Tan’gun in Korea

The Son of the Lord of heaven Hwanung wanted to go to earth, his father the Lord of Heaven Hwanin gave him permission, so he descended to Mount Paekdu (which is in Modern North Korea/China) with assorted ministers. A Bear and Tiger preyed to Hwanung begging to become human. He told them to eat 20 cloves of garlic and some mugwort then fast for 100 days. The bear was successful (the tiger got hungry after 20 days so he was not). The bear as human was lonely, so Hwanung out of pity married her and they had a son. His name was Tan’gun and he founded the first kingdom on the Korean peninsula, Old Chosŏn and built its first city Asadal.

In the late 19th Century Korean historians and intellectuals began to look to the Myth of Tan’gun as the perfect foundation myth to underline Korean ethnic homogeneity. Tan’gun became the head of the Korean national family tree that extended back 5,000 years. Korea had been an independent people in a variety states for 5,000 years these nationalists claimed. Therefore they should resist the imperialist forces of Japan and the west, and maintain their autonomy and sovereignty at all costs. Tan’gun was a powerful symbol but prominent nationalists like Shin Ch’ae-ho didn’t believe the whole myth. Most of these nationalists were rationalists, who used Tan’gun as a powerful racial symbol, a real but wholly human national progenitor (or as he is known in Korean ‘Grandfather Tan’gun’). Taejong’gyo is the obvious exception. Taejong’gyo is a religion that was started in the early 20th Century. It worships Tan’gun as a god, along with Hwanin and Hwanung. But whilst claiming to have a rich history, it was both new and not popular.

After 1945 Tan’gun gradually became less important in South Korea. Syngman Rhee tried to use the Tan’gun myth as a nationalist rallying point, but this was abandoned by his successors. North Korea went in the opposite direction. Initially the state, heavily influenced by Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideas of history interpreted Tan’gun as a myth that marked the start of a change in Ancient society. Tan’gun was a myth that indicated the start of a new political epoch. The first king of Old Chosŏn used the title Tan’gun and claimed to be descendent of the heavenly Lords in order to legitimise his claims to political authority. This is not as farcical as it may sound; the Japanese emperors still nominally claim to be descended from a Goddess.

But the North has changed their interpretation of Tan’gun. The North gradually moved away from the Soviet model, and started to practice a far more nationalist style of ‘Socialism’ after 1956. Their historical narratives started to change with this ideological and geopolitical shift. Just as North Korea started to assert their autonomy geopolitically, they also began to assert the independent spirit of the Korean people. Initially they did not reinterpret the Tan’gun myth; they just pushed the historic borders of the Old Chosŏn into Manchuria, much to the chagrin of the Chinese.

But by the 1990s when it became clear that ‘Socialism’ had failed as a worldwide movement, they began to go further in their historical narrative. The Koreans were now not only a unique people, racially and culturally; but they had had their own civilisation for 5,000 years. This cuts to the heart of Korean nationalism in general. I will make a clear distinction between primitive, vehement nationalism and patriotic feeling. They are clearly different beasts, whilst states can mobilise the masses under patriotism to do terrible things, patriotism in itself is not malign. To be patriotic is to hold your own state in high esteem, to look to it as you look to your parents. Patriotism can be expressed in many ways, singing the national anthem, saluting the flag etc. Patriotism notice has the state as its focus; from talking to Koreans patriotism is increasingly popular amongst our generation. Nationalism is the counterpart to patriotism. It is in some ways similar, certainly nationalists also use state symbols, the Taeguk for instance is a symbol for both nationalists and patriots. But nationalism does not have the state as its primary focus, rather it is focused on an ethnic identity, it is usually racial. Nationalists identify with an ‘imagined’ racial group as their own; this group is privileged above all others, in terms of its history, culture, language and customs. Korean nationalism is an exemplary example of this, in all respects. The North Korean variant was dramatically strengthened starting from the early 1960s.Originally North Korea had relied mainly on patriotic ‘Socialist’ fervour (loyalty to the revolution and its state). But as the regime distanced itself from the Soviet Union, Kim Il Sung started to use the same ideas that Shin Ch’ae Ho had set out 70 years before. South Korean nationalism is rather crude and unnecessary but North Korean nationalism is both extraordinarily primitive and very necessary as a means of ensuring the survival of the regime.

Part of this nationalist strategy was the use of Tan’gun. In the Northern narrative he was a person, his father was not the son of the Lord of Heaven, and his mother was not a former bear. But nonetheless the shamanistic myth became a real person, they even ‘found’ his tomb near Pyongyang, and proceeded to reconstruct it in 1993. This new narrative was a convenient way to paint Pyongyang as the natural centre of the Korean people, politically, culturally and historically. The North had been doing this since the 1960s. They had begun to ignore the achievements of Southern based kingdoms of Korean history, for instance Shilla, and began to exaggerate the achievements of the Northern kingdoms like Koguryŏ.

It was also part of a survival strategy for a regime that desperately needed add to its nationalist credentials now that socialism had been discredited worldwide, and was soon to fail at home in a catastrophic famine. It is not widely known by most people but the North Korean famine was did not start suddenly as a result of natural disasters in 1995. Rather it was a slow-motion event that actually began in the late 1980s. The North Korean economy had been stagnating and spluttering since the early 1980s. Then Soviets reduced aid in the late 1980s, and then the aid stopped completely with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The effects of this were much more immediate than most people realise. North Korea instituted a ‘Let’s Eat 2 Meals a Day’ campaign in 1991, this starkly illustrates the food shortages even at that early stage. The discovery of Tan’gun coincides with the slow-motion catastrophe, and thus can be seen as a part of the nationalist coping strategy of the regime. Just as the first modern Korean nationalists used Tan’gun as a nationalist symbol to unite the people and achieve independence, the North today uses Tan’gun as part of a strategy to maintain the regime’s independence.