Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang

Also Known As: also Daebyeol-wang and Sobyeol-wang; “Great Star King” and “Little Star King”; the twin sons of the sky god Cheonjiwang in the shaman songs of Jeju Island
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Korean Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: The twins draw iron bows of enormous weight to shoot the spare sun and moon out of the sky, and between them they hold the rule of the living and the dead.
Role in Mythos: They are the brothers whose flower-growing contest, won by a cheat, decides who governs this world and who governs the next.
Relation to Humans: People live under Sobyeolwang, the twin who stole his seat, which is how the songs account for theft, murder and broken marriages. They pass after death to Daebyeolwang, whose court is said to be fair, and Jeju shamans still sing the brothers’ story at the opening of their largest rite.

Two flowers stand in two silver jars. One has opened wide and bright. The other is black, its head hanging, the stem gone soft. Beside the jars lie two young men who are supposed to be asleep, and only one of them is.

Everything wrong with the world, according to the shamans of Jeju Island, comes down to what happens in the next few seconds.

The brothers are Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang, the Great Star King and the Little Star King, and their story is sung in the Cheonjiwang bonpuri, the origin song of the Heavenly King. It belongs to the opening of the Great Gut, the largest of the island’s shamanic rites, in a first sequence called the Chogamje where the gods are invited down. About twenty versions have been written down from the mouths of working shamans, the earliest in the 1930s and the latest in 2017, and they do not agree on every point. They agree on the flowers.

The twins begin with an absent father. Cheonjiwang, the king of heaven, comes down to earth, and in many tellings he comes to punish a rich and vicious man named Sumyeong-jangja, who has been cruel to people and insolent to the sky. While he is below he lodges with a poor, devout woman, most often called Chongmyeong-buin, the clever lady. He spends the night with her. In the morning he tells her what to name the sons she will bear, hands her some gourd seeds, and goes home to the sky.

The boys grow up fatherless and are mocked for it. When they finally demand to know whose sons they are, their mother gives them the seeds. They plant them. The vines come up thick as rope and keep climbing until the tips are lost in the clouds, and the brothers go up after them hand over hand. Some singers have them meet Cheonjiwang at the top. Others have them find only his empty throne. In a few versions the grown twins climb into the god’s lap and behave like newborns there, in every sense, as a way of being born a second time in front of the father who missed the first.

The world they have inherited is unfinished. There are two suns in the sky and two moons. By day people dry out and die of the heat. By night they freeze. So the twins take up iron bows that weigh a hundred catties, or a thousand, depending on who is singing, and they shoot. One sun comes down. One moon comes down. Most versions drop the pieces into the seas of the east and the west, where the Dragon Kings keep them. A few scatter them across the sky as the stars. Singers differ on the timing as well: some set the shooting before the contest between the brothers, and some leave it to the elder twin to tidy up afterwards.

Then comes the question of who rules what. There are two realms to hand out, the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the world of the living is the prize. The brothers try riddles first. Sobyeolwang asks whether trees that keep their leaves in winter are solid or hollow inside. Solid, says his brother. Sobyeolwang points to bamboo. He asks whether grass grows thicker in the valley or on the hilltop. In the valley, says his brother. Then why, asks Sobyeolwang, does a man have more hair on the top of his head than on his feet? The younger twin is quick. Nobody has ever said he was not.

The flowers are meant to settle it. Each brother plants one in a silver jar, and whoever grows the better bloom will take the living world. Daebyeolwang’s flower thrives. Sobyeolwang’s turns black and droops. So the younger twin proposes a nap, a contest of who can sleep deepest, and his honest brother shuts his eyes and sleeps. Sobyeolwang lies still and listens to the breathing slow. Then he reaches over and swaps the jars.

Daebyeolwang wakes up and knows at once what has been done. He does not fight. He gives a verdict instead. Go and rule the living, he tells his brother, but know what kind of world a thief will get. It will be full of murderers and traitors and robbers. Husbands will leave their wives for other men’s wives, and wives will leave their husbands for other women’s husbands. Then he goes down to take charge of the dead.

He turns out to be good at it. The songs speak of two laws: the great law, clear and just, which Daebyeolwang lays down for the dead, and the little law of the living, which his brother cannot make work. Sobyeolwang finds the human world a shambles. In that first age everything could talk, the trees and rocks and grass and birds, and ghosts walked about among people so that nobody could tell which was which. He begs his brother to come and rule in his place. Daebyeolwang refuses. He does agree to help. He numbs the tongues of the trees, the stones, the grasses and the crows with a dusting of pine-bark powder, so that only humans speak, and he sorts the ghosts from the living and sets a border between them. The moral disorder he leaves exactly where it is. That part was his brother’s doing.

It is a hard little story. The world is run by the wrong twin, and the right one is waiting on the far side of death.

What the two can do follows from the shape of the tale. Together they are strong enough to bend bows no man could lift and to bring down a sun. Sobyeolwang has cunning, a fast tongue and the nerve to cheat a brother who trusts him. Daebyeolwang has the power to grow living things, to judge fairly, and to quiet a whole landscape with a handful of dust. Their limits are just as sharp. Sobyeolwang can win a kingdom and still not govern it, and nothing he plants will bloom. Daebyeolwang, for all his fairness, loses both riddles, sleeps when he should have watched, and cannot or will not mend the hearts of the people he was cheated out of ruling.

The mainland of Korea tells the same contest with other names. In the creation songs of the northern shamans the rivals are Mireuk and Seokga, two great beings who borrow their names from the Buddha of the future and the Buddha of history. They too grow flowers while lying down to sleep, and Seokga steals the bloom from Mireuk’s lap. There the wronged party curses the age to come and walks away from it for good. A song from Gyeonggi Province has twins named Seonmun and Humun who simply divide the realms between them, with no cheating at all. Only on Jeju does the loser stay close by, keeping an honest court among the dead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang?

Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang are twin gods in the shamanic mythology of Jeju Island, Korea. They are the sons of the sky god Cheonjiwang and an earthly woman, and their names mean Great Star King and Little Star King. Sobyeolwang rules the world of the living and Daebyeolwang rules the world of the dead.

What is the flower contest between Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang?

Each twin plants a flower in a silver jar, and the one with the better bloom is to rule the living world. Daebyeolwang’s flower blooms and Sobyeolwang’s turns black, so Sobyeolwang suggests they sleep and swaps the jars while his brother is really asleep. The cheat wins him the world of the living.

Why did Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang shoot down a sun and a moon?

In the Jeju creation story the world began with two suns and two moons, so people died of heat by day and froze at night. The twins shot down one of each with huge iron bows. In most versions the pieces fell into the eastern and western seas, and in a few they became stars.

Why is there evil in the world according to this Korean myth?

The myth says the living world is ruled by Sobyeolwang, who won it by cheating. Daebyeolwang told him that a world taken by theft would be full of murderers, traitors, thieves and unfaithful husbands and wives. The story presents human wrongdoing as the result of that stolen rule.

Where does the story of Daebyeolwang and Sobyeolwang come from?

The story comes from the Cheonjiwang bonpuri, a shaman song of Jeju Island sung at the start of the Great Gut ritual. About twenty versions have been recorded from Jeju shamans between the 1930s and 2017. Mainland Korean creation songs tell a similar flower contest about Mireuk and Seokga.