Dragonfly Days (물잠자리)
A male 'chili dragonfly' (고추잠자리). This type appear is common in early October
Mid August and the dragonflies (잠자리) are hovering over puddles and pools of water. There are several ‘flushes’ of dragonfly with another in early autumn. I suspect these are collectively known as ‘water dragonflies’ (물잠자리) irrespective of actual specie. Sometimes you can see them in large numbers erratically darting here and there. Some are probably damselflies (실잠자리) which are distinguished from dragonflies in much the same way as butterflies are from moths, in that when resting a dragonfly’s wings are 90 degrees to its body, in contrast, a damselfly’s wings rest along the body itself. Dragonflies can fly in six directions, up, down, forwards, backwards and side to side.
Bright blue damselflies and deep brown reddish dragonflies seem to be particularly prominent around my area of Daegu at present.
A damselfly (실잠자리)
Clicking this link will take you to David Hasenick’s photo gallery which besides hosting some excellent photos of dragonflies, also has a number of other Korean categories.
While searching for information on Korean dragonflies, I discovered a ‘list’ of the variations in Korean regional dialect for ‘dragonfly.’
'Dragonfly' - regional variations in dialect
© Nick Elwood 2010. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Elwood 5566 
I’d love to get some really good pictures of these. But I think I need to go sit in the long weeds around my apartment for an hour or so. They are fast!
I just added another dragonfly post – and seemed to have missed this comment, Hamish. Koreans catch them with their hands, I’ve actually forgotten the method they use but awhile back I read that in Japan kids throw a weighted piece of twine in the air and this catches them. Not exactly sure how it works. These ones were landing very close (2 feet or so) to me, to rest in the sun. I took a load of close ups photos but few were any good.