Inmyeonjo (人面鳥) — The Human-Faced Bird

A being that drifts through the air on the body of a bird, wearing a human face. That face is most often a woman's, though rare sightings of a male visage have been reported. Whether the upper half is human and the lower half bird, or the entire body is avian with only the face belonging to mankind — in either case, those who meet its gaze are said to lose the power of speech.

Deep within the tomb murals of Goguryeo, certain things have been sealed away. The human-faced birds painted in the Deokheungni tomb (덕흥리 고분), named Cheonchu (天秋, "Thousand Autumns") and Manse (萬歲, "Ten Thousand Years"), are recorded as creatures of immortal longevity — beings that live a thousand years, or perhaps ten thousand. If one asks why they were painted on the ceiling of a chamber for the dead, there is only one answer: because they know the road between heaven and earth.

Four of them are carved into the Baekje Gilt-Bronze Incense Burner. There has long been a rumor that when the incense smoke rises and their forms begin to waver, they appear to breathe. The human-faced bird on the bronze cup-stand unearthed from the Tomb of King Muryeong holds a lotus blossom before its wings, giving rise to the theory that it is one and the same as the Kalavinka (迦陵頻伽) of the Buddhist sutras — the bird said to be born in the Himalayas and to sing the words of the Buddha.

The Dahuangbei chapter of the Shanhaijing (山海經) records two deities: Yuqiang (禺彊), who hangs green serpents from his ears and treads red serpents beneath his feet, and Jiufeng (九鳳), whose head is ninefold. Both bear human faces upon the bodies of birds. Whether they are gods, monsters, or something that walks the very boundary between the two remains unclear to this day.

In the winter of 2018, before an audience of hundreds of millions, the human-faced bird revealed itself once more beneath the open sky. Some said it was terrifying. Others said it was wondrous. That particular unease felt when something ancient steps into the light of the modern world — perhaps that is proof that the Inmyeonjo is still alive.