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, and 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.

I’ve been making contemporary depictions of this obscure Korean folktale about suffering and redemption in the form of ink drawings, oil paintings, and murals.