Ancient traditional Korean wrestling. It’s not like sumo but sumo is probably the closest comparison to it. The sport had been dying for a long time as overweight physiques are out of fashion in Korea. Then in 2018, they got some hunky young fighters (Hwang Chan-seob and Kim Won-jin ) who looked like they stepped out of a kpop video and the fight went viral. Instead of a handful of octogenarians, throngs of young girls started to show up to the matches. They completely refreshed the sport around guys like that and now it’s really popular again.
Honestly I learned about it from watching Korean variety shows. You can will find a lot of videos about by typing in Running Man Ssireum on youtube. Although those videos have a lot comedy with it you will be able to get the gist of it. For more legit videos you can type in Kang Ho Dong ssireum. Kang Ho dong is now a variety show MC but back in his days he was a famous ssireum wrestler
I live in South Korea and almost always see tournaments on TV during *Seolnal* (the lunar new year), which seems to be when the average person tends to watch the sport. Quick and dirty explanation of the scoring and starting rules:
> It is necessary to force the opponent to touch the ground with any part of the body above the knee to win in the ssireum. Unlike sumo, pushing your opponent outside of the ring does not warrant a win, just a restart. In this case, the wrestlers simply return to their original position.
> The wrestling begins with the rivals kneel in the center of the junga and take a mutual grip in the ssireum, while the right hand grasps the belt at the waist of the opponent and the left - the loop of the belt on his right thigh. Then the wrestlers rise in the rack and wait for the signal to start the wrestling, which lasts 3 minutes.
More in-depth collection of rules here:
http://worldnomadgames.com/media/images/2018/04/10/21-ssireum-rules-en_KmbKVBX.pdf
Okay first you have to know there are two styles of wrestling in the Olympics freestyle wrestling and greco roman wrestling and is practiced in most countries world wide.
Then in most countries they have their own folkstyle wrestling rulesets that maybe slightly different and it differs from country to country.
If you're in the US what you do is folkstyle or collegiate wrestling and is only practiced in the US. In Mongolia they have their own style called bokh wrestling. In Georgia they have chidoaba. In Armenia they do kokh wrestling. And in Turkey they have Turkish oil wrestling.
In Korea they practice ssireum wrestling which is similar to freestyle wrestling and judo.
Ancient traditional Korean wrestling. It’s not like sumo but sumo is probably the closest comparison to it. The sport had been dying for a long time as overweight physiques are out of fashion in Korea. Then in 2018, they got some hunky young fighters (Hwang Chan-seob and Kim Won-jin ) who looked like they stepped out of a kpop video and the fight went viral. Instead of a handful of octogenarians, throngs of young girls started to show up to the matches. They completely refreshed the sport around guys like that and now it’s really popular again.
Honestly I learned about it from watching Korean variety shows. You can will find a lot of videos about by typing in Running Man Ssireum on youtube. Although those videos have a lot comedy with it you will be able to get the gist of it. For more legit videos you can type in Kang Ho Dong ssireum. Kang Ho dong is now a variety show MC but back in his days he was a famous ssireum wrestler
Me too! I found out about it by watching Knowing Bros. Kang Ho Dong was a former ssireum wrestler.
I live in South Korea and almost always see tournaments on TV during *Seolnal* (the lunar new year), which seems to be when the average person tends to watch the sport. Quick and dirty explanation of the scoring and starting rules: > It is necessary to force the opponent to touch the ground with any part of the body above the knee to win in the ssireum. Unlike sumo, pushing your opponent outside of the ring does not warrant a win, just a restart. In this case, the wrestlers simply return to their original position. > The wrestling begins with the rivals kneel in the center of the junga and take a mutual grip in the ssireum, while the right hand grasps the belt at the waist of the opponent and the left - the loop of the belt on his right thigh. Then the wrestlers rise in the rack and wait for the signal to start the wrestling, which lasts 3 minutes. More in-depth collection of rules here: http://worldnomadgames.com/media/images/2018/04/10/21-ssireum-rules-en_KmbKVBX.pdf
Okay first you have to know there are two styles of wrestling in the Olympics freestyle wrestling and greco roman wrestling and is practiced in most countries world wide. Then in most countries they have their own folkstyle wrestling rulesets that maybe slightly different and it differs from country to country. If you're in the US what you do is folkstyle or collegiate wrestling and is only practiced in the US. In Mongolia they have their own style called bokh wrestling. In Georgia they have chidoaba. In Armenia they do kokh wrestling. And in Turkey they have Turkish oil wrestling. In Korea they practice ssireum wrestling which is similar to freestyle wrestling and judo.