Arang, the Ghost of Yeongnamnu Pavilion

Long ago, in the town of Miryang, where the river curves beneath steep green hills, the magistrate had a daughter named Arang. She was gentle and lovely, and her father, who had lost her mother when she was small, treasured her above everything. She had been raised by her old nurse, who had looked after her since she was a baby.

Arang was often lonely. Her father was busy all day with the business of the town, and as the daughter of a magistrate, she could not wander the streets or the riverbanks as she liked. She spent her days in the inner quarters of the official residence, sewing and reading, with only her nurse for company. So when the nurse suggested something to do, Arang was always glad of it.

Above the river stood Yeongnamnu, a pavilion so grand and graceful that poets came from all over the country to write verses there. On moonlit nights its tall red pillars and sweeping roof seemed to float above the shining water.

Arang had often seen it from the windows of her room, glowing in the moonlight. She had always wanted to stand there herself and look out over the river at night, the way the poets did.

One such night, Arang’s nurse came to her with a suggestion. “The moon is beautiful tonight, my lady,” she said. “Come and see it from Yeongnamnu.” Arang trusted her nurse completely. She followed her out of the house and up the steps of the pavilion.

The night air was cool and smelled of pine and river water. Arang held up the hem of her skirt as they climbed the long stone steps, and when she reached the top and saw the whole valley silver under the moon, she gasped with delight. For a moment she forgot everything else.

But the nurse had been bribed. Waiting in the shadows was a young clerk from her father’s office, a man who had long wanted Arang for himself. The nurse slipped away, and the clerk stepped out of the darkness and seized Arang.

“Nurse!” Arang cried. But the old woman had already gone down the steps and vanished into the dark, and nobody answered.

Arang fought him with all her strength. She would not give in. In his fury, the clerk drew a knife and killed her, and then he carried her body down from the pavilion and hid it in the bamboo thicket by the river.

She struck at him and twisted out of his grip and screamed for help, but the pavilion stood high above the town, and the river below swallowed every sound.

The vanished daughter

In the morning, Arang was gone. Her father searched the town, the hills and the riverbanks, but there was no trace of her. Rumours began to spread that she had run away with a lover. The magistrate, broken by grief and shame, gave up his post and went back to the capital, a ruined man.

The clerk went on working in the magistrate’s office as if nothing had happened. The nurse said nothing. And down by the river, in the thick bamboo, the wind rustled through the leaves day and night, and nobody went near.

A new magistrate was sent to Miryang. On his first night in office, as he sat reading in his quarters, a cold wind blew through the room and the candle flickered. The door swung open, and in the doorway stood a young woman with loose, tangled hair, her clothes stained with blood. She opened her mouth to speak, and the magistrate fell dead of fright before she could say a word.

The next magistrate died the same way, on his first night. So did the one after that. Soon no official in the kingdom would accept the post. Miryang, people said, was cursed.

The servants found him in the morning, sitting upright at his desk with his eyes wide open, the candle burned down to nothing beside him.

The townspeople whispered about it in the market. Officials in the capital went pale when the name Miryang was mentioned. The king’s ministers offered the post to one man after another, and one man after another found some reason he could not possibly go.

The brave magistrate

At last, when no one else would go, a man volunteered. Some say he was a poor scholar who had failed to find any other post; some say he was simply braver than everyone else. Either way, he travelled to Miryang and took up his duties, and on his first night he did something none of the others had done. He lit a candle, sat up straight, opened a book and waited.

The servants begged him to sleep somewhere else. He sent them away. The house grew silent. The candle burned lower. Outside, the river murmured in the dark, and somewhere an owl called. He read the same page over and over, and found he could not remember a word of it.

At midnight the cold wind came. The candle bent and guttered. The door opened, and there stood the ghost, pale, bloodstained, her hair hanging loose, her eyes full of sorrow.

The magistrate’s heart pounded, but he did not run, and he did not faint. “Who are you?” he asked quietly. “And what do you need from me?”

The ghost bowed low. “I am Arang,” she said, “daughter of the magistrate who governed this town before you. I did not run away. I was murdered at Yeongnamnu, and my body lies hidden in the bamboo by the river. I have come to every magistrate to beg for justice, but none of them would stay to listen.”

Up close, the magistrate saw that she was very young, hardly more than a girl, and that what he had taken for rage in her face was only a deep and terrible sadness.

She told him everything: the nurse, the moonlit pavilion, the clerk and the knife. And she told him the name of the man who had killed her.

As she spoke, the magistrate’s fear drained away and turned into anger. “You have waited long enough,” he said. “I promise you, he will not escape.” The ghost looked at him for a long moment. Then she bowed again, and faded away into the dark like smoke, and the candle flame stood up straight and still.

Justice

The next morning, the new magistrate called all the clerks and servants of his office together in the courtyard. Arang had told him how he would know her killer, and he looked along the line of faces until he found the one he was looking for. He had the man seized and questioned, and the clerk, faced with what the magistrate already knew, confessed to everything.

Some tellers say that Arang had promised to show him the killer by turning into a white butterfly and landing on the man’s hat. As the line of clerks shuffled past, a white butterfly drifted down out of nowhere and settled on one of them, and the magistrate pointed and said, “That one.”

Then the magistrate went down to the river and searched the bamboo thicket, and there he found Arang’s body, exactly where she had said, as if she had died that very day. He had her buried with full honours. The murderer was put to death, and the nurse who had betrayed her was punished too.

From that night on, the ghost never appeared again. New magistrates came and went from Miryang in peace. And the people of the town, remembering the girl who had fought so hard and waited so long for justice, built a shrine for her beside the river below Yeongnamnu.

Aranggak

A small shrine called Aranggak still stands near Yeongnamnu in Miryang, and rites are still held there in Arang’s memory. For many years the town’s spring festival was named after her, before it was renamed the Miryang Arirang Festival.

Talk about it

Why do you think the earlier magistrates died, while the last one survived? What does Arang want from the living? And why do you think so many Korean ghost stories are about someone waiting for the truth to be told?

Words to know

Yeongnamnu (영남루) is the famous pavilion above the river in Miryang. A wongwi (원귀) is a ghost who died with a wrong left unrighted. Sinwon (신원) means clearing someone’s name and setting a wrong right. Aranggak (아랑각) is the shrine to Arang.