A Study on the Belief System of the Dangun Myth and its Reflection on Korean Christian Faith

Abstract

This essay aims to examine the religious ingredients from the Dangun myth, which has long been the heritage of ancient Koreans to regard it. In particular, I intend to analyze the texts of the Dangun myth to understand the process of forming ancient culture and society, find out the religious ingredients, and clarify the analogy between the Dangun myth and Christian church in the meaning of deity. Through this study, I tried to elucidate the mystery concerning the Korean churches as follows: how the Korean Christian church understands the concept of God, or how the Korean Christian church has influence on such a rapid growth of churches in recent years. To achieve this aim, I worked for the following tasks. At first, I analyzed the editorial resources in the texts of the Dangun myth and their meanings in perspective of religions. The Dangun myth has been handed down by the Korean people’s remembrance and narratives so that it has influenced the religious beliefs of them in history. Thus, as I analyze the Dangun myth, I could seek the structural characters and religious meanings for the Gochosun people who have long desired in order to achieve their ideal vision. At second, I tried to examine the Dangun story as the myth concerning the foundation of a nation. I could urge that the bear group who founded Gochosun had developed its original culture and civilization. The Gochosun people had strongly kept his cultural identity and enlarged his subjectivity through a narrative of the Dangun myth. At third, I examined the religious ingredients and their meanings of today in the Dangun myth. I could find the three religious elements; the god and the belief of his descent, belief in fertility, the religious initiations and the harmony of heaven and earth. At fourth, I interpreted the belief system in the Dangun myth to compare with the Christian faith by hermeneutics. While the Dangun myth had the deity of three types of gods(Whan-in, Whan-ung, and Whan-gum), each of the three gods could compare with God the father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son in Christianity. Moreover, as the bear-woman of the Dangun Myth is changed into a human by great obedience to bore Dangun, Mary is obedient to God when she hears the message about her pregnancy by the Holy Spirit from an angel. This essay is to examine the cause of the rapid growth of Korean Christian churches in the perspective of religious ingredients of Gochosun. I can mention the potentiality and capacity to accept Christian faith by the similarity of belief systems between Korean peoples’ religions and Western Christianity.