Somewhere in the fifth century, a Goguryeo king made a decision that sounds almost too clever to be true. He sent a monk south, into rival Baekje territory, with a single mission: get close to the Baekje king by playing baduk with him.
The monk, a man named Dorim, was reportedly skilled enough at the game to become a trusted companion at the Baekje court, gathering information the entire time. That episode is recorded in the Samguk Sagi, and it happens to be the oldest surviving reference to baduk in Korean history. A board game, apparently, was once considered a legitimate tool of espionage.
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| A badukpan, the wooden board where Joseon scholars trained patience one stone at a time. |
What Exactly Is Baduk?
Known internationally as Go, baduk is a two-player strategy game played on a grid, most commonly 19 by 19 lines, using black and white stones.
- Players take turns placing stones on the board's intersections, aiming to control the largest amount of territory
- Unlike chess, pieces are not moved once placed, and captured stones are simply removed from play
- In Joseon Korea, baduk was considered one of the four essential arts of a cultivated scholar, alongside music, calligraphy, and painting
- It was enjoyed by both men and women, cutting across a society that otherwise kept the genders fairly separated in daily life
The rules are almost deceptively simple. Mastering them is a different story entirely, which is exactly why Confucian scholars found the game so useful.
A Game Old Enough to Spy With
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| Every stone placed changes the entire board. Nothing about baduk rewards impatience. |
Here's the backstory behind that opening scene. King Jangsu of Goguryeo wanted an edge over the rival kingdom of Baekje, and he found one in King Gaero's well-known love of baduk. Dorim, disguised as a defector, worked his way into Gaero's inner circle by simply being an excellent opponent at the board.
Once trusted, Dorim reportedly encouraged Gaero toward extravagant building projects that drained Baekje's resources, weakening the kingdom from the inside. Whether every detail of the account is precisely accurate, historians treat the core episode as credible enough to matter, and it says something remarkable about how seriously baduk was taken. This was not viewed as a trivial pastime. It was viewed as a game skilled enough to double as a political weapon.
Not Just for the Elite
By the time Joseon rose to power, baduk had spread well beyond royal courts and spy plots.
- Confucian scholars valued the game as a form of self-cultivation, requiring the same restraint and judgment demanded by governance or classical study
- Wealthy families hired dedicated teachers to ensure their sons were properly trained in the game
- Villagers played too, often scratching a makeshift 19 by 19 grid directly into the dirt and using seeds or pebbles in place of proper stones
That combination is what makes baduk's history genuinely interesting. For a king, the board mirrored the stakes of running a kingdom, where one careless move could unravel everything. For a farmer with a stick and a patch of dirt, it was simply a way to sharpen the mind after a long day of work.
Korea's Own Twist: Sunjang Baduk
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| Different century, same posture: two people, one board, and all the time in the world. |
Korea did not just adopt baduk wholesale. It developed its own distinct version, known as sunjang baduk.
- Unlike the modern international rules, which start with a completely empty board, sunjang baduk began with sixteen stones, eight black and eight white, already arranged in a fixed opening pattern
- This native ruleset remained the dominant way Koreans played baduk for centuries, well into the modern era
- It was eventually phased out in the twentieth century as Korea moved toward standardized international rules for competitive play
Sunjang baduk is a useful reminder that Korea's relationship with the game was never just imported and imitated. It was adapted, localized, and played by its own rules for a very long time.
Tuho: The Noble Art of Throwing Arrows Into a Jar
Baduk was not the only game keeping Joseon nobility entertained. At royal banquets, a very different kind of contest often took center stage: tuho, the game of pitching arrows into a narrow-mouthed vase from a set distance.
- Each player received a set of twelve arrows, scoring points based on how close each throw landed to the vase's center
- King Seongjong formally codified the game's etiquette in 1467 with a rulebook called Tuhoui, promoting it as a tool for cultivating discipline and refined manners
- Tuho competitions became fixtures of specific court banquets, including formal gatherings honoring elder officials
- The game was also enjoyed by the queen and other women of the ruling class, offering a rare public pastime within a fairly restrictive social system
The influential scholar Yi Hwang reportedly recommended tuho to his own students, not for entertainment alone, but as a way to sharpen focus and maintain physical discipline. Fittingly, his portrait once shared space with a tuho vase on Korea's 1,000 won banknote for over two decades, a quiet nod to just how tied together scholarship and this particular game once were.
Why These Games Still Matter Today
Baduk never faded into a historical footnote. If anything, Korea's relationship with the game only intensified. The Korea Baduk Association, founded in the mid-twentieth century, turned it into a legitimate professional sport, complete with rankings, sponsorships, and international competitions.
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| The board changed from wood to glass. The thinking behind every move did not. |
The game even found its way into one of the most talked-about moments in artificial intelligence history, when a Korean professional player faced off against an AI system in a widely watched match that captured global attention. The fact that baduk, a centuries-old Joseon scholarly pastime, became the proving ground for a modern AI milestone says a great deal about just how deep and demanding this simple grid of lines actually is.
Games Worth Taking Seriously
It is easy to file baduk and tuho away as quaint historical hobbies, something Joseon nobles did between more important matters of state. The history suggests otherwise. These were games taken seriously enough to train future scholars, entertain queens, and, on at least one occasion, quietly help decide the fate of a kingdom.
Next time you pass a baduk board, whether carved from wood in a museum case or glowing on a tablet screen, remember it has been sharpening minds, and occasionally reshaping history, for well over a thousand years.
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