Today is Gaecheonjeol, Festival of the Opening of Heaven (lit. “Opening Sky Day”), also known as National Foundation Day. Gaecheonwas the day, according to Korean legend, when Hwanung, the son of the Lord of Heaven, descended to live upon the earth in 2457 BC. On the same day in 2333 BC, his son Dangun established the first Korean state of Gojoseon. Originally, it was celebrated on the 3rd day of the 10th lunar month, but has since been fixed on October 3. Gaecheonjeol was designated a national holiday in 1909.
When Hwanung came to earth, he brought with him a few thousands followers and founded the city of Sinsi (“City of God”) on the sacred mountain Baekdu.
Baekdusan is the highest mountain on the Korean peninsula. It is an active volcano with a lake (Heaven Lake) in the caldera at the top of the mountain. Today, Baekdusan is dissected by the border between North Korea and China. Some Koreans claim that Japanese colonizers gave away their sacred territory to the Chinese when establishing boundary lines, and there have been disputes about the border for decades. However, South Korean tourists are able to visit the mountain today because they can access it from the Chinese side.
Once on earth, Hwanung taught humans laws, morals, arts, medicine (e.g., acupuncture), and how to grow food.
In a cave on the mountain lived a tiger and a bear. Every day, they prayed to Hwanung that they might become human. Having heard their prayers, Hwanung called the animals before him. He gave them each 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, and commanded them to eat only this sacred food and to stay out of sunlight for 100 days. If they did this, he would make them human.
The animals returned to their cave. However, the tiger soon grew hungry and impatient and left the cave. Only the bear remained. On the 21st day, the bear transformed into a beautiful woman. Her name was Ungnyeo. She was grateful to Hwanung, and gave him offerings of thanks.
But people avoided the bear-woman, and over time she became lonely. Sitting beneath a sacred sandalwood tree, she prayed to Hwanung that she might have a child. Moved by her sincerity, Hwanung decided to answer her prayers by making himself human and taking Ungnyeo as his wife. Together they had a son, Dangun Wanggeom.
Dangun succeeded his father as a wise and powerful ruler. (Personally, I think it helps to have “Grandson of God” and “Child of a Bear” on your resume for such a position.) He founded a mythical walled city called Asadal that marked the beginning of the Gojoseon Kingdom – the first of many kingdoms on the Korean peninsula.
*South Korean photographer Ahn Seung-il has been photographing Baekdusan for decades. Frustrated that he could only take pictures from the Chinese side of the mountain, he wrote a letter to Kim Il-sung in 1995 asking for permission to visit the North Korean side and delivered it to the North Korean embassy in China. He told “Dear Brother Kim” to not let only Japanese or foreign photographers take pictures of Baekdusan, but a Korean such as himself who understood the soul of the mountain. He has twice held photo exhibitions in Pyongyang. “When political exchanges were almost non-existent,” he said, “we had a few in the field of photography.”