단군신화에 나타난 유교적 성격

Abstract

Confucian Features in the Dangun Myth / Lim, Tail―hong In the story of the Dangun myth, there is a personal God, Hwan-in, who gives his son Hwan-ung the three divine objects to come to and govern the human world. These conceptions of humanized divinity and divine decree are very similar to the ideas in the sacred books of Confucianism. Also the teaching of confucius texts take much more of the human relationship, especially that among family. Such kind of relationships are also repeatedly described in the myth of the kingdom of ancient Cho-sun. In the myth, the father Hwan-in looks down and approves for his son to widely distribute a boon to mankind(弘益人間), and sends him to the earth with his 3,000 beings for governing and educating the world(在世理化). These ideas of 'widely distributing a boon to mankind' and 'governing and educating the world' are also resembled to the thoughts of ‘supporting people(養民)’ and ‘educating people(敎民)’ which are the very important political thoughts of Confucianism. As a result, the ideal society of Confucianism, 'Dae-dong society(大同社會)' can be said to be the ideal society which Dangun myth pursue. The story of Dangun myth has three world, such as the world of Heaven, the world of Earth and the world of Man(or Emperor). This 3 world structure is same to the structure of 'the thought of three essential element(三才思想)' of Confucianism, which is composed of Heaven, Earth, and Man. The Confucian features appeared in Dangun myth could be considered as a sort of original Korean thought. This paper, however, through the comparison with the Chinese Huangdi myth, concluded that the Chinese confucian thought, through the long, long time, had mended the ancient labile myth to the Dangun myth which is now found in Sam-Guk-Yu-sa of Il-yeon.