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The National Palace Museum of Korea (Director: Kim In Kyu), an affiliate of the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea, has selected “Flag with a Design of a Girin” as its “Curator’s Choice from the Royal Treasures” for the month of August. It will be presented online in a YouTube broadcast on the channels of the Cultural Heritage Administration and the National Palace Museum of Korea starting August 1.

* National Palace Museum of Korea YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/gogungmuseum

* Cultural Heritage Administration YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/chluvu

 A flag with a design of a girin was carried by royal guards of the Joseon Dynasty for the procession of a crown prince or his eldest son. Believed to possess a gentle and benign nature to the point of not stepping on living insects or grazing on growing grass, girin have represented a sage ruler since ancient times. The Joseon royal court used the girin as a symbol of the crown prince, the successor to the throne.

The girin was broadly depicted as a combination of a horse, deer, and dragon, but its representation varied over time. The image on the flag in the collection of the National Palace Museum of Korea has the body of a roe deer, the head and scales of a dragon, the tail of an ox, hooves like a horse, horns, and a mane. A similar image can be observed in the illustration of a girin flag in the Royal Protocols on the Banquet for King Gojong in 1892.

A flag with a girin design was attached to a three-meter bamboo pole with strings. At a procession, one person carried the pole while two others held cords extending from its upper parts. An implement known as a bongjitong was inserted into the lower end of the pole and attached to the waist or shoulder of the flagbearer to support the weight. Each flag with a design of a girin was produced as a set with a rain cover and a wrapping cloth made from blue cotton tabby that was used when the flag was in storage. A distinctive item among the twenty-two ritual objects (in thirty-five pieces) used in the procession of the crown prince during the Joseon Dynasty, a flag bearing a girin reflected wishes for an era of peace and prosperity governed by a sage ruler.

The flag is on display in the Royal Rituals of the Joseon Dynasty Gallery on the B1 floor of the National Palace Museum of Korea. Those unable to visit the gallery in person can still enjoy this month’s Curator’s Choice virtually through a video with Korean and English subtitles available on the museum’s website (gogung.go.kr) and on the YouTube channels of the museum and the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea.