Long Long Time Ago: Korean Folk Tales

by Dong-Sung Kim

From time immemorial, folk tales and stories have delighted children everywhere. Children are most happy when they are listening to stories as they fall sleep, and living the stories in their dreams.Sometimes the stories make them feel happy, sometimes sad, weak or strong, scared or brave, but mostly the stories become part of them as they grow up. Children who read many stories can learn how to live, how to dream, how to make their dreams come true, and how to sympathize with others. Here in these twenty most wonderful stories, children will meet the long-time friends of Korean children. A rabbit who outwits a tiger, a brother and a sister who became the Sun and the Moon, ogres and their magic clubs, a tortoise and hare who are totally different from the ones in Aesop's fable, rats who want the Sun to became their son-in-law, and many many more beloved characters.Such stories as these, while appealing to children everywhere, are also true reflections of Korean customs and tradition. So these stories also serve as a wonderful way to understand the culture and customs of Korea.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[James Lawner · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5*

While this was nice to read folktales from a country/culture I’m not familiar with, I will admit that I was not as impressed or captivated by these stories as I wanted to be, some of them just made no sense and the way they were written was just bland and juvenile and straight-up weird, and they were even some grammar and spelling mistakes (I know this book is meant for children, but there are better written children’s books out there. Also, I don’t know if these stories would make more sense in Korean or not). I would say the least-worst stories in this were:

The Lazy Man (good life lesson learned)
The Green Frog (hilariously ironic)
Green Onions (Kinda fucked up, but interesting)
The Donkey’s Egg (Villager foolery at its finest!)
The Ogres’ Magic Clubs (
The Fountain of Youth (The ending is just weird, but in a good way)
The Firedogs (Interesting explanation of eclipses)
The Heavenly Maiden and the Woodcutter (A Korean-style Greek Myth Story, unbelievable!)

And the most-worst stories:

The Son of the Cinnamon Tree (Classic flood myth, but it involves the son of a Fairy and a Tree and that’s porn territory I don’t wanna deal with)
The Vanity of The Rat (Rat parents go around asking random elements to marry their daughter, only to eventually marry their daughter to another rat, what was the point of the story??!!)
The Two Brothers (Two Brothers secretly give each other rice. That’s the entire story!)
The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon (Whatever)
The Rabbit and the Tiger (Mildly humorous)
The Tortoise and the Hare (Don’t be fooled by the title. How come all it took was ginseng roots to treat the Dragon King’s illness, but his advisors told him to eat raw rabbit liver? They should be fired!)
Mr. Moon and Miss Sun (Two kids become the sun and moon after climbing a rope to the sky in order to escape a tiger. WTF?!)
The Herdsman and The Weaver (Bland hetero romance)
The Dog and the Cat (Apparently, this is why dogs chase cats)
The Snail Lady (Enforced gender roles, eyy!!)
General Pumpkin (Farting saves lives!)
A Grain of Millet (The story had an interesting direction, but the ending was so bizarre and pointless)

Overall, this was a very strange collection of stories that I would not read again or read to children. Also, the illustrations were hit-or-miss.

[Nicole Shafer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stella: 4/5
Vivienne: 5/5

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's called "Long Long Time Ago..." charming. These stories are probably every bit as relevant to me as Aesop's Fables or anything from the Brother's Grimm...