Stars and Souls in Korean Oral Traditions Fact Check

In Korea, there are few creation myths that start from the beginning, the very beginning. In a few oral traditions, a primal chaos exists until, unexpectedly, a crack appears, separating earth from sky. But these myths, those that survive, are not the colorful intricate histories of the Theogeny ...

There are two types: the written, literary mythology in traditional histories, mostly about the founding monarchs of various historical kingdoms, and the much larger and more diverse oral mythology, mostly narratives sung by shamans or priestesses (mansin) in rituals invoking the gods and which are still considered sacred today.

The governing god in Korean tradition, referred to as Hananim, Hanallim, or Hanŭnim, is deemed to rule the heavens but is rarely worshipped. Some of the more powerful deities can make demands from humans without any obligation to reciprocate. Other deities are involved in everyday human concerns and prayed to accordingly. Many of the deities desire food and drink, spend money, and enjoy song and dance, and thus receive these things as offerings. Spirits of the dead are thought to yearn for the activities and pleasures they enjoyed in life; spirits of military generals are for instance believed to like dangerous games.

Characters in Korean mythology · Korean folklore · Search · Category:Korean legendary creatures ·

Its name literally means 'can't be killed', due to the monster's metal hide that renders any metal weapon useless. Its toughness and hard-to-kill nature have prompted Koreans to call starfish 'Bulgasari', since their regeneration and hard-to-kill ...

The sea began to betray the haenyeo. Clamping abalones trapped them underwater, exhaustion slowed their limbs, the gray water clouded their vision, trash riddled their coral, plastic choked their once teeming underwater forests. Slowly, she fished her drowned, loved ones out of the depths and deposited them onto the fishing boats. Their lungs gasped for air long after their souls had left their bodies.

The Korean Grim Reaper guides dead souls to the afterlife.

The Dalgyal Gwishin, or Egg Ghost, is a faceless apparition whose smooth, egg-like face lacks eyes, nose, or mouth—a walking embodiment of the uncanny. Often seen as an omen of bad luck or death, these spirits are believed to be the souls ...

That was just more confusing and I wanted to cry but everything was so fast I could barely understand enough to be sad. He spoke again like nothing was happening. "You've been selected randomly to be a new Reaper. You are not alive or dead. You will now collect souls." At that I lost it unable to believe any of it at all.