Gods of Gojoseon

Question: So, I'm currently researching the Korean pantheon with the idea of working them into a playable pantheon. Have you considered doing this, and what general thoughts do you have on them?

Well, you guys know me; I've considered making pretty much everybody playable. If I had the ability to type and create twenty-four hours a day without dropping dead from exhaustion or being evicted from my house, I'd probably have produced five more extra pantheons by now and still be drooling thinking about what awesome stories the next one might have in store. I actually came within a hair of putting the Korean pantheon on the voting poll for the next project this time, but decided against it since Tibet was already there representing Asia, and was more recognizable to most voters to boot.

The Korean pantheon is a weird, weird set of gods, and they absolutely tickle me. They're pretty obscure; most people in the west aren't even aware that Korea had a separate pantheon, assuming they were all doing some general Asian thing like Buddhism over there if they think about it at all. That's not totally off-base, because the Korean gods are certainly heavily influenced by both the Shen (and by extension the Devas, those Buddhism-spawning magnates of Asian religion) and the Amatsukami, but like all cultures' religions they have their own unique figures, concepts and takes on the things they borrow.

They're also exceptionally hard to find information about in English; I know we whine about that for a lot of gods, but even the Chinese pantheon has nothing on these guys. Most of their stories were orally preserved and therefore basically forgotten when modern religions took the area over, and those that remain are very seldom translated into English because, well, do them white people in Europe and the Americas even care? Most of them don't even know Korea had an indigenous religion, much less give a damn who it was about! At best you can find folktales and small-scale stories that give you a flavor of the local folklore, but that leave the ancient gods out entirely.

But, anyway, yes, there are Korean gods and I'd love to see them ready to go in Scion someday. They're as fabulously out of control as the gods of any other pantheon: Taebyolwang and Sobyolwang, the creator gods of the sun and moon who are constantly arguing with one another over who should be the dominant power; Kangim, the lord of the Underworld who works to reduce the fear of hapless humanity of his unknown realm; Chachongbi, the goddess of agriculture who is having none of your shit and, when asked to masquerade as a man, used a reed to make sure she could piss further than any other man around; Hwang Uyang, the protector of hearth and home, who leads the spirits of divine ancestors and protects or lets languish the good fortune of the families who honor him. There's also a heavy emphasis on divine figures cheating at honorable games, which inevitably leads to disaster and sets the course of the world in some detrimental way, and the interpretations of Buddhism are absolutely hilarious. In particular, the great creator god Maitreya has the same name as one of the foretold Buddhas but absolutely nothing else in common with him, and the evil antagonistic cheater god Sakyamuni who fights against him is one of the alternative names of Gautama Buddha, meaning either the Koreans are hilarious in their subtle digs at Buddhism or some seriously weird shit is going down on the divine plains of upper Asia.

I don't know if the Korean gods will become a big project for us any time soon; as I said, few people are aware of their existence which doesn't exactly put them in great demand, and the absolute bitchfits needed to find any reliable information on their divine legends are expensive and exhausting. If you're researching them and come up with any awesome sources for information on them, please share! The best source we've got on them by far is Choi Won-Oh's An Illustrated Guide to Korean Mythology; it's hard to come by, suffers from occasional translation troubles (it was written by a Korean author, and once in a while there's a slip-up in the text) and is one of the most expensive books we own, but it's got a lot of great stories that are hard to find elsewhere.

Until then, we salute you for bringing Korea into the game. They deserve it every bit as much as every other culture.