(12-3, p. 44)

Kanghwa Island history begins before recorded time, during the neolithic period. The communal clans who populated the region left remnants of their society, at a spot marked with an impressive northern-style dolmen. Along with the pottery, stone tools and ceremonial objects unearthed from the area, come many questions. Was this a burial ground, a tomb, or an altar? One wonders how these stone-age people erected the forty-square-meter stone slab in its present position. How did it survive Kanghwa Island's turbulent history?

The Tan'gun Myth

Kanghwa-do holds a place in the earliest of Korean written history. The monk lryon used sources lost to modern historians to record the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms). Written in the thirteenth century, it includes the story of Tan'gun. This mythological foundation legend is a basic element of Korean culture.

The heavenly prince, Hwanung, asked his father, the god Hwanin, if he could govern the beautiful peninsula of Korea. His wish was granted. Hwanung descended to the sacred sandalwood tree on Paektu-san on the Yalu River, together with the gods of wind, rain and clouds, and 3,000 officials to help him rule. Hwanung instituted a moral code of law for the primitive tribes and taught them, agriculture, medicine, and more than 360 useful trades.

A bear and a tiger, who lived together in a cave near the sandalwood tree, prayed fervently to be made human. Hwanung took pity on them and, after giving them a clump of mugwort (bitter herbs) and twenty cloves of garlic as their only food, instructed them to go deep into the cave to meditate for 100 days. At the end of the given period, he promised, they would be made human. The tiger, unable to endure the hunger, ran away. The bear patiently complied with the rules. After twenty-one days he emerged from the cave transformed into a beautiful woman.

The bear-woman returned to the sandalwood tree to pray that she might bear a child. Hwanung transformed himself into a human and made her queen of his kingdom. They had a son named Tan'gun, meaning Sandalwood King.

Tan'gun ruled the peninsula as the first human king. He moved his capital first to Pyongyang where he named his kingdom Choson, Land of the Morning Calm. He later moved south to Kanghwa Island where he built an altar to worship his heavenly father on the island's highest peak, Mani-san. Tan'gun is said to have ruled for 1,500 years. After abdicating, he ascended to heaven and became the mountain god, sansin. Thus, the Korean people consider themselves the descendants of this union, giving them the wisdom of the gods and the strength and patience of the bear.

The early morning sun warms the crisp air on October 3rd, Foundation Day, or Heavenly Opening Day. Worshipers trudge the steep path to Mani Mountain's 1,500-foot peak. They have come to celebrate the founding of the Korean nation in 2333 B.C. by Tan'gun in the fifty-first year of his reign.

The priests of Taejonggyo, perhaps Korea's oldest religion, begin ceremonies to the spirit of Tan'gun that date from the Three Kingdoms period (57 B.C. to 668 A.D.). Their traditional clothing displays symbols of their religion. The high-pointed hats are of red silk with a circle depicting heaven, a square denoting earth and a triangle representing man. (Tan'gun was the man-child of heaven and earth.) The pale blue robes with dark blue edging are adorned with t'aeguk, the red and blue symbol of Korea, displayed on a gold background.

Unselfish Love

The ceremony takes place at the Ch'amsong Altar where the lower pillar symbolizes heaven and the upper portion symbolizes earth. The priests begin by lighting a sacrificial brushwood fire in a granite vase. They wash their hands three times before entering the structure to bow to Tan'gun's spirit, resting on red and yellow cushions in the form of a statue. They bring offerings of rice cakes, fruit and the shamans' traditional boar's head. Silver pitchers are used to pour rice wine into stemmed silver cups. Fragrant incense smoke swirls through the air. After the service, a feast of roasted pig and soju is savored by all attending. With their motto, Hongik ingan, "Unselfish Love Towards Mankind," the believers of this religion maintain that Tan'gun personifies the finest spirit of the Korean people. All spectators are warmly welcomed to the ceremony.

On a rock, representing Tan'gun's home, various ritual fires are lit for special occasions throughout the year. Whenever there is an athletic contest at Seoul Stadium, a fire is started by using the sun. A torch is lighted to be carried by runners to Seoul.

The legend continues with the famed Samnang Fortress (Fortress of the Three Sons). It is said that the fortress wall, one mile in circumference, was built in one day by Tan'gun's three sons. Located among beautiful flowering shrubs and gingko trees in the southern area of the island on Chongjoksan, it is also called Chongjok Mountain Fortress.

Within the fortress walls is the famous Chondung Temple. It is believed to have been built originally during the Koguryo period, when Buddhism was first practiced on the island. Another (12-3, p. 45) temple was built on this site in the later Koryo dynasty.

The Buddhist Canon

During the Mongol invasion of Korea, between 1232 and 1250, the Koryo court took refuge on Kanghwa Island and used this temple for worship. King Kojong (the twenty-third king) then commissioned wood blocks of the Buddhist canon to be carved as a deep commitment to Buddhism and to appeal for divine favor to expel the Mongol invaders. The wood was soaked in salt water for three years and in fresh water for another three years to fully cure it so it wouldn't warp. Then it was buried for three years before being dried in the open air for yet another three years. The actual carving project became a national endeavor, which lasted sixteen years. The world's oldest and most comprehensively complete collection of Buddhist scriptures, the 81,258 wood blocks were carved on both sides, containing two pages of text. Each block is 9.5 inches by 29 inches by 2.5 inches thick, averaging twenty-two lines to a page, fourteen characters to the line. During the Choson dynasty, they were moved to Haeinsa in Taegu for safer storage. They can still be seen there today. It is said that nuns carried one block each on their heads, walking the entire distance from Kanghwa-do to Taegu.

King Kojong died on Kanghwa Island, unable to return to Seoul. King Kojong's tomb and three other royal tombs can be found near Kanghwa City. He left the remains of the royal palace he built in the nineteenth year of his reign, which was his royal residence for thirty-nine years. During the Choson dynasty the site was reconstructed as a regional military headquarters from which to defend the island.

In 1299 Queen Honghwa, wife of King Ch'ungyol, King Kojong's grandson, gave the temple its name, Chondung, meaning "Transmitted Lamp," when she donated a rare jade lamp to this temple. Sadly, the lamp has disappeared.

The two buildings of Chondung-sa are masterpieces of Buddhist architecture, built during the Choson dynasty. The main hall, or Taeungbojon, enshrines images of Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha, and his two bodhisattva attendants, Manjusri and Samantabhadra. The second hall, Yaksa-jon, is dedicated to the Buddha of Medicine.

Anguished Figures

This temple structure, too, is not without its legends. At the four corners of the Taeungbojon are carved four anguished figures, squatting with their knees under their chins. The wooden carvings are found only in this temple.

And so the story: In the 1590s, during the reconstruction of the hall after the Japanese invasion, the builder had no place to stay on the temple grounds. He rented a room next to the wine shop in town and fell in love with the shop owner's daughter. The poor builder had no money for marriage, but promised the girl they could be wed after the completion of the temple. After a reasonable period, the builder finished the temple and brought the money to the girl to finalize their wedding plans. During the night, while the builder slept, the girl stole his money and ran off with another village boy. The distraught builder sought revenge by carving the four nude statues of the deceitful girl with the heavy beams of the temple roof pushing her head to her knees. For centuries, she has pleaded forgiveness (12-3, p. 46) for her sins, while the forsaken builder disappeared into the ranks of the unknown.

The nine-hundred-year-old temple bell was cast during the Chinese Sung dynasty. During the most recent occupation of Korea, the Japanese were stopped from taking this Chinese bell to Japan after World War II ended, having transported it as far as Inch'on harbor. During the twelfth century, Korean artisans developed the unique pale-green celadon pottery. Kanghwa Island was one of the major sites of the celadon industry.

During centuries of periodic invasions and incursions, the Japanese abducted Korean artisans, dispatching them to southern Japan where they developed the Japanese pottery industry.

Early in the thirteenth century (the exact date given as 1232), movable metal type was invented in Korea, about two hundred years before Gutenberg in Germany is credited with its invention. Before his death in 1241, the renowned scholar and prime minister, Yi Kyubo, is claimed to have had twenty-eight copies of a book printed on Kanghwa Island using this type of publishing.

Manchu Invaders

Kanghwa-do has long been an island fortress, often the major defense area for the capital city of Seoul, with walls built and rebuilt throughout the centuries. The capital was returned to Kanghwa Island during the Manchu invasion in 1636. In a small pavilion located near the city bell, a memorial tablet is kept in honor of Prime Minister Kim Sang-yong. In 1636, after a long siege by the invading Manchu army, Kim, the retired prime minister, heroically destroyed the gunpowder stored in the South Gate's roof. In the explosion, he killed the horde of Manchu soldiers rushing through the gate, but died along with the enemy.

The island capital was destroyed by the marauding Manchus. Scattered along the ridges of Munsu-san are the remnants of thirteen-century fortifications, built by King Kojong, destroyed by the Manchus and repaired during the reign of the Choson dynasty king, Sukchong. The structures now standing are part of the reconstruction of 1676 and 1710. The earthen wall was originally forty-two kilometers long with four main gates, four secret gates and four water gates. The old Kanghwa city wall and the West Gate are well preserved, with the South Gate recently reconstructed.

Found in an old pavilion is the Kanghwa City Bell. King Sukchong, the nineteenth King of Choson, who ruled from 1674 to 1700, cast the copper bell. Weighing about four tons, it stands about six and half feet high. It was rung to announce the opening and closing of the city gates. In 1866 the invading French troops attempted to haul the bell off. It proved too heavy and cumbersome, and they had to leave it outside of town.

During the Choson dynasty a naval headquarter was established on the island. With eight gun emplacements built along the coast four kilometers apart, and eight forts, the island was one of the most important strategic points for the defense of the capital.

The French Retaliate

After the Manchu invasion, Korea became known as the "hermit nation." When King Ch'olchong died, leaving twelve-year-old King Kojong as his successor, the king's father became Prince Regent with the title taewon'gun. Taking a stand of national isolation, the late Choson dynasty prince regent opposed any change. He began a persecution of Catholics and executed several priests. In 1866, the French retaliated by invading and burning Kanghwa Island, leaving only the great bronze bell and the Confucian temple. A pine tree shows the scars from battle, and the cannons used at that time seem prepared for a new enemy. Within Chondung Temple, General Yang Hon-su's monument to his victory over the French in 1866 carries Chondung-sa history forward with that of Kanghwa Island.

Seeking a trade agreement, in 1871, a flotilla of American warships fired on Kwangsong fort on Kanghwa Island. American marines from the USS Colorado landed and defeated the outnumbered Koreans, killing General Oh Che-yon and 350 of his men, with the loss of thirteen American lives. These battles, fought with the French in 1886, the Americans in 1871, and the Japanese in 1875, forced Korea to open her ports to trade with the western world. The ramparts of forts Chojijin and Kwangsong were repaired in the 1970s.

In 1831, the next to last king of Korea, Ch'olchong (the twenty-fifth Choson king) was born on Kanghwa Island and grew up there.

In keeping with Kanghwa's tradition of religiously historical buildings, one of the oldest Episcopal Churches stands on a hillside near Kanghwa City. Built by Bishop Corfe in 1900, it is a very interesting structure. Planted at the dedication ceremonies (12-3, p. 47) , a Bodhi tree still dominates the southwestern corner of the church grounds. Gautama Buddha sat beneath this type of sacred fig tree when he received enlightenment. Buddhist prayer beads are made from the nut of this tree.

Signal Fires to Seoul

As you climb the steep hill overlooking Pongchon-sa, a beautiful view of the waterways looking toward north Korea unfolds. Here the ruins of a stone beacon tower recall pre-Choson dynasty days when national defense messages were sent to Seoul via signal fires. The twenty-foot-tall stone watch tower is four-sided, flat-topped and crumbling in one corner—a victim of age. A view of the estuary and the fishing boats bobbing quietly on the water is the same view Korean defenders witnessed when warships of Mongols and Manchus, French and Americans, came to attack their country.

To the northern section of the island, all that is left of a Koryo-era temple is a five-story pagoda, set among the fields and trees in peace and harmony with its surrounding. This is a fine place for a respite from sightseeing.

In the shadow of the great stone dolmen, long rows of straw lean-tos shield a most important plant in the Korean culture, ginseng (insam). A cure-all, a tonic of good health, and an excellent cure for a "morning after" a heavy night of drinking, ginseng finds its way into Korean homes in medicine, tea, and wine as chunks, powder, or whole. Kanghwa Island is one of the nation's most concentrated ginseng farming areas. Korean ginseng has been known throughout the Orient since the Three Kingdoms period and more lately, throughout the world, as the king of herbs.

Ginseng, too, must have its tale. Each day, a childless woman prayed to have a son. One night, in a dream, she was instructed to go to a mountain where she would be blessed with a child. There was no child, but instead she found a cluster of ripe ginseng seeds. At home, she painstakingly planted and nurtured the seedlings as if they were her children. Ginseng cultivation was born. When the ginseng (insam) root is harvested, it has the form of a human figure. The Chinese character in means "man." It is easy to imagine a humble woman caring for this "man-root" as if it were her child.

During the six years it takes to mature, the plant needs the tender care of a "mother." The straw lean-tos protect it from the sun, wind and rain. It requires proper soil drainage, and no rain may touch the root during harvest and drying season when it is set out on racks or wooden trays and baskets. After being skinned, washed and dried, it is sold as white ginseng. The best of the roots are set aside to be steamed over a fire until they become pink, and are exported as red ginseng. Kanghwa Island is noted for its excellent red ginseng.

As a special remembrance of Kanghwa Island, fine quality embroidered mats, woven from white rushes, can be bought at the local shops. They were first constructed during the Koryo dynasty and were common gifts for Chosen dynasty kings.

Anyone wondering about Kanghwa-do today feels the history of the island in temples and shrines, national treasures that speak with silent tongues of the past.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AUDREY AUSTIN is a freelance writer who lived for six years in Korea. She has written several travel pieces for Korean Culture.