Founding of Goguryeo

Also called: Jumong myth, Dongmyeong myth

Jumong, who had come south from Buyeo, founded Goguryeo at Jolbon.

The Samguk sagi tells the founding story. Yuhwa, daughter of the river god Habaek, was taken in by King Geumwa of Buyeo after an affair with Haemosu, son of Heaven. Shut in a room, she was followed by sunlight and laid a large egg. The king threw the egg away, but dogs and pigs would not eat it, cattle and horses stepped around it, and birds covered it with their wings. The boy who hatched made his own bow at seven and never missed, so he was called Jumong, "good archer" in the Buyeo tongue.

When King Geumwa’s sons plotted to kill him, Jumong fled with Oi, Mari and Hyeopbo. Stopped by the Eomsa river, he cried out that he was the son of Heaven and grandson of Habaek, and fish and turtles rose to form a bridge. He went south and founded a state at Jolbon on the middle Yalu in 37 BCE. The Gwanggaeto Stele of 414 opens the same way, calling the founder Chumo a son of the Heavenly Emperor who broke out of an egg born to Habaek’s daughter — Goguryeo itself proclaimed this as its origin.

Its mountainous land had little farmland, and Goguryeo grew early by conquest.

It began as a league of five clans whose chiefs kept their own officials and decided great matters in council. It held the Dongmaeng sky festival in the tenth month, and a new husband lived in a small house behind the bride’s family home (seook).