Best and Worst

This was for the Overnight Camp activity during the Summer Intensive English program at Pukyong University.  During the three hour bus ride, me and my class of twelve students (and two other classes on the same bus) played games, ate snacks, laughed, talked, slept, and generally had a great time.

One of the games they played involved a complicated set of rules whereby each participant held out one hand (or both hands in some versions of the game) balled in a fist, thumb on top.  On a cue given by one of the players, all participants would either stick their thumbs up, or leave their thumbs down.  I didn't understand the rules completely, but I gathered that eventually there would end up being one odd-man-out.  When that happened, that player would slap his/her hand down somewhere (on the seat back, on the window, on someone's knee, wherever) and all others were supposed to quickly place their hands on top of that player's hand. Whichever player was last to do so (the one whose hand was on top of the pile) would get the "penalty", which was to let all other players slap them very hard on the back of their hand. I found that many games Koreans play involve a painful penalty of some kind.