These sculptures are located in Shinnam village, Samcheok, Gangwon Province, South Korea in park called Haeshindang Park, in translation – “Temple of the sea goddess”.

Haeshindang Park was created because of the girl, a virgin, who died tragically.

Legend has it that four hundred years ago a fisherman took his young virgin fiancee to a rock a short way off shore to collect seaweed.

He left her there promising to pick her up.

But whilst he was engaged in his work on shore the weather deteriorated, a strong wind started to blow and huge waves crashed against the shore.

It was too perilous for the fisherman to sail back to his fiancee and she was stranded on the rock.

Eventually the high waves swept the young virgin off the rock and she drowned.

From that day forth the sea was stormy and the fishermen were afraid to go out fishing, and very often the most courageous of them did not return to the shore.

And once, a fisherman ventured out into the sea. And immediately the wind and the waves rose, the boat was tossed from side to side, and the fisherman had already began to say goodbye to his life, but then he saw the ghost of a girl who was coming to him.

He begged and begged for mercy. In despair, the fisherman took off his pants and cried to the ghost:

“I do not have anything. You may take away the most precious thing, just let me go back to the shore !”

And the girl who had never seen anything like this calm down and so did the sea.

The fisherman, still hardly believing in his miraculous escape, returned to the village and told what had happened.

Since then the people of the village began carving phalluses and performing rituals.

Once they began doing this, the fishermen were again able to achieve a good catch.

Categories: erotic art and craft, wood carving

