The Song of Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi () is a Korean shamanic narrative recited in the Mangmuk-gut, the traditional funeral ceremony of South Hamgyong Province, North Korea. It is the most ritually important and most popular of the many mythological stories told in this ritual. The Mangmuk-gut is no longer performed in North Korea, but the ritual and the narrative are currently being passed down by a South Korean community descended from Hamgyong refugees.
Several versions of the Song are known. In all versions, a man named Dorang-seonbi marries a woman named Cheongjeong-gaksi, only to die almost immediately after the wedding. Distraught, Cheongjeong-gaksi weeps or prays until a Buddhist priest—or a god in the form of one—gives her a set of tasks by which she can meet her husband again. The most recurrent tasks are tearing out her hair and weaving the hair into a rope, boring holes into her palms and threading the rope into the holes, and either hanging on it, going back and forth on it, or both; repeatedly drenching her fingers in oil, then setting them on fire; and, finally, paving a difficult mountain road with only what remains of her bare hands. Having done all this, Cheongjeong-gaksi is briefly reunited with her husband before he dies or departs again. In the majority of versions, the woman ultimately commits suicide or otherwise dies to be reunited with her husband for good in the afterlife.
Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi were worshipped in the Mangmuk-gut as eminent gods who paved the road on which the deceased soul would travel to the afterlife. In the funeral context, the Song demonstrated the unbreachable gap between the living and the dead but also suggested that shamanic ritual could lead to a brief reunion with the dead. Scholars have focused on the myth's Buddhist influences, and especially on its relationships to Neo-Confucian patriarchy. Whether Cheongjeong-gaksi is motivated by a patriarchal ideal of female virtue that the Song therefore supports, or whether she acts out of personal love, remains debated.
Names
The central figures of the myth are the dead husband Dorang-seonbi and his grieving wife Cheongjeong-gaksi. Seonbi and are both titles, not integral parts of the names. Seonbi is a Korean word referring to a Confucian scholar, and gaksi simply means "newlywed bride." According to some versions of the narrative, the husband was named "Dorang" after the Korean word "stone", because it was hoped that he would live a long life just as a stone does not decay or perish. On the other hand, the name of the ritual in which the narrative was recited, (), is found in other areas of Korea where the myth of Dorang-seonbae is unknown. It may be that the mythological figure is named after the ritual, rather than vice versa. No version gives any indication of the meaning of "Cheongjeong".
Two of the versions (the 1966 and Gazette versions) name the heroine "Cheongcheon" instead of "Cheongjeong." The Gazette version also names her husband "Doryang," not "Dorang." For the sake of consistency, the article will always refer to Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi.
Narratives
Korean shamanic narratives are works of narrative oral literature sung during gut—the Korean term for large-scale rituals officiated by shamans—which constitute the mythology of Korean shamanism, the indigenous polytheistic religion of the country. As no standardized form of Korean shamanism or its mythology exists, shamanic narratives exist in multiple versions. There is also significant regional variation in the tradition, with many myths only recited in one specific region. The Song of Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi is one such localized narrative, being unattested outside South Hamgyong Province, now North Korea.
Several versions of the narrative are currently known. All versions recorded after the division of Korea in the late 1940s are from shamans who had fled the North Korean government, or people who had learned from those shamans. rituals are illegal and no longer held in North Korea, so the oral transmission of the narrative is presumed extinct. The ritual was thought to be virtually extinct in South Korea as well, as most refugee shamans did not pass down their knowledge. But in the 2010s, researchers were able to contact a community descended from North Korean refugees, living near the city of Sokcho in South Korea, who continue to recite the narrative today.
Reciting shaman Shaman hometown Date of recitation Notes Kim Geun-seong Hongwon 1926 As Kim Geun-seong was extremely drunk when he was being interviewed by the researcher, a proper transcription was not possible. Despite this, the 1926 version remains among the longest and most detailed. Ji Geum-seom 1965 Preserved only as a recording for five decades; first transcribed in 2019. Yi Go-bun Hamhung 1966 Transcribed, but the ending appears to be incomplete. Jang Chae-sun Unknown 1981 Only a summary of the plot exists in written form, but the recitation was filmed and is available on YouTube. Unknown Pukchong Unknown A summary is provided in the Pukchong County Gazette, a 1970 publication by refugees from Pukchong who had fled to South Korea during the division and the ensuing Korean War. Yi Chan-yeop Sokcho 2019 Yi Chan-yeop was born in 1982 but received training from refugee shamans from Hamgyong, notably his grandmother from Hamhung. Only a summary, first published in 2020, currently exists.
1926 version
Cheongjeong-gaksi, the daughter of two gods, is arranged to be married to a young nobleman named Dorang-seonbi. The groom falls very ill the moment he enters the bride's gate for the wedding. They consult a shaman, who tells them that the sickness is because Dorang-seonbi's marriage gifts to Cheongjeong-gaksi were ritually impure. They burn the gifts, but he continues to be nearly comatose. He leaves alone on the wedding night, after telling his wife that he will have died if she sees a man with shorn hair at noon the next day. No such man comes at noon, but a shorn-haired servant of Dorang-seonbi arrives at her house at night and announces that his master has died.
Cheongjeong-gaksi does nothing but weep day and night. The sound of weeping reaches the hall of the Jade Emperor, who orders a subordinate god, the Sage of the Golden Temple, to find the reason why. The god approaches her in the form of a Buddhist priest, and she pleads him to teach her how to meet her husband again. The priest tells her to fill a gourd container with clean water, then to go to Dorang-seonbi's grave alone and pray with it for three days. Cheongjeong-gaksi does so and is reunited with her husband. Delighted, she tries to grab his hand, but he disappears. The priest then tells her that what to do to be reunited with her husband another time:
"Tear out your hair, one by one. Weave them into a rope with three thousand strands and three thousand knots. Go to Geumsang Temple in Mount Annae and hang one end [of the rope] in the temple sanctum and hang the other end in the middle of the air. Bore holes into your two palms and insert the rope into your palms. If you do not say that you are in pain, even while three thousand girls are raising and lowering that rope with all their force, you will meet him.""너의 머리카락을 하나씩 뽑아 삼천 발 삼천 마디가 되게 노끈을 꼬아 안내산 금상절에 가서 그것의 한 끝은 법당에 걸고 또 한 끝은 공중에 걸고 두 손바닥에 구멍을 뚫어 그 줄에 손바닥을 끼워 삼천동녀가 힘을 다하여 올리고 내려도 아프다는 소리를 하지 않아야 만날 수가 있으리라."
Cheongjeong-gaksi does this, and Dorang-seonbi returns. When she attempts to embrace him, he disappears. The priest then tells her to dip her fingers in oil and let them dry, and to repeat this until she has dried fifteen (approximately 240 liters) of oil. Then she must set her fingers on fire while praying to the Buddha. When she does this, Dorang-seonbi returns to the living world, only to vanish once more when Cheongjeong-gaksi tries to embrace him. Finally, the priest tells her to pave the road from her home to Mount Annae using only what remains of her bare hands. While doing this, she discovers Dorang-seonbi paving the same road from the other direction. She embraces him, and he does not disappear.
On their way home, a sudden north wind knocks Dorang-seonbi off a bridge and hurls him into the river below. As he drowns, he tells his wife to commit suicide so they can reunite in the afterlife. Cheongjeong-gaksi goes home, "rejoicing greatly" at finally having understood how to be with Dorang-seonbi forever."크게 기뻐하며" She hangs herself. She finds her husband teaching painting to children in the afterlife. The two reunite and enjoy "infinite happiness.""무한의 樂" Later, they are reborn into the human world as deities invoked in the Mangmuk-gut.
1965 version
Two divinities are banished from the realm of the gods and exiled into the human world. They marry and give birth to a boy, who they name "Dorang" after "stone" (). Dorang's mother dies when he is three and his father dies when he is four, and he is brought up by his maternal uncle. When the boy reaches fifteen, a marriage is arranged between him and Cheongjeong-gaksi. His uncle divines the future of the couple and determines that they are incompatible, but Dorang-seonbi insists on the marriage. He ignores a series of inauspicious omens on the way to his bride's house and falls ill on the night of the marriage. He leaves for home, telling Cheongjeong-gaksi that he will have died if she spits on the wall the next day and it immediately dries. Her spit dries the next morning, and a messenger soon arrives bearing the news of her husband's death.
The distraught Cheongjeong-gaksi refuses to eat or drink for a hundred days. The sound of her wailing reaches the celestial Geumsang Temple of Mount Anhe. The Sage of the Temple visits to tell her to fill a gourd dipper with rice in order to see her dead husband. When she pours the rice into the dipper, every grain vanishes. Next, the Sage tells her to dig a pit with her bare hands in the coldest winter; she must enter the pit wearing the panties she had worn on her night with Dorang-seonbi, then undress and put her panties in the pit. Though she does this, the Sage refuses to show her her husband until she brings him a being or an object called a , which is "the sort of thing that gathers rock and makes it split, and gathers water and makes it split.""조랑말따다리라는 거는 돌을 걷어 돌을 갈라지구 물을 걷어 물을 갈라지게 하는 따위이니"
When the woman brings him the , the Sage gives her the task—already seen in the 1926 version—of smearing and drying fifteen of oil and setting her fingers on fire. She manages this and finally sees Dorang-seonbi at a distance, although he soon disappears. Her next task is to be raised and lowered by a rope woven from her hair and running through her palms, with the same specifications as in the 1926 version. Even when she accomplishes this, Dorang-seonbi fails to appear.
The Sage finally orders Cheongjeong-gaksi to pave mountain roads with what remains of her hands. She falls asleep after weeping while paving the roads and finds Dorang-seonbi beside her when she awakes. But on the way home, a bridge spanning a river collapses while her husband is crossing it. Cheongjeong-gaksi returns to the Sage, who tells her to throw herself into the river where Dorang-seonbi drowned. She does this and is reunited with her husband in a world full of light. They later become gods.
1966 version
Dorang-seonbi loses his parents at an early age and is brought up by his maternal uncle. The uncle chooses an inauspicious day for his nephew's marriage with Cheongjeong-gaksi, ignoring warnings from gods and birds. Dorang-seonbi falls sick on the wedding day. He spends one night in his bride's house and goes home, saying that white doves and white crows will bring news of him. Dorang-seonbi dies immediately upon coming home, and the birds deliver his wife a letter bearing the news.