After reaching Shinwonsa during my January trip up Dobongsan I next encountered Ssangyongsa. While all of the temples mentioned previously on this journey share names with sites located in the south of Korea, searching for Ssangyongsa on the internet brings up a lot of matches for the South African branch of Ssangyong Motor Company. The fourth largest auto manufacturer in Korea - after Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo - Ssangyong was taken over by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Most of the Ssangyong Group's subsidiary companies were sold to keep the corporation afloat. However, checking out the South African page does provide a story explaining the origins of the name 쌍용 / 雙龍:

SsangYong means "twin dragons". It refers to a legend in which two dragons waited 1000 years to fly to dragon heaven. Finally, a single cintamani, which was necessary for the journey, was released. Each dragon encouraged the other to take it and make the trip until both missed the opportunity. The king of heaven was so touched that he released a second cintamani and thus the two dragons entered heaven together.

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One of the remarkable things about Korea is the degree of syncretism that takes place between religions. While there are several 'universal truths' to be found within the world's belief systems it's not often that they borrow from one another to the extant that they do here. Take, for example, the following sign that I encountered a couple of weeks ago:

I found this sign on the side of a Buddhist temple near the tomb of King Yeonsangun. One of the more prominent symbols on this sign is the swastika (卍), associated with the Buddhist principles of Dharma and harmony. The left-facing swastika is said to represent love and mercy while a right-facing swastika signifies strength and intelligence. Located within the swastika is a taeguk (太極) image, a reference to Daoism and, in particular, the notion of yin and yang. The first line of Korean - 태백산 산신령 - mentions Taebaek Mountain (太白山) and the mountain spirits (산신) that are an important part of Korean shamanism. The expression 산신령 adds the suffix ~령 (領) to imply possession of a dominion or territory.

The other example I'll share tonight comes from Korean Shamanism and Cultural Nationalism by Hyun-key Kim Hogarth (1999:85). In the chapter on becoming a shaman she includes the following case history:

Mudang K, aged 76, lives in Yangju, Gyeonggi-do. When she was 12, she fell ill with a total loss of appetite, and stayed indoors all the time. One day, she had a dream in which, a Taoist god, mounted on a crane, appeared and grabbing hold of her hair, went away. The following morning, she dashed out of the house all naked in the snow which had fallen the previous night, feeling as though somebody was tempting her. She ran on, until she reached a haystack, situated outside a house, some twenty or thirty ri away. Jumping on top of it, she danced like mad until she fell unconscious. It transpired later that the house was that of a shamaness, who had recently died. Inside the haystack was a shamanic brass mirror (myeongdu), which had been hidden there by her son after her death. She was found, half dead, by her family, who tracked her down by her footprints in the snow, having been worried about her absence. She later hung the mirror in her shrine and kept it as her guardian spirit. (Akiba 1950/1987:69)

Continuing on from this entry, the next site one encounters on Dobongsan after Daewonsa is the complex at Shinwonsa. As with all of the other temples that I've written about from this particular trip, Shinwonsa shares its name with a more popular temple to the south, this one located in Chungcheongnam-do. In Hanja the temple's name is 新元寺, which can be interpreted in a couple of ways; the most likely to me is New Head Temple but feel free to correct me if a better translation is available.

Oddly enough, while I was looking up information on the temple I came across this site (Korean Temple Online), which includes all of my Shinwonsa photos from Flickr. There's no text to go with them, so I have no idea why those particular images were chosen. Anyway, photos from the snowy 선날 holiday:

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Two months ago I wrote a pair of posts on a recent archaeological find at Mireuksa connected to a story from the Samguk Yusa. My first post was mentioned on the Korean meta-blog Hub of Sparkle last week, which was a bit surprising to see. (And here I thought kutay was the only one who reads my history-related updates.) Encountering a reference to my earlier entries made me realize that I hadn't checked for any recent information on whether archaeologists had been able to link Princess Seonhwa of Silla to Prince Seongdong of Baekje. With something like 500 artifacts recovered from the temple's cache it will obviously take some time to catalogue and analyze everything.

A recent search of Daum and Naver shows that Mireuksa made the news again last week, with articles coming from the Munhwa, Chosun, and Hankooki. However, the general feeling from each is that researchers are still no closer to finding a link than they were back in January. While browsing through Korean search engines I did come across another couple of sites with lovely photos. The first of is here courtesy of 9suk9suk while the second is a post here by 03swsw (사람♡사랑). The latter set includes two older images coming from 1910 and 1930 that add a little more historical context.

Another awesome find was this piece that discusses the currency and pressed gold in use by the Baekje kingdom at the time. From what I can make out it was common to emboss the hanja (Chinese character) for 'cow' (牛) on one edge of the gold, though I don't know the reasons for this. The Baekje kingdom wasn't founded on pastoralism and, if anything, I would expect the character for 'pig' to show up instead; I've heard from a few people that the Korean word for money (돈; don) is a homonym with the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese character for pig (豬) -- although Wiktionary has the pronunciation as something different (저; jeo).

Cow Gold. Image from goisale

kutay

I mentioned another temple named Daewonsa in my earlier entry, and this second site is located on the slopes of Jirisan (지리산; 智異山; Unusual Wisdom Mountain). The associated national park encompasses three provinces (Jeollanam-do, Jeollabuk-do, and Gyeongsangnam-do) and I have seen two of those listed as the location of the more famous Daewonsa. David Mason's San-shin website has a page on the temple that places it in Sancheong County, Gyeongsangnam-do while Galbijim and Light Enough to Travel go with Jeollanam-do. Of course, one quick way to get an answer is to call the phone number listed on the temple's home page; the area code is for Jeonnam, which is a shortened version of Jeollanam-do. Unless there are two Daewonsa's on Jirisan, anyway, which could always be a possibility.

While looking through information on the counties surrounding Jirisan I came across the Wiki page for Gurye County, Jeollanam-do and mention of the Gurye Sansuyu (Cornus Fruit) Flower Festival. Cornus officinalis, known as 산수유 in Korean, is a type of dogwood which is used to make a local tea, liquor, and for medicinal purposes. The Gurye County website says the festival takes place every mid-March, and last year it took place between March 20-23. I enjoyed my trip to the Hampyeong Chrysanthemum Festival in December and was interested in attending another flower-themed festival until I did a web search for 산수유.

Gurye County 산수유 by 행복 나들이 Check out the website for more photos.