Korean Fairy Tales

Located at the very edge of East Asia, Korea is famous for its astonishing beauty and variety of nature. No wonder its inhabitants named their country so poetically: “The Country of Morning Freshness.”

For millennia, working on land cultivated by their ancestors, the Korean people created a rich, distinctive culture.

An integral part of this culture is oral folk art: fairy tales, legends, and myths. In the sultry summer evenings, old storytellers—iyagikuns—told stories to children. More than one generation of Korean kids listened with delight to tales about wonders and wizards, clever tricks of devils, and the spirits of deceased ancestors and relatives. In rare hours of rest, adults, like children, listened as well—believing in an all-powerful strongman who could rid them of earthly troubles and oppression by yanbans.

A “happy” grave, for which they searched and couldn’t find the one single place on the “only” happy mountain.

In prophetic dreams, in which the hero is visited by a seer in the guise of a gray-bearded hermit elder—a Daoist who offers wise counsel—or in the form of a heavenly fairy, who shows how to find happiness.