Talk:Korean mythology/Archive 1

What About Adding Some Stories?
The page only mentions certain things like the creation of the world and things like that. Only a couple of actual folklore is in it (i.e. Hungbu nolbu, Sun and Moon). BUt what about the story of Kyonu and Chingnyo, the two lovers who meet only once a year. Another would be the story of the lumberjack who got a golden axe from a spirit, or something like that. There are many more that can be mentioned too. --Jettd42291 15:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed Cosmology
I removed the "Cosmology" section as it was unsourced and does not bear much resemblance to Korean mythology as the term is generally understood. I have a notion that the content of this section was largely taken from the Hwandan Gogi, possibly with an admixture of the Gyuwon Sahwa, and it might find a home in those articles -- but only if properly sourced. -- Visviva 23:55, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * They are the content of neither Hwandangogi nor Gyuwon Sahwa. The content is from the famous mythical books by Park Jesang Budoji부도지. It is better restore again. This is the text of budoji and its interpretation. --Drpepper000 15:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

2003-2004 discussion
Zestauferov, do you believe Hwandangogi? --Nanshu 01:15, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * This sentence was removed by at 2006-11-03T20:53:21 without permission, so is restored.
 * &#54620;&#44397;&#50612; &#50500;&#46972;&#50836;? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zestauferov (talk • contribs) 2003-11-24T09:45:30 (UTC)

I don't speak Korean. This article contains new "mythology" but I don't know enough to separate it from actual mythology. I'm curious where you taken the information. --Nanshu 23:10, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually there is nothing "new" about any of the info on the page. Korean mythology is disintegrating rapidly to the level of folklore because of lack of interest or perhaps rather embarrassment. The modern Korean is most often lapsed buddhist a member of some kind of protestant church or atheist (disenchanted through the corrupt and chauvenistic form of Confusionism which has developed since the late Chosun period where a strict hierachy exists with despotic eldest son-grandfathers heading the families) and influenced mainly by American trends. Shamanism has been almost stamped out and remains mainly as a means of making money amongst charlatans and new-age young-grannies. The Shamanic mythology is shunned or sneered at as a matter of shame. The only acceptable form for the appearance of any of the old mythological figures is in the form of a children's fairytale. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zestauferov (talk • contribs) 2003-11-26T10:26:35 (UTC)

Quote from the article:
 * 7 Hwanins ruled a country in succession from 7193-3898 BCE their country spreading 50,000-li north to south and 20,000-li east to west comprising of twelve Dongyi nations. Bak-dal Nara, the first Dongyi state of Greater Mongolia stretching from the Stanovoy mountains in the Lake Baykal vicinity from the North to the Yangzi river in the south (including present Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Anhui) and the Russian Maritime Provinces in the East to Dunhuang in the west is established in 3898 BCE ruled by the first of 18 Hwanungs. Tangun the son of the last Huanung recorded in Korean memory Kuh-bul-dan established Korea in 2333BC.

This is NOT traditional mythology. Such an absurd story has been cooked up since the end of the 19th century. --Nanshu 00:56, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Are you sure? The Koreans I meet and talk to are convinced that this is the case, and they always say that Japanese people hate this fact because it undermines their claim to Kendo (I do not understand the exact nature of this claim). It seems like it is a pretty well known story in certain circles. Out of interest, what is your basis for suggesting the book was only written in the 19thC withut earlier precedence? By the way do you live in Japan? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zestauferov (talk • contribs) 2003-11-30T06:29:19 (UTC)


 * You seem to live too long in Korea. Unfortunately, Koreans tend to receive other Koreans' stories on faith without checking whether they are really true. So, we often have to trace back to the ultimate sources, which require knowledge of Classical Chinese, as for history.
 * My basis for suggesting the book was only written in the 19thC? It's a rather long story. I think Choe Inseong provindes nice analysis of Hwandangogi and other books.
 * And, yes, I am an engineering student living in Japan. --Nanshu 23:12, 2 Dec 2003 (UTC)

This is certainly interesting discussion of Korean mythology. Out of curiosity, how familiar are you with Korean mythology? Are you guys an expert or people interested in mythology in general? Although I would appreciate it if animosity between Japan and Korea politically or otherwise does not result in disrespecting each other's culture full of tradition... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.55.245.150 (talk) 2004-01-11T17:34:34 (UTC)

My $0.02: I have to agree with Nanshu that as it stands this is not a fair presentation of traditional mythology. Mythology, yes, but there is a lot of contamination from unreliable 19th-century sources such as Hwandangogi (yes, it was only written in the 19th century), and it is difficult to separate what the genuine traditional myths are from these, owing to the loss of a large body of traditional manuscripts. I can't really edit the article at this point because I am not a student of Korean mythology, but I have read fairly extensive scholarly works based on Shamanic narratives and folklore, and it would be nice to have the results of such studies summarised here rather than the Bakdalnara cycle. I am Korean, by the way, should anyone jump to conclusions. --Iceager 23:51, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hello I am a Korean myself, and I have heard this mythology since childhood, so I do believe there is nothing wrong about the content of this article and it is a well known story.I DO agree that the dates in the quote shown by Nanshu is highly likely forged (except for the founging of the Joseon), as it is quite impossible to get exact dates of things that happened thousands of years ago, but Korea's history is VERY long. And for the fact that we are embarrased at our ancestor's beliefs, I think that no matter how farfetched the stories are they are still our history and culture. Also, most of Japan's culture originated from Korea itself. JustShin 11:13, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello. I am a Korean. But, I have never heard this mythology. Please show us the first historical materials of this mythology. These discussions are not academic controversies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.111.79.98 (talk) 2007-06-12T08:28:23 (UTC)

Another Korean pitching in. I also have not heard of the Koreah mythology extending beyond 2333 B.C. until last year. Though, since then I've been researching the topic myself since I have a severe interest in mythologies and folk beliefs. I found out that the old old myths are considered credible enough the Korean academia spends a fair amount of time and effort researching and debating it. If this is the case, I think it's safe enough to mention it in this article without labeling it a chauvinistic forgery... Though I'm not naive enough to say that the dates and years mentioned are to be trusted 100%.--24.27.128.220 (talk) 04:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

WP:TNT
It's so bad, we probably need to restart this from scratch. I have reviewed a number of Korean topics now, and it really seems as if people contributing to Korean topics are somehow under the impression they are excused from citing sources and just dump tons of unreferenced, and mostly essay-like, text. The only possible approach to such a situation is this, blank unreferenced content first, ask questions later. --dab (𒁳) 09:36, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Needed to clean up
The article looks quite mess.....--Appletrees (talk) 01:40, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

And it looks like no one's worked on it since. That summary is baaad. Is there anyone here willing to work on this? Edit: There we go, had to go and get my user. Darxide (talk) 17:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

From an inexperienced Wikipedia user: I don't really know how to edit wikipedia, but LARGE portions of this article are plagiarized from "An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology" by Choi Won-Oh. I have the book next to me and am comparing it with the article. The ENTIRE section on kut is a direct quote of the book's preface, and the classification of Korean myths also seems to be lifted from it. This book is not even correctly cited in the references, and there is no indication that large portions of this article were lifted directly from it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.22.161.162 (talk) 15:30, 5 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Cleaned up the lead and the first section and the second section (Changed the title, etc). I don't have time for the next few sections. Also the book is dated to 1988, so I updated to a book with a 1998 and tried to get rid of the judgmental language towards Muism, by using terms Muists would use. For example, Muists would say Muism, rather than Shinkyo, the basis would not be Kut, which is a ritual, but on the religion itself, and also calling them crazy witches, wizards, etc and changing that to "Shaman" and "Shamanesses" as well as the odd male-centric bit of muism, despite the fact that it's thought the early religion was split 50/50 practice with the majority who actually practice today being women. (Despite past persecution) I can also add 2 books of legends, but I need to find space to reference them.--Hitsuji Kinno (talk) 18:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I noticed a few typos: Under Gods of Death "juhseung chasa" it should actually read JeoSeung Saja - or something similar. It's also not uniform throughout the article: sometimes jeoseung, sometimes juhseung. Either one sounds close to the Korean, but we should pick one and stick to it. All other references to "Chasa" might be incorrect, given that the word "Sa-ja" means envoy/emissary - Jeoseung Saja being an emissary of the afterlife. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.27.235.220 (talk) 17:28, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know about TNT
...but large swathes of this article do need to be killed with fire. It seems to be under the impression that the Cheonjiwang Bonpuri is the entirety of Korean mythology or has deities who reflect anything except local Jeju beliefs. Since an article on "Korean mythology" should be about the mythology of Korea, the entire thing probably needs to be shunted to a separate article on Jeju beliefs with links and parallels discussed. This article, however, should be focused on the mainland, particularly the most common beliefs of the common Koreans and any official cults patronized by the various Korean states. — Llywelyn II   16:30, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Article needs a total rewrite. Some thoughts.
This article isn't cutting it.

First, there needs to be a proper definition of mythology. When Korean scholars talk of Han'guk sinhwa "Korean mythology," they mean one of two wildly different corpuses:


 * Munheon sinhwa "literary mythology": Stories transcribed in sources such as the Samguk Sagi, e.g. Dangun, and which are now divorced from their ritual context. These include state foundation myths, the supernatural stories preserved in the traditional histories, and myths about the founding ancestors of descent groups described in jokbo.
 * Musok sinhwa "shamanic mythology": The mythical narrative poetry that is a fundamental part of religious practice in modern Korean shamanism. These are divided geographically, into mainland narratives and the Jeju bon-puri, or by topic (as seen in the bon-puri article). This includes the myths of village patron deities (maeul sinhwa "village myths" or dang sinhwa "shrine myths"), because ritual dedicated to village patrons typically involve shamans.

If you look at the Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture's category for "Mythology", you will see that every single one of the stories listed is one of these two. The only exception is the creator giantess Mago-halmi, but even she does appear as a side character in the mainland shamanic narrative The Princess Bari and in the Jeju Heogeung-aegi bon-puri. And if you look at their definition of "mythology", they say:

"구연자가 이야기의 내용이 신성하다고 여기며, 이야기의 내용이 옳은가 거짓인가에 대한 비판이 금기시되는 것이 신성성이 구현되는 양상이다... 한국신화는 문헌에 정착한 건국신화와 무속의식에서 전승되는 무속신화가 주류를 이루고 있고, 마을에서 전승되는 당신화와 씨족집단에서 전승되는 성씨시조신화 등도 있다."

"[Mythology] is a genre where the narrator believes that the content of the story is sacred, and discussion of whether the story is true or false is tabooed... The mainstream of Korean mythology are the state foundation myths preserved in literary sources and the shamanic myths transmitted in shamanic rituals, but there are also shrine myths passed down in the village and descent group founder myths passed down within the descent group."

Keeping this in mind, my opinion WRT article scope is that:


 * Namu-doryeong and Mago-halmi should be moved to Korean folklore, because stories associated with them do not hold religious significance and are not old enough to be grandfathered into being considered mythology. The current Korean folklore article is not about the same type of "folklore" that Russian folklore, English folklore, French folklore, etc., are about, and should also be totally rewritten.
 * The primary divisions in this article should be one section discussing literary mythology, a second section discussing shamanic mythology, and a final section about connections between the two (e.g. the Jumong myth parallels the Jeseok bon-puri).

That's one issue. The second issue is that the current organization-by-topic system is dysfunctional:


 * The Princess Bari is not an "afterworld myth" but the archetypal "myth of the ancestral shaman" (mujo sinhwa), along with the Jeju Chogong bon-puri.
 * Once this article reaches a somewhat comprehensive state, organization-by-topic will easily fall apart. For example, Jeju has the Munjeon bon-puri, the myth of the household gods. The mainland analogue to this (identical narrative structure and details) is the Chilseong bon-puri, the myth of the star gods. Similarly, the Chogong bon-puri (myth of ancestral shamans) is the Jeju version of the mainland Jeseok bon-puri (myth of the fertility gods).
 * Because Jeju probably has as many structured shamanic myths as the rest of Korea combined, organization-by-topic leads to a disproportionately Jeju-focused article. But Jeju is just 1% of the Korean population!

IMO, the "shamanic myths" category should be organized like this:


 * Section 1: Introduction of ritual context.
 * Section 2: Mainland narratives, with a focus on those found throughout large parts of the mainland. Myths that deserve a dedicated paragraph are The Princess Bari, the Jeseok bon-puri, the Changse-ga-type creation myths, and the two Seongju puri myth groups, with maybe a line or two for the Chilseong puri and the Sonnim-gut.
 * Section 3: Jeju narratives. Sum up the bon-puri article in a few paragraphs, noting mainland-Jeju parallels where appropriate. A few bon-puri deserve their own paragraphs; I'd think Chogong, Chasa, Segyeong, and the village-shrine Gwenegi-t-to bon-puri would be broadly representative.
 * Section 4: Connections between shamanic mythology and folklore/Buddhism.

Thoughts? I'm not sure if I'll have the time to fix this, but it does deserve fixing.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:33, 16 June 2020 (UTC)