Tug-of-war is a folk game in which two teams pull at opposite ends of a long rope until one team drags the other over a line on the ground.
From ancient times our people with strong cohesion enjoyed doing tug-of-war that demonstrated communal might involving a lot of people.
Tug-of-war came into being through creative labour of mankind for survival. Whenever they needed to pull or drag up something in remote primitive times, our ancestors used to fasten ropes to them. This turned into a game little by little and eventually became tug-of-war, a competitive sport.
According to historical records, tug-of-war was usually done by peasants, especially in areas with a high proportion of paddy farming.
“Rimhaphilgi” (19th century) wrote that tug-of-war was already popular in the period of Three Kingdoms ― Koguryo, Paekje and Silla.
It became even more popular later in the period of Koryo and feudal Joson Dynasty. “Tongguksesigi”, “Hwagyejip”, “Tonggukyojisungram”, “Thamraji” and other historical books containing contemporary historical records give details of tug-of-war at that time.
Present-day tug-of-war is a little different in the ways of playing and ropes.
First, the thickness and length of a rope were altered to be convenient. After the national liberation, the thickness and length were fixed at 4~5cm and 20～30m each.
Next, unlike the past tug-of-war with main focus on strength only, the teams with tens of prearranged players have to pull the rope over one metre first to be the winner.
That is how tug-of-war was able to develop into a popular folk game in which many people can highly display the collectivist spirit of pooling their strength and wisdom, and players as well as spectators can enjoy themselves anywhere amidst tension, cheerfulness and laughter.
Im Sung Bin, section head at the Academy of Social Sciences
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