pride of Our Nation – Folk Dance

Our people enjoyed the songs and dances from the early time of human history, creating many folk dances reflecting diverse lives and beautiful customs. Among them are the folk dances which reflect various aspects of life, including working life, and those which depict human relations and customs.

The folk dances that reflect the working life are diverse and rich in heritage such as the peasant dances which reflected the joy and delight of having a rich harvest, the Pongjuk Game and the Fishermen’s Dance which reflected the fishermen’s working life, and the Handweaving Dance and the Blacksmith Dance which reflect the manual labour life.

Folk dances reflect in a concentrated way the wisdom, talents and emotional aesthetic tastes of our nation. Our ancestors, who distinguished musical emotional sensitivity and rhythmic expressive power, showed outstanding artistic talent and resourcefulness in portraying the emotional aesthetic tastes peculiar to the nation by unique dance techniques.

Our people danced coquettishly, turning round, shrugging mainly shoulders, moving up and down feet, and waving arms. Each of these dance tunes expresses deeply its own national characteristics, which are not found in any other nation in its stance, movements, flow and rhythmic movements. The folk dance enjoyed by our people is characterized by strong rhythmic, cheerful and elegant performance because of the large number of movement patterns combined with the performance of colourful rhythms.

Among them are drum, janggo (a kind of Korean drums), sago and canary dances, in which people dance pleasantly playing percussion instruments, and water-janggo (a janggo on the water), crab-foot dance and bucket dance, in which people dance in tune with the tools of life.

Our folk dances have strong local characteristics. There are many dances peculiar to each locality, such as Tondollari, Nilliri Dance, Kanggangsuwolae and Pongsan Masked Dance. Farm dances and masked dances widely performed in different parts of the country are characteristics of the tune and composition of dances.