In ancient China, the term konghou came to refer to three different musical instruments: a zither and two different types of harp.

During the Tang dynasty it was also used as a general term for string instruments from other countries that played in the Chinese court.

[1] There were three types of variations of the konghou name, and scholars have been working to match them to musical instruments.

One use of wo konghou could have been applied to a fretted bridge zither whose strings were plucked with a slender bamboo stick).

[4] Archeological finds show details of construction; for instance, the soundboxes were carved from diversiform-leaved poplar.

[2] The shu-konghou (豎箜篌) or vertical konghou first appeared in the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 AD).

In Korea, like China, the names for the harps started as terms for nonspecific foreign stringed instruments.

[1] The konghou was adopted in Korea, where it was called gonghu (hangul: 공후; hanja: 箜 篌), but its use died out (although it has been revived by some South Korean musicians in the early 21st century).

[7] Tomoko Sugawara commissioned a playable kugo harp from builder Bill Campbell and earned an Independent Music Awards nomination for her 2010 album, Along the Silk Road, playing traditional and newly written works for the instrument.