Dangun founding Korea

At a Glance

• Central figures: Hwanin, the Lord of Heaven; his son Hwanung, who descended to rule the world of humans; a bear and a tiger who sought to become human; Ungnyeo, the bear-woman; and Dangun Wanggeom, the founder of Gojoseon.
• Setting: The Korean peninsula in mythic time, centering on Mt. Taebaek (often identified with Mt. Baekdu), as recorded in the Samguk Yusa of 1281.
• The turn: Hwanung gave the bear and the tiger a test - twenty-one days of darkness, eating only mugwort and garlic - and the bear endured it while the tiger could not.
• The outcome: The bear became a woman, Ungnyeo, and bore Hwanung a son, Dangun Wanggeom, who descended from the mountain and founded the kingdom of Gojoseon at Pyongyang in the year equivalent to 2333 BCE.
• The legacy: Dangun is honored as the progenitor of the Korean people; the third of October is celebrated as Gaecheonjeol, National Foundation Day, marking the opening of heaven.

Hwanung looked down from the sky and wanted the earth. Not a piece of it, not a province - the whole tangled mess of it, the mountains and the coasts and the creatures who lived without law among the trees. His father Hwanin, the Lord of Heaven, saw this desire in his son and did not refuse it. He looked down himself at the three great peaks and chose one: Mt. Taebaek, where the land was broad and the people below could be helped. He gave Hwanung three heavenly seals and sent him down with three thousand spirits to govern.

Hwanung landed beneath a sandalwood tree on the summit of Mt. Taebaek. He named the place his Sacred City - Sinsi - and from there he set to work. He was not a distant god. He brought with him the Earl of Wind, the Master of Rain, and the Master of Clouds, and between them they managed three hundred and sixty affairs of the human world: grain, life, sickness, punishment, the difference between right and wrong. The wind blew when it should blow. The rain fell on the fields. Hwanung governed the world below the sky the way his father governed the world above it.

The Bear and the Tiger in the Cave

A bear and a tiger lived on the mountain. They shared the same slopes and the same longing. Both came before Hwanung and prayed: let us become human.

Hwanung listened. He gave each of them a bundle of sacred mugwort and twenty cloves of garlic. His instructions were simple and hard.

Eat only these. Stay out of the sunlight. Remain in the cave for one hundred days.

The bear and the tiger went into the cave together. Darkness closed around them. The mugwort was bitter. The garlic burned their mouths. Days passed without light, without movement, without the feel of wind or grass. The cave smelled of wet rock and the sharp green of crushed mugwort.

The tiger endured it for a time. Its body was made for running, for the open ridge, for the hunt through morning fog. By the twenty-first day the tiger could not stand the cave walls any longer. It bolted into daylight and vanished into the trees, still a tiger, still four-legged and wild.

The bear stayed. She pressed her face against the stone floor and ate the bitter plants and waited. She counted the days by the faint change in the air at the cave mouth - cooler at night, a little warmer in the morning. Her limbs ached. Her fur itched. She did not leave.

On the twenty-first day her shape changed. Her paws opened into hands. Her jaw narrowed. Her back straightened. She walked out of the cave as a woman.

Ungnyeo

Her name was Ungnyeo - bear-woman. She stood under the sandalwood tree on Mt. Taebaek and breathed the mountain air with human lungs for the first time. She was beautiful. She was alone.

Ungnyeo had no companion. No one had come through the cave with her. She went back to the sandalwood tree and prayed again, this time not to become human but for a child. She wanted what humans want: someone to hold, someone who would stay.

Hwanung heard her. He was moved by her prayer, or by her endurance, or by something else - the sources do not say his reasons, only what he did. He took human form and married her. They lived together beneath the sandalwood tree on the sacred mountain.

She bore a son.

Dangun Wanggeom

They named him Dangun Wanggeom. Dangun because he was born at the altar beneath the sandalwood - dan meaning altar, gun meaning ruler. Wanggeom because he would be king.

He grew up on Mt. Taebaek, the grandson of heaven and the son of a woman who had been a bear. When he was grown he came down from the mountain. He did not stay in the clouds the way his father had; he went to the flatlands, to the place where the river broadened at Pyongyang, and there he founded a kingdom.

He called it Joseon - not the Joseon that would come thousands of years later under the Yi dynasty, but the first Joseon, Gojoseon, Ancient Joseon. The year, by later reckoning, was 2333 BCE, the fiftieth year of the reign of the Chinese Emperor Yao. This was the beginning of Korea.

Dangun ruled for fifteen hundred years. The Samguk Yusa states this plainly, without apology. He governed from Pyongyang, then moved his capital to Asadal on Mt. Taebaek - some say he returned to the mountain where his father had first descended. He later moved again to a place called Jangdangyeong.

The Mountain Spirit

When Dangun was finished ruling he did not die. He went to Mt. Taebaek and became a sanshin - a mountain spirit - at the age of one thousand nine hundred and eight. The mountain took him back the way the cave had once taken the bear. He passed from the world of kings into the world of the peaks, where old men sit with tigers and watch the clouds move across the valleys below.

This is the shape Korean memory gives its beginning: not a war, not a conquest, not a god hurling lightning. A father who let his son go. A son who wanted the earth. A bear who ate bitter herbs in darkness for twenty-one days and would not quit. A woman who prayed under a tree for a child. A child who walked down from the mountain and built a country.

The Korean people call themselves the children of Dangun. On the third of October each year they mark Gaecheonjeol - the Opening of Heaven - the day Hwanung came down through the clouds to the sandalwood tree. The mountain is still there. The story has not changed in eight hundred years of telling.