Korean chess on a 9-by-10 board, with palaces, leaping cannons, and soldiers that creep sideways.
Pieces sit on the intersections of a 9-file by 10-rank board. Each side guards a 3x3 palace; your aim is to checkmate the enemy general while keeping your own safe. Click a piece to see its legal moves, then click where it should go.
Janggi is the chess of Korea, a close cousin of Chinese xiangqi and, like it, a descendant of the same ancient family that began with India's chaturanga. Xiangqi crossed into the Korean peninsula and was gradually reshaped into a distinct game, so that while Janggi keeps the fortress-like palace and the screen-jumping cannon of its Chinese parent, it has long since become a game of its own.
Its clearest link to history is on the pieces themselves: one army is marked Cho (楚) and the other Han (漢), naming the two sides of the Chu–Han contention — the war between Xiang Yu of Chu and Liu Bang of Han that founded China's Han dynasty around 202 BC. Every game of Janggi is, in miniature, a replay of that ancient struggle.
Korean players refined the rules in their own direction. The counsellors never leave the palace beside the general; the elephant makes a longer, blockable leap than its Chinese counterpart; and a cannon may neither jump another cannon nor capture one. A player may even pass a turn, and if the two generals end up facing each other down an open file with nothing between them, the game can be claimed as a draw — small rules that give Janggi a character quite unlike Western or Chinese chess.
Played for centuries in homes, teahouses and marketplaces, Janggi remains one of Korea's most popular traditional board games, with professional players and televised matches today. This is a free browser version of that living tradition.
Janggi is the traditional Korean entry in the historical chess family, prized for its jumping cannons and palace tactics. This is an original, free browser build with adjustable AI and pass-and-play.