What even is 개천절? The myth behind Korea's weirdest-sounding holiday 🐻🏔️

October 3rd is 개천절, one of Korea's national holidays. This year it falls on a Saturday, which means there's a 대체공휴일 — a substitute holiday — giving everyone a long weekend through Monday instead of just losing the day off entirely.

So what even is 개천절? Turns out there's a whole myth behind it — bears, tigers, mugwort, and garlic 🐻🐯🌿🧄. Let's get into it.

개천절 — "the day the sky opened"

개천절 breaks down into 개 (to open) and 천 (sky, or heaven), plus 절 (holiday, or day of observance). Put together, it literally means "the day heaven opened." It marks the legendary founding of Korea's first kingdom, 고조선, said to have happened in 2333 BC — which is also why the Korean traditional calendar, 단기, counts its years from that date instead of from year 1 AD.

"개천절은 단군이 고조선을 세운 날을 기념해요." — 개천절 commemorates the day Dangun founded Gojoseon.

"단기는 고조선이 세워진 해부터 세는 연도예요." — 단기 is a year count that starts from the founding of Gojoseon.

단군 — the founding king

단군, or 단군왕검 in full, is the legendary founder of 고조선 and the central figure of the whole holiday. We’ll walk through the myth surrounding this founder below.

"단군 신화 들어본 적 있어요?" — Have you heard of the Dangun myth?

환웅 — the god who came down from heaven

The myth starts with 환웅, the son of the god of heaven, 환인. 환웅 wanted to live among humans, so his father let him descend to earth with three thousand followers, landing on a sacred tree on 태백산. There, he set up a kind of divine government and ruled by a principle called 홍익인간 — more on that one below.

"환웅이 하늘에서 인간 세상으로 내려왔어요." — Hwanung descended from heaven to the human world.

"태백산 신단수 아래에 자리를 잡았대요." — He's said to have settled under the sacred tree (신단수) on Mount Taebaek (태백산).

웅녀 — the bear who became human

A bear and a tiger both prayed to 환웅 to be turned into humans. He gave them a set amount of mugwort and garlic and told them to eat only that, staying out of sunlight, for a hundred days. The tiger gave up partway through. The bear stuck it out, turned into a woman — 웅녀 — and eventually married 환웅. Their son was 단군.

"곰이 인간이 되고 싶어서 쑥하고 마늘만 먹었대요." — The bear wanted to become human, so it ate only mugwort and garlic.

"호랑이는 중간에 포기했다고 해요." — The tiger supposedly gave up halfway through.

홍익인간 — the four-character phrase still printed in Korean law

홍익인간 means roughly "to broadly benefit humanity," and it's described as the founding ideal 환웅 ruled by. It's still cited today as the guiding philosophy behind Korea's education law, so the phrase shows up in textbooks and official documents well outside the context of the myth itself.

"홍익인간은 교육법에도 나오는 말이에요." — 홍익인간 is a phrase that even appears in the Education Act.

"사람들을 널리 이롭게 한다는 뜻이에요." — It means broadly benefiting people.