[Hallyupedia] Jukbuin (죽부인)

By Ra Hwak Jin / Lee Hyo Yoon 

Jukbuin 

[ENG]: Bamboo Wife

▲ This photo, provided by the National Folk Museum, shows bamboo wife. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

Bamboo wife is a bed gear woven with split bamboo sticks. It is like a traditional form of today’s body pillows. Its Korean name, Jukbuin is a conjunction of juk[죽, 竹] meaning the pillow’s materials, bamboos and buin[부인, 夫人] meaning wife.

The traditional body pillow is used to cool down the hot summer heat while sleeping. Users sleep hugging the pillow and its long cylindrical shape varies in lengths and sizes to match its users.

It is woven loosely enough to make holes and both ends are well folded so they would not stick out sharply. The surfaces are polished until there are no protruding prickles. Strings or nails are not needed.

Usually, sleepers rest one leg on the bamboo wife. Then they can sleep feeling the bamboo’s cool surface and the circulating air in and out the holes of the hallow pillow.

It is said to have been used as a treatment for the sick when there had been no sleeping pills.

◇ Not just resting in museums… still viral in real life
As bamboo wife is one of the traditional tools used in summers along with fans and bamboo mats, it can easily be seen in museums featuring the lives and crafts of our ancestors. In the National Folk Museum of Korea, located in Jongno-gu, Seoul, bamboo wives are in display for its permanent exhibition ‘Korean Traditional Daily Life.’ The exhibition is also available online (https://www.nfm.go.kr).

Bamboo wives are still popularly used today. If you search for “죽부인” in Korean online shopping malls, various products are on sale. There is even a master who has been producing bamboo wives for decades in Damyang-gun, South Jeolla Province.
 

▲ This photo, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows bamboo wives on sale in markets. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

▲ This photo is a captured screen of an online shopping mall, Coupang, showing the results of searching 'bamboo wife.' (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

◇ Increasing demands for a change in the name, bamboo ‘wife’
There are many traditional novels and poems using bamboo wives as a metaphor of women. Lee Gok, in the late Goryeo Dynasty, wrote a novel named “The life of the bamboo wife” (translated title) likening a woman loyal to her husband to the pillow. Also, Yi Gyubo, scholar, literary critic, poet and writer of the Goryeo Dynasty, left a poem praising bamboo wives as they do not nose into his business or move onto another man.

It was not a courtesy of a son to use his father’s bamboo wife, according to the National Folk Museum.

These days, there are people pointing out that it is sexual discrimination to name a pillow like a woman. Officials from Gyeonggi Province has regarded the word ‘bamboo wife’ as a sexually discriminative term that needs to be fixed and has suggested to change the name into ‘bamboo pillow,’ in May.

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