척, what the heck is it?
It is a length measurement like cm and ft and I’ve heard this often enough when I was young, from my parents, grandparents and also read in folktales. Yet I had no idea what it really meant in realistic terms so I looked it up. Going down the rabbit hole so to speak.
There were various interpretations of what 척 means. According to current Google (yes, seriously, Google seems to track everything!), 1척 = 33 cm so 6척= 200 cm which would be approximately 6.56 ft. That seemed a little overblown. This was very different from a blog written by someone who analyzed height measurement written in 삼국지 (three kingdoms). According to that blog, 1척 = 23 cm, which means 6척 = 138 cm. This was way off the mark. 삼국지 after all is from hundreds of years in the past and not even in Korea. After more searching, I found another blog that analyzed what 척 meant during 조선period in Korea, which is the time period my great great grandfather lived. That page indicated 1척 = 31 cm, so 6척 = 186 cm. If you can read and understand Korean, click here to read more.
Korean Snippets 