Korean Zodiac Animals (띠) and Saju: How the 12 Signs Actually Fit

Your animal sign is one of the eight characters in a Saju chart, and the year it belongs to starts on a different day than most people think.

Your Korean zodiac animal, or tti (띠), is the Earthly Branch of your Year Pillar. It is one character out of the eight in a Saju chart. The animal changes at Ipchun (입춘, 立春), the solar term around February 4, in a Saju calculation, while everyday Korean usage often switches it at Lunar New Year. In 2026 those two dates are thirteen days apart, and a birth between them gets a different animal under each rule.

Where the animal sits in the chart

A Saju chart has four pillars, each a Heavenly Stem (천간, 天干) over an Earthly Branch (지지, 地支). The twelve branches carry the animal names. Only the bottom character of the Year Pillar is your tti; the other seven characters are just as fixed by your birth and say more about the chart than the year animal does.

Take a birth on July 20, 2026 in Seoul, at any hour. The Year Pillar is Byeong-O 丙午, so the animal is Horse. The Day Pillar for that date is Eul-Mi 乙未, which makes the Day Master Eul Wood. In a Saju reading, Eul Wood is the reference point for every relationship in the chart, and the Horse in the year column is one of seven characters measured against it.

"Year of the Fire Horse" already tells you this. The Horse is the branch, O 午. The Fire is the stem, Byeong 丙. A stem-and-branch year name is a full pillar, and the sixty-pillar cycle (육십갑자, 六十甲子) means it recurs every sixty years: 2026 is Byeong-O, and so was 1966. People born in 1966 and 2026 share a Year Pillar and nothing else that the calendar guarantees.

When the year changes

This is where a Saju chart and popular usage part ways.

In Saju, the year pillar changes at Ipchun, the solar term at 315 degrees of the sun's ecliptic longitude. It falls on February 3, 4 or 5 depending on the year. In 2026 it fell on February 4 at 05:02 Korea Standard Time. The month pillar changes at the same instant, from the Chuk 丑 month to the In 寅 month. Kairo's engine uses this boundary for both pillars.

In folk usage the animal changes at Seollal (설날), Lunar New Year, which moves between late January and mid February. In 2026 Seollal was February 17. So for a birth on February 10, 2026 in Seoul:

Rule	Year boundary in 2026	Year for February 10	Animal
Saju chart (Ipchun)	February 4, 05:02 KST	Byeong-O 丙午	Horse
Folk convention (Seollal)	February 17	Eul-Sa 乙巳	Snake
Western calendar (January 1)	January 1	2026, no pillar	Horse, loosely

Most Koreans born on February 10, 2026 are told from childhood that they are Snake. Their Saju chart says Horse. Neither is a mistake; they answer different questions. The folk convention answers "which New Year had passed," and the Saju convention answers "which solar-term year had begun." The site has an article on why Saju runs on solar terms rather than lunar dates.

The width of the gap changes every year, and sometimes its direction. In 2027 Ipchun falls on February 4 and Seollal on February 7, so only births from February 4 to 6, 2027 are affected. In 2025 the order was reversed: Seollal fell on January 29 and Ipchun on February 3, so a birth on February 1, 2025 is a Snake by the folk rule and still a Dragon, Gap-Jin 甲辰, in a Saju chart. Seollal moves between January 21 and February 20, so the gap is never more than about two weeks on either side, and in some years it closes to a day.

The twelve branches

Each branch has an animal, an element, a polarity and a month it governs. The months begin at solar terms, so the dates below shift by a day either way from year to year.

Branch	Animal	Korean sign	Element	Polarity	Month governed (approx.)
Ja 子	Rat	쥐띠	Water	yang	December 7 – January 5
Chuk 丑	Ox	소띠	Earth	yin	January 5 – February 4
In 寅	Tiger	호랑이띠 (범띠)	Wood	yang	February 4 – March 5
Myo 卯	Rabbit	토끼띠	Wood	yin	March 5 – April 5
Jin 辰	Dragon	용띠	Earth	yang	April 5 – May 5
Sa 巳	Snake	뱀띠	Fire	yin	May 5 – June 6
O 午	Horse	말띠	Fire	yang	June 6 – July 7
Mi 未	Goat	양띠	Earth	yin	July 7 – August 7
Sin 申	Monkey	원숭이띠	Metal	yang	August 7 – September 7
Yu 酉	Rooster	닭띠	Metal	yin	September 7 – October 8
Sul 戌	Dog	개띠	Earth	yang	October 8 – November 7
Hae 亥	Pig	돼지띠	Water	yin	November 7 – December 7

The Saju year begins with the In 寅 month, which is why the Tiger governs February and the Rat, first in the animal order, governs December. The branch order and the year order are the same cycle entered at different points.

The same twelve branches also name the hours of the day, two hours each, starting with Ja at 23:00. A person born in the Horse year, the Horse month and the Horse hour has O 午 in three of four branches. That is a chart fact with consequences for the reading. Being "a Horse" on its own is not.

Why the Day Master outranks the year animal

The year animal is the oldest and most public layer of the calendar, which is why it is the one most people know. In Saju it is the least individual layer. Everyone born between 05:02 on February 4, 2026 and Ipchun 2027 shares Byeong-O, a full year of births under one pillar.

The Day Pillar changes every day. The Day Master, its stem, is the character every other character is classified against, and it produces the Ten Gods (십성, 十星), the relationship labels that a reading is built from. Two people with the same year animal and different Day Masters get readings with no shared structure at all. Two people with different year animals and the same Day Master, Month Branch and hour share most of one.

Kairo's free reading sorts a chart into one of 40 blocks by Day Master and season. The year animal is not one of the inputs to that sort.

Pattern questions

If you know your animal but have never seen your chart, these are the checks that show what the animal is and is not carrying.

Were you born between January 20 and February 20? If so, look up the Ipchun time and the Seollal date for your birth year; the animal you were told and the Year Branch in a Saju chart differ whenever the birth fell between the two.
Do you know your Day Master? If not, the animal is the only character you know out of eight.
Does the animal description you have read fit you better than it fits your parents or siblings born in other years? A description that fits everyone is describing the year, not you.
Is your birth year the same pillar as a grandparent's? A sixty-year gap gives the same stem and branch, and the tradition attaches no meaning to the match beyond that.

What this can and cannot tell you

The animal is one branch. Under a stated boundary rule there is one right answer for which branch it is, and Kairo uses the Ipchun rule. Beyond identifying the branch, animal-sign horoscopes are not Saju readings: they take one character of eight and write about it in isolation, without a Day Master to measure it against or a Month Branch to place it in a season. Saju is an interpretive tradition, not a validated predictive method, and we don't present it as one. Whether a Horse and a Goat "get along" is a folk pairing, and Kairo does not offer compatibility readings.