page_title: Korean mythology
section_title: State-foundation myths
hierarchical_section_title: Korean mythology / Literary mythology / State-foundation myths
caption_attribution_description: 中文（中国大陆）‎: 好太王碑1
context_page_description: Korean mythology is the body of myths told by historical and modern Koreans. It is divided into two distinct corpuses: the literary mythology written in traditional histories, mostly about the founding monarchs of various historical kingdoms, and the much larger and more diverse oral mythology, most of which are narratives sung by shamans in rituals invoking the gods and which are still considered sacred today.
  The state-foundation myths that represent the bulk of the literary mythology are preserved in historicized form in Classical Chinese-language works such as Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa. They are divided into northern-type myths such as that of Goguryeo, in which the founding king is the son of a celestial male figure and an earthly female figure, and southern-type myths such as that of Silla, in which the founding king descends from heaven via an object and marries an earthly woman himself. One state-foundation myth, that of Dan'gun, has come to be perceived as the founding myth of the Korean nation as a whole. Other literary myths include the origin myths of descent groups written in traditional genealogies.
context_section_description: State-foundation myths involve the first ruler of a new Korean kingdom or dynasty. Their crucial elements are the founder's supernatural birth, the story of how the founder came to create his kingdom, and his miraculous death or departure.
  The founding myths of the earliest Korean kingdoms—such as Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Silla—are transcribed in Classical Chinese in Korean texts compiled during or after the twelfth century, although based on earlier sources. Such texts include Samguk sagi, Samguk yusa, Jewang ungi, Eungje siju, and Dongguk tonggam. Several ancient Chinese texts are also important contemporaneous sources for myths; these include not only the official dynastic histories such as the third-century Records of the Three Kingdoms and the sixth-century Book of Wei, but also more general texts such as the Lunheng, written in 80 CE. In the case of Goguryeo, there are also five Chinese-language stelae narrating the kingdom's foundation myth from the perspective of the Goguryeo people themselves. The oldest of the five is the Gwanggaeto Stele, erected in 414.
  The founding myth of the Goryeo dynasty, which ruled Korea from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, is recorded in Goryeo-sa, the official dynastic history published in the fifteenth century. Yongbieocheon'ga, a poem published around the same time as Goryeo-sa by the Joseon dynasty that replaced the Goryeo, is sometimes seen as the Joseon foundation myth, but it is debated whether Yongbieocheon'ga should be seen as having a narrative at all. As the Joseon were the final Korean dynasty, there are no newer founding myths.
  State foundation myths were once also narrated orally, perhaps by shamans. The poet Yi Gyu-bo (1168—1241) mentions that both written and spoken forms of the Goguryeo foundation myth were known during his lifetime, even though the kingdom itself had fallen more than five centuries earlier. The modern Jeseok bon-puri shamanic narrative has many structural parallels to the Goguryeo myth and may be a direct descendant of the ancient tale.
  The ancient (pre-Goryeo) state-foundation myths are classified into two major types, northern and southern, though both share the central motif of a king associated with the heavens. In the northern kingdoms of Gojoseon, Buyeo, and Goguryeo, the founding monarch is born from the coupling of a celestial male figure and an earthly woman. In the southern kingdoms of Silla and Geumgwan Gaya, the king is generated from a physical object that descends from heaven, and then marries an earthly woman himself. In the northern myths, the demigod king succeeds his heavenly father or creates a new kingdom himself. In the south, the celestial being is crowned by the consensus of local chieftains.
  State-foundation myths are often interpreted as euhemerized accounts of actual events that happened during the kingdom's founding.
caption: Gwanggaeto Stele
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