The Old Man Who Became a Fish

Some years ago, a well-known official became magistrate of Ko-song County. One day a visitor came to pay his respects, and at noon the magistrate had a meal served to him, including a bowl of skate soup. When the guest saw the soup, his face twisted and he pushed it away. “Today I am fasting from meat,” he said, “so please excuse me.” He turned very pale, and tears ran from his eyes. The magistrate thought this very strange and asked him two or three times what was wrong, until at last the guest could hold back no longer and told him everything.

“I have had a strange and unhappy experience,” he said, “which I have never told to a living soul, but since Your Excellency asks, I cannot refuse. My father was a very old man, nearly a hundred, when one day he came down with a terrible fever, and his body burned like a furnace. Seeing how ill he was, we children gathered round him weeping, sure that his time had come. But he lived, and a few days later he said to us, ‘This fever is so hot I can’t bear it any longer. I want to go out to the bank of the river in front of the house, watch the water flow by and be cooled. Don’t disobey me. Carry me down to the water’s edge right now.’

“We begged him not to, but he grew very angry. ‘If you don’t do as I say, you’ll be the death of me!’ he cried. So, seeing no way out, we carried him down and set him on the riverbank. The sight of the water delighted him. ‘The clear running water is curing my sickness,’ he said. A moment later he added, ‘I want to be all alone for a little while. Go off into the wood and wait until I call you.’

“We protested, but he flew into such a rage that we were helpless, and we feared that if we insisted, his illness would grow worse, so we gave in. We went a short way off and turned to look, and suddenly our father was gone from the spot where he had been sitting. We ran back to see what had happened. He had taken off his clothes and plunged into the water, which was all stirred up, and his body was half changed into a skate. We watched the change in terror and did not dare go near, and all at once he became a great flatfish, which swam and dived and played in the water with tremendous joy. He looked back at us as if he could hardly bear to leave, but a moment later he was off into the deep sea, and we never saw him after that.

“On the bank of the stream where he changed his shape, we found his fingernails and a tooth, and we buried them. To this day our whole family refuses to eat skate, and when we see our neighbors frying or eating it, we are filled with disgust and horror.”

About this story

“The Old Man Who Became a Fish” is from Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies, James Scarth Gale’s 1913 translation of Im Bang’s stories. A skate is a flat, wide fish of the ray family, long eaten as a delicacy in Korea.

The tale explains a family custom, a whole household that will never eat one particular food, through a strange and sad memory. It is one of several stories in Im Bang’s collection about very old people who change into animals.

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

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes serious illness, frightening bodily transformation, remains and a family’s lasting grief.

The same river brings relief and loss

The transformed father swims with joy, but his children watch in terror and never see him again. The tale holds those feelings together instead of giving everyone the same happy ending. At the meal, the host sees a dish while the guest sees a reminder of that separation. Beginning with the refused soup makes the family’s private experience explain an action that initially looks puzzling to an outsider.

Change the viewpoint

Write two captions for the moment the fish swims away: one based on its joyful movement and one based on the children’s last sight of their father. How do both captions help explain why the guest cannot eat the soup?

Questions to ask

• Why did the guest refuse the skate soup?
• Why did the old father want to go to the river?
• How do you think the family felt when he swam away?

Related stories

• The Man Who Became a Pig — another very old father who changes shape
• The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad — another tale of the deep sea
• A Story of the Fox — another strange tale from Im Bang