If you've watched more than a few K-dramas, you've already met them — even if you didn't know their names. The man in black who comes for the dying. The giant serpent coiled around a thousand-year grudge. The grandmother who somehow knows everything about a newborn. Korean folklore is full of beings beyond the famous Gumiho and Dokkaebi, and three of them turn up again and again on screen.
Here's who they really are in Korean myth — and exactly which dramas brought each one to life.
The Grim Reaper (저승사자)
The jeoseung saja (저승사자) is Korea's grim reaper — but he isn't death itself. He's more like a civil servant of the afterlife: a guide whose job is to escort a soul from this world (이승, iseung) to the next (저승, jeoseung). In old folklore he arrives dressed in black, carrying a register with the deceased's name already written in it. There's no negotiating; when your name is called, it's simply your time.
What makes the Korean reaper so compelling on screen is that he's a bureaucrat with a soul. He follows rules he didn't write, witnesses every kind of human grief, and often carries his own quiet sadness. Modern dramas lean hard into that melancholy — the reaper as a beautiful, lonely figure caught between duty and feeling.
The traditional jeoseung saja wears a black hat and robe (and, in folk belief, a deathly pale face). Contemporary dramas keep the all-black look but restyle it as a sharp black suit and fedora — instantly recognisable as "the reaper" to any Korean viewer.
The Imugi & the Dragon (이무기 · 용)
Korea's dragon (용, yong) is nothing like the fire-breathing monster of Western fantasy. The Korean dragon is a benevolent water deity — a bringer of rain, a guardian of rivers and seas, and a symbol of kings. But every dragon starts somewhere, and that's where the imugi (이무기) comes in.
An imugi is a giant serpent that has not yet become a dragon. In the legends it must endure — a thousand years in the water, or the favour of the heavens, or possession of the yeouiju (여의주), the wish-granting dragon orb — before it can finally ascend into the sky as a true dragon. That long, aching wait for transformation is pure drama fuel: a creature so close to glory, and so easily turned bitter by being denied it.
The dragon orb is the Korean dragon's source of power and the imugi's ultimate prize — roughly the dragon's equivalent of the Gumiho's fox bead. Whoever controls the yeouiju controls the creature's fate, which is why it sits at the centre of so many supernatural plots.
Samshin Halmi, the Birth Goddess (삼신할미)
Samshin Halmi (삼신할미) — literally the "birth grandmother spirit" — is the goddess who presides over conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and the health of young children. In traditional belief she sends each baby's soul into the world and watches over it through its most fragile years. A new mother's family would lay out a simple offering of rice and seaweed soup — the same miyeok-guk Koreans still eat after giving birth and on birthdays — to thank her.
She's the gentlest being on this list — not a monster or a reaper, but a protector. That's exactly why dramas use her to represent fate, blessing, and the unseen hand guiding a character's life.
Ever wondered about the bluish birthmark many Korean babies are born with? Folk tradition says it's the mark left where Samshin Halmi gave the baby a gentle smack to hurry it out into the world — a sweet, very Korean way of explaining a real thing.
Why these beings still matter
What ties the reaper, the dragon, and the birth goddess together is that each one marks a threshold in a human life: being born, becoming who you're meant to be, and dying. Korean folklore gave a face to each of those mysteries — and K-dramas keep reaching for those faces because they carry instant emotional weight that a brand-new character never could.
Next time one of them appears on screen, you'll know the centuries of story standing behind them.
Meet the Gumiho, the nine-tailed fox and the Dokkaebi, Korea's mischievous goblins — or try our AI Drama Recommender to find dramas full of Korean supernatural beings.