Prince Sandalwood, the Father of Korea

Four children lived in Mr. Kim’s house, the girls Peach Blossom and Pearl and the boys Eight-fold Strength and Dragon. Dragon was the eldest of the four. Their grandmother loved telling them tales of the heroes and fairies of their lovely land.

One evening their father returned from his work in the government buildings, and he gave Grandma two small books. One was a small almanac, its cover of red, green and blue as bright as the piles of cakes and sweets made for a wedding, as Grandma’s family liked to picture wedding treats.

The second little book held instructions from the Royal Minister of Ceremonies for honoring Old Sandalwood, the Ancestor-Prince and Father of Korea. Every year, on two occasions, in the city of Ping Yang, offerings of meat and other foods were made in his honor, and these were never cooked.

“Who was Old Sandalwood?” Peach Blossom, the elder girl, wanted to know.

“What did he do?” asked Yongi, the elder boy, whose name means Dragon.

“I’ll tell you,” Grandma said, while they snuggled round her on the oiled-paper floor over the main flue at the warmest end of the room, for it was early December and the wind was roaring outside. “I’ll also explain why bears are good and tigers bad. Well, to begin.

“Long, long ago, before the customs of Grandma’s own imagined world had begun, a bear and a tiger met in the woods on the south side of Old Whitehead Mountain. These wild creatures were not pleased with the people who lived on earth then and wished for better ones, and they believed that by turning into humans themselves they could bring a better way of living. So the bear and the tiger, who loved their country, agreed to go to Hananim, the Great One of Heaven and Earth, and beg him to transform their shape and nature right away, or at least explain how to do it.

“But where was he to be found? Nobody knew. So they politely bowed their heads, held out their paws and waited and waited, hoping for an answer. Then a Voice spoke: ‘Eat a bunch of garlic and remain in a cave for twenty-one days, and you shall be human.’

“So the two crept into a dark cave, munched their garlic and fell asleep. The cave was chilly and dismal, with nothing to hunt or eat, and the tiger soon grew tired of it. Day after day he sulked, snarled, growled and was rude to his companion, but the bear put up with his insults.

“At last, on the eleventh day, the tiger saw no sign of losing his stripes or shedding his fur, claws or tail, and no hint of fingers or toes, so he gave up the idea of becoming a man. Out of the cave he leaped and went straight off hunting in the woods, as wild as ever.

“The bear, though, sucked her paw patiently and stayed until the twenty-one days were over. Then her hairy hide and claws dropped off her like a coat, her nose and ears grew short all at a stroke and she stood up straight, a perfect woman. She came out of the cave and sat by a stream, where the clear water showed her how lovely she had become, and there she sat to see what would come next.

“Meanwhile, interesting things were happening in the sky. Whanung, the heavenly Son of the Great One, asked his father for an earthly kingdom to rule. Pleased with the request, the Lord of Heaven decided to give his son Korea, the country known as the Land of the Dragon’s Back.

“In this legend, our country, the Everlasting Great Land of the Dayspring, came up from the sea on the first morning of creation shaped like a dragon. The dragon’s backbone, loins and tail make up the long chain of mountains that is the backbone of our beautiful land, and his head rises to the sky as the everlasting White Mountain in the north. On its snowy, icy summit lies a blue lake of pure water, from which our border rivers flow.”

“What is the lake called?” asked Yongi.

“The Dragon’s Pool,” said Grandma Kim. “Long, long ago, for one whole night, the dragon breathed hard and long until his breath filled the heavens with clouds. That was how the Great One in the Sky prepared the way for his son to come down to earth.

“People thought there had been an earthquake, but in the morning, they gazed up at the shining white peak and saw the cloud climbing high overhead. As the bright sun shone on it, the cloud turned pink, red and yellow, and the eastern sky grew so beautiful that it gave our country its name, the Land of Morning Radiance.

“Down from his many-colored cloud, carried on the wind, came Whanung, the Heavenly Prince, first to the mountaintop and then to the lower earth. Deep in the forest, beside the stream, he came upon a beautiful woman. It was the bear, changed into a lovely human being. The Heavenly Prince was delighted and chose her as his bride, and in time a baby boy was born. His mother made him a cradle of soft moss and raised him in the forest.

“In Grandma’s telling, people at the foot of the mountain lived differently from her own household. They wore no hats and no white clothes, they lived in huts and they did not know how to heat their houses with flues under the floors, and they had no books or writing. Their holy place was beneath a sandalwood tree on Tabak, a little mountain in the province of Ping Yang.

“They had seen the many-colored cloud rise from the Dragon’s Pool, and as they watched, it drifted south toward them until it hung over the sacred sandalwood tree. Out stepped a white-robed being, who floated down through the air and landed in the forest, on the tree. How beautiful the spirit looked against the blue sky! But the tree was far away, and the journey to it was long.

“‘Come, let us all go to the holy tree,’ their leader said, and together they hurried across hills and valleys to the sacred ground, where they gathered in rings around the tree. A lovely sight met their eyes. Under the tree sat a young man of noble appearance, dressed like a prince. His face was young and rosy, yet his look was grand and majestic, and young as he was, he was wise and worthy of honor.

“He looked at them very kindly and said, ‘My children, my ancestors in Heaven have sent me to be your ruler.’

“The people fell to their knees, bowed low and cried, ‘You are our king! We accept you, and we will loyally obey only you.’

“Seeing that they wanted to learn from him, he began to teach them. Even ahead of giving them laws and rules and showing them how to build better houses, he told them stories, and the very first one told why bears are good and tigers are bad. The people marveled at his wisdom, and from then on the tiger was hated, while people grew fonder and fonder of the bear.

“‘What shall we call our king, so that we can address him properly?’ the people asked their elders. ‘He should be named for the spot where he appeared to us, beneath our holy tree. Let us call him the August and Venerable Sandalwood.’ That was the title they greeted him with, and he gladly accepted it.

“Prince Sandalwood introduced rules about arranging hair. Grown men, he ordered, were to wear their long hair in a topknot. Boys were to wear a single braid down the back, and a boy counted as a man only when he had a wife. Then he could knot up his hair, wear a hat and a grown-up headdress and dress in a long white coat.

“As for women, they were to braid their hair and wear it plainly at the neck, except at their wedding or on great ceremonial days. Then they could pile it up like a pagoda and wear long hairpins, jewels, silk and flowers.

“That is how our Korean way of life began, and even now our rule about hats and hair sets us apart from all other peoples,” said Grandma. “And we go on honoring the August and Venerable Prince Sandalwood. Good night now, my darlings.”

About this story

“Prince Sandalwood, the Father of Korea” is William Elliot Griffis’s version of the Dangun legend, the founding myth of Korea, from his Korean Fairy Tales. Griffis frames it as a bedtime story told by Grandma Kim to her four grandchildren on a windy December night.

In Griffis’s version, a bear becomes a woman by patiently enduring twenty-one days in a cave, marries the son of the Lord of Heaven and bears the founder of the Korean nation, who is known as Dangun or Tangun. Griffis calls him the August and Venerable Sandalwood, after the sacred tree where he appeared. The cave instructions, place-name explanations and clothing rules belong to this telling; they are not a documented account of the origins of all Korean customs.

Read the original: Korean Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Best for all ages — Korea’s founding legend of a patient bear, a restless tiger and a prince from heaven.

The first lesson is itself a story

Prince Sandalwood begins by telling why bears are good and tigers bad before introducing laws. The bear’s experience becomes an explanation for his own ancestry and authority. Grandma then uses the same account to explain the rules familiar to her imagined household. Storytelling works at two levels: within the kingdom and around the children’s warm floor.

Find the two audiences

Draw the prince speaking to the people beside Grandma speaking to the children. What does each audience learn, and why might each trust the teller? Separate the tale’s judgments about two particular animals from claims about real bears, tigers or the worth of human communities.

Talk about it

• Why did the bear become a woman when the tiger did not?
• Where did Korea get the name Land of Morning Radiance in this story?
• What did Prince Sandalwood teach the people first?

Related stories

• East Light and the Bridge of Fishes — another legend of Korea’s first kings
• Old White Whiskers and Mr. Bunny — another Korean tale about a tiger
• The Sky Bridge of Birds — a Korean legend of the heavens