The shrine was destroyed in the nineteenth century, and the works are currently preserved at Jeju National University as a government-designated Important Folklore Cultural Property.

In many mainland traditions of Korean shamanism, portraits of the gods are hung in a shrine room above the altar.

These works hold great religious significance, being both the objects of daily worship and a medium by which the depicted deity sends forth divine inspiration, to the point that "the shaman does not venture to touch them without first making offerings and petitioning the gods, requesting their indulgence".

Many reasons have been suggested for the lack of shamanic paintings on the island, including a tradition of offering worship in exposed environments such as forests and caverns rather than inside buildings;[7] the impoverished state of the island during the Joseon era (1392–1910) which made materials difficult to afford; and the fact that the local Buddhist tradition had gone nearly extinct under persecution by the Neo-Confucian Joseon state, so that there remained very few goldfish monks.

[3] According to the Gung-dang bon-puri, which includes mythological narratives, Sangsa-daewang has two wives: Jungjeon-daebuin, his primary spouse, and Jeongjeol-sanggunnong, his lesser wife.

The Dragon King's youngest daughter opens the chest and finds the handsome Cheonjado reading a book inside.

[18] The motifs of the Gung-dang bon-puri, such as gods with multiple wives, conflicts over eating habits, and the abandonment of a child into the sea, are typical of Jeju village-shrine myths.

[19] The ten surviving paintings are all drawn with mineral-derived deep-color pigments (jinchae) on Korean paper[20] using an ink brush, with gold leaf in parts.

[21] The six male gods are dressed in an overcoat, often with long cords of cloth—symbols of military command in traditional Korean attire—hanging from their waist or chest,[26] and are seated in lotus position.

[33] The god holds a white fan, and a lacquered bamboo staff (not used by Korean monks) with a red-beaked crow perched on it.

[23] Cloud and chrysanthemum motifs[a][27] are drawn on the fringes of Jeseok's overcoat; dancheong patterns on the pink cloth that flutters around him; and diagonally positioned rectangles on his red kasaya.

[32] Eomora Wonmang-nim (Wonmang in the painting) wears a black gat hat over a headband, and a green overcoat with red and blue fringes,[35] probably cheollik: the traditional coat of Korean military commanders.

[33] Like Wonmang, he wears a green overcoat with red and blue fringes and cloud and chrysanthemum motifs,[27][35] as well as black wooden shoes, and holds another lacquered folding fan.

[33][38] Gamchal-jiban'gwan-han-jip-manora (Gamchal in the painting) wears a form of futou, an East Asian official's black headdress; a green overcoat with red and blue fringes, chrysanthemum motifs,[27][40] and wide sleeves;[33] and a pair of unhye, leather shoes with cloud motifs typically worn by noblewomen.

[38] Sangsa-daewang (Sangsa in the painting) wears a very unusual turban-like headdress surrounding a white and red disc that may reflect the god's origins in the Western Regions of Central Asia.

[33] Bon'gung-jeon (Bon'gung in the painting) wears a jokduri coronet with jade beads[4] over a chignon fixed by a hairpin in the shape of a bird.

A couple who desired children would have a shaman select an auspicious day for them, then visit Naewat-dang and make sacrifices to its gods.

Once the rituals were completed and the shaman departed, the couple would have sex within the shrine in order to conceive the hoped-for child.

[3] That year, a man accused a local official of offering sacrifices at Naewat-dang before a portrait of Danjong, the teenage king who had been usurped and murdered in 1455 by his uncle Sejo.

[49] Hyun Yong-jun, one of the most important scholars of Jeju shamanism,[50] considers it almost certain that the two currently missing portraits were the ones destroyed in 1466, presumably because the gods that they depicted resembled Danjong.

It is not known whether the Naewat-dang paintings survived this event,[52] although Hyun suggests that they probably did, as a post-1702 restoration project would logically have repainted portraits of all twelve gods and not just ten.

The Jeju National University professor Hyun Yong-jun fortuitously encountered the woman in 1959, when she was already nearly eighty years old.

[56] Attempts to estimate the rough date of creation have focused on stylistic elements, which suggest that they were painted during or before the 17th century.

[57] According to the Goguryeo murals of the mid-first millennium CE, the upper garments of Korean women were long enough to reach the buttocks.

By the 19th century, the Korean woman's upper garment was 25 centimeters (10 inches) long on average and could not fully cover the breasts.

[59] Meanwhile, the portraits depict the upper garments as being tucked under the skirt, a practice unusual in the Goryeo era (936–1392) and afterwards but popular in Later Silla (676–936) fashion.

Over the course of the second millennium, the two boards on the side of Korean futou headdress became increasingly thicker, growing horizontally shorter and vertically wider.

[30] There may be a connection to tree-human hybrid deities that feature in other village-shrine myths,[67] such as the goddess described below: Her body is torn in the thorn bushes and all her skin is shed.

[68]The cords of cloth that hang from the Naewat-dang deities are reminiscent of snakes, which are sacred patrons of wealth and a favored manifestation of village gods in Jeju religion.

[64] The red-beaked crow may be linked to an episode in the Chasa bon-puri myth in which the god of death transforms into a bird and perches on a bamboo pole to escape the hero Gangnim.