Korean Folk Tales
Tigers, rabbits, spirits, magistrates and lovers facing unequal power appear in these Korean tales. English sources include H. N. Allen’s Korean Tales, James Scarth Gale’s Korean Folk Tales and William Elliot Griffis’s Korean Fairy Tales.
Their historical language and commentary sometimes reflect the translator’s assumptions. Source notes separate those judgments from the narrative, while individual audience guidance identifies stories involving captivity, violence, sacrifice or other mature themes.
72 stories are in this collection right now.
Browse by region: Korea.
Korean Folk Tales
The Story of Chunhyang
A governor’s son climbs a mountain to admire the spring view and glimpses a girl flying up on a swing among the peach blossoms in a garden below.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Whom the King Honours
While his fellow students feast in the woods, a plain country scholar stays behind to guard the college shrine, never guessing that the King is watching.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Yun Se-pyong, the Wizard
A wizard so feared that his own family keeps away sets out to rid Seoul of a rival magician, who hides from him by turning into a beetle under a crock.
Korean Folk Tales
All Ages
Topknots and Crockery Hats
To stop the endless street brawls in his new kingdom, the wise counselor Kija invents a hat of baked clay four feet wide that cracks at the first blow.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Tokgabi and His Pranks
Deep in the warm, sooty flues beneath the floor lives a black goblin who hates anything white, hides the laundry sticks and makes the rice-pot lid dance.
Korean Folk Tales
All Ages
Tokgabi’s Menagerie
When the magic stone that keeps old Tip Pul’s wine bottle full goes missing, his dog Snap and his cat Mee Yow both set out to find it.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Woodman and the Mountain Fairies
A woodcutter climbs the mountain to cut fuel and stops to watch two long-haired fairies playing a board game on flat stones, quite forgetting the time.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Wild-Cat Woman
Late one night a young scholar is eating roasted chestnuts brought by his wife when the door opens and a second wife walks in, carrying the very same basket.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Visit of the Man of God
Hiding among the trees, a woodcutter watches a shining warrior from heaven threaten to flood the land while a Buddhist monk begs him for mercy.
Korean Folk Tales
The Voice of the Bell
King Tai Jo wants a bronze bell so huge that its music will roll over every street of Seoul and for miles across the hills, yet each casting cracks.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Vision of the Holy Man
On a calm night in a fishing village, a wandering holy man stares out to sea and warns the merchant To-jong that a giant wave will strike within hours.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Temple to the God of War
When officials cannot agree where to build a shrine to the God of War, a huge stranger in uniform asks to speak with the statesman Yi Hang-bok alone.