The provenance file on Baekdusan
Catalogue entry — Baekdusan. Every claim below carries its chain of custody.
Provenance
1. The attestation. 백두산 (白頭山), from the tradition's own record. On record: Il-yeon, Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, 1280s; trans. Tae-hung Ha & Grafton K. Mintz, Yonsei University Press, 1972), Goryeosa (History of Goryeo, 1451), annals of King Jeongjong for the eruption of 946, Manchu Veritable Records (Manzhou shilu), account of Bukuri Yongson at Bulhuri Lake, Grayson, James H., Korea: A Religious and Cultural History (Routledge, 2002).
2. The narrative record. Where Hwanung Descended — The founding cycle of Korea begins on a mountain. In the Samguk Yusa ('Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms', compiled by the monk Il-yeon in the 1280s), Hwanin permits his son Hwanung to descend from heaven to the human world; Hwanung descends with three thousand followers beneath a sandalwood tree on Taebaeksan, the 'Great White Mountain'. The Maiden, the Red Fruit, and Bukuri Yongson — The Manchus tell the same mountain a different birth story. The Manchu Veritable Records (Manzhou shilu) relate that three maidens of the Bukuri clan came to bathe in Bulhuri Lake at the foot of Changbai, the Chinese name for Baekdusan.
3. The physical record. Unlike a temple, a volcano carries its own monument. The 946 eruption left the B-Tm tephra layer across northern Japan and in the Greenland ice sheet — a datable fingerprint of the 'Millennium Eruption' (Oppenheimer et al., 2017). On the ground stand human markers: the 1712 boundary stele of Mukedeng, raised near the headwaters of the Yalu and Tumen to mark the Qing–Joseon frontier, and the sites of Qing imperial offerings on the Chinese slopes, ordered by the Kangxi Emperor in 1677. North Korea's Samjiyon region, with its revolutionary museums, is the modern, state-sponsored layer of the cult. No sanctuary precinct survives — the crater lake Cheonji, the ash fields, and the steles are the archive.
4. The current holding. The temple at /baekdusan/, classified Tier 2. Tier-2 here means one preserved truth — not less important, just singular. The temple shows it and names it.
5. The documented resonances. Agriculture, Food & Harvest, Environmental & Climate Services, Forestry, Conservation & Outdoor Industries — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
6. The continuing record. Baekdusan occupies a unique place in Korean identity. It appears in poetry — most famously in Jeong Ji-yong's 1936 modernist poem 'Baekdusan' — in painting, patriotic song, and North Korean state iconography.
At a Glance
- Restored name: Baekdusan
- ASCII form: baekdusan
- Meaning: "White head mountain"
- Domain of influence: Sacred Mountain, Origin
- Pantheon: Korean
- Classification: Tier 2
- Original script: 백두산 (白頭山)
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 75 of 548
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Badb (read it here) · next file: Bāguà (read it here).
The Restoration Files are written from the same canonical record as the temples themselves: the lexicon, the lore catalog, the pattern atlas, and the cited scholarly sources. If a file ever disagrees with its temple, the temple is right — tell us, and the file will be corrected.