#97. Pay attention to your dreams (Shamanism 8, Hanja 2)

A popular myth in North Korea goes that Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un and the founder of North Korea, had some special powers. He was able to walk incredibly fast by warping the ground and leaping through the folds (in Korean, this is called "축지법.") During the Japanese occupation, he is said to have crossed the Tumen River ("두만강" in Korean) on a single leaf to fight and defeat the Japanese. In this battle, he turned pine cones into grenades and threw it at the Japanese. This sounds crazy!

To the Koreans, this also sounds crazy. But I always maintain that this sounds slightly less crazy to the Koreans than the rest of the world, because we have many other characters in our history who claim to have done similar things (to be fair, there is also Jesus Christ, who walked on water and turned water into wine, but I feel that there are just way more stories like this in Korea!)

The reason for my claim is that the Koreans are really interested in the biographies of the famous historical figures. In fact, you used to be able to buy a set books of 200 (or some other large number) famous historical personalities (I assume you still can, although I'm not sure). Of course, not all of them are actually significant in history, so often myths or legends were inserted into these books to make their lengths approximately equal, and many of these stories became well-known in the general Korean psyche.

One character who is said to have accomplished such fantastical things is a man named 김유신 (Yooshin Kim, if you anglicize it). He was a famous general in the Three Kingdoms Era (삼국시대), which consisted of 고구려 (Goguryeo), 백제 (Baekje), and 신라 (Silla). 김유신 was one of the highest-ranking generals of Silla, and he led the final battles that ended the kingdom of 백제. He was also politically talented, and his political talents ended 고구려 eight years later.

Here is a portrait of 김유신 (595-673 AD).

There are a million myths associated to 김유신. One short myth goes that a soothsayer in 고구려 was about to be executed after being framed. This soothsayer, as his dying words, told the people around him that he will be reincarnated as a fearsome general of Silla, and that he will bring doom to 고구려. Some time later, the king of 고구려 dreamed of the soothsayer, who was in process of entering the body of a Silla woman, of the name 만명부인. When he heard the news that she indeed had a son (김유신, of course!), the king sent an assassin after her son, but it is said that three goddesses appeared and forewarned the general and his mother about this scheme, and 김유신 survived.

You can already tell that dreams occupied an important part of the Korean lives; important enough for a king to act on his dream. The Koreans took their dreams very seriously since the ancient times. As far as the Koreans were concerned, they could tell the future, they served as warnings, and if you acted appropriately, you could avert disaster, or also bring luck into your life. 김유신 had two sisters, and it is said that their fates changed because of one dream.

The older sister, named 보희 (Bohee), had a dream that she climbed the Seoak Mountain (서악산) which overlooks the city of Gyeongju (경주), which was the capital of 신라. In her dream, she urinated at the top of the mountain, and her urine filled the entire city of Gyeongju.

Scandalized and embarrassed, she confided in her younger sister named 문희 (Moonhee) her awful dream. 문희, however, thought that this dream was a positive omen, and that this meant that she would rule over Silla one day. So she asked 보희 to sell the dream to her, to which 보희 gladly and eagerly agreed. For the price for her dream, 문희 paid with a beautiful dress made of silk.

The story of 문희 and 보희 is well-known amongst Koreans!

Just a few days later, 김유신's good friend named 김춘추 (Chunchu Kim) was kicking a ball around with 김유신. While doing so, he ripped his shirt (some say that 김유신 caused this on purpose). As it would not have been proper behaviour for a nobleman to walk around with a ripped shirt, and as they were near 김유신's house, 김유신 brought his friend home, and asked his two sisters to sew the shirt back up. 보희 declined, as she did not want to stay in the same room with an unmarried man as the etiquettes of the time dictated. However, 문희 accepted. And thus 김유신 played a matchmaker to 김춘추 and 문희, and the pair met often and enjoyed a whirlwind of romance.

Alas, while 김춘추 was a nobleman of the highest tier (back in the Silla era, he was a 성골; this meant that he was eligible for the crown), 김유신 was only a nobleman of the second highest tier (진골; while this meant that he had a very high status, he could never be the king). And by law, marriage between different tiers was forbidden. However, 김유신 was not to be deterred. When he found out that his sister was pregnant, he ordered her to be burned to death -- however, her burning was to take place at a very visible place, while he knew that the queen of Silla would be nearby with 김춘추! When the queen found out that 문희 was about to be killed because of 김춘추, she ordered the two to be married despite the difference in their ranks.

It is said that on the day of 문희's marriage, 보희 stayed at home crying and burning her silk dress.

Eventually, 김춘추 unified the three kingdoms and became the first king of the Unified Silla (통일신라), and 문희 was his queen. Their son was the next king of Unified Silla.

Interestingly enough, many Koreans still put a lot of significance into their dreams, and there are many Korean words whose equivalent translations do not exist in English because of this. First, a Hanja:

The Korean name of this Hanja is

꿈 몽.

As in the previous installation where I introduced Hanja, the meaning of this letter is "dream," while the pronunciation is "몽." So whenever you encounter a Korean word that has the letter "몽" as a part of it, you might guess that this word has something to do with dreams. Some examples of such words include:

악몽 (惡夢, nightmare), 몽유병 (夢遊病, sleepwalking), 몽환 (夢幻, dreams and fantasies), 몽정 (夢精, wet dreams), 동상이몽 (同床異夢, two people dreaming of different things even though they are lying in the same bed; two people who seem to be partners while having a different agenda).

Anyway, in the modern-day Korea, people still pay attention to their dreams. Some of the dreams are widely believed to talk of imminent good fortune. There dreams are called 길몽, or auspicious dreams. If you dream of a dragon (the Korean-style, of course, 용꿈), pigs (돼지꿈), or feces (똥꿈...?!), then this means that you are about to have some financial windfall. Many Koreans react to this dream by going out and buying a lottery ticket, or they might try to sell their auspicious dreams to someone going through hard times (like 문희 and 보희) for a nominal amount of money. At the very least, this is a nice gesture, and possibly has a placebo effect, right?

I can't really tell you why the pigs or feces are considered good dreams. I do have some guesses, though. For pigs, as they are generally chubby, they were believed to be the bringers of good fortune from the olden days. As for the feces, Koreans also often say that

꿈은 반대다 (dreams are opposites of reality)

and since feces are pretty much one of the worst things that can happen, maybe it is a favourable dream. Popular urban myths often say that a lot of lottery winners dreamed of feces before winning the lottery.

There are dreams that are opposites of 길몽 -- they are different from nightmares, as the dreams themselves might not be too bad, but they foreshadow some bad things to come. These dreams are called 흉몽 (as opposed to 악몽, which are the nightmares). One widely believed 흉몽 is the dream of having your tooth (or teeth) come out (이빨 빠지는 꿈). The Koreans say that when you dream of something like this, one of your relatives are about to die. If their dream seems very ominous, some Koreans (obviously, not all!) will pay a visit to a shaman to have their dreams interpreted, and to try to prevent the disaster that is to come.

태몽

A final group of dreams that is widely believed by the general population of Korea is called 태몽. When a woman becomes pregnant, either the woman or family members close to the woman are said to dream a mysterious dream. These dreams are supposed to tell you the gender of the baby, the personality of the baby, and the future of the baby. If you ask, many Koreans will tell you their own 태몽!

These 태몽 feature a lot of objects that are stereo-typically associated to a gender. For example, if you are to have a boy, you might see the sun, the dragon, a thunderbolt, a rock, a rooster, a pig, or a peach (in Asian cultures, peaches are very much associated to the male gender, for some reason.) If your pig was particularly lively, this might signify that your child will be a very outgoing child, whose aptitude is in the sports or in performance. If you are to have a girl, you might dream of a flower, a melon, a cucumber, an apple, a seashell, a half-moon, etc.

For example, 김유신's father is said to have dreamed of two planets coming at him before having his child. It is not entirely clear to me how you tell a 태몽 apart from other dreams, but I suppose these dreams remain with you vividly even after you wake up, and it's all about whether you decide to attribute the significance to the dream or not. At least most Koreans that I talk to seem to have no ambiguity about their own 태몽.

I am not sure about my own 태몽, weirdly enough. When I first asked my mom about it, I think I must have been maybe seven or eight years old. She just told me that she would tell me when I became an adult. However, although I became an adult a decade ago, she still hasn't told me about it. I suspect that she didn't have one (or, my family was never very superstitious, so maybe she just disapproved of me getting sucked into the popular shamanism myths!), and she was just buying time before disappointing me -- I will have to ask her again in the near future.