Sobyeol-wang is the younger of Cheonji-wang's twin sons and the cunning counterpart to his upright brother Daebyeol-wang. In their father's court the two are set a flower-growing contest to decide who shall govern the living world. While Daebyeol-wang sleeps, Sobyeol-wang exchanges their flowering plants, claiming the flourishing bloom as his own and so winning the world of the living. Yet because his rule was founded on a lie, the living world remains beset by murder, theft, disease and deceit, ills that his brother, sovereign of the dead, can only partly remedy. The chant thus explains, through the brothers' rivalry, why the world of the living is so much more disordered than the world of the dead.