In the reign of Heongang, the forty-ninth king of Silla, the capital was unusually well off.
Houses and walls ran on without a break and there was not one thatched roof, the record says. Music and singing never stopped along the roads, and wind and rain came in season all year.
This chapter begins in the middle of that good stretch.
The King in the Fog
The king had gone out to Gaeunpo and was on his way back.
Resting at the water’s edge at midday, he was suddenly closed in by cloud and fog and lost the road. He thought it strange and asked the court astronomer. It was the work of the dragon of the East Sea, came the answer, and must be undone with a good deed.
The king ordered his officers to build a temple for the dragon nearby. The moment the order went out, the clouds parted and the fog scattered. So the place is called Gaeunpo, the harbour where the clouds parted.
The Son Who Followed to the Capital
The dragon of the East Sea was pleased and appeared before the king with his seven sons.
They praised the king’s virtue and danced and made music. One of the sons followed the king into the capital and helped him govern. That man’s name is Cheoyong.
The king did two things to keep him there.
He gave him a beautiful woman as a wife and an office called geupgan. Marriage and a post were how a man from the sea was kept on land. That becomes the ground for what happens next.
Four on the Mat
Cheoyong’s wife was very beautiful. A plague spirit desired her, changed into the shape of a man and went into the house at night. Then it lay down secretly on the mat. Cheoyong came home late from being out.
There were four legs on the mat. Two are mine, he asked, so whose are the other two. They were originally mine, he said, but what can be done about what has been taken. He sang the words, and danced, and withdrew.
This song survives as the Cheoyong song. It is written in hyangchal, so what scholars read it as in today’s language differs a little. Even so, the counting of the four legs and the last question are the same in every reading.
The record does not say that he was angry.
The Face on the Door
The spirit then showed its true form and knelt in front of Cheoyong. It said it had desired his wife and wronged him, and was moved that he had shown no anger. Then it swore an oath. From now on it would not enter a door where his face was drawn, even only drawn.
That one promise is what kept this story alive. People of the country began putting Cheoyong’s face on their doors. It was to keep bad things out and let good things in. The king came home and built a temple in a good place east of Yeongchwisan and called it Manghaesa.
What the Dancing Told Them
The entry does not stop here but adds a few more scenes. When King Heongang went to Poseokjeong, the god of the southern mountain appeared and danced before him. Only the king saw the dance. Gods appeared and danced in other places too.
The record sets down what those dances came to say. Gods came out and danced to tell the country it was going to fall. And people did not read it. They took it for a good omen and enjoyed themselves more and played more.
Silla declined after that. An entry that began in a well-off season closes like this. Good news and bad news can arrive in the same shape, and this chapter shows it twice.
Today, On Withdrawing
Cheoyong’s story lasted not because he is a man who won.
He recovered nothing that night. There is no line saying his wife came back, or that the spirit was punished.
And yet the other side knelt. People read that differently. You can see it as the strongest move available in front of an opponent he could not fight. You can also see it as a man who lost staying lost.
Both readings are inside this story. Our work brings its own moments of withdrawal. Rage and you go down to the same level as the other person; hold it in and you look soft.
What Cheoyong did is a little different from holding it in.
He said what he saw. Four legs, two of them not his, and taken from him, all of it sung before he withdrew. He did not pretend nothing had happened.
What you say on your way out is what divides the rest.