Janggi - Korean Chess

A short time ago I bought a set for Janggi, the Korean version of the great chess family. Janggi is more closely related to Chinese chess (Xiang Qi) than any other version, and it is generally believed that Janggi derives from an earlier version of Xiang Qi.

Janggi is played on a board similar to that of Xiang Qi, but without the river, which obviously affects some moves (in Xiang Qi the elephant piece cannot cross the river). The pictures below show the two sides set up in a conventional arrangement, and the empty board (paper, as is also common for Xiang Qi):

The pieces used in Janggi are flat, as in all other East Asian chess variants. They have the name of the piece written on the flat surface, in green for one side and in red for the other (or, at least this is the commonestcolour combination -modern Korean sets use other clours, such as blue). The pieces are usually hexagonal, as shown below, but again, modern Korean sets (and one reported from 1895) can be circular as well:

My set are basically cheap plastic pieces - I would like to get better wooden ones, but they seem to be unavailable in Europe. Most games shops are unaware of even the existence of Janggi - I asked in Just Games in Camden Lock (London), a long established games shop, and the owner has never heard of Janggi, despite selling nice wooden sets of Xiang Qi pieces. In Korea, though, you can get lovely sets, but I cannot figure out how to buy them, as the sellers website is in Korean only.

There are a few good websites that explain the rules of Janggi, including (of course) Wikipedia, and the Chess Variant pages. Written information in English is quite scare, and quite recent. The original source was the great games historial Stewart Culin, who wrote one of the earliest descriptions in his 1895 book Korean Games:

Unfortunately, Culin's book is not easily available - Amazon.com has some copies available second-hand, but at a price. I don't remember where I got my copy, but I think it was not too expensive at the time. It is a Dover Publications reproduction from 1991 (ISBN: 0486265935).