Founding stories beyond an egg, and a goddess of Tamna

Korean founding myths, the notes say, are not only the well-known stories of Dangun, Goguryeo’s Jumong, and Park Hyeokgeose. They also include Seolmundae Halmang, also called Mago Halmi, the story of Yeono-rang and Seo-nyeo, the brother and sister who became the sun and the moon, and the story of Princess Bari. To look at how these stories are built, the writer says, is to see what values ancient Koreans held and what indigenous faith on the peninsula looked like.

Korean myth, compared with neighboring Chinese and Japanese myth, is simpler in structure, and the hero is often born from an egg. That egg, the notes say, can be traced to a faith that worshipped an earth deity symbolized by a snake or a dragon in Korea, Japan, and China. Myth often rests on indigenous faith, a trait one can also glimpse in the Greek and Roman stories and in those of northern Europe. This essay, the writer says, leaves those egg-birth stories aside and introduces a tale that may be less familiar: Seolmundae Halmang, together with the writer’s own thoughts and a story tied to a visit once made to Jeju.

Seolmundae, strictly speaking, did not found a country so much as make the world and the island of Jeju; she is an indigenous goddess of that island. The most common name is Seolmundae Halmang, though she is also called Mago Halmi. The tale was not written down in any document and has been passed on by word of mouth, and many Jeju place names come from it. Among the sources the notes list is Lee Chang-sik, 2013, “Literature: the value and use of traditions related to Seolmundae Halmang,” at the Onji Society. That year stays in 2013.

How the island was made, and how the story turns

In the beginning, in Tamna, there was a grandmother said to be the tallest and strongest in the world. One day she sat up from sleep and passed wind, and heaven and earth began to be created. A fire island roared and shook, a pillar of fire rose into the sky, and she scooped seawater and earth with a spade to put the fire out, then carried earth in her skirt and worked to make Hallasan. One skirtful of earth made the mountain; earth that ran from a tear in the hem gathered and became the oreum. She had everything inside her body and was abundant. The people of Tamna plowed fields on her soft flesh. Her hair became grass and trees, and from the strong stream of her urine came all kinds of seaweed, octopus, abalone, conch, and fish, and made the sea rich. From then, the notes say, women divers appeared.

She had only one worn skirt, so she always had to wash it. She sat on Hallasan, put one leg on Gwantal Island and the other on Jigwi Island off Seogwipo, used Seongsanbong as a laundry basket and Soseom as a washing stone, and did the wash. Sometimes she lay with Hallasan as a pillow and dipped her toes in the sea. Around the island white foam made waves; when she lifted her hips from Hallasan, set one foot on the mountain and one on Seongsanbong, and used Gwantal Island as a washing stone, the world seemed to change again. But this source of plenty was also unhappy because of her size. She was too tall to dress properly, and even a torn, worn skirt could not cover her. She had always wanted to lay a bridge as far as the mainland for the people of Tamna. One day she said that if they would make her just one undergarment, she would lay that bridge. Making it took a hundred measures of silk. They wove ninety-nine, and because silk was scarce they could not finish; she was ashamed of the incomplete garment and angry, and she gave up the bridge. From then, the notes say, Jeju became an island cut off by water. The writer also puts the shortfall as one bolt of silk, and that wording is left as the notes give it.

She always boasted of her height. Yongyeon water, said to be deep, barely reached her instep; Hongri water came to her knee. But Muljangori pond on Hallasan was a pond with no bottom, and as she tried to come out she fell in and died. There is also a story joined to her death and to the Five Hundred Generals. Seolmundae had borne those five hundred and was living on Hallasan. A famine year came as well, and they could not keep meals going. She told her sons to go out and find food, and she began to cook porridge, hanging a great cauldron at Baengnokdam, lighting a fire, and walking the rim to stir. The five hundred came back and began to eat, not knowing. The youngest, last to return, stirred the pot and found a strange bone. He lamented that he could not stay with the unfilial brothers who had eaten their mother’s flesh, ran far to Chagwi Island in Gosan-ri, Hangyeong-myeon, wept without end, and became a rock. The brothers, seeing this, knew the truth at last, stood here and there wailing, and all hardened into rock as well.

A comic and tragic goddess, and a hall still only planned

The tale, the writer says, sometimes makes the grandmother comic in the stream of her urine and in the sight of her washing, and it also draws her as a tragic being who dies by falling into the porridge pot or into Muljangori pond. As fits a goddess, it describes with some fullness the image of plenty and birth through the female body — the sea creatures that come from the urine, the fields plowed on her flesh. Unlike other Korean myths, a goddess in giant form creates the world and makes it abundant, yet she also has a human side, a limit and a failure: short by one bolt of silk for a new undergarment, she isolates the island. Because the story can account for Jeju’s landforms, its rich seafood, and why the island was cut off, and because a tale passed down over a long time has flesh added to it, the writer saw in it the affection and worship Jeju people have for Seolmundae.

The writer had once been to Jeju, and chose this tale because it is tied to every landform on the island. There had been a visit to Jeju’s stone culture park. An old saying has it that Jeju is famous for stone, wind, and women, so thoroughly is the place full of stone. On that stone, and on the basis of the Seolmundae story, a stone theme park was said to have been made in harmony with indigenous culture. The park holds Jeju’s well-known dolhareubang, many sculptures in stone, and strange rocks that hold nature as they are; a stone standing on a wide blue-green field made the writer feel the grandeur of the place.

At this park, the notes say, a Seolmundae Halmang exhibition hall was later to be built. It was still at the planning stage, so the writer did not see it. Seen from the sky it was to be shaped like a person lying down, with a large theater and a small one at the head, and an art museum and a folk-craft exhibition at the wrists and ankles. That hall is left as it was planned at the time of writing, and is not treated as a later official state. The same Korean essay, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. A student essay introducing the orally kept tale of Seolmundae Halmang, also called Mago Halmi, as a Jeju creation story rather than a state-founding myth.
2. The making of Hallasan and the oreum, a bridge to the mainland left unfinished, a death at Muljangori pond, and a story of the Five Hundred Generals at Baengnokdam.
3. Lee Chang-sik, 2013, “Literature: the value and use of traditions related to Seolmundae Halmang,” Onji Society, left in 2013; a visit to a stone culture park, and an exhibition hall still only planned.

Last updated: 14 November 2026