The Story of

영등할망

Yeongdeung Halmang

영등할망 Yeongdeung Halmang's story begins as a young sea goddess when she helps shipwrecked sailors escape being devoured by cyclops. She tells the men to sail quickly to their home, Jeju Island, never to look back while singing a magical chant.

Enraged by the goddess' actions - and, by her rejection of the cyclops king’s affections, the cyclops horde tears her into pieces & scatters her body parts across the sea.

Yeongdeung Halmang's mother, the Sea, and her father, the Wind, find the pieces of her body one by one and stitch them back together. From this rebirth, she becomes a powerful goddess, associated not only with the wind and sea but with the sowing of seeds over the waters - just as she herself was once scattered.

As a Korean American artist, I have been fascinated by this beautiful story of suffering and redemption. I have been creating contemporary depictions of this obscure Korean folktale in the form of murals, oil paintings, and ink drawings since first learning of its existence in an effort to keep this beautiful cultural myth alive.