Ungnyeo

What it is

Ungnyeo belongs to the Korean story of national beginnings, and she begins it as an animal: a bear who changes into a woman. In the tale she becomes the partner of Hwanung, the heavenly ruler, and the mother of Dangun, the legendary founder of Korea. She is honoured in Daejongism and in Muism, Korean shamanism. Her name is written 웅녀 in Korean and 熊女 in hanja, and both mean bear woman. Inside the narrative she stands at the meeting point of animal and human life, and her change of form is what allows the founding line to begin.

Where it comes from

The oldest surviving telling opens the Samguk Yusa, a chronicle of the Three Kingdoms period that mixes myth with history and draws mainly on Silla. The Buddhist monk Ilyon wrote it in the late 13th century, while the peninsula was under Mongol rule. Scholars have argued that putting this founding story first carries a quiet political point: since Dangun's name is granted by his divine father, an outside claim to authority is set aside and Korean independence is asserted. The myth is still treated as a source of legitimacy by both North and South Korea and by Korean nationalism.

How it is done

The tale is told rather than performed, yet a trial sits at its centre. A tiger and a bear share a cave and ask Hwanung to make them human. He hands each of them twenty bulbs and a bundle of mugwort, with one condition attached: stay away from sunlight and eat nothing else for a hundred days. Hunger defeats the tiger at roughly twenty days. The bear remains inside, and after twenty-one days she is a woman.

Tools and materials

Two plants carry the test. The first is written san (산), a word used for garlic and for a related local bulb called dallae; the researcher Park Gwang-min argues that the plant meant is mureut, a famine food. Mugwort was long tied to women's reproductive care, taken with food, burned as fumigation, or applied as moxibustion, the burning of dried mugwort on or above the skin. Later Ungnyeo prays beneath a sacred betula tree, the sindansu (신단수).

What it is for

For the communities that keep it, the tale accounts for where the Korean people come from and why their line carries both heavenly and earthly blood. Ungnyeo's patience is given as the reason a human body was granted to her, and her wish for a husband and a child answers two of the roles a woman was expected to fill, the third being daughter. Her prayer for a child, made under the tree, is also how the story explains the birth of Dangun.

Who does it

No living office belongs to Ungnyeo; she is a figure of story rather than a role anyone takes up. She is venerated in Daejongism and in Muism, Korean shamanism, and the myth is read by historians of religion as well as by scholars of language. Within the tale the one who acts is Hwanung, who hears both animals, sets the test and later accepts her as his partner. Her own part is endurance, offering and prayer.

Peoples and places

The story belongs to Korea and is told on both sides of the present border, serving as a founding narrative in the North and the South alike. One line of interpretation holds that Ungnyeo stands for an old clan whose totem was the bear, and since Dangun is taken as the ancestor of the Korean people, that clan has been proposed as their real forebears. Ha and Mintz suggest, in their English translation of the Samguk Yusa, that a female figure of this kind points to a matriarchal or at least matrilineal clan.

What people believe

Behind the story lies a pairing of sky and land. The father's line is Cheonsin (천신), the sky god; the mother's line is Jisin (지신), the land god, and their joining has been read as a political statement as much as a cosmology. The bear is tied to farming: it is a god of the land and an image of the womb that yields crops, which is why bears here are mostly read as female. Ungnyeo has been called a female deity and a totem of Dangun's maternal line.

When it is done

The tale counts its own days: a hundred days of darkness and plain food, a tiger gone at about twenty, a woman made at twenty-one. Its turning points are life events rather than dates, moving from a prayer for a child beneath the sacred betula tree to marriage and then to the birth of Dangun.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Historians read the placing of the myth in the Samguk Yusa as a claim about autonomy under Mongol rule. Anthropologists use the idea of totemism, the belief that a clan is descended from a particular animal, to explain the bear. Writers on gender note that the bear stands for land and fertility, and that Ha and Mintz take a female Ungnyeo as a hint of matrilineal organisation. A later Confucian reading makes her a model of patience, obedience and motherhood.

Compare and confuse

In Goguryeo tradition a bear-linked figure appears as Susin, though the identification is given with a question mark. Ungnyeo is usually set beside the tiger that fails the same test, and beside Hwanung and Dangun, the three together making up the founding story. The name also appears as 熊女, and in English she is simply the bear woman.

Today

The myth is still cited as a foundation for both Korean states and for nationalist feeling, which keeps Ungnyeo's story in public use. Daejongism and Muism continue to honour her. Scholars keep returning to it: the Samguk Yusa has an English translation with an introduction by Ha and Mintz, and researchers argue over the plants named in the cave test, including Park Gwang-min's paper on Korean political thought.

Questions people ask about Ungnyeo

Good reading and sources

• Ungnyeo on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data