culture

Top spinning is one of winter folk games of Korean children. A top is spun with a whip on the ice or the ground.

In winter children made various shapes of tops to their liking to play with it outdoors.

Top spinning has been played by children from ancient times.

Phaengi is a spinning top in English. It is recorded as phingi in ancient Korean documents.

It is considered that phingi was fixed as phaengi in around the modern age.

The tops were often whittled from pieces of wood. Most favoured materials for them were such hard and heavy trees as Schmidt's birch and jujube.

According to its type, the top was divided into mal phaengi, janggo phaengi and jul phaengi.

The cylindrical mal phaengi has a flat top, the lower part is conical with the point at the bottom and it turns round and round well and longest.

Its name is derived from the shape of the spinning top whose upside-down shape is similar to mal, an old volumenometer.

Janggo phaengi has the point at both ends on which it can turn round and round.

Jul phaengi is similar to mal phaengi but it has a longer waist and a groove in the middle of the waist.

The whip of top consisted of a 40 to 50cm-long straight handle and a cord which was made by twisting cotton thread and attached to the handle.

Children spun tops alone or played games with others by various methods, such as knocking others’ tops down by making their tops hit each other, going a certain distance while spinning tops to see who goes faster and hitting the tops far to see whose top turns round longer.

Top spinning is good for children’s physical training in winter. At present it is a major event in the folk games of schoolchildren held on the occasion of folk holidays like lunar New Year’s Day.

It was registered as national intangible cultural heritage element of the DPRK No. 140 in August 2025.