Korean traditional

Assessment

Confidence

placeholder no source establishes the descent at all; the parent link is a guess

Evidence

corroborated two or more independent sources agree on the facts that define this variant

Cross-comparison

What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.

• [1] Sloperama queries whether 104 applies only to the three-player game. Bamboo is absent from the listed suits, which is what the chart means by 'no bamboo'
• [2] length 32 hands, no dead wall
• [3] states that Korean mahjong does not allow melded, that is stolen, chows, and that Japanese mahjong is standardised in Japan and South Korea
• [12] sets out the Korean and Japanese three-player game: the north wind is removed, 2 to 8 of bamboo are removed, the four seasons are removed and the four flowers kept, with no jokers. That is a different reduction from the Korean 104-tile game, which drops bamboo entirely
• [1] Re-read 2026-10-09 and unchanged. The revision log shows the Korean entry was added and clarified twice on 25 May 2001 with help from one informant, Sangchol Sheen. The entry still asks whether 104 applies only to three players and lists no books
• [4] Calls the game three-player ('3작마작'). It gives Korean tile names (요통, 양만), wait names (방, 양면방, 떼방) and the 겐쇼 bonus for copies of the winning tile, which takes the place of dora
• [2] Calls the game 'two-suited mahjong' and says it suits three players. Seating and dealing are nevertheless set out for four (East, South, West, North), with four walls 13 long and no dead wall. The page was last edited on 17 March 2010 and links a three-player variation
• [5] Korean features include open ready (Bulhe), the premium-tile point for copies of the winning tile, and higher bonuses for winning on a last-tile 1 of dots or a replacement 5 of dots. The open-ready rule refers to 'the other three players'
• [6] Revision 3, captured 29 April 2010. In the missing-wind form a full round lasts 9 or 18 hands
• [13] Mahjong, written 마—짱 (麻雀), is the craze of Korea's moneyed classes. The article says it came widely into Korea about four years earlier, around 1926, and that Koreans took it up because rich Americans and the Japanese liked it. It warns that the game is turning into gambling and notes that Chiang Kai-shek has banned it in China
• [14] Lists the new book 『麻雀競技法』 with an appended 'standard rule of Joseon mahjong' (朝鮮麻雀標準規定). It was edited by the Gyeongseong Aejakhoe (京城愛雀會), published by Imundang in Gwanhun-dong, Seoul, and priced at 50 jeon
• [15] Seoul's Honmachi police called in all mahjong parlour operators (마작영업자) in its district. From 13 March 1939 fees under the 東東制 were halved, 'tip' prizes were stopped and business after midnight was banned
• [7] Seoul prosecutors charged three men who coded about 60 of the '104 mahjong tiles' and, between April and October 1978, took 200 million won from a gravel-company owner in about 80 sessions. Dong-A Ilbo's report of the same day gives the same tile count
• [16] The government planned to amend the Enforcement Rules of the Tourism Promotion Act to add mahjong to the casino games permitted nationwide, to attract Chinese tourists and investors; 18 casino games were permitted at the time
• [8] The author imports automatic tables and runs a mahjong café. He says Chinese mahjong reached Korea with Chinese workers after about 2000 and Japanese riichi spread through board-game cafés from about 2005. Korean mahjong, he says, is played mainly in baduk clubs (기원), for example in Jongno, by players over fifty, and reached the public from Japan under colonial rule; he also makes an unsupported claim of arrival through Busan in the 1890s
• [9] A browser game's rules page: four players play a 12-hand match, each starting from 50 points
• [10] Says Korean mahjong is played with 104 tiles, mostly synthetic, with one die. Automatic tables are not yet widespread in Korea, so most games are played on an ordinary table with a mat

Reading it

The sources agree on the node's label: Korean mahjong uses 104 tiles, characters, dots, honours and four bonus tiles, with no bamboo. Korean Wikipedia, a 2020 Clien post, the kmahjong.ai rules page and Shin Jae-seon's 2017 newspaper column say so independently of Sloperama and Mahjong Wiki, and Seoul dailies of 2 December 1978 already report a cheating ring marking '104 mahjong tiles'. They also agree on a 13-tile hand, no chow claimed from a discard, a two-point minimum, bonus points for flowers and for the winning tile, and a payout in which everyone pays a self-draw and the discarder alone pays double. They disagree on the number of players and on the bonus tiles. Korean Wikipedia calls the game three-player, while Shin's payment example, kmahjong.ai, Mahjong Wiki's seating and the four-person 1978 game describe four. Mahjong Wiki's three-player options drop the north wind and may add the 1 and 9 of bamboo, which is the set English Wikipedia copied. The bonus tiles are seasons, flowers or the 1-bamboo birds, depending on the source. A 1929 Chosun Ilbo article dates the game's spread in Korea to about 1926. Still wanted: the 1931 Seoul rulebook with its 'Joseon standard rule', Park Young-woo's 2010 manual and the casino regulation.

Looked for, not found

• Official rules No body governs the traditional Korean game. The Korea Mahjong League (KML) and the WMPA/WMF publish riichi-based rules, and Korean Wikipedia says Korean mahjong scoring is not standardised. Searched through Naver, RISS and the Internet Archive on 2026-10-09
• Tournament rules No tournament of the 104-tile game was found. The Korean events in Naver and web results (KML league and 명인전, World Mahjong Championship in Jeju) use riichi or Chinese Official rules. The only tournament found for this game is the 1928-29 Iri 'new-year mahjong tournament' in the Naver News Library, which gives no rules
• Scholarship RISS on 2026-10-09 ('한국 마작', 177 hits) and the Naver News Library found no study of the Korean game's rules or history. Sung Si-hoon (2021) is about mahjong's origin in China, Kim Sang-jin (2006) about a tile-evaluation algorithm, and Jeon Bong-gwan (2022) about a 1930 short story
• Collection Not searched for objects. No museum record of a Korean 104-tile set was looked for; the National Library of Korea catalogue was used only for books

Known, not yet read

Sources that look worth having but could not be read for this entry. If you can reach one, it can be read and added. Every variant’s list is gathered on Missing sources.

• Rulebook 박영우 (Park Young-woo). 『마작 길잡이: 한국마작의 정패(定牌)』. Seoul: BG북갤러리, 2010. ISBN 978-89-91177-94-9 (NLK KMO201014689). — Korean Wikipedia's source for the Korean game's scoring, and the only recent book found that is devoted to the 104-tile game. It should settle the player count and the bonus tiles
  Where: National Library of Korea (call number 691.48-10-1) and its digital copy; Korean libraries and second-hand booksellers. Tried: NLK catalogue search on 2026-10-09 found the record. The digital copy can be read only at the NLK and its partner libraries, which is the library's own restriction
• Historical 韓慶錫 編, 京城愛雀會 編. 『麻雀競技法』 (附朝鮮麻雀標準規定). 京城: 以文堂 / 京城愛雀會, 25 February 1931. — The earliest Korean rulebook found, with a 'standard rule of Joseon mahjong'. It would show whether play in colonial Korea already differed from the Japanese and Chinese game, for example by dropping bamboo
  Where: National Library of Korea, digitised (search 麻雀競技法 at nl.go.kr). Tried: NLK catalogue search on 2026-10-09 found the record. The digitised copy is open only at the NLK and partner libraries, which is the library's own restriction. The Dong-A notice of 5 March 1931 was read
• Rulebook 이근황 (Lee Geun-hwang). 『(한국식) 마작 교실: 초보에서 전략전술까지』 (Korean-style mahjong class). Seoul: 동신출판사, 2006. — A second book-length account of the Korean-style game, independent of Park Young-woo
  Where: Korean university and public libraries (RISS lists holdings); the National Library of Korea. Tried: RISS search on 2026-10-09 found the record only; no full text is online
• Law 관광진흥법 시행규칙 (Enforcement Rules of the Tourism Promotion Act), annexed table of casino game types, as amended from 1999 to add 마작. — The only Korean regulation found to name mahjong, which makes it legal in casinos (otherwise it falls under the gambling law). It would show which rules casino mahjong uses
  Where: Korea Law Information Center, https://www.law.go.kr/ (current and historical versions of 관광진흥법 시행규칙 and its 별표). Tried: 2026-10-09: the law page URLs failed with connection resets (curl error 35, tunnel closed mid-exchange per the proxy log). That is a failure on our side of the connection, not a refusal by the site; another network may read it at once
• Organisation 한국마작연맹 (Korea Mahjong League). Document uid=68, kml.or.kr/?page_id=12&mod=document&uid=68, summarising Korean mahjong in its own terms; and KML's 2010-06-07 competition rules. — A Korean mahjong body's own summary of the traditional game (104 tiles, no bamboo, no prevailing-wind rounds), quoted only in a Naver search snippet
  Where: https://kml.or.kr/?page_id=12&mod=document&uid=68; possibly Wayback captures of kml.or.kr. Tried: 2026-10-09: kml.or.kr answered a Cloudflare 'Just a moment' challenge (403), the site's own refusal; Wayback captures of uid=68 were not checked

Where it was searched

Every place the search checklist names for this variant’s languages, and what each gave, including nothing. The last full pass was on 2026-10-09.

Names searched: Korean 한국마작, 한국 마작, 한국식 마작, 마작, 麻雀, 마장, 마—짱, 3작마작; English Korean mahjong, Korean mah-jongg, Korean style mahjong, two-suited mahjong, Three Player Korean Mahjong.