Nongae

Also called: Uiam

An anecdote passed down outside the official histories. It may or may not be true.

The story that, after Jinju fell, the courtesan Nongae embraced a Japanese commander at their victory feast and leapt with him into the Nam River. It is absent from the official histories and first appears in the Eou yadam.

This is an unofficial story, not official history. The Eou yadam, compiled by Yu Mong-in around 1621, tells it thus: Nongae was a government courtesan of Jinju. When the Japanese held a feast at Chokseongnu after taking the fortress, she dressed in her finest and stood on a rock by the river. When one of their commanders approached, she welcomed him with a smile, wrapped her arms around him and leapt with him into the water.

State records such as the Annals do not name her. The story passed among the people of Jinju until the state recognized it in the eighteenth century, building the Uigisa shrine beside Chokseongnu in 1740 and naming the rock Uiam, "Rock of Righteousness". The commander’s name, Keyamura Rokusuke, and the claim that Nongae was Choe Gyeong-hoe’s concubine are later additions found in neither Japanese nor contemporary Korean records.