Damyang became known for its bamboo craftsmanship as early as the late Joseon period. It is said that at that time, some 300 households in the region made chambit — fine-toothed combs woven from bamboo strips — making bamboo craftsmanship a significant part of the local economy. The Damyang bamboo-goods market of the 1970s and 1980s is remembered as having been the largest of its kind in the country, and at the time it stood on the very site now occupied by Guksu-geori, in front of Juknokwon Park.
But as inexpensive Chinese-made bamboo products and plastic goods entered the market afterward, the bamboo-goods market's standing declined from what it once was. The hands that once made chambit and other bamboo goods gradually left the market, one by one, but the craft did not vanish entirely. Even today, around 200 households in Damyang continue to produce bamboo handicrafts, carrying the tradition forward. The process by which a market once the largest of its kind in the country shrank in the face of a new material, plastic, illustrates in compressed form the broader transformation traditional crafts underwent through the era of industrialization.