Asadal
In Korean mythology and history, Asadal () was the capital city of the kingdom of Gojoseon ( - meaning "Older Joseon"), the first Korean kingdom and notably founded by the legendary god-king Dan'gun. It is thought that Asadal was located in Manchuria, or in the northeastern Hwanghae Province () in North Korea, or in the Pyongyang Province (), not referring to the modern-day capital of North Korea - Pyongyang. Etymology. It is often hypothesized that Asadal may be a compound noun composed of two elements, "asa" and "dal". This hypothesis appears to be motivated by an assumption of equivalence between the Chinese phonetic  transcription , which is read in Modern Korean as "Asadal" (but in Mandarin Chinese as , and the word ( or , Korean "Joseon", another name for Korea." However, the etymology of Joseon is unknown; it is not even clear whether it has been created as a phonetic transcription of a foreign name or rather as a semantic calque of a foreign name, and the "Cháo" reading of the first syllable of the Mandarin Chinese form is identical with the reading of this character when used to mean "dynasty," not with the reading of this character when used to mean "morning" (which would be  *"Zhāo" instead). However, the Chinese character , which is used in the modern Chinese language mainly to represent the phoneme or in word-final and preconsonantal positions when transcribing foreign words, has always had a sibilant () rather than an affricate like Korean "ch", and the Chinese language has plenty of characters that would be better suited to transcribing Korean "ch". "Dal" may be the result of reading Chinese characters in the Korean way, and the original Chinese pronunciation at the time Asadal was recorded in ancient historical texts could have been "Da," a transcription of the Korean word "sdah" or "ddang  meaning land." If such is the case, "Asadal" would mean "Morning Land." However, if "dal" has been used much like the Goguryeo city name suffix "-dal" used for mountains and cities founded on plateaus/mountains, then "Asadal" would mean "Morning Mountain." History. The first Korean historical work that mention Asadal is the "Samguk Yusa" ( - ""Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms""), which cites the Chinese "Book of Wei" (Korean Hangul/ Hanja: 위서/魏書 - "wi-seo"). The "Samguk Yusa" also cites the lost historical records of "Go-gi" ( - ""Old Analects/ Records"") to the effect that Dan'gun's capital was located in Pyongyang. But  recent studies show that there were more than one city named Pyongyang (which literally means "flat soil" in Chinese), situated in the north deep in Manchuria - possibly bordering in between China and Russia. The today Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, is actually the southern counterpart. At that time it was common for an emperor to manage two capitals and rule in two palaces. Therefore, it could be that the "true" Asadal is located in Manchuria.