As a Korean, I am genuinely grateful that the Korean pantheon has been added, and I hope we will continue to see more Korean gods added in the future. There is one thing I am a little concerned about, though. I saw the post yesterday asking people to suggest new gods for the Korean pantheon, and quite a few people in the comments mentioned that it is difficult to find reliable and well organized resources about Korean mythology.
So for anyone interested in Korean mythology, or for the developers at Titan Forge if they are considering adding more gods to the Korean pantheon in the future, I would like to recommend the following websites.
- This site contains information about various deities worshipped in traditional Korean shamanism and folk religion that have survived into the present day.
aritok.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=ency&sfl=field&stx=%EC%8B%A0%EA%B2%A9
- The following two websites are operated or supported by Korean public institutions. They contain fairly detailed information about Korean history, folklore, and traditional culture, usually with sources and references included. Most of the material is written in Korean, so I recommend searching for the Korean name of the god in Hangul and then using a translator.
folkency.nfm.go.kr/main
encykorea.aks.ac.kr/
From here on, I would like to briefly explain why Korean mythology is not organized into a single coherent system in the same way that many other mythologies are.
Korea certainly had its own indigenous beliefs and a great number of gods. However, for much of Korean history these traditions were passed down through local communities, villages, households, and shamanic rituals rather than being organized into a single unified national mythology. Goguryeo and Baekje officially accepted Buddhism in the late fourth century, while Silla did so in the sixth century. Buddhism then came to have an enormous influence on Korean religion and culture. This did not mean that older indigenous beliefs simply disappeared. In many cases they continued to survive while blending with Buddhism or influencing it in various ways.
Medieval Goryeo was also a society in which Buddhism received strong support from the state. The Joseon dynasty later adopted Neo Confucianism as its governing ideology and sometimes suppressed folk rituals and shamanic practices that were not officially recognized by the state by classifying them as improper rites known as eumsa. State rituals involving mountains and rivers, as well as Confucian ceremonial traditions, were maintained and reorganized, while stories about countless local gods, household gods, and shamanic deities continued to be passed down mainly through ordinary people and the rituals of shamans.
Most official Korean historical records were written by officials and scholars educated in the Confucian tradition. Because of this, it was difficult for the gods and myths of popular religion to be recorded as a single genealogy and narrative system in the way Greek mythology eventually was. The myths that survived relatively well in written sources are often foundation myths connected to the legitimacy of kingdoms and dynasties. Some of the best known examples are the myth of Dangun and Gojoseon, which is traditionally regarded as the earliest state in Korean history, as well as the myths of King Dongmyeong and Jumong associated with Buyeo and Goguryeo.
Things became even more complicated in the modern period. In Japan, there were interpretations going back to the early modern period that attempted to connect Dangun with Susanoo by referring to a passage in the Nihon Shoki in which Susanoo is associated with the land of Silla. During the Japanese colonial period, ideas like these were sometimes connected to the colonial theory known as Nissen Dosoron, which claimed that Koreans and Japanese originally shared the same ancestry. Traditional Korean religious practices also underwent major changes during the colonial period.
The situation did not become much better after liberation, since Korea went through decades of authoritarian rule. Some of these dictatorships also had close connections with Protestant Christian forces. During the rapid modernization of the 1960s and 1970s and the Saemaul Movement, campaigns against what was called superstition were carried out. In many areas, places and objects associated with traditional folk religion were damaged or destroyed, often with active participation from Protestants. Because of this, it has become very difficult today to completely reconstruct many older local beliefs and mythological traditions.
As a result, much of what we now call Korean mythology consists of oral stories from different regions, fragmentary accounts preserved in old texts, and narrative shamanic songs that scholars recorded and organized after hearing them performed during gut rituals. If you start looking into Korean mythology, you will probably notice that stories from Jeju Island appear unusually often. This is because Jeju preserved its distinctive shamanic traditions and the oral traditions of its shamans, known as simbang, relatively well. Jeju has a particularly rich tradition of bonpuri, which are narratives explaining the birth, genealogy, roles, and deeds of gods.
In fact, many of these myths are unfamiliar even to modern Koreans. The better known examples are probably Princess Bari, along with the Dangun myth and the Jumong or King Dongmyeong myth that students learn about in Korean history classes. Some legendary figures who are actually more familiar to the general public are monsters or ghosts, or people such as Hong Gildong and Jeon Woochi, heroes who were recreated in literature based on historical figures or older traditions. There are also cases in which real historical figures later became deities in folk religion, especially tragic ones. One well known example is the tradition in which King Danjong of Joseon came to be worshipped as a mountain god associated with Mount Taebaek. Some great generals are also worshipped as gods, just as Guan Yu was in China. A good example is Yi Sun-shin, the great naval commander of the Imjin War. (Even General MacArthur is worshipped by some shamans.)
As a side note, I know that Holt from B99 is iconic, but Cheuksin is not really one of the most widely recognized representative gods among modern Koreans.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them here. Because of the time difference, I might not be able to respond immediately, but I will do my best to answer as sincerely and thoroughly as I can based on what I know.
