Jangseung Village Guardians

Jangseung are posts carved from a whole trunk and stood at the entrance to a village, usually in pairs: one marked as the great general under heaven, the other as the female general under ground, with bulging eyes, bared teeth and an expression meant to frighten off disease and misfortune. The carving is deliberately rough and often faintly comic, in the same spirit as the foolish-looking tiger in folk painting - fearsome enough to work, friendly enough to live beside. They also served as boundary markers and told travellers the distance to the next settlement. Often standing with them is a sotdae, a tall thin pole topped with a carved wooden bird, usually a duck, understood as a messenger between the village and the sky and a request for rain and a good harvest. Both belong to village shamanic practice rather than to Buddhism or Confucianism, which is why they survive at the edges of places rather than at their centres.

Highlights

• The paired posts - male and female guardians at a village entrance.
• The carved faces - fierce and comic at once, cut from one trunk.
• Sotdae - the tall pole with a wooden bird on top.
• The boundary role - markers of the edge and the distance ahead.

When to go

Any time. They stand in the open and cost nothing to look at. Folk villages have well-kept examples; roadside ones in the countryside are weathered and more convincing.

Good to know

Not a destination - something you come across. Examples at folk villages are recently carved for display. Old wooden ones rot and are replaced, so nothing you see is ancient.

Nearby

The Korean Folk Village at Yongin, Hahoe, Naganeupseong and most temple approaches have them.