Scott Skinner
From Discourse 18

Scott Skinner Korean kites from the collection by kitemaker Shin Kunsoo. Each kite, like signal flags on a modern naval battleship, has a specific message. The three kites above communicate: “Attack to the western, southern, and eastern enemy.”

For more about Korean kites, visit Peter Nam’s “All About Korean Kites” website: http://koreankite.tistory.com

We wrote a past Kitelife article about a wonderful addition to the Drachen Foundation kite collection: “DF Board president, Scott Skinner, describes how the fifteen kites, all more than a hundred years old, made their way to Drachen. Because of an unexpected and delightful gift in 2000, the Drachen Foundation may hold the oldest specimens of Korean kites extant. The kites were originally bought by or given to Georges Lefevre, French consul to the Orient in the 1890s. They passed within his family to his great-grandchildren, one of whom was Docteur François Fourrière, formerly president of a French kite club. Fourrière was unsure of what to do with these fragile artifacts, and was encouraged by members of Zoone Collectif to gift them to the Foundation. Ramlel Tien and Christophe Cheret, Zoone Collectif members, helped make the exchange complete at the Art Kite Festival in Detmold, Germany.” For many years, the kites graced the walls of the Drachen Foundation study center in Seattle, powerful testaments to the longevity of bamboo and paper.

In remembering this wonderful gift, I thought this might be a good time to look at Korean kites, in particular their use by the Korean navy as signals.

I am almost completely ignorant of first-hand knowledge of Korean kites. So I took an Internet journey to find out more. With a search for “Korean naval kites,” the first good reference came from the CyberFighter website maintained by Gina Hsiung, where there was the following reference: “Admiral Yi Sun-sin used kites in the 16th century as a fast way to inform the naval troops of his strategic instructions, flying kites having different pictures signaling tactics to use…”

Scott Skinner. Korean kites from the collection by kitemaker Shin Kunsoo. The kites above communicate: “Concentrate at the sea of Ebong-Mountain” (left) and “Surround the enemy” (right).

So my next step was to learn a little more about Admiral Yi Sun-sin. First stop, Wikipedia, which says Yi “was a Korean naval commander, famed for his victories against the Japanese navy during the Imjin War in the Joseon Dynasty, and was well- respected for his exemplary conduct on and off the battlefield not only by Koreans, but by Japanese admirals as well. Perhaps his most remarkable military achievement occurred at the Battle of Myeongnyang. Outnumbered 133 warships to 13, and forced into a last stand with only his minimal fleet standing between the Japanese Army and Seoul, he still managed to destroy 33 of 133 Japanese warships in one of the most astonishing battles in military history.” Online Encyclopedia Britannica starts with much the same description of Yi, but goes on to mention his developing the famous kobukson (turtle ship). These were ironclad battleships, their upper decks covered with armored plates to protect its crew, knives and spikes attached to discourage enemy boarding. A cannon, embedded in a dragon head at the bow of the kobukson, could be fired and emit smoke to obscure the ship’s position.

This is all fascinating material, but brought me no closer to the signal kites Admiral Yi Sun-sin might have used at the time. Correspondence from 2007 with Orly Ongkingco from the Philippines brought some information to light. He found information from a Korean cultural exhibit of “traditional Korean military signal kites” scheduled in Honolulu in 2003. This information stated that “over time, the knowledge and understanding of the kites were neglected and lost.” Embedded in the information was the following:

“During the Korean-Japanese War of 1592-1596, the Korean Duke of Loyalty and Valiance employed kites as means of communication between sea, island and the land. When the Japanese troops surrounded and attacked Pyongyang, a minister within the city flew a kite to report the enemy situation to the rescue troops, and thus defeated the Japanese invaders by collaboration from within, with the forces from without.” Interestingly, this exact paragraph is contained in the Japanese Kite Collection website (www.asahi-net.or.jp/~et3m-tkkw) in its “The History and Development of Kites,” updated in 1998. So this is certainly not original information and we get no closer to how the kites were really used.

At the time of our correspondence with Orly in 2007, I started the process of commissioning a relatively comprehensive set of the naval signal kites as they were understood to be in contemporary Korea. Korean kite maker Shin Kunsoo came through with a collection of thirty kites. His website (http://kite.or.kr) appears to be inactive, so I can’t add any current information, but the information contained with his kites is specific. Each kite, like signal flags on a modern naval battleship, has a specific message: “Attack to the hill,” “Attack to the western enemy,” and so forth.

Is the Korean kite community the only repository of this information, and is it corroborated elsewhere? My short answer is: “I don’t know,” and I’m not sure if the Internet is of great help here.

I hope readers of Discourse, many of whom are far more Internet savvy than I, might find more information and share it with the kite community. ◆