When a Korean family loses someone, a shaman may hold a ritual to guide the dead person’s soul safely to the other world. Near the end of that ritual, often deep into the night, the shaman sings one long story. It is the life of Bari Gongju (바리공주), Princess Bari, a girl who was thrown away by her parents on the day she was born, and who grew up to walk through the underworld and bring back the water of life. Because she made that journey and came back, Korean shamans say, she knows the road. She is the goddess who leads the dead to where they need to go.
The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that about a hundred versions of the song have been recorded across Korea. In Seoul she is called Princess Bari. In the southwest and along the east coast she is Baridegi, and the shaman’s song is sung during the great rituals for the dead: the jinogwi gut of Seoul, the ssitgim gut of Honam and the ogu gut of the east coast. Here is the story as most versions tell it.
The seventh daughter
Once there was a king, often called King Ogu, who married and longed for a son. His queen gave birth to a daughter. Then a second. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth. When the seventh child was born, it was a girl too.
The king was furious. “Throw her away,” he ordered. The baby was put in a jade chest and cast away, in many versions onto the river, and she was named Bari, from the Korean word beorida, “to throw away”. Bari, the abandoned one.
But the gods did not abandon her. In the Seoul versions, an old couple find the chest and raise the princess as their own. She grows up far from the palace, knowing nothing about her royal parents.
The water of life
Years passed. Then the king and queen fell gravely ill, both at once, and no doctor could cure them. At last they learned that only one thing could save them: medicinal water from a far-off land in the west, a place no living person could easily reach. In the songs it is called Seocheon Seoyeokguk, the western land beyond the edge of the world.
The king called his six daughters one by one and begged each of them to fetch it. Each one made an excuse. Not one of them would go.
So the king and queen sent for the daughter they had thrown away. Bari came to the palace and met her parents for the first time. She did not shout at them or refuse. She said she would go.
Walking into the underworld
In many versions Bari dresses as a young man for the journey. She walks out of the palace gate and, almost at once, the world changes. The encyclopedia describes the moment from one classic version: she can no longer tell east from west, heaven and earth grow dim, and she is already on the road to the land of the dead.
One of the strangest things about the Bari songs, scholars point out, is where the underworld is. It is not deep below the earth. It lies on the same level as our world, just beyond the familiar places. Walk far enough, and you arrive. A Korean funeral song puts it the same way: they said the road to the underworld was long, but it lies just outside the front gate.
On her way, Bari meets immortals playing baduk and chess, who give her help. She sees the Ten Kings of the underworld judging the souls of the dead, and is shown around the hells. In some versions she uses the magic she has been given to break open the gates of hell and the walls of its fortresses, freeing countless sinners and sending them on to paradise.
The price of the water
At last Bari reaches the guardian of the medicinal water. In the Seoul versions he is Mujangseung, a huge and fearsome god. He does not simply hand over the water. He asks a price: Bari must work for him. She carries water for three years, gathers firewood for three years and tends the fire for three years. In the end she becomes his wife and bears him seven sons. Only then does she receive the water of life, together with flowers that can restore life to the dead.
On the east coast, the guardian is a mischievous figure who suspects from the start that the “young man” in front of him is really a woman, and keeps trying to prove it. Those versions are full of comedy, and the shaman’s audience laughs out loud. In the Seoul versions, the tone stays solemn throughout.
The funeral procession
Bari sets off home with her husband and children, crossing the river that divides the living from the dead. But as she reaches the human world she meets a funeral procession coming the other way. It is her parents’ bier. She has arrived too late. Her mother and father are dead.
Bari does not hesitate. She runs to the coffins, opens them, lays the flowers on her parents and gives them the medicinal water. The king and queen breathe again and sit up, alive.
The grateful king offers her anything she wants: half his kingdom, treasure, honours. Bari asks for none of it. Instead, she chooses to become the goddess who guides the souls of the dead. Her husband and sons are given places as gods too. And so, at every ritual for the dead, the shaman sings her story, because no one knows the road better than Bari.
Many Baris
The encyclopedia divides the versions into four main groups. The Seoul and central versions are the most solemn and focus on Bari as the guide of the dead, and they are considered the basic form. Northern versions say Bari’s parents were gods exiled from heaven, and in some of them Bari dies after bringing back the water. East coast versions are long and playful. Southwestern versions are shorter and vary a great deal, and in them Bari does not disguise herself as a man.
The encyclopedia also compares Bari with another famous dutiful daughter, Shim Cheong. When Shim Cheong becomes a queen, she can only weep for her blind father and wait for him to find her. Bari, by contrast, sees her parents’ funeral and immediately leaves her husband and children behind to run to them. She is not a girl things happen to. She is the one who makes things happen.
Bari today
Princess Bari has had a rich modern life. Her story has been retold as children’s books, a ballet and several webtoons, and the novelist Hwang Sok-yong reworked it into a modern novel, Princess Bari, about a North Korean girl’s journey across the world. To many readers, she has become a symbol of a woman who was rejected for being a girl, and who answered with courage rather than bitterness.
Quick facts
Princess Bari, or Baridegi, is the heroine of a shaman’s song sung at Korean rituals for the dead. Abandoned at birth as her parents’ seventh daughter, she alone agrees to fetch the water of life when they fall ill, walks into the underworld, pays the guardian with years of labour and marriage, and revives her parents at their funeral. She then becomes the goddess who guides the souls of the dead. About a hundred versions have been recorded across Korea.
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