Hwanung- Korean GodDeity"Heavenly King"

The Descent

Hwanung was the son of Hwanin, the Lord of Heaven. According to the Samguk Yusa, which preserves the myth from the lost Gogi, Hwanung looked down at the mortal world and saw suffering. People did not know how to grow food or treat illness. They had no law and no rites for birth, marriage, or death. He wanted to descend and bring them order.

Hwanin chose Mount Taebaek, traditionally identified with Mount Baekdu on the border between Korea and Manchuria. He judged it a place that would "broadly benefit humanity" (hongik ingan), a phrase that became a founding principle of Korean civilization. He gave Hwanung the cheonbuin, Three Heavenly Seals, and sent him forth as the Heavenly King.

Hwanung descended with three thousand followers. Beneath the Sindansu, the sacred tree at the mountain's summit, he established the Sacred City. He appointed three ministers: Pungbaek the Earl of Wind, Usa the Master of Rain, and Unsa the Master of Clouds. Under their governance, the rains fell when crops needed them and winds carried seeds without destroying what had been planted. Hwanung taught grain cultivation, the treatment of disease, and the principles of law. The Samguk Yusa records that he governed more than 360 affairs of the human world.

The Bear and the Tiger

Near the Sacred City, a bear and a tiger shared a cave on the slopes of Mount Taebaek. Both yearned to become human. They prayed to Hwanung, begging him to grant them transformation.

Hwanung gave them a bundle of sacred mugwort and twenty cloves of garlic. He commanded them to eat only these bitter foods while remaining in the darkness of the cave, away from all sunlight, for one hundred days.

The tiger could not bear it. After a few days it fled into the forest. The bear persevered. Day after day she sat in darkness, eating nothing but mugwort and garlic. On the twenty-first day she emerged transformed into a woman. The people called her Ungnyeo, the Bear Woman.

Ungnyeo and Dangun

Ungnyeo was grateful for her human form but soon grew lonely. She returned to the sacred tree beneath which Hwanung had first descended and prayed to be blessed with a child.

Hwanung took Ungnyeo as his wife. She bore a son: Dangun Wanggeom. According to the Samguk Yusa, Dangun established Gojoseon, the first Korean kingdom, traditionally dated to 2333 BCE, with his capital at Asadal. After reigning for more than fifteen hundred years, he withdrew to Mount Taebaek and became a mountain god.

The Sacred Mountain

Mount Baekdu rises to 2,744 meters. The volcanic caldera lake at its summit, Cheonji, the Lake of Heaven, evokes the bridge Hwanung established between celestial and terrestrial realms. On Ganghwa Island, the Chamseongdan altar atop Mount Mani honors the lineage from Hwanin through Hwanung to Dangun. The Opening of Heaven Day, Gaecheonjeol, observed on the third of October as South Korea's National Foundation Day, commemorates the moment Hwanung descended.