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
Ages 9-12
The Mirror That Made Trouble
A miller from the countryside visits Seoul for the first time and buys a round metal disc with a man inside, never guessing what it will do to his family.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Old Man Who Became a Fish
A guest bursts into tears at the sight of skate soup and explains how his feverish father, nearly a hundred years old, begged to be carried to the river.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Man Who Became a Pig
A man travels from the far countryside to ask a minister’s advice, because his father, nearly a hundred, shut himself in for a nap and turned into a pig.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Man Who Lost His Legs
A merchant buying seaweed on Quelpart meets a legless old man who tells how his shipwrecked crew was trapped in the castle of a man-eating giant.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Man on the Road
Trapped by an invading army in 1636, a crowd of refugees sits down beside a calm stranger and a strip of cotton cloth as the horsemen thunder past them.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Magic Peach
At a feast on the Island of Gems, a young prince eats a peach of long life, and the palace maid kneeling beside him seems to grow lovelier every moment.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Magic Invasion of Seoul
Dozing on a ferry across the Han River, a gentleman dreams that the God of War marks his palm and orders him to stop seven loaded horses bound for Seoul.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Literary Man of Imsil
An Imsil scholar uses invisible guards to force payment of a wine bet, then uses the same strange authority to protect a town and rescue a girl's soul.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The King of Yom-na (Hell)
Spirit soldiers carry off a sick scholar to the judgment hall of the underworld, only for the King there to find that they have arrested the wrong man.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The King of the Flowers
To warn a pleasure-loving king, the great scholar Sul Chong tells of a royal peony who forgets his garden kingdom for the charms of a spicy cinnamon rose.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The King of the Sparrows
A kind man mends the broken leg of a young sparrow, and the grateful bird flies off to tell the Sparrow King, who sends back a seed packed with treasure.
Korean Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Ill-Fated Priest
A giant priest beats a scholar and all his servants by a river, until a thin archer on a bony pony rides up and decides it is time someone stopped him.