The Korean Folk Custom Forbidding The Establishment of Water Wells

Abstract

For over a thousand years many settlements in Korea forbid the digging of water‐wells. This custom can be explained using geomancy, which personifies local landscapes or names them after animate or inanimate objects. In ‘sailing boat’ landscapes the digging of water‐wells was prohibited because this was viewed as analogous to making a hole in the bottom of a boat, which would thus bring misfortune to local residents. Based on this geomantic reasoning, people considered the custom of forbidding well digging to be an integral part of the art of geomancy, with its origin in a geomantic belief system. My earlier research sustained this explanation but this paper, which is based on two recent instances of field work, rejects the established view on the custom. The aim of this paper is to critically re‐examine this established view and suggests a new idea that the folk custom of prohibiting well digging in Korea was not originally derived from geomancy, but was conceived from a non‐geomantic indigenous Korean idea and have become linked to geomancy through the enforcement process of practicing the custom in traditional Korean society.

Key words:

• water‐wells
• forbidding well digging
• geomancy
• sailing boat landscape
• golden hen sitting on egg landscape
• settlement
• Korea

Notes

1. Sŭngjŏngwŏn Ilgi, http://sjw.history.go.kr/main/main.jsp, accessed on 27 February 2013 and downloaded the originally recorded wordings in classical Chinese. This English version of 13 June 1789 and 28 August 1876 royal diaries is my translation of the original Korean Court record.)