Jangseung: The Wooden and Stone Guardians Standing at the Edge of Korean Villages

What is a jangseung?

A jangseung is a post of wood or stone with a human or generalissimo's face carved into the top and a title written on the body. Standing at a village entrance or beside a road, it is a guardian, a boundary marker and a signpost in one. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes it as a sacred post that protected the village gate, marked the border between villages or temple lands, and told travelers the distance to the next place. Most stand as a pair, a male and a female figure facing each other across the path.

You rarely find a jangseung alone. It usually keeps company with sotdae (bird poles), piles of stones, a seonangdang shrine or a sacred village tree. Villagers often thought of the mountain shrine behind the settlement as the 'upper shrine' and the posts at the entrance as the 'lower shrine', a gatekeeper that stopped harm from coming in from outside. For that reason nobody cut one down or knocked it over casually. Leaving a village guardian alone was an unwritten rule of the community.

Origins and history

Nobody can say for certain where jangseung come from. Scholars point to several sources: native Korean customs such as bird poles, standing stones and stone-pile shrines; the boundary stones that Buddhist temples used to mark their land; and comparisons with rice-farming cultures in Siberia and Southeast Asia. The earliest written trace is usually said to be a 'jangsaengpyo' boundary mark mentioned on a monument at Borimsa Temple in Jangheung, dated to the 18th year of King Gyeongdeok of Silla (759).

In the Goryeo period temples set up stones carved 'Gukjangsaeng' (national boundary) and 'Hwangjangsaeng' at their borders, and the Gukjangsaeng marker at Tongdosa Temple in Yangsan is the best-known example. During the Joseon dynasty the legal code called for a marker (hu, 堠) at every ten and thirty ri, giving the place name and the distance, so jangseung doubled as road signs. A sixteenth-century Korean character primer glosses the character for 'marker' with the word jangseung, which tells us the name was in common use by then.

Faces and inscriptions

Jangseung come in two broad kinds: carved wooden posts and dressed stone pillars. A wooden one rarely lasts more than about ten years, so villages recarve theirs every year or every few years. A stone figure, once raised, may stand for centuries. The male figure usually wears a hat and glares with bulging eyes, while the female may be bare-headed with painted cheek dots. Some have fangs and wide round eyes in a fierce demon-face style, while others have the gentle smile associated with Buddhist stone figures.

The most common inscriptions are 'Cheonha Daejanggun' for the male and 'Jiha Yeojanggun' for the female. The words mean 'Great General Under Heaven' and 'Female General Under the Earth', so the pair together cover sky and ground. Other inscriptions appear in different regions, as the table shows.

What the jangseung stands for

The first meaning is a boundary. A jangseung says: this is our village, and sickness and ghosts should not cross this line. When epidemics swept through, people gathered in front of the post to make offerings, which was also a way for a community to bear its anxiety together.

The second is protection with humour. The goggling eyes and mouth stretched to the ears look fearsome, but look again and the faces are often clumsy and funny. Folklorists read this as a wish for dignity and friendliness at the same time. Korean proverbs reflect how close these figures were to daily life: someone who stands around blankly is said to be 'like a beoksu', and a very tall person is 'like a nine-chok jangseung'.

The third is a signpost. Some posts have the distance to the next town written on the body. Place names like Jangseungbaegi and Jangseonggol, found all over the country, are traces of jangseung that once stood along the roads.

The jangseung ritual: carving, raising, praying

Jangseungje is a village ritual held for the jangseung, normally in the first lunar month together with the communal village rite (dongje). The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes how it works in Eommi-ri, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, and the sequence shows the flavour of the whole event.

• Choosing the wood: on the morning of the mountain-god rite held every second year, the village men pick an alder tree and trim it.
• Carving and writing: they carve a pair, Cheonha Daejanggun and Jiha Daejanggun, along with a bird pole made by seating a carved bird on a thin pole.
• Raising the posts: Cheonha Daejanggun goes on the road side and Jiha Daejanggun on the village side, facing one another.
• Offering: food is laid out in front of the posts and the village prays for peace. This part is lively and festive.
• Mountain-god rite: at midnight a village representative climbs the hill to offer a quiet, solemn rite to the mountain god.

Regional names and famous examples

What people call a jangseung depends on where they live. In Jeolla and along the southern coast it is beoksu or beopsu, or 'Grandfather of the village tree'. In Chungcheong it is jangsin, susalmak or susalmok. In the north it is sometimes called a stone Maitreya, and some scholars see Jeju's dolhareubang as the same family. Around Suwon, Incheon and Bucheon, generals for the four directions were carved and set around the village.

Stories and sayings around jangseung

Jangseung turn up in folktales and in the pansori song Byeon Gangsoe-ga. In a tale known as the 'Magistrate and the Jangseung', a local official hauls a jangseung into court and uses the trial to track down a thief. In Byeon Gangsoe-ga a man pulls out a jangseung to burn as firewood and is punished by a curse. These stories were a way to teach the village rule that the guardian should be respected, and today they are best read as a reminder of community agreements rather than a warning meant to frighten.

Everyday sayings show the same closeness. Korean has expressions for a person who stands stiffly in one place, a person with a huge mouth, and a mystery riddle about something that has a big mouth but cannot speak, all pointing back to the jangseung face.

Jangseung today

Researchers at the National Folk Museum of Korea have recorded more than 540 sites with jangseung, but many have vanished as villages turned into cities. Still, some villages hold the jangseungje, and designated stone figures are protected by local governments. Seoul's Jangseungbaegi in Dongjak District keeps the memory in its name.

Nowadays jangseung also stand in parks, at highway rest stops and at festival entrances as friendly greeters, and there are carving workshops and jangseung parks for families. Whether you see them as objects of belief or as folk sculpture, they show a community's wish to protect itself. If you visit one, do not climb on it or lean on it, since some villages still honour theirs as sacred.

For fun and self-reflection, many visitors enjoy looking at a pair of jangseung and imagining which face seems like 'their' guardian. That kind of play is a modern pastime; it is not part of the traditional belief, and the guardians are best met with simple respect.

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