Seocheon Flower Garden

Also Known As: Korean 서천꽃밭, Seocheon-kkotbat, “the flower field of Seocheon”; also rendered Seocheon Flower Field or the Fields of Seocheon; said in the Jeju chants to stand in Seocheon Seoyeokguk, 西天西域國, the Western Heaven and the Western Regions of Buddhist geography
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Korean Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: Its beds grow flowers that put bone, flesh, blood, breath and soul back into a corpse, and beside them flowers that make a household laugh until it hurts, weep for no reason, turn on itself and finally destroy itself.
Role in Mythos: It is the otherworldly nursery from which the life of every child is drawn and to which the Jeju shamans go in song whenever a myth requires the dead brought back.
Relation to Humans: The childbirth goddess picks a flower there for each baby she grants, so a person’s health and span are decided by how that particular bloom fares. No living human walks in by choice, and no unclean person can stay, because flowers watered by defiled hands wither on the stem.

A Jeju shaman takes up a camellia and begins to dance, the janggu keeping time at her knee, and for the length of that dance the flower in her hand is not a camellia. It is a cutting from a garden at the western rim of the world. The drum is loud in a small room. The point of the dance is to bring that garden close enough to borrow from.

Seocheon means the western sky, and the chants place the garden in Seocheon Seoyeokguk, the Western Heaven and Western Regions that Korean Buddhism borrowed from India and that Jeju shamanism then borrowed again for its own purposes. It is one of the otherworlds, though not quite the land of the dead. It sits at a hinge, a walled cultivation with a gate and a keeper, closer to a royal estate than to a paradise of clouds. The tellings are stingy about its geography. What they insist on instead is the inventory.

The good flowers are counted out by name in the chanting. There is the saengmyeong-kkot, the flower of life, the beonseong-kkot that makes a household flourish, and above all the hwansaeng-kkot, the flower of rebirth, which in the fuller versions breaks into five separate blooms applied in order: one that revives the bones, one the flesh, one the blood, one the breath, and last the one that calls the soul back into the body it left. Set them down on scattered remains in sequence and a skeleton assembles, takes on meat, runs red, draws air, and opens its eyes. Beside them grow the others. A laughing flower and a weeping flower, a fighting flower, and the sure-myeolmang-aksim-kkot, the flower of destruction through an evil heart, which ends a bloodline. That last one is found in no other Korean narrative. It is the Jeju imagination’s own contribution, and it is the reason the garden is not simply a pleasant idea.

The gardeners are the dead. Souls who died as children before fifteen, and young women who died good and unlucky, are made sinsomi, small celestial attendants, and given silver and brass jars to carry. Morning after morning they go down the rows and water. It is quiet, repetitive work performed by people who never got to do any other kind, and the tellings present it without pity, as a job. Over them stands the kkot-gamgwan, the flower overseer, also called the kkot-seongin, the flower sage, an office rather than a personal name. Its holder carries the title Igong, the Second Lord. The Jade Emperor appoints him.

The first appointment ruined a marriage. Sara Doryeong was summoned west to take the post while his wife Wongang Ami was heavily pregnant, and the road proved longer than she could walk. She asked to be sold, and he sold her, to a rich man called Jangja, keeping half a broken comb so the child could prove itself later. The boy was born and named Hallakgungi. His mother held Jangja off with excuses for years, was tortured three times for it, and was finally killed and thrown out for the crows. By then the boy had run, riding a white deer, throwing salted buckwheat cakes to the hounds sent after him. Some tellings have him crossing three rivers on the way west, white to the knee, yellow to the waist, red to the neck, made of his mother’s tears.

Inside the wall he did not knock. He climbed the willow by the pond, bit his middle finger and let one drop of blood fall into the water, and waited. The attendants filled their jars from that pond as usual and went along the beds, and behind them the flowers shrivelled. When the overseer came out to see what plague had struck his garden, there was a boy in the tree holding half a comb.

What Sara Doryeong gave his son was the garden itself, in cuttings. Hallakgungi went back to Jangja’s house and produced the flowers one at a time, laughter first, then tears, then the fighting flower, and last the flower of destruction, at which the household consumed itself down to the one daughter who had shown his mother mercy. Then he found what the crows had left of Wongang Ami and laid the five revival flowers on her in order. Bone. Flesh. Blood. Breath. Soul. She sat up, and the family went west together, and the son took his father’s office, which is how the post became hereditary.

The garden runs through the rest of the Jeju repertoire as well. When the Jade Emperor had to choose between two women both claiming the office of childbirth goddess, he settled it with a flower-growing contest, and the one whose bloom flourished took the living children while the loser was given charge of every child who dies before fifteen. That winner, Samseung Halmang, works with a flower from Seocheon for each pregnancy she grants, which means a Jeju infant’s fate is a specific plant standing in a specific bed a long way west. Elsewhere Jacheongbi borrows the revival flowers to bring back a murdered servant, and in the house-gods’ chant a seventh son uses them on his drowned mother. The mainland has its own version of the errand in Princess Bari, who goes to the far country for the medicine that will raise her father.

The garden’s one rule is cleanliness, and it is enforced without appeal. The chant of Yang-ssi Ami tells of a girl beaten and force-fed dog broth by her brother until she died, who arrived at the gate and was welcomed in by the attendants for her beauty and handed a jar. Every flower she watered turned to geomnyul-kkot, a withering, blackening thing. The overseer traced the defilement to the broth, and she was put out. She could not get back to the world of the living either, having no body to return to, and she cried like a rain-bird between the two.

That is the whole of the garden’s power and the whole of its limit. It can undo a death, and Korean myth is otherwise not generous about that. It cannot be entered by anyone unfit to touch it, which in practice means gods, the shaman who stands in for them, and the blameless dead. Everyone else gets at it the way Jeju people always have, through a rite: the buldo-maji held to secure a pregnancy or heal a sick child, the igong-maji sung in the great gut, both of them asking for the rebirth flower to come into the house and the destruction flower to stay out of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Seocheon Flower Garden?

The Seocheon Flower Garden is an otherworldly walled garden in Korean shamanic mythology, particularly the tradition of Jeju Island, where flowers with power over life and death are cultivated. It stands in the far west, in the region the chants call Seocheon Seoyeokguk, a name Jeju shamanism took from Buddhist geography. It is guarded by an official called the kkot-gamgwan, the flower overseer.

What flowers grow in the Seocheon Flower Garden?

The garden grows both healing and destroying flowers. The best known is the hwansaeng-kkot, the flower of rebirth, which in fuller versions is five separate blooms that restore bone, flesh, blood, breath and soul in that order. Against them grow a laughing flower, a weeping flower, a fighting flower, and the sure-myeolmang-aksim-kkot, the flower that destroys a household through an evil heart.

Who guards the Seocheon Flower Garden?

The garden is administered by the kkot-gamgwan or flower overseer, who holds the divine title Igong, the Second Lord, and is appointed by the Jade Emperor. In the Igong bon-puri the first holder is Sara Doryeong, and his son Hallakgungi succeeds him after using the garden’s flowers to avenge and revive his mother. The flowerbeds themselves are watered by sinsomi, the souls of children who died before fifteen and of young women who died young.

Can living people enter the Seocheon Flower Garden?

No. The garden is closed to the living and to anyone ritually unclean, and flowers watered by defiled hands blacken and die. The chant of Yang-ssi Ami describes a girl expelled from the garden because she had been force-fed dog broth before her death. In practice Jeju people reach the garden only through shamanic rites such as the buldo-maji and the igong-maji.

Why does the Seocheon Flower Garden matter in Korean mythology?

It supplies the mechanism by which Korean myth reverses death, and it is where human life begins. The childbirth goddess Samseung Halmang selects a flower from the garden for each child she grants, so a person’s fate is tied to how that bloom fares. The garden appears across several Jeju chants, including the Igong bon-puri, the Samseung Halmang bon-puri, the Segyeong bon-puri and the Munjeon bon-puri.