The Boxed-up Governor

A certain scholar-official was once Governor of the city of Kyong-ju. Whenever he visited the Mayor and saw the dancing girls there, he would tap them on the head with his pipe and say, “These girls are devils, ogres, goblins! How can you stand having them near you?”

Naturally, everyone who heard this disliked him, and the Mayor himself could not bear his rude behavior. He sent a secret message to the dancing girls: “If any of you can find a way to trick this Governor and make a fool of him, I’ll reward you richly.” One of them, hardly more than a child, said she could do it.

The Governor lived in the part of the city where the Confucian Temple stood, with only one servant, a young boy. The dancing girl who had taken on the task dressed as an ordinary townswoman and often walked past the main gate of the Temple, calling the Governor’s boy out to her as she went. Sometimes she showed just a glimpse of her face, sometimes she stood in full view in the gateway. The boy would go out, she would talk to him for a moment and then she would leave. Sometimes she came once a day, sometimes twice, and she kept this up for a long time. At last the Governor asked the boy who this woman was who kept calling for him.

“She’s my sister,” said the boy, who was in on the plan. “Her husband went off peddling a year or so ago and hasn’t come back, so she has no one else to help her, and she often comes to talk things over with me.”

One evening, while the boy was away eating his supper and the Governor was alone, the woman came to the gate and called for the boy. His Excellency answered and invited her in. She blushed and seemed very shy, standing modestly to one side.

“My boy is out just now,” said the Governor, “but I’d like a smoke. Would you fetch a light for my pipe?” She brought the light, and he said, “Sit down and have a little smoke too.”

“How could I dare?” she replied.

“There’s no one else here. Never mind.”

Since there was no way out of it, she did as he said and smoked a little. Suddenly the Governor found his heart warming toward her. “I’ve seen many beautiful women,” he said, “but I truly think you’re the loveliest of all. Since I set eyes on you, I’ve quite forgotten how to eat or sleep. Couldn’t you come and live here with me? I’m all alone, and no one will know.”

She pretended to be shocked. “Your Excellency is a nobleman and I’m a low-class woman. How can you think of such a thing? Are you joking?”

“I mean it truly. It’s no joke,” he said, and he swore an oath that he meant every word.

“Since you say so, I’m very grateful, and I’ll come,” she said.

“How wonderful to have met you like this!” said he.

“But there is one more thing,” she went on. “I’ve heard that the place where Your Excellency is staying is very sacred, and that by ancient law no man may have a woman here. Is that true?”

The Governor clapped her on the shoulder. “Well, now, how do you know about that? You’re right. What shall we do?”

“If you’ll leave it to me, I’ll make a plan,” she said. “My home is nearby, and I live alone too, so if you come quietly to me at night, we can meet and no one will know. I’ll send a felt hat with the boy, and you can wear it as a disguise. In a common man’s felt hat, no one will recognize you.”

The Governor was delighted. “How clever you are! I’ll do just as you say. Now be sure you’re there,” he told her two or three times.

The woman went off into the house she had pointed out. When evening came, she sent the hat with the boy, and the Governor arrived as agreed. She welcomed him, lit the lamp and brought him food and drink, and they talked and drank together. He called her to come and sit close beside him. She hesitated a moment, and just then a shout was heard outside, followed by a great commotion. She bent her head to listen, then cried out in alarm.

“That’s my husband’s voice! It was my bad luck to be married to that miserable wretch. He’s the worst man alive, and violent beyond anything. Three years ago he left me, and I took another husband, and we’ve had nothing to do with each other since. I can’t think why he’s come now, and he sounds very drunk, too. Your Excellency is in terrible danger. What shall I do?”

She went out and called, “Who comes making such a racket at midnight?”

“Don’t you know my voice?” came the reply. “Why don’t you open the door?”

“Aren’t you Chol-lo, Brass Tiger? Didn’t we part for good years ago? Why have you come?”

“Your leaving me for another man has always made me furious,” the voice answered. “I’ve something special to say to you.” And he pounded the door open and came thundering in.

The woman rushed into the room. “Your Excellency must escape somehow!” But in such a little thatched hut there was nowhere to hide except an empty rice box. “Get in here, please!” she said, lifting the lid and hurrying him in, and the Governor, half undressed in his haste, was bundled into the box.

From inside he heard the man come into the room and quarrel with his wife. “We’ve been apart for three years,” she said. “What right have you to come and make such a fuss now?”

“You threw me out and took another man,” said he, “so I’ve come for the clothes I left and the other things that belong to me.”

She threw his belongings out to him, but he pointed to the box. “That’s mine.”

“It is not,” she replied. “I bought it myself with two rolls of silk.”

“But one of those rolls I gave you, and I won’t let you keep it.”

“Even if you did, do you mean to carry off this whole box for one roll of silk? I won’t allow it!” And so they argued back and forth.

“If you won’t give me the box,” he said, “I’ll take you to court before the Mayor.”

A little later day broke, and he had the box carried to the Mayor’s office to have the case settled by law, with the woman following behind. When they came into the court, the Mayor was seated in the judgment seat, and they laid their dispute about the box before him.

After hearing them, the Mayor gave his judgment. “Since each of you paid half the price, there’s nothing for it but to divide the box between you. Bring a saw.”

The servants brought a saw and began to cut the box, when suddenly a cry came from inside: “Save me! Oh, save me!”

The Mayor pretended to be astonished. “Why, there’s a man’s voice in there!” he said, and he ordered the box opened. The servants found the key, the lid swung back and out came a half-dressed man. At the sight of him, the whole court shook with laughter, for it was none other than the Governor.

“How does Your Excellency come to be in this box, of all places?” asked the Mayor. “Please come out.”

The Governor, huddled up as best he could, climbed out onto the open veranda with his head hanging, nearly dying of shame. The Mayor, laughing until his sides ached, ordered clothes to be brought, and the first thing that came was a woman’s green coat. The Governor hastily turned it inside out, threw it on and dashed off to his rooms in the Confucian Temple.

That very day he left Kyong-ju for good, and the narrator closes by imagining the people continuing to laugh at the Boxed-up Governor.

Where this story comes from

“The Boxed-up Governor” is from James Scarth Gale’s 1913 book Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, translated from the collection of Im Bang. It is a comic tale with no spirits in it at all, just a clever trick played on a pompous official.

The dancing girls of the story were gisaeng, trained entertainers who sang and danced at official gatherings. The Governor insults them in public while privately falling for one of them, and the joke, arranged by the Mayor himself, exposes him in front of the whole town.

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

For older readers with adult guidance: an adult official pursues an entertainer described as hardly more than a child; the plot includes sexual hypocrisy, threatened domestic violence and a frightening confinement prank.

The audience changes his behaviour

In public the Governor insults entertainers; in private he pursues one while believing she is someone else. The Mayor then makes that concealed conduct visible to the court. The performer controls the disguise and timing, but she is also carrying out a powerful official’s scheme. Her cleverness does not remove the imbalance between her and either man.

Mark public and private speech

Compare the Governor’s first insult, his private invitation and his cry from the box. Who can hear each? Explain how the shift in audience, rather than a change in his beliefs, drives the exposure.

Talk about it

• Why did the Mayor want to play a trick on the Governor?
• How did the dancing girl and her helpers get the Governor into the box?
• Do you think the Governor deserved to be embarrassed? Why or why not?

More stories like this

• Charan — another clever Korean dancing girl from Gale’s collection
• The Honest Witch — another proud official who learns he was wrong
• Longka, the Dancing Girl — a brave Korean dancer in a Griffis tale