Before chicken became everyone’s favorite white meat, pheasant was a valued source of protein. Pheasant meat, instead of beef, was used in many special dishes and to make stock for various soups. In an agricultural society like Korea, it was hard to get beef because cattle provided vital labor for farming. So it was only natural that Koreans of the old days came to favor pheasants as an important food ingredient. But pheasants were also regarded as a sacred bird, for they were known as the gods’ messengers. Perhaps the reason ancient Koreans made ddeok-guk, or rice cake soup, for New Year’s Day with pheasant meat was that they wanted to take in the auspicious energy of the gods. But it wasn’t easy to catch the wily pheasants. So in mid-winter, ahead of the lunar New Year’s Day, men would wander the forests and fields to hunt pheasants. Those pheasant hunters used to catch the birds not with nets or traps, but with falcons.

The Song of the Hen Pheasant / Sung by Oh Jung-sook and Sung Chang-soon

That was “The Song of the Hen Pheasant” performed by Oh Jung-sook and Sung Chang-soon. The hen pheasant is called “kkaturi까투리” in Korean and the colorful cock pheasant “jangkki장끼.” Falcons were often used to hunt pheasants in the old days. Young falcon chicks still unable to fly well would be tamed by hunters to become hunting falcons and the best ones to train for falconry are the Siberian peregrine falcon or goshawk. The Siberian peregrine falcon is one of the fastest animals on earth, capable of diving and snatching up a quarry in mere seconds. The raptor also has a sharp beak that can strike a death blow to prey. In particular, Haedongcheong, or the blue peregrine species of Korea, was a lethal hunting bird coveted even in China. The goshawk kills a quarry by primarily using its powerful talons to choke the prey’s neck or its deadly beak to stab at the heart. Often compared to the tiger of land in ferociousness and lethality, the goshawk is dubbed the emperor of the sky. The young goshawk that hasn’t yet molted is called “boramae보라매” in Korean and is the symbol of the Korean Air Force. Falconers say that the fastest and the most fearless of all hunting raptors are the ones which have been trained for about a year. When chasers make noise and sweep the forest to flush out the game, pheasants fly out of their hiding and that’s when falconers release their birds to hunt them down. The next piece you are going to enjoy is titled “Namwon Sanseong” or Namwon Mountain Fortress, sung by Kim Su-yeon김수연, Yu Mi-ri유미리, Kang Kyeong-ah강경아, and Jo Ju-seon조주선.

Namwon Sanseong/ Kim Su-yeon, Yu Mi-ri, Kang Kyeong-ah, and Jo Ju-seon

Falconers typically mark their birds by decorating the tails with the owner’s name tag and a bell. The bell rings when a falcon picks at its kill, allowing the falconer and the chasers to follow the sound and find the falcon before it finishes off the dead animal. Falconry has been a popular sport in Korea from the ancient times. A record shows that during the Three Kingdom era Baekje’s King Beopwang법왕, who was a devout Buddhist, banned all hunting, including falconry, and ordered all raptors raised for hunting in private homes to be released into the wild. In Goryeo there was even a separate government office called “Eungbang응방” in charge of training falcons for hunting. Today falconry has become an activity enjoyed only by a handful, but Korea’s falconry was registered in 2010 as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, together with eleven other nations, which includes Mongolia, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. Today’s last music piece is “Flying Bird” with Jeong Gil-sun at the gayageum.

Flying Bird/ Gayageum by Jeong Gil-sun