Queen Heo Hwang-ok

On a small island off the coast, a man stood looking out at an empty sea.

He had been ordered to wait there. He was to bring a good horse and a light boat, and simply stand and wait. Wait for whom, the king did not say. He said only that someone would come, and that when that person came, the man must recognize that person at once.

Every day the sea looked the same as the day before. A white glare in the morning, a dazzle at noon, gray in the afternoon, then dark. The horizon was one straight line, and nothing ever broke it.

Until one day, in the southwest corner of the sea, a red dot appeared.

The red dot grew larger. It was a sail, dyed a deep red. Above it flew a flag, red as well, stretched out in the wind. The boat did not turn aside, did not circle, did not feel its way. It headed straight north, as if the people on board had known exactly where they were going before they ever raised anchor.

The man on the island was named Yu Cheon-gan. He did exactly one thing. He lit a fire for the boat to see. The moment it blazed up, the boat answered. The people on board raced one another to the shore and hurried onto dry land. Another official, watching from far off, turned and ran all the way back to the palace.

To see who they were waiting for, and why someone had to stand out on an island at all, the story has to go back to the beginning.

The land was called Garak, also known as Gaya. It was a small kingdom by the sea in the south of the Korean Peninsula. Legend says it was founded in the year 42 of the Common Era. On a hill called Guji, the people of the area found six golden eggs, round and bright as the sun. The six eggs hatched into six boys. The first to show his face was named Suro, and he became the first king of that land.

Some time later, nine chiefs came to court with a heartfelt request. The king had been on the throne for a long time and still had no wife. They asked to choose the finest of their own daughters and bring her into the palace.

The king refused. His coming down to this land had been the will of heaven, he said, so the one to be his match would also be sent by heaven. They need not worry. Then he sent Yu Cheon-gan with the horse and the boat to Mangsan Island, to stand there and wait.

So all those days, as the man watched an empty horizon, he was waiting for someone no one in the kingdom had ever seen. No one knew her name, or where she would come from.

When the news reached the palace, the king was overjoyed. He had the nine chiefs prepare fine boats and good oars, and go down to the shore to bring her in at once.

But she would not go.

In substance, she said that she had never known these people before, so how could she lightly follow them?

Here was a young woman who had just crossed a wide stretch of sea. She had set foot in a land she had never known, surrounded by strangers. She did not panic. She did not cry. Nor did she meekly follow the first person who ran out to call her. She stayed right where she was, and waited to be received in the proper way.

The officials went back and reported. The king listened, nodded, and went out himself. On a patch of ground about 60 paces southwest of the palace, he had a tent put up on the hillside, and sat there to wait.

Only then did the red boat put in at a landing farther out, called Byeolpo. She tied up the boat, stepped ashore, climbed a high mound and sat down to rest.

Then she did something the old tellers describe with great care. She took off the silk trousers she was wearing and laid them down as an offering to the mountain spirit of this land.

She had not yet met the king. She had not said a word to anyone. The first thing she did on foreign soil was to greet that soil, with the most precious thing she had on her.

Only after they met did she say her own name, in her own words. She was a princess of the kingdom of Ayuta. Her family name was Heo, and her given name was Hwang-ok. The old tale gives only the name of that kingdom, not where it lay. So to this day, all one can say is that it was a land very far away across the sea.

She told him why she had come. On the same night, her father and her mother had the very same dream, and in it they both met a being from heaven. This being said that the king of Garak had been sent down by heaven to watch over that land, but had no one to be his match. So they should send the princess across the sea. Her father and mother called her in, told her of the dream, and fitted out a boat for their daughter.

But they did not send her empty-handed.

On board were brocade and silks, clothes and rolled bolts of cloth, gold and silver, pearls and gems. There were fine things in such numbers that they were past counting. With her came two attendant officials named Sin Bo and Jo Gwang. Their two wives, Mojeong and Moryang, came too, along with more than 20 servants. So she did not come alone. She brought a whole household with her.

Tradition also gives the year she arrived. It was the year 48 of the Common Era by today's reckoning.

One small detail stands out, because it is kind in an unexpected way. The 15 rowers who had brought her across the sea were sent home. Each of them received 10 measures of rice. Each also took home 30 bolts of cloth. No one was kept back. Her one-way voyage did not become a one-way voyage for them.

Later, people named several places in the area after that very meeting. The village where her boat landed became Jupo. The mound where she offered her silk trousers to the mountain spirit became Neunghyeon Pass, which means silk slope. The shore where the red flag appeared became the landing called Gichul, which means the place where the flag came out. In later times, people who passed by and spoke the names of those roads and landings were retelling a piece of the story without knowing it.

She became the queen of Garak, and bore King Suro a son to succeed him, Crown Prince Geodeung.

The story comes from a chapter called the Record of Garak, in a book called the Samguk Yusa. It was compiled by a monk named Iryeon in the 13th century. The Samguk Yusa is a collection of stories and records about the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. In Korea today she is known as Heo Hwang-ok, the king as Kim Suro, and the land as Gaya. Scholars see the tale as a founding legend, not a page of history that can be proven. But a legend has a weight of its own, because it shows what people long ago wanted to keep.

And what they chose to keep was not a battle.

They kept an empty horizon, and a red sail rising in the southwest corner of the sea. It held straight on toward the north, carrying a young woman who knew exactly who she was, and who would not step down until she was received in the proper way.