How to Make and Play Yut Nori

First off, yut nori is a traditional Korean board game. And it’s usually played during holidays. Which is why I thought it’d be a good time to make this game for Korean New Year (Seollal) in just a few days!

I remember my parents playing this game with their friends and it was a rocking good time! (It makes me wonder if they had money riding on it…hm….) But you don’t have to involve money at all. It’s kind of a super simplified version of Sorry!. Personally, I much prefer Yut Nori, over that game any day!

Yoot, as the young folks would call it, is easy to make and easy to play. There is a little bit of strategy involved in game play but it’s mostly luck.

Make Your Own Yut Nori Game

In order to play Yut Nori, you need a game board, yut sticks, and eight tokens (four for each team).

The Game Board

The traditional game board is round, but for simplicity’s sake, we’re going to make ours square. I cut up a brown paper grocery bag to make a 16″x16″ square. You can use any kind of paper you prefer. I just happened to have a ridiculous number of brown paper bags laying around.

Then mark a starting point, four spots, and then the corner along each side. You can make dots, stars, or use stickers. Feel free to get creative. I used circle stickers for illustrative purposes and because I had them.

Mark the center of the board, and then two spots from each corner leading to the center.

 

The Yut Sticks

The traditional yut sticks are flat on one side and rounded and marked on the other. For this yut nori game, we’re going to use popsicle sticks. Since they’re flat on both sides, we’re going to mark one side. This marked side will be the “rounded” side.

Just as with the game board, you can mark the sticks however you like.

As a mom of a rambunctious toddler, I much prefer using popsicle sticks for yut sticks than the traditional sticks because they’re much more substantial, as in he could do a lot more damage. It’s all fun and games until some one gets a yut stick in the eye! How do you explain that black eye?? … Yeah, I got it from playing a board game…. 🤔

The Tokens

You need four tokens per team, so eight tokens total. I borrowed eight pieces from our gonggi (Korean jacks) game. But you can use buttons, rocks, or something else.

Now it’s time to play!

Yut Nori Game Rules

Rules vary a little bit depending on how players want to play. However, these are the basics;

The Goal – The goal is to get your team’s token back home before the other team. And it only takes one token to get home to win. It doesn’t have to be all the tokens…unless that’s how you want to play it (see what I mean by it varies?).

The Basics

Starting – Each team places their tokens on “Start”.

Who moves first? It’s up to you to decide but good old rock, paper, scissors works for us.

The first player tosses the yut sticks up and how they land dictates how many spaces they can advance.

So if one flat side (not printed side) is up, they move one space.

If two flat sides (again, not printed side) are up, they move two spaces.

If three flat sides (again, not printed side) are up, they move three spaces. (Getting the picture? Pretty easy, right?)

If four flat sides (not printed side) are up, they move four spaces AND they get to go again.

If four rounded (printed in this case) are up, they move FIVE spaces AND they get to go again.

In those cases where players get to go again, there is no limit to how many times they get to go again. It keeps being their turn until the throw something other than four flat sides down or up.

Specifics

If one team’s token lands on a spot already occupied by the other team, that other team has to go back to the beginning with that token.

If you land on a spot that’s occupied by your own team’s token, that’s okay. And you can elect to move those tokens as a group from that point on if you want. However, remember the prior rule that, if the opposing team lands on your spot, they can send that group of tokens back to the beginning. (This is where a bit of strategy comes into play.)

If you land on a corner, you can change direction and go toward the center of the board as a shortcut to get back home.

Remember, the goal is to get back home before the other team.

Go Play!

Pretty simple, right? Now you know how to make and play Yut Nori! It took me less than ten minutes to throw this game together. It’s great for those cold and rainy days when the kids are forced to stay indoors. And what better way to celebrate Korean New Year than by playing a traditional Korean game?

By the way, if by chance you just cannot bring yourself to make the game, even though it’s super incredibly easy, you can buy it here.

Still have questions on how to play? Ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!