Hwandan Gogi

The Hwandan Gogi (환단고기) is a really, really, really stupid book, and is notable for its pseudohistorical contents, which quite a lot of extremely guillible people, termed as Hwanbba, or Hwandan Gogi, have managed to believe. It is the Korean equivalent of Young Earth Creationism and already thoroughly refuted.

Fiction over fact Pseudohistory

How it didn't happen

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“”"All just fuckin' over comical works of fiction."

—Anonymous blogger on the Internet

What is funny about Hwandan Wingnuts is that they are unsatisfied with the Hwandan Gogi and keep writing novels to reveal the 'real nature' of ancient history. For example, the Hwandan Gogi says that a 79,000-year-old kingdom called Hwanguk was toppled by 100,000 invaders. Apparently, the number of invaders are too few, and the actual number was about a million. That's why the supposed Korean kingdoms keep getting bigger and bigger. In the 1980s, for example, Hwanguk was in Manchuria. Then in Mongolia. Then in China. And now, it has been revealed that the Sumerians were actually Koreans, and returned to Korea in BCE 2000.

It is composed of a very large number of separate books, like another epic of bullshit, and uses suspiciously modern terms (Mongolia, Siberia) for geography. It is also renowned for conflicting with archaeology on the location of every major site until 676 AD, one of the best being that the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, was originally near Beijing.

Claims and refutations

Hwandan Gogi claims

RationalWiki Response

First, mainstream records are impossible to use, because they are too biased towards China.

The nationalist canon is even more biased towards pseudohistorical mysticism. Also, those allegedly 'biased' texts are actually old, unlike the Hwandan Gogi.

These texts existed in 1457; "The Secret Book of Ancient Joseon, The Words of the Great Change, The Records of the Morning, The Public Books, The Revealed Words of the Three Divinities, The Secret History of the Three Divinities, The History of the Three Divinities, and a variety of other texts are found in the royal records of Korea.[1] Since the Korean royal records are notable for their accuracy, these books must have existed. The History of the Three Divinities is part of the Hwandan Gogi canon. Thus, the Hwandan Gogi cannot be a hoax.

If these books existed, they would have been completely destroyed in the Japanese invasion of Korea in 1592. To any Korean historian, this should be blindingly obvious. Also, the king at this time, Sejo, was a renowned mystic. These texts seem like Taoist, mythological, or mystic works, not works of history. Finally, if the books did survive the war, it is suspicious that it is never heard of again in history — until 1960. And suddenly, a member of a nationalist, anti-Japan religion has the book. Weird, huh? The Hwandan Gogi is certainly a hoax.

An undisputedly medieval text says that the sky god sent his illegitimate sun down to Earth to teach mankind 360 crafts. A bear and a tiger wished to be human. They had to eat garlic and grass for a hundred days. The tiger ran away, but the bear became a woman. And the illegitimate son of the sky god turned into a human and had sex with her and the son of the bear founded the first Korean kingdom in 2333 BCE. This is physically impossible, but it's in a medieval history book, so it must be true, and the only way to rationalize this myth is to make the gods and animals into countries and ethnic groups. If you do that, then, it matches the Hwandan Gogi story, and thus it is true. There is also evidence; some versions of the Samguk Yusa say that Hwanin, 'sky god', is actually 'Hwanguk', 'sky country'.

Who says that myths have to be true? There are a dozen theories on the origin of myths, and the theory that myths were mythified versions of history is only one of them. And even when the hypothesis is accepted, the hypothesis is weighed against evidence and logic, not vice versa. The same book claims that a mountain danced along with the king, a sea god chased away an evil monster who had sex with him by singing, and the son of the sun and the grandson of the river flew away to heaven riding on a golden dragon. Now, do you think this sounds like real history? Also, it is apparent from the contents of the Hwandan Gogi that the hoaxer based the plot on actual myths. Is Percy Jackson and the Olympians an actual book of Greek mythology? Finally, as for 'Hwanin' being 'Hwanguk', this has been proven a hundred times to be a scribe's mistake while copying down two very similar characters, but Hwandan Wingnuts still get all stressed up over it.[2]

The Hwandan Gogi states that the sky god appeared in Siberia and made Naban and Aman, the first people, in Lake Baikal. This fits with the evidence for the movement of the Tungusic peoples. Also, 'Naban' fits with the world 'Abeoji', Korean for father, and 'Aman' fits with 'Eomeoni', Korean for mother.

Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests Koreans were descended from Scytho-Siberian peoples. Seeing how this book popped up in 1960, where a lot of archaeological studies have already been made, it's more likely the detail was added after the fact was known. This knowledge could have also been pieced together from ancient Chinese texts, which speak of 'eastern bowmen' or 'barbarians to the east' which put everyone living in Manchuria and Korea more or less a similar stock of Tungusic people. As for the similarity between modern Korean words and 'Naban' and 'Aman', it's inevitable for languages in the same geographical region to have some similarities. Case in point, Tangun, the god in Mugyo and the Mongol god Tengrii, were for a time considered the same entity by Japanese publicists, although in fact they're unrelated.

In China, the Korean Civilization was discovered, dated to 6000 BCE. Even Chinese archaeologists have admitted that this civilization was not Chinese, but Mongolic, Tungusic, or Koreanic in origin. The civilization had writing, jade tools, and dragon emblems. These things now exist in China, so the Koreans must have taught the primitive and uncivilized Chinese how to do those things. The only country that could possibly be the Korean Civilization is Hwanguk, which was founded 79,000 years ago.

The proper term for the Neolithic culture of the Liao is Hungshan culture. Now, to the point made itself: the development of writing in the Yellow River Valley is very well documented through oracle bones. The Hungshan culture might have developed proto-writing, like the Mi'kmaq tribe in Canada; this is not evidence that Koreans taught the Chinese how to write. Also, why is a Neolithic culture linked to an unverifiable text? Do we connect a Freemason Grand Lodge with the Taxil hoax, or a proto-hominid with Nebraska Man?

China also made a road through Hungshan relics. This is a conspiracy so that Koreans will not simultaneously revolt.

Huh? By that logic, if China wants to make sure there's no revolts then they should make roads through Tibetan relics, since that'll prevent Tibetan demonstrations. Anyway, the entire premise is invalid. It's a road to, not through, Hungshan relics, and every proper site has a road linking them to the rest of the world. Is UNESCO working for China, since it demands that World Heritage sites can be easily visited?

James Churchward, a notable pioneer in the study of prehistory, said that Indian and Tibetan writings say that there was an Uyghur Empire in the time of Atlantis. Obviously, this is Hwanguk, or a proto-Hwanguk which developed into the Korean empire of Hwanguk.

James Churchward was not a prehistorian, but an occultist who wrote on the lost non-existent continent Mu. Obviously, this claim is fallacious.

The archaeological evidence says that Siberia until 5,900 years ago was actually a fertile grassland, like the Sahara. This fits with Hwanguk, which ruled a fertile Siberia, where the first men, Naban and Aman, were made.[3]

Of course there was no first man & woman, Adam & Eve style. The evidence is very clear about this.

The founder of Hwanguk, Anpagyeon or Geobalhwan, have modern Korean words correlated to them. Anpagyeon is 'Abeoji', or 'father', and 'Geo' mans 'large', as in 'Geodae', or enormous, and 'bal' means 'bright', as in 'balgda', 'bright', and 'hwan' means sky', as in 'Haneul'.

This is a bit of sound and fury signifying nothing, or anyway very little.

Obviously, Sumerians were Koreans!!!! One of the twelve tribes of Hwanguk was 'Sumili', and another was 'Uru'. This is a reference to 'Sumer' and the Sumerian city of 'Ur'. Also, figurines show that Sumerians played wrestling. Koreans played wrestling for 2000 years, so Sumerians are Koreans. Also, 'Sumer' made cow heads, and cow heads are 'Someori' in Korean. Sumerians were named after 'Someori', the national cow-headed idol. Finally, Sumerians mysteriously vanished 4000 years ago, when Baedalguk, which existed between 8000 and 4000 years ago, would have been destroyed. Sumer was a part of Baedalguk, and returned to Korea after Baedalguk's demise.

This is Conspiracy-Theory levels of connecting unrelated items just because they sound similar or happened by coincidence within say 2000 years of each other. It should go without saying that this is not the way history is done, nor historical linkages of peoples established.

See also

• Nationalist pseudohistory

External links

• The Process of 『Hwandangogi(桓檀古記)』 Text Formation - Focusing on Contents Change (Most of the content is in Korean, except the last three pages of the PDF file.)

References

1. It can be found on 조선왕조실록 (Annals of the Joseon Dynasty).
2. 환국은 없다 (There is no Hwanguk), Maeil Business Newspaper
3. 태초에 인간은 지상의 어느 곳에서 처음 화생된 것일까? (Where on the Earth did the human beings first come to life?)