SDLC 113 Biweekly Language Learning Post #4

[June Choi]

Recently, Jimin and I have been exploring many different Korean folk tales to not only share nostalgia about our parents telling us bedtime stories when we were children, but also to look into the stories for their deeper meanings that we didn’t realize before. Korean folk tales serve as an excellent way to learn more about Korean culture through the different values and morals that they highlight. A couple of the ones that we read include The Princess and the Beggar, The Korean Cinderella, The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon, and Heungbu and Nolbu. The Princess and the Beggar is a rather feminist Korean folktale that revolves around a weeping princess who chooses a village beggar as her partner as she refuses to marry based on social status. This forces her to be expelled from her father’s court, and eventually, the beggar becomes rather skilled and educated enough to be welcomed back to court with the princess. The Korean Cinderella is a twist on the original Cinderella story that involves a Korean girl named Pear Blossom is treated as a slave by her stepmother and is forced to complete 3 nearly impossible tasks. With the help of some magical creatures, Pear Blossom is able to complete them and also become a nobleman’s wife. Overall, I thought the theme revolved around karma, and that this version of the Cinderella story was more unexpected and deep in meaning. The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon is the story of a tiger who mistakenly thinks that a dried persimmon is a deadly predator and runs away. It illustrates the dynamics between the strong and the weak, and ends with the moral that even the weakest can win against the strongest by outwitting them. Finally, Heungbu and Nolbu was one of my favorite folktales that Jimin and I read, and it was also the one that I was most familiar with already. This tale was written in the late Joseon Dynasty and is one of the most popular bedtime stories for Korean children. Heungbu and Nolbu are brothers, with Nolbu as the greedy older brother and Heungbu as the kind and empathetic younger brother. They found that their father was to split his fortunate in half for each of them, and Nolbu dramatically threw out Heungbu’s family in an effort to keep the fortune all to himself. Following this, Heungbu remained impoverished until he came upon an injured swallow that he nursed back to its full health, after which swallow gifted Heungbu with seeds that yielded gemstones. Nolbu demanded Heungbu to tell him of his secret, and after Nolbu tried to recreate the fortune himself by breaking a swallow’s leg, Nolbu was showered with misfortune. Overall, this tale emphasizes that good deeds bring wealth and luck. Additionally, it challenges the traditional Korean value that the eldest son is the most important of the family. Overall, I felt that these Korean folktales are a very valuable part of our Korean cultural learning, especially since they are one of the first lessons of Korean values for Korean children. Even though the writing and vocabulary is very elementary, I thought that the deeper meanings behind the stories made them worthwhile for my Korean cultural learning. In the future, I would like to explore more advanced Korean novels that also have Korean values embedded in them.

[Jae Wan Kim]

Great post June! I've never heard that folktale before, but after reading your post, I really enjoyed it! I completely agree with the sentiment that although we heard these stories from our parents for about a thousand times, we never really understood its true meaning. Reading these stories now is a great way to trigger some good childhood memories.