World Mythology

Fourth king of Shilla. T’alhae was born to the queen of King Hamdal in Wanha, and was said to have hatched from an egg. This was unheard of at the time, and the king’s advisors warned him that it was a bad omen. He put T’alhae in a large chest with various precious stones and set him on a ship. The ship was immediately met by a red dragon who guarded the ship until it reached Shilla.
T’alhae surveyed the land for a place to live, and he came to admire the house of a man named Ho. He went down to the house in secret and buried some charcoal and a whetstone. The nest day he went to Ho and accused him of taking his ancestor’s land. When questioned by the police, T’alhae said that his ancestors were blacksmiths, and they could find proof of this by digging up the yard. The charcoal and whetstone were found, and so T’alhae took Ho’s house. King Namhae of Shilla saw this and realized that T’alhae was a man of great ingenuity. He gave his first daughter to him in marriage, and T’alhae became the fourth king of Shilla after Namhae’s son Yuri.

T’alhae also appears in the Kaya legend of King Suro. This legend claims that T’alhae went first to Kaya and challenged King Suro for the throne, and they tested each other in metamorphosis magic (see also the story of Habaek). T’alhae first changed into a falcon, but Suro changed into an eagle. Then T’alhae changed into a sparrow, but Suro changed into a sparrow-hawk. T’alhae changed back to human form and bowed before the king. He acknowledged the king’s mercy in not killing him while he had the chance, and departed Kaya on a ship that had arrived from China. The two legends, of course, do not correspond.

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The Korean god of the mountains.

This myth tells of the first settlement on Cheju Island, located off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. In the beginning, before any people roamed the land, three demi-gods (Yangeulla, Koeulla, Pueulla) emerged from the ground. They wandered through the land and hunted, making clothes from the skins and subsisting on the meat. One day they discovered a large wooden chest on the eastern shore of the island. They opened up the chest and a messenger wearing a purple robe and red belt emerged. Also in the chest was a stone box, and inside were three girls wearing blue clothing, a calf, a colt, and the five grains (barley, rice, soybean, foxtail millet, and millet; in Korean folk literature these five grains represent all of agriculture).
The messenger announced that they had been sent from Byeongnang (some sources indicate that the messenger and girls came from Japan, which makes geographical sense). The king of that land had sent the girls to be the brides of the three demi-gods. After delivering his message, the messenger returned to his land on a cloud. The three demi-gods each married and went their separate ways, founding each their own village.

The youngest of three demi-god brothers, appearing in the Samseong myth.

In ancient Korea, he is the sun god and founder of the realm of light. Palk is the personification of all that is light, good, and beneficial. The opposite force is Kud, the dark one. Palk’s cult included sacrifices that took place on mountaintops and which were strictly oriented towards the east.
The Koreans regard themselves to be the sons of Palk.

First king of Shilla. The area where Shilla was later to emerge was first called Ch’inhan, and it was occupied by six towns (most probably city-states). According to the mythology, the leaders of the towns gathered together and decided that they needed a king to rule over them, primarily because there was no fixed rule or law and thus the people acted without virtue. They ascended to a high place and to the south they saw something like lightning flash from heaven. Then they saw a great white horse bowing down to the ground. When they neared the place they saw that the horse was bowing to a shining egg that lay on the ground. When the horse saw the men approaching, it whinnied loudly and flew up to heaven.
When the egg was opened, a shining boy emerged. All the birds and animals danced for joy, the heavens shook, and the sun and moon grew brighter. Because he was born from an egg, he was given the surname Pak (”gourd” in Korean). The boy was taken to a temple in the south where he was raised. When he reached the age of thirteen, he married Areong and became king of the land. He ruled for 61 years and then ascended to heaven.

Pak Hyeokkeose was most probably an early chieftain who succeeded in uniting the six main city-states of the area into one nation which was at first called Kyerim but later became Shilla
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The “Five Dragon Chariot” was the chariot which Haemosu rode when he descended to earth and ascended into heaven. Given the name, it was most probably pulled by five dragons, and it was said to have ridden on the wind and the clouds. It could transport the rider anywhere almost with the speed of the wind.

Among the deities and semi-deities of ancient Korea, the chosen method of battle was magic. Unlike Western magic, which often involves incantations cast to harm the enemy, metamorphosis magic was more indirect. Rather than directly attempting to harm the enemy, one would test one’s strength against an opponent by changing into various animals. The transformation would continue until one party gave up. In all instances the weaker party transforms first and is then bested by the stronger party who transforms into a stronger animal, most often the weaker animal’s traditional hunter or nemesis. The contest ends without violence, and is really a test of strength that is a substitute for direct battle. For examples of metamorphosis magic, see the stories of Habaek and T’alhae.
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A famous giant in Korean mythology who became the island of Cheju.

Kumiho means, literally, “nine-tailed fox.” The following description appears (word for word) in both the Donga Color World Encyclopedia (Tonga wonsaek segye paekhwasajeon) and the Dusan Great World Encyclopedia (Tusan segye taebaekhwasajeon):
“A fox with nine tails that commonly appears in the oral tales of our country. It can freely transform into, among other things, a bewitching girl that seduces men. A fox that lives a thousand years is said to turn into a kumiho. There are a number of legendary tales in which the kumiho appears.” A half dozen or so of those legendary tales can be found in the encyclopedic Compendium of Korean Oral Literature (Hanguk kubimunhak taegye). A quick look at them will help supplement the brief description given above.

In “Transformation of the Kumiho” (”Kumihoui pyeonshin”), a kumiho transforms into an identical likeness of a bride at a wedding, and not even the bride’s mother can tell them apart. The kumiho is finally discovered when her clothes are removed. In “Pak Munsu and the Kumiho” (”Pakmunsuwa kumiho”), the famous character Pak Munsu encounters a girl living alone in the woods who has a distinctly fox-like appearance. “The King and the Kumiho” (”Wanggwa kumiho”) tells of a king who meets a girl in the woods at night and tells her to take off her clothes after promising to save her debt-laden father. The tale records that it was too dark for the king to see whether she was actually a girl or a fox, indicating that if it had been light the difference would have been obvious. In “The Maiden who Discovered a Kumiho through a Chinese Poem” (”Hansiro kumihoreul aranaen ch’eonyeo”) we read that the kumiho was ultimately revealed when a hunting dog caught the scent of the fox and attacked. All of these details would seem to indicate that, while the kumiho may be able to change its appearance, there is still something fox-like about it; its countenance changes, but its nature does not.

The kumiho is typically pictured as taking a female form when transforming into a human being (as indicated in the encyclopedia entries), but the kumiho in “The Maiden who Discovered a Kumiho through a Chinese Poem” turns into a young man who attempts to trick the maiden into marrying him. It should be noted that this is the only case where the kumiho transforms into a man; in the rest of the tales the kumiho takes the form of a beautiful girl.

Although it is not indicated in the encyclopedia entry quoted above, the kumiho is not a benign trickster who delights only in fooling people. There is no doubt that the kumiho is an evil creature; unlike the fox of Japanese folklore, who will sometimes change into a woman to marry a man who has been kind to it, the kumiho never appears as a benevolent figure. The kumiho encountered by Pak Munsu intended to harm him, but he was able to escape. Likewise, the amorous king was saved by the timely arrival of a mountain spirit who struck the kumiho on the cheek and forced her to reveal her true form. Others were not so lucky. In “The Hunter and the Kumiho” (”P’osuwa kumiho”), a hunter comes upon a fox scratching at a human skull in the woods. Before his eyes, the fox changed into an old woman and went down into a nearby village (the scratching of the skull and the subsequent metamorphosis introduces an element of sympathetic magic into the kumiho’s transformation, but there is not space enough here to flesh out this aspect). The hunter followed and saw her “reunited” with her children, who had puzzled over her absence of several months. The hunter was able to warn the children that their mother had been killed by the kumiho, and the kumiho intended them to be her next victims. “The Emperor’s Kumiho Daughter-in-Law” tells of us a Chinese emperor’s son who married a kumiho. After the marriage, the country’s retainers mysteriously began to die one by one. The tale’s hero eventually discovered the kumiho and was given permission by the emperor to kill it and save the remaining retainers. The kumiho of “The Kumiho and the Samjokku (Three-legged Dog)” (”Kumihowa samjokku”) is married to another Chinese emperor, and she shows vampiric tendencies in wanting to suck the blood from her intended victim, the hero of the tale (she is foiled by the hero’s three-legged dog, who attacks and kills her).

Although this is by no means a complete survey of kumiho tales, it should suffice to supplement the brief definition we began with. Through these tales we can see just how intriguing a character the kumiho is, reflecting in its complex nature aspects found in various characters familiar to a Western audience: the trickster, the fiend, the succubus, and even the vampire. The kumiho continues to live on today as one of the few truly evil creatures of Korean folklore.

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