Which animal am I
The animal comes from the year you were born, but the year does not turn over on January 1. In the Korean reckoning it turns at ipchun, the start of spring, which falls around February 4. Anyone born in January or the first days of February belongs to the previous animal, and that single fact is what most online charts get wrong.
- RatResourcefulness and watchful attentionWater, yang
- OxSteadiness through a long winterEarth, yin
- TigerThe impulse to beginWood, yang
- RabbitSensitivity to what is taking shapeWood, yin
- DragonGrowth that needs room and directionEarth, yang
- SnakeConcentration beneath the surfaceFire, yin
- HorseThe energy to turn a decision into actionFire, yang
- GoatAttention to what summer leaves behindEarth, yin
- MonkeyAnother way to approach the problemMetal, yang
- RoosterPrecision and the value of a clear standardMetal, yin
- DogLoyalty and the responsibility of keeping watchEarth, yang
- PigOpenness with depth beneath itWater, yin
Not the same as your star sign
English uses the word zodiac for two unrelated systems. One is this — twelve animals on a twelve-year cycle, borrowed into Korea from the Chinese calendar. The other is the band of Western star signs that runs on a twelve-month cycle. They share a number and nothing else: different cycle length, different origin, different reasoning.
If you were looking for Aries and Scorpio rather than Tiger and Ox, those are written up separately.
How this differs from the version you have read
Most English pages on the Chinese zodiac stop at a personality paragraph and a lucky colour. Korean readers treat the animal as one of four pillars, not the whole chart, and they read it through the relations between branches — which pairs pull together, which clash, which quietly wear each other down. That is where the compatibility claims come from, and it is why the answers are specific rather than flattering.
Each animal page also carries the part most write-ups leave out: what the sign is said to be bad at. A reading that only praises is not telling you anything.
The Korean pages
The Korean side of the site goes further — a daily reading per animal, year forecasts, and compatibility for all twelve pairs.
- Daily reading by animalUpdated against the day pillar, no birth date needed
- Which animal am IEnter a birth year; handles the ipchun boundary
12 animals, same order in both languages.