Glossary: Korea's Ancient Words in Plain English

Every word on this page comes from an article on this site. Each one gets a sentence or two in everyday English and a link to the place where its story is told in full.

The words are not in alphabetical order. They run in the order most people meet them: first the names you hear in dramas and on holidays, then the old books behind those names, then the practice. Start anywhere.

Stories & people

Dangun (단군, 檀君)

The founder of Korea's first kingdom, remembered in full as Dangun Wanggeom. Tradition dates the founding to 2333 BCE, and the oldest surviving account of him is in the Samguk Yusa, a chronicle of the thirteenth century.

Gojoseon (고조선, 古朝鮮)

Korea's first kingdom. Its own name was simply Joseon; "Gojoseon" means "Old Joseon," a label added later to keep it apart from the Joseon dynasty of 1392–1897 that palace dramas are set in.

Hwanin and Hwanung (환인 · 환웅)

Dangun's grandfather and father in the founding story. Hwanin is the heavenly ruler; Hwanung is the son he sends down to the human world, who arrives on Mount Taebaek with three thousand followers.

Ungnyeo (웅녀, 熊女)

The "bear woman," Dangun's mother. In the founding story a bear and a tiger ask to become human and are given mugwort and garlic and told to stay out of the sunlight. The tiger gives up. The bear keeps the discipline and becomes a woman.

Sinsi (신시, 神市)

"The Divine City": the place Hwanung founded beneath the sacred altar tree on Mount Taebaek when he came down. Korea's chronicles count "the opening of heaven" from here, long before Dangun's kingdom.

Buru (부루, 扶婁)

Dangun's son, who ruled after him as the second Dangun. The chronicles remember him as the prince who tamed a great flood and the king under whom no one went hungry or cold.

Buyeo (부여, 夫餘)

An ancient kingdom on the plains north of the Korean peninsula. The Dangun Segi records that Dangun's Joseon took the name Great Buyeo in 425 BCE, and the kingdoms that came later — Goguryeo, Baekje, Balhae — each claimed Buyeo as where they came from.

Jumong (주몽, 朱蒙)

The archer-king who founded Goguryeo, known to many viewers from the MBC historical drama Jumong. Goguryeo's own stone monument of 414 opens by saying its founder came out of North Buyeo.

The Three Kingdoms: Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla (고구려 · 백제 · 신라)

The three kingdoms that shared the Korean peninsula and the lands to its north for most of the first millennium. Goguryeo was in the north, the largest and strongest; Baekje was in the west; Silla was in the southeast, with its capital at Gyeongju.

Read more: Who Was Bak Je-sang?

Hwarang (화랑, 花郞)

The "flower youths" of Silla: young men who were chosen and trained together, and who roamed the mountains and rivers with no place too far. They were also called gukseon, "the seon of the country."

Bak Je-sang (박제상, 朴堤上)

A fifth-century official of Silla, also spelled Park Je-sang. He brought the king's two brothers home from captivity abroad and was put to death in Wa, in the Japanese islands, for refusing to call himself anyone's subject but Silla's.

Read more: Who Was Bak Je-sang?

Chisullyeong (치술령, 鵄述嶺)

Chisul Pass, a mountain pass in southeastern Korea. The Samguk Yusa records that Bak Je-sang's wife climbed it with their three daughters and wept toward the sea until she died. The villages below remember her as a mangbuseok — a stone that waits for a husband.

Read more: Who Was Bak Je-sang?

Holidays & customs

Chuseok (추석, 秋夕)

Korea's harvest festival, held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month — always a full moon. It is one of Korea's two largest holidays, alongside Seollal, the lunar new year. Families travel home, set a table for their ancestors, visit the family graves, and go out at night to see the moon.

Hangawi (한가위)

The older, native Korean name for Chuseok. Han means great and gawi means middle: "the great middle," the full-moon night at the center of the eighth month.

Charye (차례)

The memorial table a family sets for its ancestors on Chuseok, laid with the year's first harvest — new rice, new fruit — and offered before the family eats.

Songpyeon (송편)

The rice cake of Chuseok: filled with sesame, chestnut, or bean, folded into a half-moon, and steamed over pine needles. It is a half-moon and not a circle because a half moon is the one still filling.

Ganggangsullae (강강술래)

A circle dance performed by women under the full moon. UNESCO added it to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.

Yeonggo, Dongmaeng, Mucheon (영고 · 동맹 · 무천)

Korea's oldest recorded festivals: the great yearly rites to heaven, held in the tenth month when the farming year was done. Buyeo called its rite Yeonggo, "welcoming the drum"; Goguryeo called its rite Dongmaeng; the Ye people of the east coast called theirs Mucheon, "dancing to heaven." The day ended in drums and dancing in a circle.

Bobon (보본, 報本)

"Paying back the root." It is the word Korea's old records use for what the rites to heaven were for: not asking for something, but giving thanks for what had already been received.

Gaecheonjeol (개천절, 開天節)

A South Korean public holiday on October 3. The name means "the festival of the opening of heaven," and in English it is usually called National Foundation Day. It is not an independence day — Korea remembers its independence on August 15.

Dangi (단기, 檀紀)

The Korean way of counting years from Dangun's founding, with 2333 BCE as year one.

Chamseongdan (참성단, 塹星壇)

An ancient stone altar near the summit of Mount Mani on Ganghwa Island, not far from Seoul. Tradition holds that Dangun built it to make offerings to heaven. Ceremonies are still held there.

Goindol (고인돌)

The Korean word for a dolmen: upright stones carrying a large flat capstone. The name comes from goida, to prop something up. Korea has more than 35,000 of them, roughly 40% of the world's total, and the sites at Gochang, Hwasun and Ganghwa are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Hangul (한글)

The Korean alphabet. King Sejong, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, had it made in the winter of 1443, and the book that explains it followed in 1446. That book says the consonants copy the shape of the mouth, tongue and throat, and the three base vowels copy heaven (a dot), earth (a flat line) and the human being (a standing line). Hangul Day is October 9.

Garimto (가림토, 加臨土)

A set of 38 letters that the Dangun Segi says an official named Eulboreuk composed under the third Dangun, in 2181 BCE by the chronicle's own count. The table printed in the Hwandan Gogi opens with a dot, an upright stroke and a flat stroke.

Baegui minjok (백의민족, 白衣民族)

"The white-clad people," an old name for Koreans, from the long habit of wearing white on ordinary days. The oldest Korean account, the Budoji, traces that white not to cloth but to a man named Hwanggung, who bound white grass about his body and made a vow.

Daenggi (댕기)

The ribbon tied at the end of a traditional Korean braid. The oldest recorded form of the word is dangi, and a popular Korean telling links it to the dangi — the banner of Dangun that people carried to mourn their founding king.

Buru danji (부루단지)

"Buru's jar": a clay jar of grain kept on a small altar inside a Korean home and refilled with new rice every autumn. The Dangun Segi records that families began keeping it after Buru, the second Dangun, died.

Sotdae (솟대)

A tall wooden pole with carved birds at the top — usually three — that Korean villages set up to mark sacred ground or a boundary, or to guard the village. It is also called a bird pole.

Sodo (소도, 蘇塗)

The sacred ground of ancient Korea, where people raised a great tree and hung bells and drums on it. Chinese chroniclers of the third century wrote that anyone who fled inside a sodo was never handed back. Korea's Encyclopedia of Korean Culture traces today's sotdae to it.

Scriptures & ideas

Samguk Yusa (삼국유사, 三國遺事)

A Korean chronicle compiled in the thirteenth century by the monk Iryeon. It carries the oldest surviving account of Dangun and of Korea's founding.

Budoji (부도지, 符都誌)

An old Korean text handed down under the name of Bak Je-sang of Silla, the first part of a book his family kept for a thousand years. It tells of Mago, the first mother, and her walled city at the beginning of the world, and of the city Dangun built.

Read more: Who Was Bak Je-sang?

Budo (부도, 符都)

"The capital of the heavenly token": the sacred center the Budoji says Dangun built on Mount Taebaek, with an altar at its summit, where peoples from everywhere were invited to gather every ten years.

Hwandan Gogi (환단고기, 桓檀古記)

The collection of Korean chronicles this site works from. The Dangun Segi (Annals of the Dangun Rulers) and the Taebaek Ilsa are among the texts gathered inside it. Mainstream historians treat it as a later compilation; this site reads it as Korea's own memory of its first kingdom and names the book behind each account.

Hongik Ingan (홍익인간, 弘益人間)

"To broadly benefit all human beings." In the Samguk Yusa it is the reason Hwanung is sent down to the human world, and it becomes the founding ideal of Dangun's kingdom. South Korea's education law still names it as the guiding ideal of national education.

Jaese Ihwa (재세이화, 在世理化)

"Governing the world with reason while living in it." In the Samguk Yusa it names Hwanung's manner of rule. Hongik Ingan says what the aim is; Jaese Ihwa says where and how it is carried out — inside ordinary life, by principle and not by force. The two phrases are almost always quoted as a pair.

Bok-bon (복본, 復本)

"Returning to the origin." In the Budoji it is the vow Hwanggung swears when he binds white grass about his body, and the same vow runs through Dangun's story in a longer form: undo the delusion and return to the origin.

Cheonbugyeong (천부경, 天符經)

A Korean scripture of exactly eighty-one characters. It says that all things come from the One, that the One opens into three — heaven, earth, and the human being — and that everything returns to the One. One of its best-known lines: "The use changes, but the root does not move."

Mu (무, 無)

"The source before all things." The Cheonbugyeong opens and closes on it: "It begins from the One — a One that began from Mu," and "It ends in the One — a One that ends in Mu." The One and Mu are not two things. They are one thing seen from two sides.

Samil Singo (삼일신고, 三一神誥)

A Korean scripture of 366 characters in five short chapters. Its last and longest chapter, the Truth Chapter, is the one about human beings: what every person is given, what grows over it, and the way back.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Sinhun (신훈, 神訓)

The second of the Samil Singo's five chapters, the chapter on Haneunim, fifty-one characters long. It closes by saying that calling out with the voice, exerting your energy, and praying your wishes to an absolute being outside yourself will never bring you face to face with Haneunim. Seek the seed of truth in your own nature: Haneunim has already come down and dwells in your brain.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Haneunim (하느님)

"The Ultimate Heavenly Source." The Sinhun chapter of the Samil Singo says Haneunim is in the highest place of all, with great virtue, great wisdom, and great power — and that Haneunim has already come down and dwells in your brain.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Il-sin (일신, 一神)

"The Universal Divine." Zexeda does not translate Il-sin as "God," a word that in English points to an absolute being outside you. In Zexeda's reading, Il-sin is your own nature, already come down into your brain. The Truth Chapter names the end of the road in four characters, 返眞一神: "Returning to the true is becoming one with Il-sin."

The three truths: cham-seong, cham-myeong, cham-jeong (삼진, 三眞)

Sam-jin, the three true things the Samil Singo says every person receives, and receives whole: cham-seong (True Nature), cham-myeong (True Vitality), and cham-jeong (True Essence). True Nature is free of good and evil, True Vitality of clear and murky, True Essence of abundance and lack. The single characters are read seong (성, 性), myeong (명, 命), and jeong (정, 精).

Gi (기, 氣)

Life energy. In the Truth Chapter of the Samil Singo it is one of the three delusions — mind, gi, and body. The gi rests on vitality and comes to hold clear and murky.

Sam-mang (삼망, 三妄)

"The three delusions": what grows over the three truths when a person loses sight of the root. They are sim-mang (the mind delusion) over True Nature, gi-mang (the gi delusion) over True Vitality, and sin-mang (the body delusion) over True Essence. They are not three enemies. Each is a clouded version of one truth.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Sam-do (삼도, 三途)

"The three roads" the three delusions open: Gam (感, feeling), Sik (息, breath), and Chok (觸, contact).

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Sip-pal-gyeong (십팔경, 十八境)

"The eighteen states." The three roads branch into six states each.

On Gam, the road of feeling: Hui (喜, joy), Gu (懼, fear), Ae (哀, sorrow), No (怒, anger), Tam (貪, grasping craving), Yeom (厭, aversive rejection).
On Sik, the road of breath: Bun (芬, fragrance), Ran (爛, foulness), Han (寒, cold), Yeol (熱, heat), Jin (震, dryness), Seup (濕, damp).
On Chok, the road of contact: Seong (聲, sound), Saek (色, color), Chwi (臭, smell), Mi (味, taste), Eum (淫, lust), Jeo (抵, touch).

The Truth Chapter says ordinary people follow the roads and the states, running wherever they please. Hui — joy — is on the list alongside anger and fear: all of them are states you get pulled along by.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Tam and Yeom (탐 · 염, 貪 · 厭)

Two of the six states on Gam, the road of feeling, beside Hui (joy), Gu (fear), Ae (sorrow), and No (anger). Tam is grasping craving: pulling an outside condition or object toward you and clinging to it, compulsively, to make it yours. Yeom is aversive rejection: strongly rejecting, pushing away, and loathing an outside condition or object that does not please you.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Ban-mang jeuk-jin (반망즉진, 返妄卽眞)

"The false, turned back, becomes true." The hinge of the Truth Chapter. The delusions are not destroyed and replaced with something imported. They are turned back, and what was in the way, reversed, is the way.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Seongtong Gongwan (성통공완, 性通功完)

Seong-tong gong-wan: "the nature opened, the work completed." The Samil Singo uses the phrase twice — for the gate of the heavenly palace in its third chapter, and as the last words of its Truth Chapter. The chapter does not end in private illumination. It ends in something finished, and work is finished out in the world.

Seondo (선도, 仙道)

Korea's own tradition of spiritual practice, often written Sundo. Seon (仙) is written with the characters for a person and a mountain. It is not Korean Zen, which is also spelled Seon in English but is written with a different character (禪) and belongs to Buddhism.

Pungnyu (풍류, 風流)

"Wind and flow": the name the Silla scholar Choe Chiwon gave this same tradition in writing. He called it a profound and mysterious Way of this country.

Practice

Cheonbu-samin (천부삼인, 天符三印)

"The three heavenly seals." In the Samguk Yusa the heavenly ruler Hwanin gives them to his son Hwanung before he comes down to the human world; that record writes the name Cheonbuin (천부인, 天符印). The old record does not name the three objects, and tradition remembers them as a sword, a mirror, and a bell.

The sword, the mirror, and the bell (검 · 거울 · 방울)

The three heavenly gifts of Korea's founding story, as tradition remembers them. Read as an inner path they are three steps in order: the sword clears, the mirror keeps, and the bell shares.

The sword of sunlight (태양빛의 검)

The sword, the first of Dangun's three seals, as the practice pictures it. It is a picture and not a weapon: a sword made of sunlight, which cuts through memory, feeling, and judgment, and what it cuts, it melts.

Eop (업, 業)

The Korean word for karma. On this site it means the memory your own life has left in you — every scene you acted, spoke, or thought, with its feeling still attached.

Eopjang somyeol (업장소멸, 業障消滅)

A Korean Buddhist phrase: "melting away the curtain of karma." Eop is karma, jang is a hindrance or a curtain, and somyeol is to melt away completely.

Seup (습, 習)

The Korean word for habit — something done so often that it does itself. On this site it means the memory your body keeps: the body you were handed, plus everything every repeated reaction since has stored in it.

Ji-gam (지감, 止感)

"Stopping reactive feeling," one of the three practices the Samil Singo names for the way back. It does not mean pushing an emotion down. It means not boarding the train the emotion offers.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Jo-sik (조식, 調息)

"Making the breath even," one of the three practices the Samil Singo names for the way back. Let the breath become slow, quiet, and smooth. Nothing counted, nothing forced, nothing held.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Geum-chok (금촉, 禁觸)

"Guarding contact," one of the three practices the Samil Singo names for the way back. It means noticing which sights, sounds, and situations reliably stir the residue in you, and not walking into them carelessly. It is not a vow of deprivation.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Il-ui hwa-haeng (일의화행, 一意化行)

"Acting with one single intention." The phrase with which the Samil Singo binds its three practices. Ji-gam, jo-sik, and geum-chok are not three chores on a list. They are one movement.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

Bal-dae sin-gi (발대신기, 發大神機)

"Great inner capacity unfolds." What the Truth Chapter says happens once the false has turned true: what was buried under the three delusions comes into use. The scripture states this plainly and does not elaborate.

Read more: What Is the Samil Singo?

This article is for educational and reflective purposes and shares interpretations of Korea's ancient wisdom traditions. It is not medical, psychological, or professional advice.