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The legendary founder of Gojoseon, Korea's first recorded kingdom, born to Hwanung, son of the Heavenly King Hwanin, and Ungnyeo, a bear who endured a hundred-day ordeal to become human; his founding date is reckoned in the source text against the reign of the legendary Chinese emperor Yao, and he remains Korea's most widely known national origin figure.
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Origins
FoundedFounder of Gojoseon, traditionally dated in the Samguk Yusa itself to the fiftieth year of the legendary Chinese emperor Yao, a date historians treat as symbolic rather than a historical record. 1 Place of OriginThe text names Taebaeksan as the mountain where Hwanung first descended beneath a sandalwood tree to found his heavenly city, the setting the Samguk Yusa gives for Dangun's own eventual birth and founding of Gojoseon. 1 Era of CompositionLater Korean chronicles such as the Dongguk Tonggam retrospectively dated his founding of Gojoseon to 2333 BCE, a figure calculated centuries after the fact rather than drawn from a contemporaneous record. 1 Origin of the NameDangun is generally parsed as a compound title, altar lord or sandalwood lord, referencing the sandalwood tree beneath which Hwanung is said to have descended, though scholars have also connected the term to Tengri, the Central Asian sky god title, suggesting a shared Northeast Asian cultural root for the royal title. 1 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 1 Veneration TodayHistorically attested; no continuous cult 1 The Samguk Yusa presents Dangun as a founding figure of national origin rather than an object of an attested continuous cult. South Korea marks his founding of Gojoseon on the National Foundation Day public holiday as a civic commemoration, and a small modern Korean new religious movement, Daejonggyo, reveres him in explicitly religious terms; that devotional claim is real but awaits its own dedicated source before the atlas can record it here as fact. History
Historical NoteThe Samguk Yusa, compiled around 1281 AD, is the earliest surviving text to preserve the Dangun legend in full; the earlier court chronicle Samguk Sagi of 1145 AD omits it entirely, and historians read the Samguk Yusa version as shaped, or possibly substantially developed, during the Goryeo dynasty under Mongol era pressure. 1 Life
Office HeldFounder-king of Gojoseon, the first state named in Korean national tradition 1 Identity
Canonical ReferenceThe account survives in the Samguk Yusa, compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryeon in the late thirteenth century under the Goryeo dynasty, more than two thousand years after the founding date the text itself claims; Iryeon cites an earlier Chinese work, the Wei Shu, which does not survive independently, so the Samguk Yusa is effectively the sole extant source for the story as it is known today. 1 Attributions
Mythic AssociationHistorians of Korea read his mother Ungnyeo's bear-to-woman transformation as likely reflecting an old totemic tradition among a bear-associated clan absorbed into the founding lineage. 1 TraditionKorean national tradition holds him founder of Gojoseon, the peninsula's first kingdom, in 2333 BCE, and South Korea's National Foundation Day, Gaecheonjeol, commemorates that founding each October. 1 Practice
LineageSon of Hwanung, who descended to the earthly realm from his father Hwanin, the Heavenly King, and Ungnyeo, a bear who endured a hundred day ordeal eating only mugwort and garlic in a cave to become human. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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