Tan'gun Myth
The oldest extant versions of the myth of Tan'gun, an ancient Korean myth, date to the thirteenth century, when the inhabitants of the Korean Peninsula, united by resistance to the Mongol invasions, began envisioning themselves as one people with a shared history. According to one version of this myth, in the Samguk yusa (Legends and History of the Three Kingdoms of Ancient Korea), Tan'gun was the product of a union between a bear-turned-woman and the son of the ruler of heaven. Tan'gun founded a state called Choson in 2333 BCE, shortly after the legendary emperor Yao assumed the throne in China. Tan'gun ruled over much of Northeast Asia for 1,500 years. He then retired and became a mountain god.
The Tan'gun myth probably began as a foundation myth of one of the various ethnic groups that later merged to form the people known today as Koreans. However, when a national Korean cultural identity was forged during the Koryo dynasty (918–1392), the Tan'gun myth was transformed into an assertion of ancient political unity. In the early twentieth century, when ethnic identity began to be defined biologically as well as culturally, the Tan'gun myth was reinterpreted to show that Tan'gun was also the first Korean, the ancestor of all Koreans alive today.
Further Reading
Grayson, James Huntley. (2000) Myths and Legends from Korea: An Annotated Compendium of Ancient and Modern Materials. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press.
Jorgensen, John. (1998) "Who Was the Author of the Tan'gun Myth?" In Perspectives on Korea, edited by Sang-Oak Lee and Duk-Soo Park. Sydney, Australia: Wild Peony Press, 222–255.
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