Founder of Goguryeo, the Holy King Dongmyeong
The Samguk Sagi tells that Yuhwa, daughter of the river god Habaek, was cast out by her father after meeting Hae Mosu, a self-proclaimed son of heaven, and was taken in by King Geumwa of Eastern Buyeo. Sunlight followed her body wherever she moved, and she conceived, giving birth to an egg the size of five measures. The king threw it to dogs and pigs, which refused to eat it; oxen and horses stepped around it on the road; birds and beasts sheltered it with their wings. Since it could not be split, it was returned to its mother, and a boy soon broke out of the shell. By seven he was making his own bows and hitting every mark, so people called him Jumong, the Buyeo word for a great archer.
Geumwa's sons, led by the heir Daeso, plotted to kill him. Jumong fled south with three companions, Oi, Mari, and Hyeopbo. Blocked by a great river with pursuers close behind, he called out his lineage, son of heaven and grandson of the river god, and fish and turtles surfaced to form a bridge, scattering once he had crossed. He founded his state at Jolbon in 37 BCE, named it Goguryeo, and took Go as his surname, aged twenty-two. He reigned nineteen years and died at forty.
The earliest surviving record of the tale is carved in stone: the Gwanggaeto Stele of 414 CE, standing at present-day Ji'an, Jilin, opens by recounting how the founder Chumo, son of heaven and child of the river god's daughter, broke from the egg, and how at his death a yellow dragon came down to bear him up to heaven. In 1193 Yi Gyu-bo expanded the story into the long poem Dongmyeongwang-pyeon. Wunü Mountain Fortress at Huanren, Liaoning, is identified with Jolbon.
