From Goryeo to Joseon: Dating the Korean Chess Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

No Janggi board survives from the Goryeo period, the centuries during which chess like games most likely first reached Korea from China, so the earliest chapter of the game's history has to be argued from context rather than read off an artifact. Trade and diplomatic contact between Goryeo Korea and Song and Yuan China ran continuously across exactly the window when Xiangqi itself was maturing into its modern form, making the transmission plausible on timing alone even without a surviving board to prove it happened.

The documentary record only firms up in the following Joseon dynasty, when manuals and physical sets begin to survive describing rules recognizably close to the Janggi played today. That five hundred year gap between plausible transmission and documented play is typical of how board games move between cultures: the game itself is portable and cheap to copy, while the writing and craftsmanship that would prove its presence to a later historian survive far less often.