Korean New Year Fortune
Korea's traditional New Year fortune book, explained
Around Lunar New Year (Seollal), many Koreans look up what the coming year may hold. One traditional way is Tojeong Bigyeol, a Korean fortune book. This page explains what it is, when people read it, how it differs from saju, and how a reading is built.
What is Tojeong Bigyeol?
Tojeong Bigyeol is a Korean book of yearly fortunes. Bigyeol means a little-known, secret method, and Tojeong is the pen name of Yi Ji-ham, the Joseon-era scholar to whom the book is traditionally attributed.
Yi Ji-ham (1517–1578) served as a county magistrate and is remembered for setting up a relief office for homeless beggars, the elderly and the hungry. The book is traditionally credited to him, though scholars are unsure whether he wrote it himself. Some scholars argue it only borrows his name.
For each result, the book gives verses for the year as a whole and for each of the twelve months.
When do people read it?
Around the New Year. Traditionally, the book is used to read the fortune of the coming year.
That was not always the case. Two Joseon-era almanacs of seasonal customs describe a different method, five-element divination (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), as the way to read the new year. From this, the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture infers that Tojeong Bigyeol became a seasonal custom only later in the Joseon period, after the reign of King Jeongjo.
How is it different from saju?
Both start from your birth date, but they build on it differently.
| Saju | Tojeong Bigyeol | |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | Four pillars: the year, month, day and hour of birth | Birth month and day, your age, and the year being read. The birth hour is left out. |
| What it looks at | Your birth chart as a whole | One year at a time |
| Possible results | Far more possible combinations than 144 | 144 possible readings, so many people share the same one |
Saju readings can also look at a given year, but the chart itself is not tied to one year.
How a reading is built
You don't need to do this yourself; our calculator does it for you.
A reading is a three-digit number. Each digit is the remainder left after a division:
- First digit (1 to 8): your age plus the year's number, divided by 8.
- Second digit (1 to 6): the length of your birth month that year (30 days if long, 29 if short) plus that month's number, divided by 6.
- Third digit (1 to 3): your birth day plus that day's number, divided by 3.
The year, month and day numbers are traditional values assigned to each year, month and day. Where nothing remains after a division, our calculator counts the highest value for that digit: 8, 6 or 3. Because the method counts months as 30 or 29 days long, as lunar months run, our calculator converts your birthday to the lunar calendar for you.
That gives 8 × 6 × 3 = 144 possible combinations, which matches the 144 results the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes. In Korean, each result is called a gwae, a symbolic pattern from the I Ching tradition. We simply call it your reading.
The method grows out of the I Ching but is not an I Ching reading. It uses only 48 of the I Ching's 64 patterns and builds them in its own way. Where the I Ching centers on cultivating virtue, the traditional readings center on good and bad fortune: wealth, rumors, family matters.
Our readings are not a translation
We wrote every reading on this site ourselves, starting from the structure of each three-digit number, and they are not based on any traditional text. They are not a translation, and they do not reproduce any traditional or modern Tojeong Bigyeol book. The layer names we use, such as Sprouting Year or Slow Build, are our own labels, not traditional terms.
Our readings are meant as prompts for reflection, not predictions. They are offered for entertainment and are not advice on health, money or law.
Common questions
Do I need my birth time?
No. The method leaves out the birth hour.
Why can't I get a reading for a leap-month birthday?
The public encyclopedia entries we checked do not say how a leap-month birthday should be counted, and we would rather not guess. The calculator also stops for a day-30 birthday in a month that had only 29 days that year, for the same reason.
Is this the same as my saju?
No. Saju reads four pillars of your birth chart; Tojeong Bigyeol gives one reading for one year. To see your four pillars, try our Free Saju Calculator. For how we calculate our saju results, see How We Calculate.
Sources: Tojeong Bigyeol – Encyclopedia of Korean Culture; Yi Ji-ham – Encyclopedia of Korean Culture; Bigyeol – Encyclopedia of Korean Culture; Sinsu Bogi – Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture; Tojeong Bigyeol – Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture. (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, Academy of Korean Studies; free to use under Article 24-2 of the Korean Copyright Act (public works)). (Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture, National Folk Museum of Korea; KOGL Type 2). Facts checked October 6, 2026.
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