Myths and Legends from Korea: An Annotated Compendium of Ancient and Modern Materials

by James H. Grayson

This book contains 175 tales drawn equally from the ancient and modern periods of Korea, plus 16 further tales provided for comparative purposes. Nothing else on this scale or depth is available in any western language. Three broad classes of material are foundation myths of ancient states and clans, ancient folktales and legends, modern folktales. Each narrative contains information on its source and provenance, and on its folklore type, similarities to folklore types from China, Japan and elsewhere.

Genres: Asian Literature

474 pages, Hardcover

First published November 23, 2000

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection of myths, legends and folktales. It is not only a great selection, but the documentation of the tales is very orderly an useful in the academic field. Each tale comes with a source, background information, scene descriptions and a commentary in which the author discusses the tale's function in Korean society, alternative versions or similar stories and particulars.

Although this book was selected to aid in my studies, it did not include the Korean folktale on which my thesis focuses. Therefore this book proved to be rather useless to my studies, were it not for the extensive introduction about folktale history and -study. :)

A thing that bothered me a little is that there are quite a few errors in the English used in the book. That should have been corrected before publishing...

Also, the commentary on the function of the various tales in Korean society never leads back to a source or method of coming to these conclusions. The functions are therefore presumably coming from the author's personal interpretation, which weakens their credibility.

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Instead of 21 pages of introduction, I would have preferred a 21 pages afterword. But anyway, I saw many tales that I knew, just with a different twist. In this version the bear and tiger not just get garlic but also some other plant to become human. And the story states they have to stay in the cave for 100 days but in the end it was only 21. So this should not have worked.
Ironically, when you read this book, you might be finished faster than you expected as most of the content is not the stories themselves but the analyzes of the stories. No joke, there was stuff like 10 pages of analyzes until the second story. And that one was the bear and tiger story again. And I don't want to read the same story over and over.
I found another version of the boy who was born from an egg and the king wants to kill him and throws him among animals for it, and yet the animals nourish the infant and later he becomes a founder or so. Sadly the same story occur over and over here. At least there was some variation between the version. In one story the whole "pregnant by the light" comes across as rather rapey. The girl even tried to flee from the light when it came into her room.
I did not expect to read anything about the Kaya federation as that one is usually ignored when it comes to the Korean peninsular.
Granted that was not as surprising as the story about these two Koreans becoming rulers of Japan. If it was the will of the gods that the two are in Japan, why is Korea plagued with calamity due to their absence?
Later stories mention first the Liao (Kithan) dynasty and then the Yuan dynasty. Funny coincidence, the Khitan were a protomongolic people and the Yuan straight up mongolian. Afterwards the Qing was there, which was a bit strange because prior there was only the Han dynasties there. In this Udegey tale the sister just claims to her brother, all women look alike and so he doesn't know wife and sister are the same? How did that work? Did he never try to visit his sister? They had kids even. 9 months is a long time.
In another story, you could say that the man killing his brother-in-law could be an accident because he aimed for the other bear. But his sister straight up told her that the she-bear and her two cubs was her and after seeing the three over and over he kills the she-bear just like that and then is shocked that it is his sister... this sounds like some dumb excuse story of a murder.
A dragon story was here as well, unusual to be honest, and it was a temple story, usually dragons are nowhere near that.
And some foxes were here as well, considered how present they are in korean pop culture today I am always surprised how little they are featured here and I am not even sure whethere this here is the famous nine-tailed fox In the story, a man called Kildal transformed into a fox and animal to human transformation is not common in the Korean stories that I know of. So this here is worth mentioning. That the guy in the next story was fathered by an earthworm in the shape of a man is more familiar. In fact, I am sure I read a similar story before. And it is also odd that the earthworm is in a pond, because, they would drown.
Speaking of water: in one story, the dragon king wants the buddhist scriptures, you know, for a being that is so often stereotypically stated to be wise and kind, "Eastern" dragons sure as hell are often pretty damn violent. Here he tried to get the scriptures via storm instead of just asking for them. What I am more surprised is that the black fox in the next story was also for bringing buddhism to Korea.
Of course I know that story: The king wants a son but the gods say only a daughter is possible or otherwise calamity would befall the kingdom, but the king insists and so the boy does became the cause for the downfall of the kingdom. Also, the boy was stated to always act feminine and act like a girl and I doubt this element is coincidental, other version of the story make it quite clear that this is a bad thing.
So one of the sons of the dragon king accompanied the king back home, helped him with political affairs and got a wife. So was he an actual dragon? Because even when the smallpox spirit shows up this guy is never stated to be a dragon. Speaking of dragons: the book has the story of the fox turned into a monk who bewitches the dragons to eat their livers... and I still wonder: Why do the dragons need this guy to shoot the fox with an arrow? Can't they kill the fox on their own?
And surprising that an evil old woman is actually a human, I would have suspected that she was some transformed animal.
I don't think the author needs to use all this Korean words. In one case here, could have just translated the word chapssal nok with dry rice cakel, his footnote describes it as just that.
And there is the story about the son avenging his father. He even kills the tigers in the same series, and so far the only new thing is that one tiger is transformed into a buddhist (somehow the transformed tigers always have some tiger trait in their human forms) and the big tiger is as big as a mountain and not a house.
And that goes on and on, so if you look for several classic korean folkstories, you can just look them up here.