Imugi (이무기 / 螭龍)

Beneath cold rivers and within the depths of still pools, there is a creature that has crouched and waited for a thousand years. It is said that the sole desire of the imugi is to seize the divine orb at the end of its long ascetic vigil, and rise into the sky amid storm and thunder to become a true dragon. Yet in the very moment of that ascension, a single chance meeting of eyes with a human being is enough to dissolve a millennium of waiting into nothing.

The imugi has been called by different names in different regions — isimi, miri, yeongno, ganghcheori (강철이 / 強鐵), hoelyong (훼룡 / 虺龍), and others. That so many names exist suggests that sightings, too, were never few. The rumor that each river and each pond still harbors its own imugi, still waiting, has never quite faded away.

In the village of Baekjeon in Byeongcheon, South Chungcheong Province, a tale is told of a nine-year-old boy who drove off an imugi using a mulberry-wood bow and arrows made of mugwort stalks. Stand beside the Turtle Rock (구암 / 龜岩) at the village entrance, and the legend pointing to that very spot — the place where the serpent was shot, the sasacheo (사사처 / 射蛇處) — remains as impossible to erase as letters carved into stone.

An imugi that failed to become a dragon is said to turn its bitterness upon the world. The proverb "an imugi that couldn't become a dragon" is used to describe someone petty and pitiless — because people have always known, instinctively, how deep a poison long frustration can become.

Even today, there are those who whisper that a sudden flood, or an unidentifiable wailing heard rising from a river, is nothing other than the fury of an imugi that failed its ascension. If you stand at the water's edge and sense something vast stirring beneath the surface, do not let your gaze linger. The imugi that has been seen has lost its heaven — and it will remember you.