Koreans traveling in the West often encounter the image of man in his proverbial struggle with the dragon, a battle that usually results in human triumph: the man on horseback trampling the monstrous lizard, piercing him with a spear, transfixing him with a sword, or even fighting him barehanded.
Though the image is expressed in various forms—paintings, sculptures, crests, embroideries, decorations on walls, and the like—the iconography remains surprisingly constant. So much so that even after the most casual observation, a traveler cannot miss the message that Westerners must have fought and killed the beast before founding their community, and that the saga, the ideas, the memories they gained in the struggle were somehow built into their collective life thereafter.
On the other hand, a foreign traveler particularly one from Asia, is often filled with a sense of awe and perhaps of pity at the savage image of the huge beast's being slain. "Poor things, hunted and killed everywhere!"
But mostly the former sentiment prevails, as Asians are accustomed to adoring the dragon's power, admiring his vitality, worshipping his supernatural character, and supplicating him for a piece of his blessing. Indeed, instead of even thinking of killing him, we have on the whole aspired to share certain aspects of his wild glory. For in our tradition, getting a glimpse or even having a dream of the supernatural beast was supposed to bring luck of unthinkable proportion to an ordinary mortal.
To be frank, I was profoundly depressed on occasion and even despaired when looking at Western depictions of human figures fighting the animal against obvious odds but in an apparently unshakable conviction of ultimate triumph. Why hadn't we Orientals ever thought of really fighting him instead of thinking of him as absolutely above us? I wondered. But then one day I found I had missed the point of it all.
Of course, we had confronted the dragon when it came to a matter of our vital concern, in our own peaceful but firm way—not single-handedly but collectively, and not for any earthly glory or welfare but for a beauty: for the sake of a beautiful woman.
Thus, one day in a small town in Europe, as I was looking at a plaque on the top of a gate showing a mounted knight engaged in a fatal combat with the lizard, I remembered a tale of a long-ago era, about the time when we Koreans began to be aware of ourselves as one nation.
An image came vividly to my mind: A multitude of people gathered on the seaside, small and helpless figures chanting, shouting, and gesticulating against a background of overpowering nature, of desolate hills and a rough sea. Out of this reverie emerged a picture filled with the words that made up a story, and account of how it came to happen.
The nature of beauty
Once, a long, long time ago, but not so long ago that we can easily think what happened at that time had nothing to do with us, there lived a beautiful girl. She was so beautiful that everywhere she went people immediately gathered around her, watching and admiring
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