Two Brothers Who Went South
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Jumong, who founded Goguryeo, married Soseono in Jolbon and had two sons, Biryu and Onjo. But Yuri, another son he had left behind in Buyeo, found the piece of a broken sword his father had hidden and set out for Jolbon.
Characters
The hero of this story
He dreams of the sea
come from Buyeo
A young man came from Buyeo and knelt before the king.
When it was put against the piece the king took from his robe, the broken sword fit together perfectly.
The crown prince was the one who would succeed the king. Now this kingdom would belong to Yuri, their half-brother from Buyeo.
Jolbon, eighteen years earlier. When Jumong founded his kingdom, Soseono, daughter of Yeon Ta-bal, gave her family’s wealth without holding anything back.
Soseono and her two sons set out for the south. Ten retainers, including Ogan and Maryeo, and many common people followed them.
Don’t let go!
Over mountains and across rivers, south and further south.
At last they climbed a mountain overlooking a great river.
Buaak (today’s Bukhansan), a mountain overlooking the Han River. The brothers climbed to the top to look for land for their capital.
Let’s build our kingdom by the sea!
Look at the land south of that river.
The ten retainers spoke as one.
It is a fortress made by Heaven. Make your capital here!
The brothers divided the people between them. The elder went to Michuhol by the sea, the younger to the land south of the river.
And so the two brothers went their separate ways.
Onjo made his capital at Wiryeseong, south of the Han River.
His father, Jumong, had died in Jolbon the previous autumn. Onjo built a shrine in Wirye to his father, King Dongmyeong.
Meanwhile, at Michuhol by the sea, where the elder brother, Biryu, had settled.
Seawater seeped into the ground, so the land was always waterlogged, and the well water was salty.
It was not a land where people could live in comfort.
on this land…
Some time later, Biryu went to Wirye, which his younger brother ruled.
Consumed by shame and regret, the elder brother eventually died.
All the retainers and people who had followed his brother came to Wirye.
From the ten retainers’ ‘Sipje’ (十濟) to the people’s ‘Baekje’ (百濟).
Years went by, and it was spring of the thirteenth year since Onjo had become king.
His mother, Soseono, closed her eyes for the last time at the age of sixty-one.
South of the Han River lay Mahan, a league of states that had settled there before Baekje.
When Onjo put up a palisade at Ungcheon on his southern border,
an envoy from Mahan came rushing.
Even today, the river flows to that sea.
In the spring of 28 CE, King Onjo died.
The small kingdom on the Han River
went on to last more than 600 years.
