Cheonyeo Gwisin, The Virgin Ghosts of Korea

Another popular female ghost from the East Asian area is the Cheonyeo Gwisin, or the Virgin Ghost, who originates from Korean folklore. When it comes to contemporary, global culture, they would likely be confused with the Japanese yurei made popular by movies such as The Grudge and The Ring; both wear white, both have long black hair, off-colored skin and deep-set eyes typically depicted by heavily encircling them in black liner. However for the Cheonyeo Gwisin, there's a cultural importance to the long black hair hanging down her back and face.

Cheonyeo Gwisin never married, and therefore, according to old Korean traditions, lacked the right to tie up their hair up until marriage, and so these ghosts are caught forever in a state of having to wear their hair down--supposedly embittered by their inability to fulfill their life's role of getting married and serving their husband.

These ghosts of girls unfulfilled are said to haunt bathrooms, forests, schools, and abandoned buildings, but are especially attracted to newlyweds and their own former villages. There are several ways in which to dispel the Cheonyeo Gwisin. Many old interpretations of the tale suggest that the best way to handle a Cheonyeo Gwisin is to arrange a marriage between it and an available bachelor ghost. Other interpretations suggest that it will go away if it is allowed to possess a body and finally have sex, as seen in the popular drama "Oh My Ghostess." Another older method of appeasing the ghost was to present it with carved phallic symbols. Haesindang park, otherwise known as "Penis Park," now a tourist destination on the east coast of South Korea, was once the site of a Cheonyeo Gwisin haunting, where according to the legend of Auebawi and Haesingdang, this remedy was first potentially discovered. 

According to the legend, a young girl was left to wait by her betrothed on a nearby rock while he gathered seaweed from an alcove. While he was working, a storm came in and washed the girl into the sea where she drowned. Afterward, the village suffered many hardships, including the ability to catch fish. One day, while a man was trying to fish, he relieved himself into the ocean. Immediately after, he caught the first fish since the girl died. The villagers reasoned that exposing the ghost to male genitalia helped ease her frustrations at not being able to fulfill her wifely duties before her death, and began to populate the area with carved phallic statues to appease her and bring prosperity.

Throughout all of its incarnations, be it phallic symbols or ghostly-marriage, is a male presence finally "solving" the unresolved issues of the female ghost. Today in popular media, as the conversation changes around gender roles, this dynamic is still being played with. In the music video below, Lee Jung-Hyun embodies the Cheonyeo Gwisin, haunting a male ghost that refuses to help her fulfill her role as a wife.  In a modernized depiction of the old legend, the Cheonyeo Gwisin is shown as campy, gleefully predatory, pursuing her mark while terrorizing him and clinging to him, all set alongside lyrics that demand adherence to strict gender roles: "Be stronger," "Be more chic." The romance is treated as something both repulsive; ("I want to leave you," "leave,") and something that the singer has no agency in ("Actually I'm waiting for you," "What you gonna do me?"). By pairing this song with Cheonyeo Gwisin imagery, it's expressing the legend in different terms not only in regards to the time period, but in regards to the voice; this time, it's the Cheonyeo Gwisin who is controlling the narrative.