Juche

    Tangun is the father of the Korean nation who created the state, civilized era for the first time in the history of our nation.

    He was born in Pyongyang area over 5 000 years ago.

    Far long before, Hwanung, his father, was the last emir of a tribe that had lived in Pyongyang believing in the Heaven as his ancestor. He married with the daughter of the head of a tribe that had lived in the neighboring village believing in an animal as her ancestor and gave birth to Tangun.

    When Tangun was born and growing up, the tribes frequently fought each other for more wealth.

    At that time, the privileged class that captured many goods and land was formed during the wars conquering the others, increasing disparity in wealth between the privileged and the common members of the society, and war prisoners had fallen down to slaves, highlighting class distinction and antagonism.

    Tangun who was born as a son of an emir at that time devoted his childhood and youth hood to training martial arts like archery, spearing and fencing and tried to understand the laws of the nature and the society.

    Because of his giant-like physique and bright brain, he was excellent in martial arts, and also gradually got to cherish far-reaching ambition to transform the society.

    After that, he inherited his father’s position of emir and gradually remade and developed the primitive political structures into the violent ones to control the conflicts between the classes and tribes. Early 30^th century B.C. he, on this basis, chose the Walled City of Pyongyang as the capital and built the first country in the Orient.

    The name of this country was recorded in history as “Joson” (The history named it as Kojoson to differentiate from feudal Joson Dynasty.) and titled him, the founder of it, “King Paktal.”

    The title “King Paktal” later was translated into “Tangun” in Chinese character.

    The advent of Kojoson built by Tangun made our country usher in the state era, an era of civilization, putting an end to the prolonged primitive society.

    After founding the country, Tangun made the commons work for life doing farming, handloom-weaving and livestock-breeding, and replaced the outdated way of life with a new civilized life.

    By the help of such innovations, Tangun developed the country’s economy and culture, strengthened its national power and unified the surrounding tribes to expand its territory.

    Thanks to his positive activities, Kojoson which started as a small country in Pyongyang area had expanded its land to become a big power covering large territory by gradually conquering the neighboring small powers.

    He died and was buried in Pyongyang where he was born.

    Tangun had four sons calling Puru, Puso, Puwu and Puyo, and Puru, his 1^st son inherited his cause of state-founding.

    Kojoson existed for about 3 000 years, displaying the might of a powerful ancient state in Asia.

    After the period of Kojoson, many states had been founded in our country, all of which had worshipped Tangun as the founder of the nation.

    Even till now, the Taejonggyo (a religion) believing in Tangun, the founder of the state, has conducted memorial services every October 3^rd, regarding this day as the greatest holiday.

    In the past, Tangun had been regarded before as a mythological figure.

    The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung made it clear that Tangun, the legendary forefather of our nation and the founder of the first state was a real person, thereby adding brilliant luster to our nation’s time-honored history of 5 000 years.

    The great leader had instructed earlier to examine Tangun whether he is a mythological figure or real figure.

    His instruction was a programmatic guideline which broke the existing thought cemented long among our historical scientists and helped them find correctly the founder of the nation, ridding themselves of the previous indifferent attitude in the study of Tangun.

    Following his instruction, the historical scientists made a field survey on the Tangun mausoleum and unearthed the remains of his and his wife’s bones as well as the valuable legacies in the process of examination.

    Thanks to the energetic leadership and deep care of the great leader who intended to find out the founder of our nation, the remains of Tangun were newly unearthed and the research on it was performed successfully, eventually proving that he was a real figure, not a legendary one.

    This shows that Tangun is not only the state founder who built Kojoson, the first country of the Korean nation, but also a figure that provided the Korean nation with an advanced civilization, substantially guaranteeing to develop as a homogeneous nation.