Chuk (Ox)

"Slow, but a bull's steps," says the proverb, and many who persevered and succeeded in the end, the museum notes, were born in the year of the Ox. Those born in it are said to share perseverance and diligence — and a stubbornness the Koreans call hwangso-gojip, "as stubborn as a bull": they go at their own pace, rarely listen to others and are hard to convince, hence the proverb "reading scripture to an ox".

Sociable as they may seem, they are said to be lonely at heart, some born only to work until death — though, as the proverbs "an ox born in winter has an easy life" and "a summer ox lying in the shade" suggest, their life can also be comfortable. Slow to start, once they set their minds to something they must finish it at once; their weakness is that they cannot always master their feelings and grow loud in anger. Hard on the hard, they can be unexpectedly kind and sympathetic to the weak.

The ox was the partner and trusted friend of the Korean farm. Its owners called it saenggu (生口), the word used for servants counted as part of the household; its strength drew the plough that broke the soil and opened furrows for the seed, carried manure on the packsaddle with the ongo (蘊罟), turned the millstone that ground rice, barley, millet and sorghum, and pulled the carts. Before farming was modernised, it was the ox that raised the farm's yield and its income; it was also its means of transport and, through its price, the family's emergency fund.

It was treated as a member of the family. In cold weather it was covered with straw mats; from spring until winter its shed was cleaned every two weeks; it was never fed grass wet with dew, it was brushed to help its circulation, and for a long journey its hooves were shod with straw shoes. At dawn the cattle markets were full of life, and a farmer would sell the ox he had lived with for years to pay for his children's studies — which is why, the museum recalls, the university was called not an ivory tower but a "tower of cow bones" (牛骨塔).

The ox stands for diligence and simple honesty; "without words," the old saying goes, "the cow has twelve virtues." Its place in the calendar follows from its nature: its hooves are split in two, a sign of yin, and its mild, patient temper is like the seeds that lie in the ground waiting for spring — the season of the twelfth month, when the cold begins to withdraw of its own accord. As a god of direction it guards the north-northeast, and as a god of time the hours from one to three in the morning.

Its earthy, innocent and patient nature, the museum writes, matched that of the Korean people, persevering, patient and composed, who always cherished the ox; it helped to shape many characters of Korean folklore, and when Koreans thought of a sweet home, there was a yellow cow in it.

The murals of the Goguryeo tombs show oxen eating, pulling carts, or as an agricultural deity — signs that by the Three Kingdoms period Korean farming was built around the ox. A clay figurine shows a long-horned ox with lowered head and planted feet, about to charge. In the Joseon dynasty scholars drawn to Taoist ideals painted the ox as their favourite animal, and Gim Hong-do's Gyeongjakdo (farmland painting) shows a farmer ploughing behind his ox, a dog, and old men talking under a tree. Images of the ox also decorated ritual vessels.

Under Joseon the king performed the Seonnongje (先農祭), an agricultural rite, on the first Pig Day after Gyeongchip in early March: an ox was offered to the gods, and the king himself ploughed a furrow to honour farming. The offering was then boiled into a beef soup and served to the people. The story goes that on the day King Sejong ploughed it rained so hard that the king and his court, stranded and hungry, ate the sacrificial ox; the soup was called Seonnongtang, "soup of the Seonnong rite" — today's seolleongtang.

Bullfighting, a contest of endurance and strength, has a history of more than a thousand years in Korea and was held especially around the first full moon and Chuseok. In South Gyeongsang the sonorigut, the "ox exorcism", sent a straw ox carried by five or six men through the village with music, dancing, a herdsman and a shaman, to pray for the harvest and the prosperity of families, before a feast shared by all. On the eve of the first full moon, farmers foretold the harvest with sobapjugi, "feeding the ox": if the ox ate the grains of the five-grain rice first, the rice harvest would be good; if it ate the beans first, the cotton would. On the full-moon day a table of rice and rice cakes was set before the cowshed, with a prayer that the ox would work through the year without accident.

The Ox, the Snake and the Rooster form one of the four harmonious triads (samhap, 삼합). The museum explains it from nature: the ox is not afraid of the snake's poison — the venom of a young snake even makes the ox's blood more vigorous — the snake likes the rooster's crowing, and after feeding the ox chews the cud and rests to the sound of the rooster.

The Horse is the Ox's wonjin (원진), the animal in conflict with it: the hard-working ox resents the horse's idleness, for the horse, it was said, mostly stands about doing nothing but eat — and in fact a stable next to a cowshed does not make for good neighbours.