Jizi

Who is Jizi?

Jizi was a semi-legendary Chinese sage who is said to have ruled Gojoseon in the 11th century BCE. Early Chinese documents like the Book of Documents and the Bamboo Annals described him as a virtuous relative of the last king of the Shang dynasty who was punished for remonstrating with the king. After Shang was overthrown by Zhou in the 1040s BCE, he allegedly gave political advice to King Wu, the first Zhou king. Chinese texts from the Han dynasty onwards claimed that King Wu enfeoffed Jizi as ruler of Chaoxian. According to the Book of Han, Jizi brought agriculture, sericulture, and many other facets of Chinese civilization to Joseon.

Gija may have been the object of a state cult in sixth-century Goguryeo, and a mausoleum to him was established in Goryeo in 1102, but the first extant Korean text to mention Gija was the Samguk Sagi. Starting in the late thirteenth century, Gija was fully integrated into Korean history, being described as a successor to the descendants of Dangun in the state of Old Joseon. Following the spread of Neo-Confucianism in Korea in the fourteenth century, scholars of the Joseon Dynasty promoted Gija as a culture hero who had raised Korean civilization to the same level as China, and Gija became an integral part of Korean cultural identity.