Hwatu Comes to Korea: A Story of Crossing the Sea

How did Hwatu, born in Japan, become a holiday pastime for Koreans? Today let’s talk about how Hwatu crossed the sea and came to us. First, I should say that scholars disagree about the exact time and route.

January Bright

August Bright

December Bright

The Opening of the Ports: The Sea Opens Up

After the Treaty of Ganghwa in 1876, ports such as Busan opened and Japanese people began to come and go. The most widely known explanation is that Hwatu also came in around this time through Japanese merchants and others. There is a theory that it spread first from the port areas. However, it is said there is no certain record that says, ‘it began on this day, with this person.’

It Changed in the Korean Way

Once it arrived, Hwatu changed little by little in our hands. A good example is the order of the months. In Japanese Hanafuda, November is the willow (Rain) and December is the paulownia, but Korean Hwatu is known to have November as the paulownia and December as Rain. This game follows the Korean way, too.

And Korean Hwatu has the character 光 (“Bright”) printed on it, doesn’t it? It is known that the cards with high points in Korean Hwatu carry the character for Bright.

Becoming a Holiday Pastime

As time went by, Hwatu is said to have settled in as a game people sit around and enjoy on holidays and at gatherings. In Korea it spread even more widely in the form called ‘Go-Stop’. There are not many solid written sources for where terms like Go, Stop and Ppeok came from, so most of it is just ‘they say it came about like this’ stories.

What Is Not Certain in This Article

• The exact year and place it first arrived
• Who spread it first
• The exact time it changed in the Korean way

Since there are several theories about these, I will only say ‘it is known that…’. Not pretending to know exactly is also a virtue of a storyteller.