Ja (Rat)

People born in the year of the Rat, Korean tradition says, will always have enough to eat — if not great fortune — throughout their lives; they are destined to a good life and to abundance. The museum adds that it may be groundless to judge one's destiny by such signs, but that at the turn of every year people have long looked to the year's animal, and to the animal of a child's birth, for its fortune and its character.

Korean records tell of the rat's intuition. The Samguk sagi (三國史記), in its history of Silla, notes that in the fifth year of King Hyegong "an unusual event took place: after 8,000 rats left Chiak-hyeon, it did not snow that year." Seeing such a migration, people sensed a coming catastrophe — which is why, by tradition, seamen do not set sail in a boat without rats.

Of the twelve zodiac deities around the royal tomb of King Heungdeok of Silla, only the Rat wears a heavenly gown, a sign of its special place as the first of the twelve. A Goryeo tomb mural at Seogok-ri, Paju, shows a seated figure with a rat's head drawn above his official headdress, in the first position among the animals guarding the tomb, at the centre of the north: the wish of the tomb's occupant for children, expressed through the animal of fertility. The museum recalls that the character for the Rat, 子, also means "son".

In Korea the rat, though small, is thought agile and clever, diligent, full of life and keen on saving food. It does great damage to crops, but its diligence made it a symbol of wealth. Its sensitive whiskers, its teeth that can gnaw almost anything, its gift for adapting to any place and its remarkable fertility explain its vitality; with four toes on its front feet and five on its hind feet, its body is balanced between yin and yang, and its many toes stand for countless goblins and for its power to multiply.

The West, the museum notes, sees the animal twice over: the rat that was thought to have spread the plague in medieval Europe and stands for the traitor, and the mouse of cartoons and fairy tales, clever and cute enough to tease a cat. In Korea, small as it is, the Rat is a wise animal that can bring abundance, hope and happiness, and a spokesperson for the weak.

A legend from Goguryeo tells of the rat's fertility. An angry king tested the fortune-teller Chunam (楸南) by asking him how many rats were in a box, and had him executed when his answer seemed wrong. When the rat in the box was cut open, it was found to be carrying a litter of young: the fortune-teller had been right all along. His unjustly executed spirit, the legend says, was reborn as General Kim Yu-sin (金庾信), who unified the three kingdoms of the peninsula.

Another tale explains why the Rat comes first. The King of Heaven promised the highest rank to the first animal that reached the gate of heaven on Lunar New Year's Day. The Ox trained hardest of all; the Rat, knowing it was too small and weak to win, stayed close to the Ox. On New Year's Day the Ox reached the gate first — but the Rat leapt from its back at the last moment and passed through before it. The Ox was indignant, but had to accept second place.

Old Korean paintings show rats realistically and with humour — a rat gnawing a carrot, another a watermelon — and the museum reads in them how much the rat was part of everyday life in Korea.

In the first lunar month farmers played jwibulnori, "playing with rat fires": they lit fires in the rice paddies and fields to destroy rats and pests, wishing for a good harvest and strengthening the spirit of the village, while their wives roasted beans chanting "Let us burn the rat's snout!"

On New Year's Eve or New Year's Day people told the year's fortune with yutjeom, a game of yut sticks. According to the Dongguk sesigi (東國歲時記), a throw of "do" and "gae" meant "a rat goes into the storehouse", and "geol", "gae" and "mo" meant "a cat meets a rat". In Dangjin, South Chungcheong, the custom of jwibaram-ssoegi, "blowing a rat wind", has a newcomer shown into every nook and cranny of the house, as nimbly as a rat, so that he or she may live as diligently and frugally as one.

The Rat, the Dragon and the Monkey form one of the four harmonious triads (samhap, 삼합): in the museum's image, the rat stands for the dragon's brain and the monkey's quick movement.

The Sheep is the Rat's wonjin (원진), the animal in conflict with it: the rat shrinks from the sheep's droppings, for the slightest touch of them, it was said, would make its body rot and its hair fall out.