In Korea, couples thinking seriously about each other have compared charts for centuries. The reading is called gunghap (궁합) — saju marriage compatibility — and it remains one of the most requested readings in Korean practice. Instead of scoring one person, it places two four pillars charts side by side and asks how they behave together: do your Day Masters support or clash, do your Five Elements complete or crowd each other, and what do the zodiac animals of your birth years add? This guide explains each layer in plain English, and how to get both charts free in about a minute.
A single saju chart is built from a birth year, month, day and hour — eight characters in total. A gunghap reading takes both charts and reads the relationship between them on three layers, from most to least weight:
Each Day Master is one of the Five Elements in a yin or yang form, and the elements relate to each other in fixed ways — one generates another, one controls another, two of the same kind amplify each other. Read across a couple, those relations become relationship textures:
| Element relation | Between partners, it tends to read as |
|---|---|
| Generating (상생) | One temperament naturally feeds the other — often felt as ease and support, with the question of whether the giving flows one way or both |
| Controlling (상극) | One temperament checks the other — friction when unconscious, useful structure when both partners know it is there |
| Same element (비화) | Deep mutual recognition — and the risk of doubling the same blind spot, since two strong-willed Metal charts may both refuse to bend |
Almost every chart is uneven — heavy in one or two elements, thin or missing in others. In a marriage compatibility reading, this is where the most practical material lives:
If you want the vocabulary first, the guide to the five elements in saju explains what each energy means inside one chart before you compare two.
Most people meet Korean compatibility through the animal signs — the question "what year were you born?" is doing gunghap in miniature. Tradition groups certain years as harmonious triads (삼합) and marks certain opposite pairs as clashing (충). It is a real layer of the reading, but it compares one character out of eight per person. A couple with a traditionally awkward animal pairing can have strongly complementary full charts — which is exactly why a serious marriage reading always goes past the animals to the Day Masters and elements.
Honesty matters most on exactly this page. A gunghap reading will not tell you whom to marry, set a wedding date for you, or guarantee how a relationship turns out. Traditional practitioners themselves rarely treat it as prohibitive — it is diagnostic, a structured way for two people to see how their temperaments are likely to interact. Couples with difficult-looking charts build lasting marriages, and beautifully matched charts still require the ordinary daily work of being kind to each other. Use the reading to ask better questions together, not to outsource the answer.
Gunghap (궁합) is the Korean marriage compatibility reading: two saju charts read side by side before a serious relationship or marriage. It weighs how the Day Masters interact, whether each partner's Five Elements complete the other's, and how the birth-year animals traditionally pair. Historically it was consulted by families before weddings; today many Korean couples treat it as a thoughtful date activity as much as a tradition.
No — and a reading that claims to decide that for you is overreaching. What a compatibility reading does well is name patterns early: where you will naturally support each other, where friction is predictable, which blind spots you share. The decision stays with the two of you, where it belongs.
On its own, no. The animal layer compares one character out of eight per person — the folk shorthand, not the reading. Full charts regularly tell the opposite story to the animal pairing. If your animals clash but your Day Masters support each other and your elements interlock, most readers would call that a complementary match with one spicy footnote.
Birth dates alone give each of you three of the four pillars — including the Day Master and most of the element balance — so a date-only compatibility reading is already meaningful. The hour pillar adds depth traditionally tied to later life and family. If one of you does not know the time, read what the dates give you; the guide to saju and birth time covers what the hour adds.
Right here. The free Cheonmyeongdang calculator turns each birth date and hour into a four pillars chart with the Day Master and Five Elements summary in plain English — run it once for each of you. Prefer chat? The same reading runs inside Telegram at t.me/sajuapp_bot/saju.