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2333 BCE (traditional, legendary)Reputable source · 2 sourcesDebated

Dangun Founds Gojoseon, According to Legend

A sky god's son, a bear who became a woman, and Korea's founding myth

On the timeline · around 2333 BCE (traditional, legendary) · Gojoseon and the Three KingdomsGojoseon and the Three KingdomsDangun Founds Gojoseon, According to Legend2,250 BCE2,000 BCE1,750 BCE1,500 BCE1,250 BCE1,000 BCE750 BCE500 BCE250 BCE

Quick facts

Traditional founding date
2333 BCE
Earliest textual source
Samguk Yusa, c. 1281 CE
Scholarly consensus on historical Gojoseon
No earlier than 7th century BCE
Modern commemoration
National Foundation Day (Gaecheonjeol), October 3, South Korea

What happened

Korean tradition holds that Dangun Wanggeom founded Gojoseon, the first Korean state, in 2333 BCE. The story, recorded in the 13th-century CE Samguk Yusa, tells of Hwanung, son of the supreme deity Hwanin, who descended to a mountain near Pyongyang with 3,000 followers and dispensed culture, agriculture, and law to the people below. A bear and a tiger both prayed to become human; only the bear endured the god's test of 100 days out of the sunlight eating mugwort and garlic, and was transformed into a woman named Ungnyo. She married Hwanung and their son was Dangun, who went on to found and rule Gojoseon. World History Encyclopedia is direct about the gap between story and evidence: there is no archaeological support for a unified state at this date, and historians place the earliest historical Gojoseon no earlier than the 7th century BCE.

Why it matters

The myth gave later Korean states a shared point of origin to claim: Goryeo kings favored Pyongyang partly because of its association with Dangun, and 20th-century Korean nationalists and modern North Korea have both invoked him, including a 1993 North Korean claim to have found his tomb, unsupported by outside scholars. The legend functions as a founding charter rather than a historical record, and Korean historiography treats it that way.

How we know

The Dangun story survives in the Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), compiled by the Buddhist monk Iryeon around 1281 CE, centuries after the events it describes. No contemporary Gojoseon-era text or inscription corroborates Dangun as a historical figure; the myth is treated by scholars as likely encoding the arrival of Bronze Age culture in Korea from Manchuria rather than as literal history.

Sources

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Part of a timelineHistory of Korea31 events · A bear who became a woman, a peninsula fought over by every dynasty in East Asia, and an alphabet built to make everyone literate in a matter of daysView all →
Dangun Founds Gojoseon, According to Legend · History of Korea · SourcedStory