Korean wrestling


the dynamic appearance of ssireum in Korea








It is a traditional Korean folk game and athletic game in which the two men compete by holding a comba and defeating each other by competing against each other with strength and skill. Famous players are Lee Man-ki, Kang Ho-dong, and Choi Hong-man.


It is a kind of power struggle sport known to have been handed down from ancient times on the Korean Peninsula. Following Taekkyeon, it was listed as Intangible Cultural Property No. 131 on January 4, 2017. On November 26, 2018, the two Koreas were jointly listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The name is ssireum, traditional Korean wrestling.

It is a game in which two players, who are wrapped around the waist of a scooter on a sand plate or mat, grab the opponent's scooter and knock the opponent over with their leg skills or waist skills. It is a very simple game because any part of the opponent's body, except for the soles of the feet, will win the game, but it is a sport where many psychological warfare and complex skills come and go in a very short moment due to the simplicity of a single moment of mistakes, weight loss, and posture collapse. The explosive power that goes into this short moment and the muscles that you can feel are very dynamic.
However, it might not be fun if you watch it without knowing it because it suddenly ended when you watch it in person, not on TV screen.

Some criticize it as a power struggle because there is no hand fight or flag fight like wrestling and judo, and because they hold the opponent in advance and start the game. However, the take-down battle is world-class. In a tight race, judo or wrestling can be reversed by scoring points without being caught much, but wrestlers have a very good sense of balance due to the rules of wrestling in which they play against each other. It is impossible to hold out and fight back in the sand that is actually hard to balance, with the other's hands in the sand that is impossible without skill and sense of balance.

Some of these techniques were highly utilized in martial arts, and some of them were similar to Japanese judo. Based on those points, there are players who have advanced from ssireum players to martial arts players. However, when Korean wrestlers entered martial arts, their take-down skills were highly regarded in the face-to-face situations, but they were very vulnerable in standing situations because they were vulnerable to identifying and measuring their distance from their opponents.

In the past, Lee Man-ki and Kang Ho-dong were the most popular players. Since then, it has become very unpopular due to various things, and there have been news reports that it is a very difficult situation. However, ssireum began to receive sudden attention through the Internet in mid- to late 2019. As the rule was changed to increase the proportion of technical wrestling, and as a result, the players with strong physique reminiscent of the time of ssireum were formed, groups began to talk about the changes that had been accumulated in the media, SNS, and the Internet community in earnest, and there are many videos that are very popular on YouTube, especially to the point that YouTube has re-created the popularity of ssireum.

As a representative example of the game videos posted on YouTube, the final video of Haksanbae's national team competition was belatedly found on the women's-oriented Internet community and SNS a year after the upload, gaining popularity with more than 3 million views. And this is receiving a different kind of attention than before, again spreading on the Internet or getting media coverage. If you look at the video comments, even foreigners who have been kidnapped without knowing what they are doing according to YouTube's algorithm are watching them without complaining.

At this time, the current ssireum is often responded by "not what I thought it was" and "Unlike the past, it is full of excitement." In addition, unlike past ssireum games, which were only seen as power games of solid middle school players, the fact that it was a "technical competition of healthy ssireum players" was received differently and attracted attention on the Internet. In addition, the Korea Ssireum Association and KBS have begun to work together to prepare for ssireum entertainment, spurring public publicity for some time and other reasons. And from November 30, 2019, a sports entertainment show from Taebaek to Geumgang - ssireum's joy program was aired. Through this program, ssireum wrestlers are creating popularity again by showing amazing scenes.