Korean mythology (Korean: 한국 신화; Hanja: 韓國神話 Han'guk sinhwa) is the group of myths[a] told

by historical and modern Koreans. There are two types: the written, literary mythology in traditional
histories, mostly about the founding monarchs of various historical kingdoms, and the much larger and
more diverse oral mythology, mostly narratives sung by shamans or priestesses (mansin) in rituals
invoking the gods and which are still considered sacred today.

The historicized state-foundation myths that represent the bulk of the literary mythology are preserved
in Classical Chinese-language works such as Samguk sagi and Samguk yusa. One state's foundation myth,
that of Dan'gun, has come to be seen as the founding myth of the whole Korean nation. State-
foundation myths are further divided into northern, such as that of the kingdom of Goguryeo and its
founder Jumong, where the founder is the son of a celestial male figure and an earthly female figure,
and southern, such as that of the kingdom of Silla and its founder Hyeokgeose, where the founder
begins as an object descended from the heavens, and himself marries an earthly woman. Other literary
myths include the origin myths of family lineages, recorded in genealogies.

The narratives of Korean shamanism, the country's indigenous religion, feature a diverse array of both
gods and humans. They are recited in ritual contexts both to please the gods and to entertain the
human worshippers. As oral literature, the shamanic narrative is regularly revised with each
performance, although a certain degree of consistency is required; new narratives have appeared since
the 1960s. It has frequently been at odds with the official ideologies of Korean society, and its
mythology is often characterized as subversive of traditional norms such as patriarchy.

The shamanic mythology is divided into five regional traditions, with each region having original
narratives, as well as distinctive versions of pan-Korean narratives. The mythological tradition of
southern Jeju Island is especially divergent. The two narratives found in all and all but one region
respectively are the Jeseok bon-puri, featuring a girl who in most versions is impregnated by a
supernaturally potent Buddhist priest—who was probably originally a sky god—and gives birth to
triplets who themselves become gods; and the Princess Bari, about a princess who is abandoned by her
father for being a girl and who later resurrects her dead parents with the flower of life.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Studies on Korean Shamanism

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Literary mythology
2.1 State-foundation myths

2.1.1 Northern kingdoms

2.1.1.1 Gojoseon

2.1.1.2 Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Baekje

2.1.2 Southern kingdoms

2.1.2.1 Silla

2.1.2.2 Gaya

2.2 Other literary myths

3 Shamanic and oral mythology

3.1 Nature and context

3.2 Regional traditions

3.2.1 Northern

3.2.2 West-Central

3.2.3 East Coast and Gyeongsang

3.2.4 Jeolla

3.2.5 Jeju

3.3 Creation narratives

3.4 Jeseok bon-puri

3.5 Princess Bari

3.6 Localized mainland narratives

3.7 Jeju narratives

3.8 Mainland village-shrine myths

4 In popular culture

5 See also

6 Notes

7 References

7.1 Footnotes

7.2 Works cited

7.2.1 Korean
7.2.2 English

8 Further reading

Introduction

Korean mythology comprises two distinct corpora of literature. The first is the literary mythology
(Korean: 문헌신화/文獻神話, munheon sinhwa) recorded in the traditional Korean histories, such as
the thirteenth-century work Samguk yusa. The myths contained in these volumes are heavily
historicized, to the point that it is often difficult to differentiate between historical fact and mythology.
The primary literary myths are the state-foundation myths (건국신화/建國神話, geon'guk sinhwa),
which recount the story of how a particular kingdom or dynasty was founded,[1] although the category
also includes other supernatural stories found in the historical chronicles as well as the origin myths of
non-royal lineages.[2]

Asian man facing front, in suit and tie.

Historian Yi Pyong-do in 1955

The second corpus is the modern oral mythology (구비신화/口碑神話, gubi sinhwa), which is
"incomparably" richer than the literary tradition in both sheer quantity of material and the diversity of
themes and content.[3] The oral mythology primarily consists of the shamanic narratives (서사무가/徐
事巫歌, seosa muga),[4] which are sung by Korean shamans during gut, religious ceremonies in which
shamans invoke the gods. While also mythological in content, these narratives are very different in
function and content from the literary myths. The state-foundation myths are preserved only in writing,
deprived of their original ritual context, and have existed in written form for centuries. By contrast, the
shamanic narratives are oral literature that is "living mythology,"[5] sacred religious truth to the
participants of the gut.[6] They began to be published only in 1930, centuries after the first attestation
of the literary myths.[7] Unlike the historicized accounts of the literary myths, shamans's songs feature
elements such as the primordial history of the world, the ascent of human individuals to divinity, and
divine retribution upon impious mortals.[8]

The academic study of Korean mythology began with the literary myths, with historians such as Choe
Nam-seon (1890—1957) and Yi Pyong-do (1896—1989) pioneering the first studies of state-foundation
myths.[9] But research into the much richer oral corpus was minimal until the 1960s,[10] when the
study of the shamanic narratives was spearheaded by scholars such as Kim Yeol-gyu (1932—2013), who
applied structuralist, comparative, and myth-ritual approaches to the songs, Hyeon Yong-jun (1931—
2016), who published a vast encyclopedia of Jeju ritual and mythology,[11] and Seo Daeseok (born
1942), who established the literary study of the shamanic narratives and whose comprehensive work on
the Jeseok bon-puri narrative proved a model for future researchers.[10] Recent trends in the study of
Korean mythology since the 1990s include a greater focus on comparisons with neighboring
mythologies, new research into the hitherto neglected village-shrine myths (당신화/堂神話, dang
sinhwa) that involve the patron god of one specific village, and feminist interpretations.[12]
The oral mythology is always religious, and must be distinguished from the broader corpus of Korean
folklore, which might be secular.[13] For instance, the Woncheon'gang bon-puri, a Jeju shamanic
narrative about a girl who goes in search for her parents and becomes a goddess, is either descended
from or ancestral to a very similar mainland Korean folktale called the Fortune Quest.[14] But because
the Woncheon'gang bon-puri is a sacred story about a goddess, unlike the Fortune Quest, the former is
a myth and the latter is not. Some Korean myths are mythicized folktales, while many Korean folktales
are desacralized myths.[13]

Literary mythology

State-foundation myths

A large, tall stone.

Gwanggaeto Stele

State-foundation myths narrate the life of the first ruler of a new Korean kingdom or dynasty. They
include the founder's supernatural birth, the story of how the founder came to create his kingdom, and
his miraculous death or departure.[15] They are often interpreted as euhemerized accounts of actual
events that happened during the kingdom's founding.[16]

The oldest surviving accounts of the founding myths of the ancient Korean kingdoms—such as Gojoseon,
Goguryeo, and Silla—are transcribed in Classical Chinese in Korean texts compiled during or after the
twelfth century. Such texts include Samguk sagi, Samguk yusa, Jewang ungi, Eungje siju, and Dongguk
tonggam. These texts were compiled on the basis of earlier sources that are now lost. [15] 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,[17] but also more general texts such as the Lunheng, written in 80 CE.[18] 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 CE.[19]

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.[15]
Yongbieocheon'ga, a poem published around the same time as Goryeo-sa by the succeeding Joseon
dynasty, is sometimes seen as the Joseon foundation myth, but it is debated whether Yongbieocheon'ga
should be seen as having a narrative at all.[20] 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.[21] The
modern Jeseok bon-puri shamanic narrative has many structural parallels to the Goguryeo myth[22] and
may be a direct descendant of the ancient tale.[21]

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.[b] 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.[24][25] 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.[26]

Northern kingdoms

Gojoseon

Main article: Dangun

Asian man with mustache and gold robes, sitting down.

Early 20th century portrait of Dan'gun

The foundation myth of Gojoseon, the earliest Korean kingdom, is first recorded in two nearly
contemporaneous works: Samguk yusa, a history compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryeon around the late
1270s, and Jewang ungi, a Chinese-language epic poem written in 1287.[27][28]

Iryeon's account is as follows. Hwanung, a younger son of the sky god Hwanin (who the monk identifies
with the Buddhist god Indra), desires to rule the human world. Hwanin sees that his son could "broadly
benefit the human world," and gives him three unspecified treasures to take with him to earth.
Hwanung descends beneath a sacred tree on Mount Taebaek (lit. 'great white mountain'), where he and
his three thousand followers found the "Sacred City." With the gods of wind, rain, and cloud, Hwanin
supervises various human affairs.[29][30]

A bear and a tiger then ask that Hwanung turn them into humans. The god gives the animals twenty
pieces of garlic and a clump of sacred mugwort, and tells them that they will become humans if they eat
them and do not see sunlight for a hundred days. The two animals then fast, and the bear becomes a
woman on the twenty-first day. The tiger fails to fast and remains an animal. The bear-turned-woman
prays for a child at the sacred tree, and Hwanung grants her wish by becoming a human to marry her.
She gives birth to a boy named Dan'gun Wanggeom, who founds the kingdom of Gojoseon at the site of
Pyongyang. Dan'gun rules for fifteen centuries, then departs from the kingdom when the Chinese King
Wu of Zhou sends Jizi to rule over Korea. The king ultimately becomes a mountain god.[29][31]

The Dan'gun myth is of the northern type, featuring the founder's birth from a celestial father
(Hwanung) and an earthly mother (the bear).[32] It is often interpreted as a mythicized account of
interactions between three clans whose totemic symbols or mythological ancestors were a sky god, a
bear, and a tiger respectively. The tiger-associated clan was somehow eliminated, but the bear clan
joined the dominant sky god clan in the establishment of the Gojoseon polity.[33][34] Folklorist James H.
Grayson draws connections to the Japanese foundation myth. Ninigi-no-Mikoto descends to earth with
three treasures as well, and the first Japanese emperor Jinmu is a younger son like Hwanung.[35]
Grayson also notes Siberian myths where a bear is the mother of a tribal ancestor.[36]

Dan'gun appears to have been worshipped only locally in the Pyongyang area until the thirteenth
century, when intellectuals attempted to bolster the legitimacy of the Korean state, then imperiled by
Mongol invasion and domination, by establishing him as the ancestor of all Korean polities.[37][38] By
the twentieth century he had become accepted as the mythical founder of the Korean nation and plays
an important role in the ideologies of both North and South Korea.[39]

Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Baekje

The foundation myth of the northern kingdom of Goguryeo is recorded in detail in both the Samguk sagi,
the oldest surviving work of Korean history, compiled in 1145,[40] and the Dongmyeongwang-pyeon, a
Chinese-language epic poem written by the poet Yi Gyu-bo in 1193. Yi's work is much longer and more
detailed than the Samguk sagi, but much of this may be due to the poet's own literary embellishment.
[41] The Dongmyeongwang-pyeon myth is summarized below.

Ancient map of Korea

The Korean Peninsula in the early 1st century CE

Haeburu, ruler of the kingdom of Buyeo, is childless. One day, he finds a boy in the shape of a golden
frog (Korean pronunciation of Classical Chinese: 金蛙 geumwa) and adopts him as his son. Some time
later, Haeburu moves his court towards the Sea of Japan, where he founds the kingdom of Eastern
Buyeo (Dong-Buyeo).[42]

Haemosu, son of the sky god, descends to Haeburu's former capital in 59 BCE on a chariot steered by
five dragons and founds a new kingdom there. One day, Haemosu encounters the three beautiful
daughters of the god of the Yalu River and abducts Yuhwa, the oldest. The outraged river god challenges
him to a shapeshifting duel but is bested. The river god concedes his defeat and allows Haemosu to
marry Yuhwa, but after the marriage the former returns to the heavens without his wife.[43]
The river god sends Yuhwa into exile. She is captured by a fisherman and brought to Geumwa the frog-
king, who has succeeded his adopted father in Eastern Buyeo. He keeps her in an annex of the palace.
One day, sunlight falls on Yuhwa from the heavens, impregnating her. She gives birth to an egg from her
left armpit, and a boy hatches from the egg.[44] The boy is supernaturally potent, including shooting
down flies with a bow—for which he is named Jumong, "good archer." The king makes Jumong the
stable-keeper, which offends him enough that he decides to found his own kingdom.[45] With three
companions, Jumong flees south, leaving his mother and wife behind. When they find an unfordable
river, Jumong proclaims his divine descent, and the fish and turtles of the river allow them to cross on
their backs. Jumong founds the kingdom of Goguryeo in 37 BCE. He is opposed by an established local
chieftain named Songyang. After a series of confrontations between the two, Songyang ultimately
surrenders when Jumong causes a great flood in his country.[46]

Yuri, Jumong's son by his wife he has left behind in Eastern Buyeo, asks his mother who his father is.
When she tells him that he does not have any one father, he attempts to kill himself, forcing her to
reveal the truth. After solving a riddle his father has left, Yuri finds his father's token, a half of a sword.
He goes to Goguryeo and meets Jumong. Yuri and Jumong match their halves of the sword, and the
sword becomes one while oozing blood. When Jumong asks his son to show his power, the boy rides
atop sunlight. Jumong then makes Yuri his heir. In 19 BCE, the king ascends into heaven and does not
return. Yuri holds a funeral for his father, using the king's whip in place of his missing body, and
becomes Goguryeo's second king.[47]

The foundation of the southwestern kingdom of Baekje is also linked to the Jumong myth. According to
the Samguk sagi, when Yuri is made heir, Jumong's two sons by a local wife are excluded from the
kingship. These two brothers, Biryu and Onjo, migrate south to found their own kingdoms. Biryu sets up
court in an unfavorable place, while Onjo founds Baekje in good terrain in what is now southern Seoul.
The former dies of shame when he learns that his brother's kingdom is flourishing, and the remnants of
his people join Baekje.[48]

The myth of Jumong is of the northern type, with Haemosu as the celestial father and Yuhwa as the
earthly woman.[49] Contemporaneous Chinese sources report that Jumong and Yuhwa were both
actively worshipped as gods by the Goguryeo people,[50] including in rituals involving shamans.[51] Like
the Dan'gun myth, the story is also subject to euhemerized interpretations. For instance, Seo Daeseok
argues that Haemosu symbolizes an ancient iron-using, agricultural sun-worshipping people, that Yuhwa
was a member of a riverine group of hunters, farmers, and fishermen, and that Geumwa's polity
centered on hunting and pastoralism.[52]

The Jumong myth is first attested in the fifth-century Gwanggaeto Stele,[53] but the first-century
Chinese text Lunheng describes a barbarian tale of a good archer who crosses a river on the backs of fish
and turtles to found a new kingdom in the south. However, this figure's mother is a slave-girl
impregnated by an egg-like energy rather than a goddess who gives birth to a physical egg, and the
figure himself founds the kingdom of Buyeo, rather than that of Goguryeo.[54] The Goguryeo
foundation myth thus incorporates the myths of Haemosu and Yuri and the Buyeo foundation myth into
a single narrative.[55][56]

Southern kingdoms

Silla

Rolling green hills with a road in between.

Tombs of the Silla kings at Gyeongju

The ancient Silla kingdom was originally dominated by three clans: the Bak, the Seok, and the Kim. At
some point the Seok were eliminated from power, and all Silla monarchs from then on were children of
a Kim father and a Bak mother.[57] All three clans have associated founding myths.

The Bak foundation myth is given in the fullest detail in Samguk yusa.[58] Six chieftains of the Gyeongju
area convene to found a united kingdom. They see a strange light shining on a well. When they go there,
they see a white horse kneeling. The horse ascends to heaven, leaving a large egg behind. The chieftains
break open the egg and find a beautiful boy inside, who they name Hyeokgeose.[59]

Some time later, a chicken-dragon gives birth to a beautiful girl with a chicken beak from its left rib.
When they wash the girl in a nearby stream, the beak falls off. When the boy and the girl are both
thirteen years old, the chieftains crown them as the first king and queen of Silla and give the king the
clan name of Bak. Hyeokgeose rules for sixty-one years and ascends to heaven. Seven days later, his
dead body drops from the sky. The queen dies soon after. A giant snake prevents the people from
holding a funeral until they dismember the body into five parts, which is why Hyeokgeose has five
different tombs.[59]

The Samguk yusa also records the Seok and Kim foundation myths. In the first, a ship surrounded by
magpies lands on the Silla coast after sailing away from Gaya for unspecified reasons. There is a giant
chest in the ship, and when they open it they find slaves, treasures, and a young boy inside. The boy,
Seok Talhae, reveals that he is a prince of a country called Yongseong (lit. 'dragon castle'). When he was
born in the form of an egg, his father put him inside the chest and sent him away to found his own
kingdom abroad. Having settled in Silla, Seok steals the house of the aristocrat Hogong through deceit
and marries the eldest daughter of the Silla king, a descendant of Hyeokgeose. He succeeds his father-
in-law as king and founds the Seok clan. After his death, he becomes the patron god of a local mountain.
[60] A village-shrine bon-puri very similar to the Seok Talhae myth is transmitted by modern shamans in
the southern island of Jeju.[61]
Asian painting with tree and gold box.

The Golden Chest, 1656

Hogong appears prominently in the Kim foundation myth as well. One night, Hogong sees a great light in
the woods. When he goes closer, he discovers a golden chest hanging from a tree and a white rooster
crowing below. He opens the chest and discovers a boy, who he names Alji. Alji is brought to court and
made the Silla king's heir, but he later abdicates his position. Alji would become the mythical founder of
the Kim clan, which would later monopolize the patrilineal line of the Silla kings.[62]

Gaya

Until their conquest by Silla in the sixth century, the delta of the southern Nakdong River was occupied
by the Gaya polities. The Samguk yusa preserves the foundation myth of one of the most powerful Gaya
kingdoms, that of Geumgwan Gaya. The nine chieftains of the country hear a strange voice announce
that heaven has commanded it to found a kingdom there. After singing and dancing as commanded by
the voice, a golden chest wrapped in red cloth descends from heaven. When the chieftains open it, they
find six golden eggs. The eggs hatch into giant boys, who fully mature in merely two weeks. On the
fifteenth day, the six each become kings of the six Gaya kingdoms. The first to hatch, Suro, becomes king
of Geumgwan Gaya.[63]

Later, Suro is challenged by the Seok clan's founder Seok Talhae. According to the history of Gaya given
in Samguk yusa, the two engage in a shapeshifting duel, after which Seok acknowledges defeat and flees
to Silla.[c][64] A beautiful princess named Heo Hwang'ok then arrives on a ship with red sails, bearing
great wealth from a distant kingdom called Ayuta. Heo tells Suro that Shangdi has commanded her
father to marry her to Suro, and the two become king and queen. They both live for more than 150
years.[65]

Black and white drawing of mustached Asian man with leaves on his head.

Illustration of Cheoyong in the 1493 Akhak Gwebeom

The foundation myths of Silla and Gaya are of the southern type, with the founder descending directly
from heaven on vessels such as eggs and chests.[66] The myths may also reflect real historical figures
and processes. Hyeokgeose may therefore symbolize an ancient migration of northern horse-riders who
created the state of Silla with the support of local chieftains,[67][68] while Seok Talhae stands for a
maritime group that was defeated by Gaya and was integrated into the Silla state[69] and Heo Hwang'ok
preserves the historical memory of a merchant group that contributed to the establishment of the early
Geumgwan Gaya polity.[70]

Other literary myths

Many other supernatural stories are contained in the Samguk yusa to the point that Grayson calls its
compiler, Iryeon, "the first Korean folklorist."[71] Some of these stories reflect shamanic mythology.
One example is the tale of Cheoyong. Cheoyong, a son of the Dragon King of the East Sea, arrives in the
Silla court where he marries a beautiful woman. One night, he goes home to find the smallpox god
having sex with his wife. Rather than punish the intruder, Cheoyong only sings a song. The smallpox god
is so astounded by his mercy that he repents and agrees to never enter any house with Cheoyong's face
on its gate. The people of Silla then attach portraits of Cheoyong to their gates.[72] The story of
Cheoyong is traditionally interpreted as the myth of a shaman or benevolent deity who wards off the
spirit of pestilence,[73][74] although the exact relationship between Cheoyong's song (which survives in
two different versions) and Korean shamanic chants continues to be debated.[75]

Another genre of literary mythology are the origin myths of specific family lineages, which are recorded
in genealogies. The motif of the founding ancestor's birth from a stone or golden chest also appears in
the genealogies of many non-royal lineages.[76] Other ancestor myths involve the coupling of a human
and a non-human. The Chungju Eo (魚 eo "fish") claim descent from a man who was born to a human
mother and a carp father, while the Changnyeong Jo are thought to descend from the offspring of a Silla
noblewoman and the son of a dragon.[77]

Shamanic and oral mythology

Nature and context

Meeting in a beige setting, the shaman wears orange.

A shaman (in orange) holding a ritual for three noblewomen and their servants. Early 19th century. They
meet in secret, perhaps without the husband's knowledge.[78]

The shamanic narratives are works of oral literature sung during gut—the Korean term for large-scale
shamanic rituals—which constitute the mythology of Korean shamanism, the indigenous polytheistic
religion of the country.[79]

Since the long-ruling Joseon dynasty (1392—1910), the attitude of the Korean population towards the
traditional religion has been ambivalent.[80] The Joseon, whose state ideology was Neo-Confucianism,
were opposed to shamanism[81] and made significant efforts to eliminate the religion from the public
sphere.[82] As Koreans increasingly accepted the Joseon state's patriarchal and anti-shamanic ideology,
shamanism became increasingly associated with women, who were also marginalized by the new social
structure. It was in this restrained capacity as women's private religion, without public influence, that
shamanism was still tolerated by Joseon society.[83]

Despite the continued presence of shamanism as a significant force in Korean religious life, a cultural
ambivalence regarding it persists. As of 2016, the capital of Seoul alone has hundreds of ritual places,
where gut are held on most days of the year.[84] Yet when in public, many worshipers—often Christians
or Buddhists as well as practitioners of shamanism—avoid discussing their shamanic worship and
sometimes disparage their own beliefs as superstition.[80][85]

Reflecting this ambivalence, shamanism and its mythology are often characterized as subversive of
Korea's mainstream values and official culture,[86][87] though some may also simultaneously
incorporate more mainstream thinking such as the Confucian virtues.[d][89] The story of Princess Bari is
a typical example. The myth centers on the princess's journey to the world of the dead to save her
parents. The story is thus "an affirmation of a Confucian virtue," that of filial piety.[89] Yet the parents'
savior is not a son but a daughter—indeed, the very daughter that Bari's parents abandon at birth
merely for being a girl. Later, Bari leaves her husband for her parents, although Confucian culture
demands that women transfer their loyalties to their husband's family after marriage. The myth
therefore can be interpreted to subvert the Confucian framework of patriarchy using the very values of
Confucianism.[90][91]

All shamanic narratives meet the purposes of both religiosity and entertainment, albeit to varying
degrees.[92] Shamanic narratives are almost never sung in non-religious circumstances, and the ritual
context is critical to a full understanding of the mythology.[93] For instance, the story of Bari is
performed at ceremonies where the soul of the deceased is sent off to the realm of the dead. Bari is the
goddess that guides the soul on its way, and the story of the princess's journey thus further reassures
the bereaved that the spirit of their loved one is in good hands.[94] At the same time, shamans also seek
to entertain worshippers. This may be done by inserting riddles, popular songs, or humorous or sexual
descriptions into the retelling of the myth, or by having the accompanying musicians interrupt the
narrative with often vulgar jokes.[95] Such humorous elements also helped convey the subversive
message of many shamanic myths, such as criticism of gender hierarchies and class structures.[96]

As oral literature, shamanic narratives are also affected by both the received tradition and the
performing shaman's original innovations. Many narratives have lengthy formulaic paragraphs and
imagery that appear identically throughout multiple versions of the myth or even across multiple myths,
and which are memorized by shamans when they first learn the songs.[97][98] For instance, a series of
highly metaphoric descriptions of Bari's mother's pregnancies is found in all regions where the Princess
Bari myth is performed.[99] On the other hand, shamans regularly add new content and reword phrases
of the narratives, and the same shaman may even sing different variants of the same myth depending
on the specific circumstances of the gut.[100] A certain degree of consistency is nonetheless expected;
in one case, a Jeju shaman reciting the Chogong bon-puri narrative was interrupted ten times for giving
inaccurate details until more experienced shamans demanded that he name the man who taught him.
[101] The shamanic mythology is thus unusually conservative for oral literature.[102]

Indoor Asian shrine.

Modern shamanic shrine in Ansan

Unlike the literary mythology, the shamanic mythology is a living tradition capable of creating new
narratives. In the 1960s, an unknown shaman in eastern Gangwon Province adapted the Simcheong-ga,
a story involving a blind man, into the new Simcheong-gut narrative, recited in order to ward off eye
disease. The new myth has since become very popular in the region.[103] Another apparently new myth
is the Jemyeon-gut narrative, which appeared in the city of Gangneung for the first time in 1974 despite
not being attested when the same ritual was held in 1966 and 1969. The Jemyeon-gut myth has no clear
source for its story, and researchers have noted an increase in narrative details from the 1970s to the
1990s.[104] Several other shamanic narratives appear to have been adapted at some point from, or
otherwise bear a close relation to, late Joseon-era vernacular literature.[105] Cross-cultural similarities
have also been noted between Korean shamanic narratives and other East Asian myths, in particular the
mythology of Manchu shamanism.[106]

Korean shamanism is currently undergoing a major restructuring that is not favorable towards a lengthy
performance of the mythology.[107][108] The traditional village community-oriented ceremonies are in
decline, while rituals commissioned by individual worshippers are on the rise. The setting of the gut has
also shifted to ritual places where only the shamans and the relevant worshippers are present, in
contrast to the public participation that was traditional for the ceremonies. Most of these individual
worshippers have little interest in the mythology itself, sometimes even leaving when the narrative
begins, but are very invested in ceremonies specifically related to themselves or their friends and family,
such as the gongsu rite in which the shaman conveys messages directly from the gods to the
worshipper. With the emergence of other forms of entertainment, the entertainment value of shamanic
rituals has also declined. In at least Seoul, the performance of the Princess Bari is therefore becoming
increasingly shorter.[108] As many new shamans now learn narratives from published books or
recordings rather than being taught personally by a more experienced shaman as was traditional, the
regional diversity of the mythology may also be in decline.[109]

Unlike the Greco-Roman or Norse mythologies familiar to Western readers, the deities of Korean
shamanic mythology exist mostly independently of each other.[e] Each shamanic narrative establishes
the nature and functions of the deities it is dedicated to, but there are few cases where gods that have
previously appeared in their own narratives interact with each other. It is thus not possible to establish a
genealogy of the gods.[111]

Regional traditions

The shamanic mythology is divided into five regional traditions (Korean: 무가권/巫歌圈 muga-gwon),
representing the primary variations of the two narratives the Jeseok bon-puri and the Princess Bari,
which are both found throughout the Korean peninsula.[112] Each of the five regions also has myths not
found in the other regions, as well as distinctive tendencies in the actual performance of the narratives.
The mythological tradition of southern Jeju Island is particularly divergent.[113]
A characteristic of Korean mythology is that the corpus is poorest in and near the capital of Seoul—the
traditional political, economic, and cultural center of the country—and largest and most diverse in South
Hamgyong Province and Jeju Island, the northernmost and southernmost peripheries respectively. The
two peripheral mythologies are the most archaic.[114] Several similar myths are found in both
Hamgyong and Jeju despite the great distances involved, suggesting that the two mythologies both
descend from a common ancient Korean source.[115]

Northern

Colored map of Korea.

Regional divisions in the shamanic mythology (borders approximate)

The northern tradition is poorly understood because all of its area is now part of North Korea, where
ethnographic research is not feasible. Ethnologist Hong Tae-han calls it a grouping made for
convenience's sake, as what regional diversity may have existed there is now inaccessible to scholarship.
[116] The religion of South Hamgyong Province may form a coherent shamanic tradition independent of
other northern shamanism.[117] The South Hamgyong mythology includes a large corpus of unique
shamanic narratives, of which the most important is the Song of Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi,
centering on a woman who attempts to meet her beloved husband after his death.[118] Other notable
South Hamgyong myths include the Seng-gut narrative, which combines the creation myth and the
Jeseok bon-puri; the Donjeon-puri, in which a husband and wife become the gods of money; and the
Jim'gajang narrative, about three boys who take vengeance on their murderer by reincarnating as his
sons.[119] By contrast, the province of Hwanghae in North Korea has virtually no shamanic mythology.
The ritual and entertainment role played by mythical narratives in other regions is served by an
unusually developed tradition of ceremonial dance and theater.[120]

According to a North Korean shaman who defected in 2008, shamanism is widespread in modern North
Korea and de facto condoned by the state, but the old songs and chants are no longer transmitted.[121]

West-Central

The west-central tradition is the mythological tradition of Seoul and its environs, and is distinguished by
a strong emphasis on the sacred nature of the narratives. The recitations are primarily addressed to the
deity, not the physically present human worshippers. Formulaic phrases of the received tradition are
frequently used. Hong Tae-han characterizes the west-central mythology as the most "solemn" of
Korean shamanic narratives.[122] This may be because Seoul shamans frequently held ceremonies in
the royal palaces for queens and other court women, who would have expected dignity and gravity from
the rituals.[123] This region also has the fewest myths. The only specifically west-central narrative is
Seongju-puri, explaining the origins of the patron god of the household. In the city of Seoul itself,
Princess Bari is the only shamanic narrative that is performed.[124]
East Coast and Gyeongsang

In contrast to the west-central tradition, shamans of the East Coast and Gyeongsang tradition do much
to make their narratives entertaining for the human worshippers. Narratives are recited with an unusual
level of detail, and the diversity of rhetorical techniques is unprecedented.[125] Indeed, Hong Tae-han
refers to the East Coast shaman families as "the most skilled performing arts group in the entirety of
Korea."[126] The musicians go beyond simply providing background music and intervene directly in the
performance, while the performing shaman actively interacts with the human audience. Non-shamanic
music, such as folk songs or Buddhist hymns, is integrated into the narrative at appropriate moments.
[127] Characteristic regional narratives include a very detailed account of the journeys of the Visitors,
the gods of smallpox.[125] The region currently has the most vigorous mythological tradition.[128]

Jeolla

The Jeolla tradition is characterized by the reduced importance of the pan-Korean narratives, and the
greater prominence of two other myths: the Jangja-puri, about a rich man who evades the gods of
death, and the Chilseong-puri, featuring seven brothers who become gods of the Big Dipper.[129] As of
2002, the Jeolla mythology was in decline.[130]

Jeju

The Jeju tradition also stresses the sanctity of the myths to the point that the performing shaman always
sings the stories while facing the sacrificial altar, turning their back towards the musicians and
worshippers.[131] The explicit purpose of the Jeju mythology, as expressed in many narratives directly,
is to make the gods "giddy with delight" by retelling them the story of their lives and deeds.[132] The
island has the richest corpus of shamanic narratives.[133] The island represents the only tradition where
Princess Bari is unknown.[113] The Jeju mythological tradition is also at risk, as the largest Jeju gut
rituals—which take fourteen days to complete—are seldom fully held nowadays. Several myths are
already no longer performed by shamans.[134]