Fans in action

Korean fans have had many functions throughout history. The most obvious one, of course, is cooling oneself by waving wind. But there’s more...

Dance

There’s fan dancing. These days the most well-known Korean fan dance is Buchaechum, created in 1954 by dancer Kim Baek-bong. He drew influences from both Korean shamanic ritual dances and traditional Joseon court and folk dances. The dance draws on the elegant aspect of the hand fan, and so it is usually performed by groups of women.

These women are dressed in colorful hanbok and they use fans painted with a pattern of peonies. They move as a group in ways to depict certain shapes, like waves or flowers. Nowadays, the dance is often performed on stages all over the world. For example, a Korean fan dance was performed in front of the Dutch royal family on King’s Day 2014, as the Republic of Korea became the first foreign nation that was invited to join the King and members of the royal family as they visited two Dutch cities as part of the celebrations..

Pansori

Fans are also used for Pansori, a Korean art form consisting of singing and acting. It is often described as a one-man opera. The singers would use the fan to make instrumental sounds by tapping it or unfolding and folding the fan. But the fan would also be used during acting. As singers originally performed various characters by themselves, these characters could be identified by the different usages of the fan. Unfolding the fan can also emphasize the words of the singer and thereby create a dramatic effect.

Fighting fan

During the Joseon dynasty (1392-1897) a unique way of using fans came into existence, namely the fighting fan or war fan. The weapon was designed because of the ban on swords and similar weapons during this time. And so a desire for weapons that could be held in plain sight without arousing suspicion was created. It was mostly used as a defensive weapon, therefore it was made out of an extremely resilient birch tree unique to the Korean peninsula, that could resist the edged weapons typical of the era. But some of the fighting fans were also used for attacks. People would weave flexible metal ribbons along the outermost edge for cutting power or placed feathers that hid finger-sized razor blades. Others held variations of poisons or were used to conceal other weapons such as throwing blades which could be released in a spread upon snapping the fan open. Folklore and hearsay also suggests occasional traveling merchants trading with China possessed fans with small compartments in the vanes of the fan which held small explosive pellets that upon striking a surface would create a bright and dazzling flash of light, similar in concept to modern Chinese fireworks.

Later this type of fighting fan was improved and made more popular by the Japanese. Nowadays, Kuk Sool Won, a Korean martial arts form created in 1958, practices fan techniques. Of course these fans have no sharp edges or poison, but are mainly used in defense, to hit the opponent or stab the opponent on a pressure point with the end of a folded fan.

To be fit for fighting, our fan would have to have been made of a different type of wood. Besides that, a norigae would have been very impractical during a fight, making it unlikely that this fan was used for fighting.