The Awful Little Goblin

A nobleman in Seoul had cause for a celebration, so he prepared a feast and invited all the family’s friends, and a great crowd of men and women came. Suddenly, in front of the women’s rooms, there appeared a boy of about fifteen with uncombed hair. The host and guests took him for a porter who had come with one of the visitors and paid him no attention, but one of the women, seeing him in the inner quarters, sent a servant to scold him and put him out. The boy did not move. “Who are you, anyway?” said the servant. “Whom did you come with, that you walk into the women’s rooms and won’t leave when you’re told?”

The boy stood stock-still and said not a word. The guests looked at him uneasily and asked one another whose servant he was. They had the servant ask him a second time, but there was still no answer. Then the women grew very angry and ordered him thrown out. Several of them took hold of him and pulled, but he was like a rock rooted in the earth and would not move at all. In helpless fury they told the men.

The men sent several strong servants, who all grabbed him together, but he did not budge a hair. “Who are you?” they demanded, but he gave no reply. The angry crowd sent ten strong men with ropes to tie him up, but he stood as firm as a great mountain, and they saw that no human strength could shift him.

“But he’s only human,” said one guest. “Why can’t he be moved?” So they sent five or six huge fellows with clubs to beat him to pieces, and they struck with all their might. It looked as though he would be smashed like an eggshell, and the noise of their blows was like rolling thunder. But he did not stir a hair or blink an eye.

Then the crowd grew frightened. “This is no man, but a god,” they said, and they all went into the courtyard, bowed down to him, pressed their hands together and begged him earnestly for a long time. At last the boy gave a mocking smile, turned, walked out of the gate and vanished.

Terrified, the company called off the feast. From then on, sickness fell on the household, host and guests alike. Those who had scolded the boy, tied him with ropes or beaten him all died within a few days, and others in the company caught typhus and other fevers and died too. People commonly said the boy was the Too-uk Spirit, but no one can say for certain. Strange indeed!

Im Bang, who wrote down this story, added his own comment. When the time comes for a family line to vanish from the earth, he said, disaster strikes it. Even if a great spirit walked through the door at a feast, the guests would have escaped if they had followed Confucius’s advice to be respectful and keep their distance, instead of insulting the spirit and making it angrier than ever. Still, he concluded, spirits and people were never meant to live together.

About this story

“The Awful Little Goblin” comes from Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, translated by the missionary James Scarth Gale from the Korean collection of Im Bang. Gale published it in 1913.

It is a short, eerie tale about the danger of mistreating a stranger who turns out to be a powerful spirit. The account says people called him the Too-uk Spirit but leaves his identity uncertain. Im Bang closes with advice he attributes to Confucius about respecting spirits while keeping a distance.

Read the original: Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes an attack with clubs and deaths attributed to a supernatural visitor.

The crowd makes the encounter worse

The boy’s silence gives the guests very little information, but each failed attempt to move him leads them to use more force. They change their behaviour only when they believe he is powerful. This makes their eventual bowing uneasy: is it respect for a visitor, or fear of retaliation? The fever deaths supply the tale’s supernatural punishment, not evidence that illness is caused by disrespect or that sick people are to blame.

Find the turning points

List what the guests do after questioning, pulling, tying and striking fail. At each stage, suggest a response that would avoid further harm. Which response could they have chosen before learning anything about the boy’s identity?

Think about it

• Why did nobody at the feast think the boy was important at first?
• What did Im Bang say the guests should have done?
• Why do you think the boy never spoke?

Related stories

• An Encounter with a Hobgoblin — another spirit from Im Bang’s collection
• Haunted Houses — more Korean ghost stories from Gale
• The Brave Magistrate — an official who stands up to a goblin