The Origin Myth of Sun and Moon in the Andean and Korean Traditions

This essay begins with the interesting fact that Korea and Peru have in common the rope motif in their cultural traditions of the sun and moon creation. The origin myths of the sun and the moon all over the world have caught on steadily in folklore studies. But it is not easy to find any previous comparison between Korean origin myths and Peruvian ones, with all their peculiar comparable elements. Based on Lévi-Strauss’s theory of mythemes, we seek to analyse the Korean story ‘The Brother and Sister who Became Sun and Moon’ and the Andean ‘Wakon and the Willkas’ in terms of five mythemic aspects: the revelation of a primordial time; the single mother and her journey; the twins or siblings; the trickster, predator or victimiser; and the cosmic rope and the transit between upper and lower worlds. In both traditions we find a common mythological structure in spite of their apparent differences. When the myths employ the rope in a similar way, it hardly seems cross cultural but uniquely culture specific. When it comes to this similarity, however, their relationship or influence will need explicating in further comprehensive studies.