Talk:Korean mythology

Embarrassment?

"Korean mythology is disintegrating rapidly to the level of folklore because of lack of interest or perhaps rather embarrassment."

"It is contended by some that after the Korean War Koreans became embarrassed about their own mythology and though many figures are still alive in the consciousness of the general population, much of the oral tradition about the relationship between the mythological figures has been lost."

As a Korean who grew up in Korea, I must note that I am unaware of any collective embarrassment regarding Korean mythology. Retellings, in books or cartoons, are popular, and myths remain a familiar part of the Korean storytelling tradition. I would also like to see the sources for this article, if any, as it does not strike me as being very accurate. Any article stating "It is contended by some" does not inspire much faith. --Noctua 22:12, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

"Deities" section is also unusable

The "deities" section, which I just noticed, is nigh-unusuable:

• Mixes literary deities with shamanic deities. Hwanung is not worshipped in Korean shamanism, and Dangun only barely.
• Mixes NRM deities with traditional deities. Haneullim is not worshipped in Korean shamanism either, and a quick look through Google Books at the source in the Haneullim article shows that not only is the source of questionable academic reliability WRT the history of Korean shamanism (describing the religion as a "deteriorated form... in need of radical renovation" and making nationalist claims not current in South Korean scholarship), the author himself concedes that Haneullim is "neglected" in the modern religion.
• Mixes Jeju deities with mainland deities. Seonang and Danggeum-agi worship is mainland only, Hallakgung'i or Sobyeol-wang are Jeju only. They were never worshipped together.
• Unreliable sources: Bugeun is not a god of sexual relationships and Doosan Encyclopedia is not a very reliable source; EKFC, the actual reliable source, describes Bugeun as a title for gods used in the Seoul region, often deified historical individuals.
• OR: Nowhere in the Woncheon'gang bon-puri (all of which you can read in English here) is it mentioned what sort of goddess the main character Today becomes. Gamang (called Gamheung in the article) is not the "father of the gods" and is not described as such in the source. Gamang is actually a mainland deity invoked only to begin a religious ceremony, whose exact nature is not clearly described by shamans.

In fact, I think it might be better to remove the deities section entirely.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:55, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Korean mythology/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MisterCake (talk · contribs) 21:45, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	It's well written, but worth going over it all before I pass when there's a possibility of some strange translation or something. Done.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Despite spinning narratives it keeps it in summary.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio: y
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Nice images.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Could use 'alt' text as it's called. Did it.
	7. Overall assessment.	Good to go.

Introduction

• Pick one of "bodies" or "corpus" for consistency. Something like "sets" might be more neutral, though literary terms ok too.
• Might use "what is history and what is mythology" or something. "where it history ends and mythology begins" is perfectly understandable, but worry it's more "journalistic" than encyclopedic
• "they" instead of "the category"
• "only in fossilized form" - I assume this needs quote marks
• "first intepretations" rather than e. g. "first studies" is interesting choice of words
• "defined by religious sanctity" little unclear
• "Don't think "descent groups" is used in English; rather "ethnic group"
• "The term myth is used here in its academic sense" "the academic sense" sounds better
• 'It is not being used to mean "something that is false".' Just say false, or is untrue, or something. "Something that is false" makes me think a proposition

Literary mythology

• "The oldest surviving accounts of the founding myths of the ancient Korean kingdoms—such as Gojoseon, Goguryeo, and Silla—are transcribed in Classical Chinese in Korean texts compiled during or after the twelfth century, although these were based on earlier, now-lost sources. " Can't put my finger on it but might need rewording. Long sentence if nothing else.

• Not a deal-breaker but consider when you can put references at the end of sentences. Sometimes it needs to be next to a word with a comma, and sometimes it can be moved to the end of the sentence and understood as to which word it refers. When it is the latter case, my eyes prefer it.

• "Having ruled for fifteen centuries, Dan'gun moves away when King Wu of Zhou sends Jizi to Korea." May need elaboration

• "Yi's work is much longer and more detailed than the Samguk sagi, but much of this may be due to the poet's own literary embellishment." Needs a source

Shamanic narratives and oral mythology

• "shamanism increasingly appealed most to women in the private sphere who were marginalized by the new social structure" Would rewrite this. Maybe "shamanism began to appeal mostly to women in the private sphere."

@MisterCake: Thank you for taking this on!

• Unified at "corpus". "Set" is a bit ambiguous for my tastes.
• Reworded to "differentiate between historical fact and mythology".
• "Fossilized form" is my wording, actually!
• Absolutely, "interpretations" there is an awkward translation from Korean. Fixed.
• Your edit as "is always religious" is perfectly fine there.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 08:03, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

That's a fair point - I think it's the word with most definitions in the OED. In contrast, I worry corpus is a little 'niche'. Hence I went with group in the lead. Not sure myself.

That one is good.

Ah, it seemed to contrast with the quoted "living mythology". Might just say "documents" for the less flowery language, rather than "fossilized form.

More to go over but just to respond, and no problem, interesting stuff. Pardon that not as fast as if it were my native tongue. Cake (talk) 12:14, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

@MisterCake:

• "Descent group" is an anthropological term not uncommon in English-language scholarship on East Asia, referring to a social unit which claims descent from a single distant ancestor: an extended family in its most extended sense, such as the descendants of Confucius. Unfortunately we don't have a proper article for it. Modern Korea has no indigenous ethnic group other than Koreans, but there are thousands of descent groups. If you think it's too confusing I could change it to "kinship group" or "family lineages", although again this isn't ideal because "descent group" is a specific term in academia with a precise meaning.
• "Included in genealogies" is also intentional because most of these genealogies really do consist only of family trees; these myths are introductions that take up only a very small volume of the text.
• The issues with the myth notice have to do with Template:Myth FAQ, unfortunately.
• The "oldest surviving accounts" sentence has been reworded.
• The Jizi sentence has been contextualized a bit.
• The citation in question has been moved up to make it clearer where the sourcing comes from.
• The women sentence has been reworded, but the fact that women were marginalized by increasing enforcement of patriarchy and found relief in shamanism is an important point to note here and should be kept.
• I will add some alt-texts soon, though I feel that they might coincide with the captions.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 12:26, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Hm. While that's interesting and will apologize if deleting it was brash, that's all one means by an ethnic group. The descendants of Charlemagne a Westerner might say; a group of people sharing a common ancestor. It's true that families fit that too - a family is a kind of ethnic group, hence ethnic groups can be described as extended families in the most extended sense. The Lee Family of Virginia or European-Americans or Europeans are all ethnic groups. Regardless, while I'm not sure I see any ambiguity, I still treated it as if there was some, hence "families and ethnic groups." The 'descent groups' seem to be family genealogies and surnames, yet so many of them to constitute an ethnic group, or whatever is between that and a family. Further, "descent group" seems to me a proprietary use. Could well be in anthropology and sociology journals, or have some technical usage in a Korean context for which I am ignorant. But if it's just, what's the word in an English dictionary where's it's "blahblah" group and you mean that strain of people tied by common descent. In the bible "Ethnos" means another nation of people or nations of people in general. Clan or tribe are other possibilities. If it translates as "descent group" literally; hard for me to complain. Cake (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Certainly didn't want it deleted, just put it as a footnote when I was worried the caption was so large in turn making the meatier text into odd shapes unnecessarily. Unless I've been doing it wrong, alt texts are more like describing the experience to a blind person or something. If they are still to be done, I could do them after I went through the rest. Cake (talk) 12:50, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Footnote 151 is Seo D. 2002 and I assume it's supposed to be 2001. Understandable typo but it's always possible they had another publication the next year missing in the list of works cited. Also, how then 151 and 152 can be combined, and 1st and 2nd, that's nice to look for sometimes. This article isn't so lengthy where that's a big concern, but if you make one that is, fewer notes can make it load that much faster. Cake (talk) 13:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Pardon to get on you for the Myth FAQ. Indeed something about it looks wrong. Cake (talk) 13:17, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Nature and context of shamanic narratives

• "musicians who provide musical accompaniment " can just be 'accompaniment', and have said musicians.
• Not sure if keep the "see below" and "aforementioned" notes with Bari. Those seem to be confusing, as if they refer to each other.
• Seems like "All shamanic narratives meet the purposes of both religiosity and entertainment, albeit to varying degrees." should be the first or second sentence. It goes with the first more than the preceding, it seems to me.
• Seems like the one paragraph starting "Korean shamanism" needs to be separated into two somewhere.

Regional traditions of shamanic mythology

• "as well as characteristic preferences in the performance of narratives." might need a rephrase. differences maybe?
• "Ethnologist Hong Tae-han calls it a grouping made for convenience" a quote or characterizing what he said?
• "This region has the fewest myths." A little abrupt. Maybe "also"?
• "The musicians go beyond simply providing background music to intervene directly in the performance" Try just ", intervening" rather than "to intervene."
• "while the performing shaman actively addresses the specific audience watching the ritual" would rephrase or try to trim down
• "Vibrant" seems unencyclopedic. Maybe "active"?
• "human" musicians seems implied
• "Uniquely out of the five regions, Princess Bari is unknown in Jeju" Might can be stated better, like just straightforwardly, it's the only region where Princess Bari is unknown.
• Dont think "of shamanic narratives" needed in section headers. much like one doesn't need "Silla state foundation myth". its already a subset.Cake (talk)

@MisterCake:

• I've changed "descent group" to "family lineage", which I think preserves the meaning decently and gets away from the jargon of the original term. "Ethnic" to me implies e.g. Race and ethnicity in the United States Census or Ethnic groups recognized by the People's Republic of China. "Clan" is possible but I would avoid it because it has a political/military connotation, e.g. the Arab clans or Scottish highland clans that were political as well as social units, which has never been the case in Korea.
• I'd be very grateful if you could do the alt text at the end, especially since it's nice to have a fresh pair of eyes.
• The citation fixes have been done. And thanks for noting that the article isn't too long! Getting it to fit into WP:SIZE recommendations and not have it look like, e.g., the Donald Trump article was actually quite challenging given the breadth of the topic.
• "musicians who provide musical accompaniment" is indeed quite the tautology.
• Neither the "below" nor the "aforementioned" seemed particularly useful, so I've removed them.
• "All shamanic narratives meet the purposes of both religiosity and entertainment, albeit to varying degrees" now heads the paragraph.
• The Korean shamanism paragraph is indeed a bit long, but I'm not sure there's a natural break there, especially when most of the paragraph is cited to a single source.
• "as well as characteristic preferences in the performance of narratives" was reworded to "as well as distinctive tendencies in the actual performance of the narratives".
• Hong's statement has been expanded on and contextualized.
• "Also" has been added there.
• "To intervene" was changed to "and intervene". "Intervening" would also work, but it seemed better to cut down on the number of commas per sentence.
• "while the performing shaman actively addresses the specific audience watching the ritual" was changed to "while the performing shaman actively interacts with the human audience" (in implied opposition to the divine audience, of course).
• "vibrant" was changed to "vigorous".
• "human" has been removed there.
• "Uniquely out of the five regions, Princess Bari is unknown in Jeju" was rephrased to "The island represents the only tradition where Princess Bari is unknown".
• The section headers have been reworded.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 15:10, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Think it's looking better. For "creation narratives" all I would do is wonder about "making life unbearably hot during day and unbearably cold during night" if it's unbearable, how is there life? It says "original" like it might mean before life. If it doesn't just mean "too", I've possible missed something. Also, maybe section headings, since it's so focused on compare and contrast Jeju and northern. Cake (talk) 15:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

Localized mainland shaman narratives

""But when Kim-jangja rejects the Visitors again" again? a second time?

"only to ignore the vow when they recall the illness in response." ambiguous whether it's him or the gods, though presumably it means the gods ignored it and recalled it.

Also before the last two or three sections - good to make sure all the older dates at least have a CE or AD or BC or whatever they need. And we don't need to link to the article internally.

Jeju shamanic narratives

First paragraph seems to say there are three or four, but I count two or three. Cake (talk) 16:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

@MisterCake: Thank you for the general copyediting.

• "Unbearably" has been tempered down to "very"; the actual myths are not very clear about how humanity survived at all in the age of the doubled suns and moons, given that they talk about people drying up from heat during day and bursting open from frozen veins during night and other such pleasant things. But most of the narratives are still clear on the fact that the earth was still inhabited in this primordial age.
• "Again" has been changed to "a second time".
• Kim-jangja ignores his promise to sacrifice for the gods, and the Visitors kill his son in response. I've tidied up this part so it should be clearer.
• Could you point to some dates that need CEs or BCEs? The only BCE dates are in the Buyeo, Goguryeo, and Baekje section, and they're all marked as such. The other dates can all be understood to be CE from context, since e.g. 1762 is clearly 1762 CE when we're talking about an oral tradition.--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 17:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

• Perhaps it was just one: " The oldest of the five is the Gwanggaeto Stele, erected in 414". Seems to need an AD or CE for Fall of Rome times.
• Notes "c" and "g" seem to need a footnote. Might be the source next to it. Also, used to the numbers in front of the letters rather than vice versa, but I suppose that doesn't matter. After one more scan and assuming my concerns were addressed, I'll add the 'alt' for the pictures and pass it. Cheers. Cake (talk) 17:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

@MisterCake:

• 414 CE has been added.
• Citations have been added to the footnotes.

Thank you again for the thorough review!--Karaeng Matoaya (talk) 17:55, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

meaning of "also, the story plays no religious function and is therefore not mythology (한국신화) as defined in the article"

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Korean_mythology&action=history Just curious about this definition about mythology. And also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Korean_creation_narratives&action=historyon this link's edit summary, it says "addition is inappropriate because it is not a shamanic narrative"

According to this point of view, dozens of greek mythology was not shamanic narrative and it's ceased religious function so it's "inappropriate" article. What does this mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.161.42.88 (talk) 06:46, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Request for feedback: Posterity of Heaven proposed for deletion

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Posterity_of_Heaven_(2nd_nomination). Yannn¹¹ 15:30, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

How many births?

How births do the korean people have? It is the main thing people would like to know. I may say, you needa write this whole again... 2402:E280:3D6B:672:C899:F100:9513:D1B7 (talk) 16:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)