Mireuk and Seokga: The Song of Creation

Heaven and earth apart

The Changse-ga, 'Song of the Creation of the World', was sung in 1923 by the shaman Kim Ssang-dori of Hamheung and recorded by the folklorist Son Jin-tae. When heaven and earth came into being, it begins, Mireuk was born. Heaven and earth clung together and would not separate, so Mireuk pushed the sky up until it bulged like the lid of a pot, and at the four corners of the earth he set up copper pillars to hold it.

Stars and clothing

In those days there were two suns and two moons. Mireuk took down one of the moons and made from it the Big Dipper and the Southern Dipper, and took down one of the suns and made the great stars and the small stars. He had no clothes, so he gathered arrowroot vines from the mountains, spun them, and wove himself a robe.

Fire and water

Mireuk wanted to know where fire and water come from. He caught a grasshopper and asked it, but it said to ask the frog, who knew more; the frog said to ask the mouse. The mouse asked what it would be given for the answer, and Mireuk promised it all the rice chests in the world. The mouse told him to go to one mountain and strike stone against steel for fire, and to another to find a spring of water. So people learned fire and water, and the mouse has eaten from the rice chests ever since.

The first people

Then Mireuk held a golden tray in one hand and a silver tray in the other and prayed to heaven. Insects fell from the sky, five on each tray. The insects on the golden tray became men, and those on the silver tray became women, and they grew up and married, and the world was filled with people living in peace.

Seokga

Then Seokga appeared and said that he would rule the world. Mireuk said his age had not yet ended. They agreed to contests. First each lowered a bottle into the East Sea on a cord, Mireuk's golden and Seokga's silver; Seokga's cord broke. Next each tried to freeze a river in the middle of summer; Mireuk's river froze. Then they agreed to lie down together and sleep, and whoever grew a flower on his knee would have the world. As they slept, a flower bloomed on Mireuk's knee. Seokga, who was only pretending to sleep, snapped it off and set it on his own knee.

The curse

When Mireuk woke, he knew. Because you have stolen my flower, he said, in your age the flowers will wither in ten days; and your age will be full of thieves and cheats, of misery and wrongdoing. Then he went away, and Seokga began to rule the world. That, the song says, is why the world is as it is.

One motif, many songs

The flower contest reappears in the Jeju creation myth Cheonjiwang bonpuri, where twin brothers, Daebyeol-wang and Sobyeol-wang, compete by growing flowers, and the younger cheats to win this world, leaving the elder to rule the world of the dead. Across Korea the story explains the imperfection of the present world as the result of a stolen victory.