Longka, the Dancing Girl

This is William Elliot Griffis’s literary telling of a captive dancer during an invasion of Korea. It is best read as a wartime legend, with attention to the way its narrator turns a woman’s death into a national symbol.

The historical setting recalls the Japanese invasions of Korea of 1592–1598. The Korean Tourism Organization’s account of Jinjuseong connects the fortress and the story of Nongae with that war.

Griffis’s original opening makes sweeping claims about the character of Japan’s people, the origins of their plants and animals, their buildings and their military technology. Those claims do not establish a reliable history. This retelling keeps the invasion and captivity essential to the plot without presenting those generalisations as facts about a people.

The source also calls the site the “Rock of the Falling Flower”. That name needs care: the Nongae tradition is associated with Uiam at Jinju, whereas Nakhwaam, the Falling Flowers Rock at Buyeo, belongs to a different legend about Baekje’s fall. The source’s place-name should not be used to identify the two sites as one.

In Griffis’s telling, when the invaders came, they camped in a town where there lived a beautiful dancing girl named Longka. She was a gisaeng, an accomplished young lady who sang beautifully. The invaders took her prisoner and made her serve in the general’s tent.

One night a great banquet was held in a famous pleasure hall called the Cliff House, because it stood on a high bank above a deep river. All the chief captains were invited, and the great room was lit by a thousand wax candles, tall and square, beautifully molded and painted with flowers, birds and pet animals, a detail of the lavish scene Griffis describes.

How charming the dancer was, and how lovely her graceful poses! Griffis describes dances that tell stories: of birds and flowers, of summer and of snowy winter landscapes, of a boat in a storm, a tiger in a trap, a brave soldier in battle, a sad lady in the palace, the fairy tales of the Western Queen Mother and many more. People who know the customs can read each story in the dancer’s gestures and poses and in the movements of her fan and sleeves, for there are languages that speak to the eye instead of the ear.

The lovely dancer was dressed all in white, with ermine-trimmed slippers and a jeweled sash, and her shining hair was arranged like a queen’s. At the end of every dance the audience applauded loudly.

When the dinner was over, the invaders’ general, who had drunk a great deal of wine, grew very rowdy and was no longer content just to watch the lovely girl dance. Some of the rough soldiers wanted to dance with her too. In the social setting described by Griffis, the dancer was not expected to dance with the men.

The rough soldiers would not take no for an answer and pressed her so hard that she felt both her own modesty and her country had been insulted. She thought of the thousands of her countrymen, brothers, fathers and friends, who had died on the battlefield defending their beloved land. Why should she not do the same?

So, pretending to give in to her country’s enemies, she led the general out of the banquet hall and down toward the river, to the very edge of the rock. Then, quick as thought, she seized his hands and leaped out over the cliff, pulling her enemy with her, and both of them passed into the other world.

Griffis remembers her death as an act of devotion to her country, ending with the image of poems clinging to the rock like azaleas on the hills. The beautiful image is the narrator’s memorial to a violent loss.

About this story

“Longka, the Dancing Girl” comes from William Elliot Griffis’s Korean Fairy Tales. Griffis places it during a Japanese invasion of Korea and surrounds the episode with a broad historical sketch. His claims about an iron-clad ship, national character and cultural borrowing are not repeated here as verified history.

The captive dancer’s refusal and fatal leap are retained. For comparison, the Academy of Korean Studies’ Uiam heritage text associates Nongae with Jinju. The Korea Heritage Agency’s account of Nakhwaam places that different rock at Buyeo in the story of Baekje’s fall. This distinction corrects the source’s confusing place-name without claiming that every detail of either legend is documented.

Read the original: Korean Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers with adult guidance: includes wartime captivity, coercive advances and a fatal leap that kills the dancer and the general. This is a tragedy, not a model for proving loyalty.

Who controls the meaning of the ending?

The soldiers refuse the dancer’s refusal; the narrator then presents her fatal response as national devotion. Readers can recognise the coercion and the desire to resist without treating death as the only honourable response. The descriptions of dance establish her skill before the violence, reminding us that a person’s life contains more than the way a patriotic legend remembers its end.

Compare two descriptions

Write one sentence about Longka as a performer and one about the way Griffis memorialises her. Which details of her living identity disappear in the final symbol? Discuss that difference without reenacting the leap.

Think about it

• How could people “read” a story in a Korean dance?
• Why did Longka feel her country had been insulted?
• Why do you think people still tell her story at the Rock of the Falling Flower?

Related stories

• Charan — another Korean tale of a brave and clever dancing girl
• The Magic Invasion of Seoul — another Korean story about invaders
• East Light and the Bridge of Fishes — a legend of Korea’s beginnings