Report from the 2007 World Traditional Archery Festival in Korea
by Peter Dekker

Pleasantly surprised
I was upon receiving Mr. Won's invitation to the 2007 World Traditional Archery Festival in South Korea. I was in China at the moment and a request was to provide a traditional set of bow and arrows from my country. Not knowing much about my native Dutch archery traditions I consulted my friends of Fabricor in The Netherlands who could tell me there was a special type of Flamish recurved longbow. They sent it to China along with materials to make enough arrows for the flamish bow, plus a new set of arrows for my brand new bow from Beijing's bow maker, Yang Fuxi. I had learned that the Manchus sometimes used a peculiar type of fletching which was very long and the feathers were not placed in a conventional way on the shaft but rather in a 180-90-90 degrees fashion with slight twist. Determined to find out how this flew, and somewhat comforted by the fact the Qianlong emperor who was a good archer preferred this fletching on his own target arrows I made my set of arrows in this fashion and set off to Korea.

The set of arrows I made for the W.T.A.F. 2007

Arrival
I arrived a day earlier because the other flights were already booked full. Upon landing I was awaited by a nice Korean fellow with a sign with my country's flag and my name on it. On the airport I already met some colorful figures from Hungary, France and England that were also headed to the festival. Upon arrival the Mongolian team had arrived as well and had taken a bottle of Ghengis Kahn whisky. "Can you drink?" was one of the first questions asked by our Korean hosts. As the evening progressed people from the different nationalities toasted with liquors from distant lands, curiously examining the archery equipment of the others. It was great to see Texan flint knapper and bow maker Bill Metcalfe making native American arrowheads with the Mongolian bow maker Tumurhuu Batmunkh.

Preparation
The next day we woke up early, had some food, after which many felt itchy fingers and wanted to shoot. Oficially there were no plans to shoot until the next day, which was the day of the demonstrations. Luckily I wasn't the only one that especially made new material to shoot with on this event and we all wanted to test and get used to our new bows and arrows prior to demonstrating. We got the chance to do so on a junior archery ground nearby with a target set up at 60 metres. It didn't take long before all were happily shooting away on Korean and Mongolian targets and a box. A fellow archer brilliantly hit the Mongolian target right through the middle but then whispered in my ear: "Don't tell anyone, but I was aiming for the box!". My own arrows flew quite well. Despite only having experience on shorter distance from 18-25 metres, I could soon hit the target on 60 metres almost every time. The new bow also shot like a dream, my arrows did not lose much height over this distance. Seeing so many different archery traditions together was great and it was a nice preview for what was to come. I left the archery ground much more confident about my demonstration the next day than I was before. In the evening we all had some drinks together again, ever discussing bows, arrows, techniqes, and examining all the equipmment the new arrivals of the day had brought with them.

A multicultural task force cooperates
in retrieving arrows from the target.

The big day
The next day was the big day of the demonstrations. First we practised the grand opening where all archers made a round through the stadium in their traditional outfits, followed by the actual opening. There was a great demonstration of old Korean military traditions including a full sized working replica of a hwacha, an ancient type of rocket launcher that uses gunpoweder to launch spears.

Me and my Greek roommate Aristoteles posing in front of the hwacha.	The hwacha in action.

The archery demonstrations that followed were very interesting, one doesn't often get the chance to see such a diversity of bows from different cultures in action. From the 22 different countries that participated, the groups that made most impression on me were the Koreans, Mongols, Bhutanese, and the Turkish.

Korean archery demonstration
The Koreans stood in rows lined up behind eachother, not unlike Ming dynasty Chinese crossbowmen and later musketeers so that one line can shoot while the others reload. The colorful clothing was beautiful and their small, elegant bows are among the most impressive composite recurve bows I have seen. They do not so much get their power from thick limbs, but from pushing the materials to their very limit resulting in very light and fast bows. Most interesting to me were the XXXXX where a short arrow is shot with a lot of overdraw, being led past the bow with a bamboo rail. A very dangerous technique but one that can deliver an extremely fast arrow up to 600 metres. The arrows were so fast that one could hardly see them fly, even from behind the archer.

Mongolian archery demonstration
The Mongols already impressed me with their sole presence, so when they picked up their bows I was all eyes and ears. I noticed they draw marks on their bow hand after shots, probably to adjust their next shot. The targets are made up of small cylindrical "baskets" of about 10cm height woven from rawhide. The middle ones are red. They shoot them at 80-120 metres, but with arrows with blunt tips that can slide over the grass. Some compared it a bit to bowling with a bow. I wonder how and at what time in history this sport was formed as it does not appear useful for military use. Other than their impressive performance you could always see them examine the equipment of other cultures, clearly they were among the more curious of the festival.

Tumurhuu Batmunkh about to shoot his composite bow, which he made himself.

Tibetan archery demonstration
The Tibetans were a colorful bunch that obviously had great joy in their demonstration and were dancing and singing as if they were home. Whenever a hit was made the whole team would run up to the target, waving their extremely long sleeves around under loud yelling and singing. In Tibet itself they appear to go further and drink between shots, and they must shoot while the wives of the other contestants are cursing at them to break their concentration.

Bhutanese archery demonstration
The Bhutanese set up three targets on some 150 metres, all about 30 cm wide and not even a metre high. Circles were drawn on them and some pieces of cloth were hung before them. Some would stand right next to the target to give signs of hit and miss, as arrows are very hard to see at this distance. Their bows consisted of simple pieces of bamboo, taped together in the center and were about 50-60 pounds to draw. Their arrows were very nicely made from bamboo, fitted with iron tips and with extremely short trimmed black fletchings. They did not really aim but released right when they reached full draw. Amazingly, they did hit their targets at such great distance, with these incredibly simple bows. The performance of these simple weapons in their skillful hands was simply amazing.

Bhutanese archer preparing to draw

Bhutanese arrows

Turkisch archery demonstration
Dr. Murat from the Turkish team made quite an impression with both his theorethical knowledge, passion to revive Turkisch archery, and his demonstration itself. They had a traditional target which was a leather bag with two circular targets, the top being smaller than the bottom one that likely depict head and torso of an opponent. Murat did not only shoot from several distances but also went into a diversity of different positions, including one lying on his back and a crouched version of the parthian shot.

Manchu archery demonstration
Then it was time for my own demonstration. I had never demonstrated my archery before, let alone in the presence of so many great archers from all over the world. My carefully selected Manchu outfit that consisted of both original and reproduced items made me feel more comfortable. If I miss, at least I'll look good, I thought. The original owner of my hat might have felt a very similar tension when going to his examinations. Luckily the tension felt great, I looked forward to shooting. Once I was there it seemed there was only me and the target, first arrow, full draw, gone. Bullseye! "Don't think too much, keep your routine, next arrow." It came right next to the other, just outside the bullseye rim. The other arrows went in the circles around it but still pretty centered. When done I got a great applause and one of my new found friends told me: "That was some of the best shooting I've seen today". (I admit, it was still rather early.) I shot better than I was used to of myself and many times better than I had expected to do under pressure, it was a great feeling to go out there and do well for all these people. After the demonstration some people got very interested in my arrows and I even traded two of mine against two of the old Korean arrowmaker that were much better made than my own, but he wanted to have mine to examine the fletchings.

The competitions
Competing with so many different cultures is not easy but the organisation of the festival did a great job by setting up targets of several different cultures and group people in groups that represented a great diversity of archery traditions. It surprised me to see that the Bhutanese and Mongols that were so great at the longer ranges had difficulty hitting a foam deer from some 20 metres, most of their shots initially went over. On the other hand, those used to targets up close had great difficulty hitting the further targets. Unfortunately I broke my bow the previous day, probably because it got overheated and used my lighter backup bow which did not even reach the distance the Korean targets were on but for this competition the fun to shoot with all these people made up for the lack of a good bow. The Mongolians showed great sportsmanship by using sharp arrows to shoot on their own targets that stuck in the ground rather than to slide like they were used to, giving everybody a fair chance. Unfortunately we had to miss all the lectures of that same day, but upon leaving we got a nicely printed book containing all the lectures given, plus illustrations.

Later that day when the competitions were over I had the chance to shoot with some other bows including a Korean bow, while some good Korean archers helped me to adjust my stance for this bow. The Mongols were having great fun with Jaap Koppedreyer's Japanese yumi bows, which was very entertaining to see.

Mongol archer with Koppedreyer's Yumi

Conclusion
At the end of the festival there was a great sense of brotherhood between the many different archers and many of us made some good friends. As students of rare and often dying arts we need to untite to carry on the ancient archery traditions, not excluding other cultures because "our bow is better". This festival had none of that and rather widened the view of the many participants. It was a great experience to meet all the established people in the field as well, laying the basis for future cooperation and the exchange of ideas and knowledge.

See you all in 2008!

-Peter Dekker

Participants could trade a set of bow and arrows from their culture for a set from Korea, which I happily did. I have since then gotten so immpressed by the Korean bow that we decided to represent them on our website along Chinese bows. The arrows I describe in this article are also available, I can make additional sets of them on request.

Article on the W.T.A.F. 2007 by Hilary Greenland, England

Copyright Mandarin Mansion 2007. All rights reserved.