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Traditional Korean fairy tales and contemporary Korean fiction:

A case study of “The woodcutter and the nymph”

Ross King

Associate Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia

“Little Red Riding Hood was my first Love. “Every rewriting of a tale is an interpretation;

I felt that if I could have married Little Red and every interpretation is a re-writing.”

Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.”1 Maria Tatar

Charles Dickens

O. Introduction: The problem of traditional culture in a “modern” world

The challenges surrounding the reception and adaptation of traditional cultural forms in modern society

are daunting under any circumstances but particularly acute in the case of Korea, which has undergone

rapid, even cataclysmic, sociocultural and political change in the past century. In this paper I examine

the adaptation and modernization of traditional cultural forms in the context of the somewhat blurred

concepts of folktale-turned-fairy tale-turned-literary fairy tale. In Korean, the relevant terms are mindam

“folktale,” yenniyagi “old tale; traditional tale,” chŏllae tonghwa “traditional children’s story” and

ch’angjak tonghwa “literary children’s story.” Korea has a rich folk narrative tradition that includes

folktales and fairy tales, but that was neglected during the Japanese colonial period and then again during

the rapid modernization and industrialization of the 1960s-1980s. The 1980s on have seen renewed

interest, and even a boom, in traditional children’s literature and fairy tales, but indigenous Korean

cultural production in this sphere remains overshadowed by Western models and translations; the sorts of

innovations that might lead to a revitalization of folktales as literary fairy tales (for both children and

adults) have been slow to come, due in no small part to the conservative tendencies of traditionally

oriented folklorist scholars. If the “woodcutter and nymph” story is any indication, retellings of fairy tales

have fared better as adult literature, and it is therefore the overtly intertextual and/or parodic retellings of

1 Cited on the inside cover of Ornstein (2002).

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this popular tale that are the subject of this paper. The reasons for my choice of this story will become

clear presently, but suffice it to say that its salience in Korean culture rivals that of, say, the “Little Red

Riding Hood” story in the Western fairy tale tradition.

1. “The woodcutter and the nymph” and its various versions

Ch’oe Unsik, an authority on pre-modern Korean literature, especially folk narrative and

vernacular fiction, has studied the “Woodcutter and nymph” story at great length. The results of his

research are best summarized in Ch’oe (1988) and Ch’oe and Kim (1998: 300). According to the latter

book, the “Woodcutter and nymph” story occurs in three basic versions:

-Basic type (including one w/o the woodcutter’s ascent to heaven (Version I)

-Type with the ascent to heaven and the woodcutter’s passing a number of tests set by

the Jade Emperor/Supreme Deity before he can marry the nymph (Version II)

-Type with the added episode of the woodcutter’s return to earth (Version III)

Following Ch’oe and Kim (ibid.: 300-301), let us examine in detail the plot structure of Version III, the

richest in content and the most interesting type:

A. A poor woodcutter is living with his mother;

B.

B1. The woodcutter saves the life of a deer being pursued by a hunter;

B2. In gratitude, the deer tells him where to find a pond where heavenly maidens bathe at night,

and instructs him to steal the winged robes of one of the nymphs in order to keep her as his

bride. He also warns the woodcutter: “Do not give the robes back to her until she has borne

three children;” (Taboo no. 1)

B3. The woodcutter follows the deer’s instructions, marries the nymph, lives happily, and has

two children;

C. Thinking that now that they have two children it should be all right to give in to the nymph’s

requests for her winged robes, the woodcutter gives them to her, whereupon she flies up to

heaven with the children;

D. The depressed woodcutter seeks out the deer again, and is instructed to go back to the pond.

This time, he must ride up in the well-bucket that comes down from heaven to draw water. The

woodcutter does so;

E. Once in heaven, the woodcutter has to pass a series of tests given by his in-laws;

F. With the help of his wife or of animals he had helped earlier, the woodcutter successfully passes

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the tests;

G. The woodcutter, living happily in heaven, comes to miss his home on earth (his widowed mother,

in particular) -- so much so that he gets sick;

H. The woodcutter rides a dragon steed/heavenly steed lent by his wife down to earth to meet his

mother. The nymph issues a warning: “Don’t set foot on the ground” (or: “Don’t eat pumpkin

soup”); (Taboo no. 2)

I. Because the woodcutter fails to observe the second taboo, he is unable to return to heaven.

Because he always stares up at the sky calling the names of his wife and children, he is

transformed into a rooster.

2. Retellings of “The Woodcutter and the Nymph” for Adults

2.1. Introduction: ‘Silly Child, Fairy Tales are for Adults’

There appears to be a strong preconception on the part of the Korean literary establishment that

folktales and fairy tales are for children. At first blush, this is not an entirely unreasonable position,

especially if we recall Roehrich’s (1986: 1) remark that “the fairy tale is the first poetic form with which

people come into contact in their lives.” But Mieder (1987: xiv), in his important book on the question of

innovation versus tradition in folk literature, poses the question of “what value and meaning fairy tales

have for adults.” He continues (ibid.: 2), “scholars have long realized that these tales were originally not

children’s stories but rather traditional narratives for adults. . . . ” Altmann and Vos’s two volumes (1999;

2001), as well as the many volumes edited or written by Jack Zipes and others, testify to the enduring

influence of fairy tales on 20th century North American, English and German literature for adults. Can the

same be said for Korean fairy tales and Korean modern literature for adults, and if so, to what extent?

The only study of the “Woodcutter and nymph” tale of which I am aware that specifically treats

its reception in literature for adults is Pae Wŏllyong (1993), a book that devotes one chapter to

intertextual treatments of this story. For example, Pae examines his own poem, “Sŏnnyŏ ege puch’inŭn

p’yŏnji” (Letter to the heavenly maiden), designed as a “metaphor for divided families,” national division,

and mankind’s desire for spiritual salvation. Besides this lone poem, Pae also treats a 1972 play by O

Yŏngjin titled “Hanne ŭi sŭngch’ŏn” (Hanne’s ascent to heaven), and three short stories: Cho Haeil

(1977), Sim Sangdae (1990-1991) and Kim Chiwŏn (1992).

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Because Pae’s analyses of O Yŏngjin (1972) and Cho Haeil (1977) are so detailed, I refer the

reader to his book for these two works. Here, I intend to focus on those works which make explicit

reference to their intertextual relationship with the “Woodcutter and nymph” tale through their titles. Thus,

I start with Yun Hŭnggil (1988), a story overlooked by Pae, and then, like Pae, I examine Sim Sangdae

(1990-1991) and Kim Chiwŏn (1992), but I also examine three other stories that have appeared since

Pae’s book was published: Yun Yŏngsu (1997), Sŏ Hajin (1998) and Angela Hur (2000). For Sim Sangdae

and Sŏ Hajin’s stories, in addition to the original Korean works, I also make reference to the English

translations of these stories by Julie Kim and Janet Hong, respectively – two works completed as part of

an ongoing project on intertextuality in modern Korean fiction at the University of British Columbia.

2.2. Yun Hŭnggil (1988)

The first post-1945 Korean story of which I am aware that makes explicit intertextual reference

to the “Woodcutter and nymph” tale is Yun Hŭnggil’s very short piece titled “Sŏnnyŏ ŭi nalgaeot” or

“The fairy’s winged robes” from his 1988 collection Hwansang ŭi nalgae (Wings of fantasy). A story of

barely five pages in the original Korean, this work is narrated from the point of view of a modern Korean

husband, and begins as follows:

My wife’s one constant wish, ever since we were married, has been to take off on a trip.

And not just a quick there-and-back over the weekend, but permanent residence.

Once a year my wife suffers a terrible bout of homesickness. Almost without exception, the

duration of this affliction coincides with the time around our wedding anniversary.

Yun’s narrator notes wistfully that for the duration of his wife’s affliction, she is convinced that

once upon a time her hometown was in heaven and that she had once been a fairy. But an unfortunate

bathing experience and the theft of her “fairy uniform” by a woodcutter have destined her to a life on

earth. As far as the husband is concerned, his wife has “the same face, the same shape,” and if anything

has changed since their marriage, it is this: whereas before she was alone, now she has borne three

children. But come to think of it, with childbirth, “her waistline has expanded considerably; stepping up

and down into the traditional Korean kitchen area has produced varicose veins in her legs; wrestling with

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the accounts in the family ledger has put wrinkles on her face; and her knuckles and the backs of her

hands have grown coarser.” But, the husband thinks, compared with the changes he has put himself

through for his wife and children, these are nothing.

“Honey, would you pull this out for me please?” So says the husband’s wife to him one day as

he steps in the door after another day at work. The old “remind-him-we’re-getting-older-by-asking-him-

to-pluck-a-gray-hair” trick. And so the husband realizes it is that time of year again, but he feigns

ignorance. Leaving his wife with the impression that he forgets their impending wedding anniversary, the

husband hatches a plot: “If we’re to go away on a trip, she’ll need a set of winged robes. And since this

will be our tenth, let’s hang a nice set of wings on her this year. Even if it means borrowing, I’ll have to

buy her a nice set of clothes for our anniversary this year.”

On their anniversary, the husband calls home from work and asks his wife to meet him near the

office – they need to go to his boss’s housewarming party. When she appears, thoroughly disgruntled by

now, he fesses up and suggests they go to his wife’s favorite dressmaking shop of old. But nobody in the

shop remembers her anymore, and after asking the price of several outfits, she tells her husband:

“Everything is ridiculously expensive. Just give me the money instead. I’ll buy a cheap

pair of slacks and t-shirt off the rack somewhere else.”

“But you can’t go on a trip dressed like that!” I shouted angrily.

“Since when can a woman with three kids in tow go on stupid trips?” she replied. Come to

think of it, she was right. With one kid under each arm, there’d still be one left behind. The fairy

who had become the woodcutter’s wife would never be able to return to heaven again.

And so ends Yun Hŭnggil’s little story. The setting has been modernized to 1980s Korea, and

the characters updated to a middle-class, white-collar worker and his wife. In Yun’s version, the

traditional story has become a metaphor for married life in modern South Korea, and though the stance is

not particularly critical, it does nonetheless point to the confinement of married life for Korean women, at

the same time providing a light-hearted snapshot of sexual politics in 1980s South Korean husband-wife

relationships through the lens of the “Woodcutter and nymph” tale.

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2.3. Kim Chiwŏn (1992)

Kim Chiwŏn’s story is titled “Namukkun kwa sŏnnyŏ” (The woodcutter and the nymph), and as

Yi Namho (1992) rightly notes is in no sense a parody. The story starts with a song sung “to the beat of a

drum.” This song, set off as a discrete poem in the text, is in fact Kim Tonghwan’s poem “Simsim

sanch’ŏn e” (Deep, deep in the mountains). The narration continues: “These are the sounds of the local

woodcutters coming down from the hills, one of whom is an aging bachelor living alone with his mother.”

And so the familiar story begins. In essence, Kim Chiwŏn’s version is a glorified vehicle for the

presentation of poems by P’ain 巴人 Kim Tonghwan 金東煥, (1901-?), who is none other than Kim

Chiwŏn’s father.

The poems and poem excerpts sprinkled strategically throughout the narrative are from Kim’s

Tonghwan’s 1932 collection Haedanghwa (Wild roses), and they fit the text beautifully. Kim Chiwŏn in

addition interjects new elements into the tale, usually of a philosophical or even quasi-religious nature,

but on occasion heavy-handedly didactic. Thus, at the juncture where the deer thanks the woodcutter for

saving its life (Kim Chiwŏn 1992: 195), the woodcutter replies: “Here I was thinking, as I do everyday,

that I’m dying little by little in the mountains as I gather wood, but now that I think about it, I’m alive!

And because I’m alive, I was able to save you from death. Don’t you think?” On the next page, in

reaction to the woodcutter’s remark that he is unworthy of a heavenly maiden, the deer replies:

“We all came from the same place. Heaven and Earth share the same roots, and it is from

those roots that Heaven and Earth have sprung. We who live in oblivion of this fact are no different

from fishes in the sea who have forgotten about water. . . . Without mutual sacrifice and assistance,

we cannot live in this world.”

In most instances, the fit between Kim Tonghwan’s poetry and the tale is elegant. Thus,

concerning the fairy and her new life on earth (ibid.: 199):

As she came to understand how to live in harmony with her mother-in-law, her husband, and

her neighbors, she had to learn how to express her own demands while understanding the many

demands and opinions of others.

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I can’t see her because of the mountains

But behind that ridge an eagle flies.

I can’t see her because of the clouds

But today, too, up there in the sky a seagull soars.

White wings, wings speeding at arrow’s pace,

Wings! Wings! Soaring up and up, ever upward.

Earthbound, all I can do is gaze up all day at the sky,

at wings.

Kim Tonghwan, “Chŭlgŏun sesang” (Happy world)

Kim Chiwŏn’s most blatant intervention in the narrative is when she depicts the fairy as awestruck at

the miracle of birth. Watching over her sleeping infant, she tells it (ibid.: 200): “But when you stop crying,

my child, open your eyes and ears -- there are flowers, songs and pictures. Look and listen to your heart’s

content, and give wing to your thoughts. Our thoughts created songs, painted pictures, built houses, and

wove cloth. The flowers and the wind, the streams, the sun, moon and stars -- somebody must have

thought these up, too. Who do you think that might be?” The narrator continues: “Mother Nature was so

hugely vast and beautiful as to be impossible for the human body to take in with all its senses. Unable to

handle this world with her human body, the fairy experienced anguish.”

This theme of nature’s miraculous beauty and mankind’s inability to comprehend or appreciate

it fully must explain the one other (and otherwise rather bizarre) innovation of this retelling – the physical

deformities of the heavenly maiden’s children: “Before he knew it, the woodcutter had become the father

of three children. But nothing is ever perfect; the first child lost its sight and so was blind, the second

child was deaf, and the third child was mute. ” And so, the nymph says to her sleeping children:

“Children, my dears: if I hadn’t wanted you, you would not have come into this world. There is no

way to see, hear and feel all in this world; is that why you have closed your eyes, your ears and your

mouth? Should we have waited for our human bodies to evolve further before being born into this

world? Perhaps our minds and bodies are not up to living on this earth. Living in this body on this

earth, humans are already ruined. We are all destined to know pain; my wounds led me to you and

they help me understand your pain. . . .”

In a poetic back-and-forth song medley by the woodcutter and fairy that is reminiscent of

scenes from The tale of Ch’unhyang, the fairy sings to her husband (ibid.: 203-205):

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A gravel field with nary a speck of dirt

Yet somehow the wild rose blooms.

Standing ever firm in the daily winds

Somehow its one bunch of petals scatters.

How could it be otherwise? We were lucky to meet at all.

Kim Tonghwan’s “Uri saimae” (The way we are)

The images of heaven vs. earth, alien vs. earthling, and other-worldly appreciation of earth’s

natural beauties are played out through the bodies of the nymph and her children, and especially through

the fairy’s “out-of-body” experience when she regains her winged robes and ascends to heaven with her

disabled children (ibid.: 206):

The fairy slowly realized that she did not live inside a human body. . . . [She] felt the

freedom and joy of having no physical body. Now that she had shed her physical body and the cold,

hunger, fatigue and pain that it experienced, she was mere spirit; it felt boundlessly peaceful. But at

the same time, she recalled the memories of times spent with her husband and mother-in-law in her

human body. She regretted, and felt spiritually pained, that she had not loved everything on earth a

little bit more before she had departed. She also regretted leaving with the children. The children had

been borne of her on earth, but were not hers. The children had to learn what kind of world gave

bodies like theirs, how to live with bodies that were less convenient than others’, and how to mend

their bodies.

There was no human life not worth living. She had heard it said that disease was an unnatural,

undesirable thing; that mental illness brought on physical illness; and that sickness was the work of

the devil. But the fairy was able to realize that when humans experienced pain and joy, it was in

order to gain something. Pain and joy were one and the same thing -- joy brought tears, and pain

brought tears. We were all mirrors of each other’s lives. Having to live more uncomfortably than

others because of a physical deformity, or living a lowly life despised by others -- both were actually

heroic lives, now that she had shed her human form and could look back on it.

The generally heavy-handed tone of Kim Chiwŏn’s rendition assumes quasi-religious

dimensions hinting at first at a sort of “return to God-the-maker” (ibid.: 208-209):

As she looked back on the life as a Korean woman that she had just lived, the fairy could feel

her heart racing, beating like a drum. It was her anticipation of the joy of becoming one with a huge

light and love. . . . When she had lived on earth, she had resigned herself to the notion that “one

never goes back home,” but the fairy realized now that we all eventually return home, and that

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coming home is always an infinitely joyous occasion.

Some Korean children’s literature critics seize on the nymph’s nakedness as a problematic issue

in the retellings of this story, and this aspect of the human body also comes to the fore in Kim Chiwŏn’s

retelling. Thus, when the woodcutter seeks out the deer again for assistance in rejoining his family in

heaven, the deer tells him (ibid.: 210): “I heard you calling. Why did you give her the clothes? Didn’t you

know that the difference between this world and that is all in the donning and doffing of clothes?”

The quasi-religious tone of Kim Chiwŏn’s narrative becomes explicitly Christian near the end

of her tale, when the woodcutter – now reunited with his wife in heaven – tells her of his desire to visit his

dear old mother on earth. The nymph sermonizes: “Going back to the human world is difficult enough,

but going there and coming back to heaven is even more difficult. Surely you know that Adam and Eve

are still trying their hardest to come back after all this time.”

The final and in some ways most disappointing innovation of Kim Chiwŏn’s retelling is that

when the woodcutter falls from the heavenly steed before his mother, he wakes up as if from a dream

(ibid.: 214). “How will I ever regain my lost paradise, thought the woodcutter to himself as he implored

the heavens. In that instant, the woodcutter turned into a rooster.” And so ends the story.

There is much to dislike in Kim Chiwŏn’s retelling: the religious preachiness and didactism, the

way the children are written out of the story (“They were born again as humans on earth. With new

parents and new lives. Each of the three children was born into a different family, and each time they

were born, I went to watch over them,” the fairy informs her husband when he rejoins her in heaven), and

the curious innovation of turning the woodcutter’s interlude in heaven into a dream, which in turn seems

mismatched with the preservation of the origins-of-the-rooster etiological tale.

Pae (1993: 211), too, criticizes Kim Chiwŏn’s version for the fact that all turns out to be a dream in

the end; he finds it “regrettable that [the author] was unable to highlight the contemporary significance of

the work.” Pae also criticizes Kim’s casting of the children as disabled, but I prefer to see this feature as

an interesting, if not entirely successful, attempt to use corporeal imagery to emphasize mankind’s

inability to appreciate the miracle of life.

Overall, though, the most innovative and successful aspect of Kim Chiwŏn’s retelling is the skillful

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way in which she has woven nineteen poems (or poem fragments) from Kim Tonghwan’s Wild roses. Yi

Namho (1992), too, praises the style and tone of the story, concluding that Kim Chiwŏn “has created a

beautiful space.” If one recalls Zipes’s (2000, Introduction: xviii) remark about the fairy tale as a genre

designed to “evoke in a religious sense profound feelings of awe and respect for life as a miraculous

process,” then on balance we must judge Kim Chiwŏn’s re-telling of the “Woodcutter and nymph” a

success. Finally, it seems somehow appropriate that Kim’s retelling of this tale, with its distinctly Korean

emphasis on filial piety, should serve as a filial elegy to the memory of her father, kidnapped by North

Korean forces during the Korean War, never to be heard from again.

2.4. Sim Sangdae (1990)

Sim Sangdae’s retelling of our tale, titled “Namukkun ŭi ttŭt” (The woodcutter’s wish), starts

with the woodcutter and nymph already in heaven and reminiscing about life down on earth:

The woodcutter started grousing again, squeezing his alcohol-blotched nose tightly. . . . He was back

on the sauce again. Ever since the second day he had set foot in heaven after riding up in the well

bucket the previous summer, his longing for the valley had turned into a sort of constant obsession.

This whining had continued after fall had passed and well into the spring. Once the cold had abated

and the peach trees were blooming gorgeously in the front yard, the woodcutter became even more

of an obnoxious drunk.”

Thus, Sim Sangdae’s woodcutter appears to have an alcohol problem; a flashback provides the

background:

From start to finish the woodcutter and the deer were responsible for the incident. And that was

already eight years ago. . . . The deer thanked the woodcutter over and over and asked him if he

had a wish. The woodcutter replied bluntly.

“If only I could marry, I’d die a happy man tomorrow.” He studied the deer’s face

closely. “And I wouldn’t even give a damn what the bitch looked like.”

That’s how it all had started.

Here again the nymph’s nakedness is seized on, but it is all about sex, with hints of perversion:

While the fairies were absorbed in their bathing, the woodcutter stole not only the wings,

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but also all the undergarments that lay on top of the wings. Then, he lay flat on his belly again,

captivated by a scene too enchanting for words to express, and grasping his loins. Truth to tell,

it drove him half-crazy as the fairies submerged and rose, rose and submerged in the water. No

scene could have been more maddeningly ecstatic.

The depictions of the nymph’s nakedness continue as she searches in vain for her winged robes

on shore: “From time to time, the fairy would lose her balance because of the pine cones and pebbles

beneath her bare feet, and her naked body, glowing in the peach-colored caress of the moonbeams, danced

on the surface of the water. The woodcutter was half-dead from watching this naked nymph leap about.”

All this is too much for Sim Sangdae’s woodcutter, and the scene ends in what can only be

described as rape. Moreover, and to the certain dismay of some Korean fairy tale critics, the nymph here

is most emphatically naked when she follows the woodcutter home:

The woodcutter offered his hand, but the fairy, shaking her locks, could only sob and did not

attempt to get up. She couldn’t have stood up if she had wanted to: she wasn’t even wearing

undergarments.

“Look, miss -- when it gets late at night, the tigers and wolves come out, and god knows what

else. Why don’t we look for yours wings or whatever tomorrow? For now let’s just go to my place,

okay?”

The woodcutter was beside himself. There was a hot fullness in his loins and his legs were

shaking. Throwing discretion to the wind, he pounced on the fairy like a tiger.

After a considerable while, the woodcutter stood up from beneath the tree and readjusted his

trousers, a gleeful expression on his face as if to say he had just swallowed the moon. Carrying the

naked fairy in his arms, the woodcutter returned to his humble hut, passing through a forest

illuminated by the scattered beams of the full moon.

Sim’s focus on sex continues. Though their first encounter was by no means one of mutual

consent, Sim’s heavenly maiden soon takes a shine to human sexuality, but presently this joy of sex turns

perverse:

Yet even here in the woodcutter’s grass hut where the sound of laughter seemed it would never end,

an ominous sign reared its ugly head. The ominous sign started under the capricious skirt of a

capricious woman one capricious spring day. Time was when the voracious bride, even in the final

phases of pregnancy, would follow her husband to any valley or ridge and gladly lift her skirt day or

night. But finally she began to tire of the old know-you-what. They say that even the sweetest songs

grow tiresome at a second hearing, but the fairy turned up her nose with a look of disgust on her face

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and said:

“Ah! . . . This is so tedious!”

No matter how she indulged in sex, after toiling day and night for seven years she perhaps

understandably began to behave capriciously. Her whimsy soon turned to grumbling and the

grumbling worsened by the day, to the point where she showed symptoms of madness. The fairy’s

demands grew ever more bald-faced, moving beyond outrageous to debauched and kinky.

“Sweety -- like this. Come on, like this. Oh, more, more, just a little more.”

As the fairy’s sexual voracity turned to bestiality, she demanded over and over things they had

never done before. The husband, already drained, gradually lost what remained of his strength. The

fairy would pinch and twist at his waist and glare at him.

“Where has all your energy gone . . . huh? Where? Ah!”

And before long Sim’s heavenly-nymph-turned-nymphomaniac has transformed her older husband into an

impotent drunk: “The woodcutter thought he would lose all his hair because of her incessant sighing and

yearning for her wings. His premature ejaculation grew worse, and he took up drinking again.”

Sim’s version of the tale is nothing if not parodic, but the humorously parodic retelling of the

first part of the story on earth yields to a more serious parody when the story resumes where it began in

heaven. Life in Heaven is just too good. The woodcutter uses “solid gold chopsticks” to “stir his

ambrosia,” he wears “silk slippers,” and in general the family lives in the lap of luxury without a care in

the world. The woodcutter pesters his wife incessantly to ask her father – Sangjenim or the Supreme

Deity – to lend him a steed to ride down to earth:

The fairy was hurt, too. Quite apart from her husband’s pestering, lately the thought of going down

to earth had etched itself in her heart, too. It was all because of the children. The children were sick

and tired of doing nothing but eating and playing, and were turning into half-wits. All they did was

fight, and all they learned was how to eat, play, dance, and wander. Since nothing required any effort,

they couldn’t be serious about anything, and therefore there was no way for them to learn

compassion.

Unable to control his frustration a moment longer, the woodcutter barges in on the Supreme

Deity and tells him his wish – to return to earth:

“All I want is to live and work with the strength left in me. I can’t stand doing nothing but

eating and bumming around. My body doesn’t want to sit down calmly and wield nothing but a pair

of chopsticks.”

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“Haven’t you ever considered reading books and learning about the principles of ruling others,

or studying the management of financial affairs and training yourself in the techniques of gathering

wealth so as to better enjoy glory, riches and honors?”

“I . . . simply don’t have the head for fancy stuff like that. I just work till my hands are callused,

and I feed my family. And as for my children, rather than teaching them the art of ordering others

around or tricks to gather wealth, I plan to teach them how to spit into their palm, pick up an axe,

and earn an honest living.”

The woodcutter’s entreaties fall on deaf ears, and he takes matters into his own hands:

The security detail guarding Sangjenim dashed in and seized the axe, but the woodcutter didn’t

budge. Shaking his fist at Sangjenim, he bellowed:

“I don’t need your Heavenly laws or Heaven’s will! They’re all useless! I’m going down to

earth!”

The woodcutter broke free from the guards and pounced like a tiger on Sangjenim on his throne

and grabbed him by the throat. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Turning so that the hand

grabbing Sangjenim’s neck was behind him, he threw Sangjenim to the floor of the Audience

Chamber like a bundle of barley against a rock. Sangjenim fell in a heap, whereupon the woodcutter

sat astride his stomach and began strangling him with his strong hands.

“I don’t need your friggin’ ‘Heavenly laws.’ I’m just a woodcutter! Are you going to send me

down to earth or not? Tell me or else you die!”

Sim’s crucial innovation is that it is not just the woodcutter who goes back down to earth, but

the entire family – together and for good:

[E]very now and then, when the woodcutter was teaching the children how to chop firewood, he

would slowly look up at the sky and say:

“Heaven is a nice place. But it’s not as nice as here. Because you can’t work up there. Humans

are born to work. People are born to look out for each other.” And then, as he wiped the sweat from

his brow, he would add: “You can work your hands to the bone and still hardly begin to know the

beauty of life.”

At times like this, the woodcutter’s wife would smile contentedly with him. Placing a hand on

her husband’s sweat-soaked back, she would whisper:

“Honey, sweety – what say we go to you-know-where when the full moon rises?”

And whenever she said this, her cute little fairy cheeks would blush pretty as peaches. The

woodcutter liked that.

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Thus, Sim’s parody of the “Woodcutter and nymph” is a paean to the hard-workin’, hard-lovin’,

honest life. Indeed, Chang Yangsu (1997b: 326) reads the story as a critique of nouveau-riche Koreans,

their spoiled children, and the social problems they have created, a suggestion that South Korea’s rapid

industrialization since the 1970s has resulted in a social structure where nobody wants to do sweaty,

physical work anymore. For Chang, Sim’s retelling gives voice to a nostalgia for Korea’s traditional

agrarian society and the physical health it imparted.

Overall, then, Sim’s is a rather successful parody. The initial emphasis on nakedness, sex and

sexual aberration gives way to a message – still somewhat didactic but by no means as sermonic as Kim

Chiwŏn’s version – about the value of old-fashioned physical labor, while still bringing closure and

resolution to the sexual theme in the final lines: woodcutter and nymph alike have learned the value of

hard work, thereby restoring balance to their marriage, family and sex life. Sim’s introduction of the

flashback and a present-past-present time frame instead of the linear temporal ordering of the traditional

folk tale is an innovation, and the tone and style remain breezy and comfortably fairy tale-like.

2.5. Feminist retellings (I): Yun Yŏngsu (1997)

Whereas Kim Chiwŏn’s rendition is fairly traditional, and whereas Sim Sangdae’s version

retains a traditional omniscient narrator and an interpretation which, if anything, accentuates the male

sexual fantasy inherent in the “Woodcutter and myth” tale, Yun Yŏngsu’s retelling has a decidedly

feminist edge. The very title of the story – “Hanŭl yŏja” (Sky woman) – presages a significant shift in the

focus of the tale, and indeed this retelling is very much the heavenly maiden’s story. Overall, Yun’s

version is still the original fairy tale with the familiar protagonists, but it is narrated in the voice of a

“handsome buck” Ch’ogang’i (Slim), talking to his younger deer-friend Pisiri (Wimpy). The hunter in

Yun’s story is T’ŏpsŏkpuri (Old Draggle-beard), who has already killed their young friend Solbong’i

(Junior, or Still-wet-behind-the-ears) and the woodcutter is Ttŏksoe, a name that literally means “carbon

steel,” but here seems to be used for the old-fashioned countryside rusticity of the –soe suffix (‘steel’)

common in traditional indigenous Korean boys’ names. Juxtaposed with the “steel” image implied in –soe,

the initial ttŏk- (“rice-cake”) implies a lack of fortitude and rectitude, which, as it turns out, is entirely

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appropriate to the woodcutter’s character in this re-telling. In any case, Yun’s use of native Korean names

with identifiable semantics for her characters is not accidental; it simultaneously recalls the traditions of

character nomenclature in pre-modern Korean and Chinese fiction, and (interestingly) Disney-esque

names à la Wimpy, Sneezy, Bashful, etc.

Here is a synopsis of Yun’s “Sky woman”:

1) The story opens with the scene where the kind-hearted woodcutter is supposed to save the

fleeing deer’s life. But Ttŏksoe, having hidden the deer beneath his newly chopped pile of brush,

is engaged in a tense argument with T’ŏpsŏkpuri the hunter. The hunter accuses Ttŏksoe of

stealing the deer, and indeed, Ttŏksoe’s intent is to kill the deer for himself. From the first

moments of Yun’s story humans are portrayed in a negative light, as quarrelsome and mean-

spirited creatures; they even have bad breath! Once the hunter has moved on, grumbling, the

woodcutter attempts to force the deer to show him where wild ginseng or precious yŏngji

mushrooms grow, but Ch’ogang’i breaks free and escapes.

2) Ch’ogang’i is lassoed by Ttŏksoe and captured again. This time he is forced to lead Ttŏksoe

deep into the mountains to Ongnyŏbong (Jade Maiden Peak), where the yŏngji mushrooms grow

like weeds, but Ttŏksoe is ungrateful and does not recognize the mushrooms for what they are.

It is growing dark, and both are tired. They sleep, but are awakened in the night by the sound of

fairies splashing in a nearby pond. Ttŏksoe is mesmerized, and Ch’ogang’i makes his getaway,

but doubles back on the sly to see what Ttŏksoe does. Ttŏksoe hides one of the fairy’s garments

under a big rock and covers his traces. The fairy in question is portrayed as innocent, modest,

demure and ŭijŏt “righteous” -- “If Sangjenim (the Supreme Deity) finds out that we came down

to a pond on earth to play, we’ll be in trouble; and besides, if people in heaven find out I came

back naked, I’d be so embarrassed I wouldn’t be able to live.” Here, again, we see the theme of

nakedness and clothing.

“Pisil, don’t you think that’s ridiculous? What’s the big deal about being naked? The other

women were all just as naked. It’s not like she was the only one with breasts and a belly-

button. Actually . . . human or Sky Woman, they all look ridiculous when they’re naked.

No sleek fur like us, no nice spotted patterns – just like plucked chickens. Plus their little

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black bushes of hair around their crotch and under their armpits, and their long hair on

their heads hanging down like tails.” (p. 27)

3) Ch’ogang’i happens upon Ttŏksoe’s house while foraging for bamboo shoots. Emaciated and

exhausted-looking, the Sky Woman (who never gets a name in the story) is hard at work in the

courtyard and kitchen, but Ttŏksoe drags her to bed at midday. Ttŏksoe is described as a

notorious philanderer and rapist, responsible for the suicide of at least one widow in the vicinity.

What’s with the human chastity thing, Ch’ogang’i wonders?

“That Ttŏksoe is something, let me tell you. When I hear what the women say when they

come to pick herbs, it makes my blood boil. There’s hardly a woman in the village he

hasn’t made passes at – it’s been ages now since anybody treated him like a human being.

They say the widow at the bottom of the mountain who committed suicide did it ‘cause of

him, too. What’s a woman living all on her own to do if she gets pregnant? She suffered

the pain on her own for a while, and finally stabbed herself in the chest in front of her

husband’s grave. Yep, Ttŏksoe’s a real bastard, all right. . . . But women are strange beasts,

too. I mean, if giving birth to children is what they do anyway, why can’t it be with some

other guy – why does the seed have to come from one, predetermined male, whether you

like him or not?”

4) Ch’ogang’i visits the woodcutter’s at night, and discovers the Sky Woman weaving a new set of

nalgaeot (winged garments) in the shed. Ch’ogang’i feels sorry for her, and also feels

responsible and guilty for her plight – none of this would have happened if Ch’ogang’i hadn’t

led Ttŏksoe to Jade Maiden Peak.

5) One day Ttŏksoe discovers his wife weaving, and is amazed at the ethereal quality of the cloth.

He rips the material off the loom to sell it at the market. Henceforth, he stops working as a

woodcutter and forces his wife to weave cloth all day for sale at the market.

6) Ttŏksoe takes some cloth to market and wit the proceeds goes drinking and whoring.

7) The Sky Woman is pregnant with her first child, but Ttŏksoe doesn’t live at home anymore.

Instead, he has shacked up with a bar hussy, and drops by only to yell at his wife to weave more

cloth. The Sky Woman whispers to her unborn child:

“Little baby in my tummy, are you growing nicely? Your daddy is late coming home again.

My cute little baby, don’t you be a miserable daughter – I want you to be born as a boy.

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Then your life will comfortable.”

8) Ttŏksoe beats his wife to a pulp in the yard for slacking off in her weaving. After he leaves,

Ch’ogang’i presents himself to the maiden, hoping to lead her to the rock where her winged

garments are hidden, but she cannot understand and does not follow. She is pregnant with her

second child.

9) In another beating scene, Ttŏksoe abuses both wife and child. Ch’ogang’i is exasperated – the

Sky Woman must be a fool to endure this.

10) Frustrated, Ch’ogang’i knocks off one of his antlers and deposits it in the yard for the Sky

Woman to discover and sell.

11) Ttŏksoe blurts out in a drunken rampage that he was the one who took the winged garment:

“Bitch, you filthy bitch! You call this weaving? Who would give money for this? The weave on

this is so loose you couldn’t wrap a bum’s foot in it! Are you trying to piss me off? Keep this

shit up and I’ll sell off those fucking winged robes of yours, you little bitch. . . . Yeah, that’s

right – I stole them—it was me. So you couldn’t go back to heaven. And I hid ‘em somewhere

where nobody would find ‘em. You got a problem with that? Get back to your weaving, if you

don’t want me to kill you first.”

Sky Woman is crushed, and Ch’ogang’i fears for her safety.

11) Pregnant with her third child, the Sky Woman commits suicide: after pushing her two children

over the cliff first, she jumps to her death after them. The woodcutter is beside himself with

grief. Ch’ogang’i muses that she could never have done this with three children:

“All that was left of her body was a shell – she was so light she must have fluttered down,

like a leaf in the autumn wind. Like snowflakes in the dead of winter falling gently on the

rocks. Poor Sky Woman. Her third child was still inside her. That’s right. If she had had

three children, she wouldn’t have made up her mind to leave this world. Once the oldest

daughter had some sense, do you think she would have followed along passively to the

edge of the cliff? There’s no way that Sky Woman, loving her children as she did, would

have chosen death if it had meant leaving even one of them behind.”

13) Ch’ogang’i is chewing hemp in an attempt to forget his sorrow and frustration. Lonely, he

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misses the Sky Woman and the soothing, rhythmical clack of her loom.

14) Ch’ogang’i goes to Jade Maiden Peak, four years later to the day on which Ttŏksoe stole the

winged garment. Ttŏksoe is there, drunk, looking desperately but in vain for the garment he

buried. Frantic to follow his wife up to heaven, and cursing her, he wades into the pool and

drowns himself. The deer feels pity for Ttŏksoe (and wishes he had something stronger than

hemp).

15) Pisil helps Ch’ogang’i lift the rock and extract the winged garment. They go to the cliff where

Sky Woman committed suicide.

16) Pisil helps Ch’ogang’i don the robes. Ch’ogang’i plans to go to the Supreme Deity and ask to

meet Sky Woman. If that isn’t possible, he intends to ask to be reborn as a human:

“At least there’s some hope left for humans, don’t you think? Four unfettered limbs. And

in their hearts the courage to push onward and upward according to their convictions. And

then there’s their voices, too. Voices with which to express their minds frankly, sometimes

softly, sometimes vehemently.”

If he comes back as a human, vows Ch’ogang’i,

“I’m going to do my best to live honestly without blaming anybody. For my very own, my

one and only woman, and for my very own children. If I become a human, I’m going to

live life more honestly than anybody else. And whether I become a hunter or a woodcutter,

I’m not going to torture animals, or cut down trees and cut grass for no good reason. I’ll do

my best to listen to and understand the words that beasts weaker than I and defenseless

trees say to humans.”

17) Ch’ogang’i the handsome buck bids farewell to Pisil and leaps to his death.

Yun’s retelling of the “Woodcutter and nymph” tale is innovative on a number of accounts. The

use of the deer’s voice and point of view is novel, as are the reinterpretations of (a) the reasons for and

method of the fairy’s ascent to heaven (suicide, by throwing herself off a cliff), (b) the reasons for and

method of the woodcutter’s ascent to heaven after her (despair and anger, and suicide by drowning in the

mountain pool where they met), and (c) the reinterpretation of the deer’s warning to wait until the fairy

has three children (more difficult to commit murder-suicide). Yun’s version is also novel in its reflection

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on animal-human relations, or at least its commentary on humanity from an animal’s point of view, and in

its introduction of the weaving motif. In effect, Yun, like Sim Sangdae, has introduced a labor motif into

the story, but for Yun the point is not to valorize labor but to criticize men’s exploitation of women, of

their bodies and their labor. The story also openly questions traditional notions of chastity and attitudes to

nakedness. Thus, it seems fair to rate this retelling as an innovative and feminist use of the “Woodcutter

and nymph” tale to raise the issue of the male patriarchal sexual fantasy which some might say lies at the

root of the traditional story.

But Yun’s story is not without its critics. Han Mansu (1998) finds it difficult to comprehend the

suicide of the Sky Woman, and describes this event as an “uncritical adoption of the traditional tongban

chasal (murder-suicide) motif.” He also finds Yun’s style inferior to that of Kim Yujŏng or Ch’ae Mansik,

especially with respect to dialogue (a rather unfair comparison, given the stature of these two stylists!).

Kim Mihyŏn (1998) does not discuss Yun’s story, but in her critical essay on parodic fiction by Korean

women authors parodying works by Korean male authors, she defines parody as “repetition with critical

distance” and finds that the inherently dialogic features of parody are amplified when the author of the

original text is a man and the author of the parody is a woman; for Kim Mihyŏn, this male-female

opposition enhances the trans-contextualization and re-contextualization of the target text. In her essay,

Kim studies Yi Namhŭi’s “Hŏ saeng ŭi ch’ŏ” (“Hŏ saeng’s wife,” a parody of Pak Chiwŏn’s “Tale of Hŏ

Saeng”), Ŭn Hŭigyŏng’s “Pinch’ŏ” (“The poor wife,” a retelling of a classic story by Hyŏn Chin’gŏn

from the colonial period) and Kim Yŏn’gyŏng’s “Tasi ssŭnŭn ‘Nalgae’” (“Rewriting ‘Wings’,” “Wings”

being a seminal story by Yi Sang from the colonial period), and many of her insights carry over to an

analysis of Yun’s “Sky Woman.” For example, Kim Mihyŏn faults Yi Namhŭi for her failure to transcend

monologism, for her story’s inverted sexism, and for its “victim feminism.” Yun Yŏngsu, in painting a

stark and uncompromising contrast between “good Korean woman” and “evil, exploitative, wife-beating

Korean male” and thereby reproducing the old binary opposition of male-female, cannot escape similar

criticisms for her “Sky Woman.”

2.6. Feminist retellings (II): Sŏ Hajin (1998)

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Sŏ Hajin’s “The woodcutter and the nymph” is a significant departure from the retellings

examined thus far insofar as it abandons the traditional characters and setting of the tale alluded to in the

story’s title. Instead, readers are forced to construct for themselves the connection between Sŏ Hajin’s

narrative and the traditional tale. Sŏ Hajin’s text is also a departure in that it involves diaspora and is set,

in part, outside of Korea. This becomes clear already in the first paragraphs: “The gentle wash of the

breathing sea. The slapping of water—a swimmer in the dark? The clipped words of an alien land

filtering through the hum of the air conditioner.” The setting, as it turns out, is the island of Guam, where

the protagonist of the story, a young woman called Chisu (the nymph) is taking a short holiday with her

young husband, Yŏnghwa (the woodcutter). The ending of the story is presaged already on page two with

a suicide in the night: “There on the green grass lay a white object that resembled a bird with huge

wings. . . It was a woman with long blond hair.”

From the initial setting in Guam, we are transported back to Korea and back in time via a

flashback. Chisu, some five months pregnant with her third child, learns that her husband has been

diagnosed with a highly contagious case of tuberculosis. This leads to significant anxiety on her part over

the health and safety of her unborn child and over the possibility of birth deformities: “Even if all these

things—all the organs you could actually see—turned out to be fine, what if the baby couldn’t open its

eyes? What if its vocal cords didn’t work properly and it couldn’t cry out?” Sure enough, and in a mode

reminiscent of Kim Chiwŏn’s version, we learn that her first child was “a boy who didn’t talk, living in

his own world from the time he learned to smile. . . . And her second child… a girl who would do nothing,

not a thing, without her brother.”

Back to the present and to Guam, where Chisu’s husband has set off with friends to an island

one hour away by boat on a fishing and scuba outing: “And now, after fussing all morning with their

scuba gear and fishing tackle, her husband and his friends had finally left, but not before looking at Chi-

su like she was from another planet for wanting to stay behind by herself.” Left to herself for the day on

the island, Chisu reluctantly submits to a massage from one of the itinerant masseuses roaming the beach.

The massage sends her back in time again to when she sprained her ankle on the stairs in the lodging in

Seoul where she was staying, at age eighteen, for a 100-day ‘fatherland study tour’ forced upon her by her

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father. Thus, we learn that Chisu, her older sister and their father are Korean residents of the United States.

You girls can’t do anything right. Here’s your chance to do some thinking about yourself, said

Chi-su’s father as he sent her off to Korea for the first time in fifteen years. The course had the

pretentious title “A Correct Understanding of Your Homeland in 100 Days.” Learning to cook

meals on your own in Korean homestays, learning proper etiquette, reading the classics, visiting the

occasional museum, watching a cultural film every day…. Had he really believed that three

months and ten days of this could cleanse Chi-su of the stench that had polluted her body? Barging

in like a marauder, her father had yelled, God, it reeks in here! when he had discovered the marijuana.

Perhaps to her father, Chi-su’s room, indeed her entire existence, had reeked of decay. A still

youthful thirty-four, he had crossed over to the States and into the twilight of his life had raised Chi-

su and her sister by himself..”

It was during this “fatherland study tour” and in the home of her host family that Chisu was first seduced

by Yŏnghwa, her landlady’s college-age son.

The beach masseuse, whom we presume to be an “alien” – or at least, neither Korean nor

American – because of her broken English and the fact that Chisu and the Korean man in the lounge chair

beside her discuss a fair price for the massage in front of her in Korean, assumes some importance for

Chisu as a mirror of her own existence:

“Three years now and I’ve never seen her take a day off. She has three kids too, every one just as

dark as her,” remarked the man casually as he watched the woman walk slowly away over the sand

in much the same manner as she had approached Chi-su. A vision of three dark-skinned children

clinging to the dark woman rose before Chi-su’s eyes. Neither the children nor the woman say

anything. Like animals, they lick each other, rub their bodies together, and cry in subdued tones.…

“

Back in time again, and back in Seoul, it emerges that Chisu, unbeknownst to her husband, and

despite the precautions taken by her husband after he was first diagnosed, is herself now sick –

presumably infected with tuberculosis:

Occasionally, her abdomen hurt like someone was jabbing it with an awl. Nobody could figure it out.

The doctor cocked his head, as if to say he had no idea why. Some women take longer for their

uterus to return to normal size. For example, if they’ve had several miscarriages, or… Even after

putting the baby to sleep, Chi-su would sometimes shudder at the startling sensation that there was

still something—another life—left inside her. … Her hair fell out, strand by strand, whenever she

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combed it. And her memories were slipping away listlessly like the strands of hair slipping through

her fingers. . . The feeling that something huge, a vast darkness over which she had no power, was

creeping up on her from behind. . . Her husband was healthy as ever again, healthy to the point that

the reason for his daily handful of pills seemed somehow suspicious. Still, Chi-su did not return to

their bedroom the bedding she had moved into the corner of the den. Supposedly after a three-

week course of medication he would no longer be contagious. Those three weeks had repeated

themselves ten times over, and yet she continued to boil his dishes and utensils.

In the midst of this stress over her pregnancy and her secret suspicions of illness, Chisu’s

husband announces a sudden four-day holiday to Guam:

“Let’s see—ticket, itinerary, and here—your passport.” He held out a number of documents.

Her black passport with the plastic cover. It looked different from the one Chi-su had lost long ago.

She hadn’t taken much luggage, but the days she had searched endlessly in her bags for that small

black object came back to her. Her eyes twitched.

. . . It had all started like a game. She would tell herself she was going back after a hundred

days, that on that day, everything that had transpired here would come to a close, that her old haunts

back home would be just as they were before.… How could she ever have come to believe such a

thing? Even as she lived her life, experiencing this thing called marriage and having children, Chi-

su would murmur to herself time and again, I’m going back. I have to go back. On days when it

seemed she couldn’t bear this impulse any longer, she would dream of setting off from the house

with a large trunk hastily packed. She would close the bedroom door gingerly so as not to wake her

snoring husband and traverse the empty streets until she came to the airport. Even in her dream

Chi-su was shocked at the savage pounding of her heart. The end of her dream was always the

same. Passing through the glass doors and up the escalator, just when she tried to step through the

departure gate, a prim lady in uniform would block her way. Excuse me, you don’t seem to have

your passport.”

Back to the present on Guam again, where night is falling but Chisu remains alone on the beach.

Oddly, the boat carrying her husband and his scuba buddies has not returned.

Chi-su stood up and began to walk along the dark shore. Seashells buried in the lukewarm sand

cut at her feet. One step into the sea, then another. The water licking at her ankles was now up to

her shins, then her knees. Waves washes past, swaying her with each pass. A silver sliver

plummeting into the black waters—the lazy moon had risen.

The outer edges of the moon. Chi-su’s eyes gazed up at the hazy glow that enclosed the moon,

and twitched. The fuzzy white edge of the moon. From somewhere in there a white strand stuck

out, a clear rope that seemed almost to touch the tip of her head. Could she reach it? Chi-su could

see herself dangling at the end of the rope. The white rope seemed to float up toward the moon,

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toward the darkness behind it. I’m going to catch it. Catch it and fly up to the sky. Fretting with

anxiety, Chi-su reached up and out toward a place beyond her grasp.

Sŏ Hajin’s retelling of the “Woodcutter and nymph” story introduces still more innovations. Like

Yun Yŏngsu’s “Sky Woman,” it takes a woman’s perspective, and thus can be described as ‘feminist’ in

some sense, but it is not as condemning of men. As with Kim Chiwŏn’s version, we find anxieties about

the nymph’s children, both born and unborn. The nymph’s time on earth in the human world is fraught

with suffering, and the children – hybrid products of an unnatural miscegenation between heavenly

woman and earthly man -- suffer from birth defects and deformities, real and imagined, while the

“alienness” of both the nymph herself and the world(s) in which she finds herself is accentuated by the

exotic settings in diaspora (the U.S.) and on Guam. The most interesting (if not entirely believable)

innovation is the substitution of Chisu’s passport for the nymph’s wings; we surmise that after the initial

seduction, subsequent revelation of pregnancy, and decision to marry, Yŏnghwa has squirreled away

Chisu’s (presumably Korean) passport, trapping her in a new life in Korea. Sŏ Hajin’s use of the rope-

from-heaven image at the end of story reminds us of the bucket-on-a-rope image from the traditional tale,

but also blends in with the suicide-by-drowning motif seen in Yun Yŏngsu’s retelling. Finally, Sŏ Hajin’s

“Woodcutter and nymph” is also novel in its deployment of the disease metaphor, a technique she also

uses in “Hong Kiltong,” her parody of the later Chosŏn fictional narrative by the same name. The linking

of the nymph’s fate to that of a human man makes her sick, and her suicide at the end can thus be

interpreted as a desperate attempt at self-healing.

2.7. “The Woodcutter and nymph” in diaspora: Angela Hur (2000)

The sixth and final “adult” retelling of the “Woodcutter and nymph” story, titled ““Dust, light

and water: Or, the woodcutter and the fairy, revisited,” belongs to Angela Hur, and was written when she

was an undergraduate student at Harvard University for Harvard’s Korean American student literary

journal, Yisei. Strictly speaking, then, this story does not belong to the realm of “Korean literature,” if we

follow traditional definitions limiting the scope of Korean literature to works written in Korean. But

Hur’s story, written in diaspora by a Korean American, brings together and develops further many of the

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themes seen in the retellings just discussed, introduces yet more innovations, and demonstrates the vitality

of this traditional fairy tale even in the contemporary Korean diasporic literary imagination.

Hur’s story is set in the Korean American diaspora, and is framed by a prologue and epilogue.

As can be seen from the prologue, Hur’s text is much more explicitly, self-consciously intertextual, and is

at the same time explicitly, self-consciously, self-examiningly Korean and Korean American-diasporic.

The prologue begins:

There’s this Korean fairy tale of a woodcutter who runs into this deer that talks. Well, this Bambi

begs the woodcutter to hide him from a hunter, which he does . . . So she ends up naked and alone in

the water, and the guy ends up with a beautiful helpless creature who’s totally dependent on him --

basically, every guy’s fantasy . . . She dons the robes, takes her children into her arms, says

goodbye, and floats back to her celestial home. If the story ended there, the moral would be that

honesty is the basis of all healthy relationships. But Koreans are stubborn lovers and persistent

storytellers, and the story goes on . . . the woodcutter climbs in this bucket and enters heaven. There

he is reunited with his wife and family. Too easy of a redemption, if you ask me. Well, the yokel

begins to miss home because he is heaven-bound. He wants to visit his mother, because as we all

know, Korean men are obsessively devoted to their mothers . . . I suppose this is the Korean way of

saying that we can’t pretend to be something else, nor can we expect our lovers to be. He was of

earth, and she of heaven. More importantly, though, the moral of the story is that men who are too

attached to their mothers will never find themselves in a healthy relationship.

The story that follows this prologue is one of Korean American college student Trina, her best

friend from childhood, Jerry (also Korean American), and romance. The story proper starts with the

narrator’s declaration: “My brother was in love with a fairy woman.” The narrator warns her brother:

"Well, just be careful. You know what happened to that other Korean guy who fell in love with

a fairy woman."

"What?"

"He got stuck living with his mom for the rest of his life."

The narrator’s brother is a twin who somehow always seemed to suck up all their parents’ attention and

affection. As a child, Trina “ran away from home” over to Jerry’s house so often that Jerry’s mother, Mrs.

Moon, regularly set a place for her at the dinner table. One day in high school, Jerry confesses to her, "I

do know what I want. I want us to be friends for a long time. I want us to go to college together.

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Somewhere far away from Fawny, New Jersey." Back on the bus in the present, Trina tells Jerry:

"My brother is dating a fairy. And no, I don’t mean he’s gay. He sees his new girlfriend as being

shimmery and light or something. Says, she skips around and smiles all the time."

"Oh, she’s that kind of a girl."

"Yeah, so I was just trying it out, my skipping that is. Tell me Jerry, am I more like Tinker Bell

or am I just Jiminy Cricket?" . . .

Once the bus deposits them in their hometown, Trina joins the Moons for supper. Jerry invites her over

for a swim later in their new pool. Back home after supper, the narrator is chided by her brother for never

noticing that Jerry “has always been in love with you." After this revelation, Trina goes over to the Moons

for that swim with Jerry in the new pool:

He was sitting by his new pool that Uncle Gee Sook put in. His legs dangled in the water. His pale

body was reflected on the pool’s surface. I sat down next to him touching his body’s reflection in the

pool, making it swirl around my finger . . . I slipped into the pool standing next to him . . .

"Do you want to swim naked?" I asked, a bit too gleeful and not lady-like enough. Then

trying to act coyer, I took off my bathing suit and waited for him. He silently took off his and stood

there trying to understand me. The darkness of the pool sort of glimmered, casting a dark light

around us. I stepped closer and touched his arms, dragging my fingers down to his hand, which was

submerged under water. I took his hand and held it. I took his other hand and wrapped his arms

around me. Then I kissed him. A slight breeze shook the trees above and leaves fell around us and

onto us. He broke apart from me.

"What are you doing?" he asked backing a tiny bit away.

"I love you," I said quietly, but the words sounded rough in my mouth.

But the narrator’s courageous overture fails, and Jerry reacts angrily:

"Trina, we will be friends for a long, long time. But for now, let’s just swim, okay?"

I nodded my head and sank into the water swimming silently towards the other end of the

pool. I felt bodiless, and I wished that I hadn’t taken a chance. I wished to continue seeing Jerry as I

did before. There was so much I could lose if I didn’t. I felt light but not free, just disconnected and

floating . . .

Trina’s story ends here, followed by a short epilogue:

Sometimes, I wonder what would have happened if the lonely woodcutter stripped himself of his

26

clothes and waded through the water to meet the fairy woman. Since it was only his farmer’s

clothing and her celestial robes that separated them, made them different, there in the middle of the

lake, they could meet between heaven and earth simply as two creatures who were wet, naked and

alone. And from afar, you wouldn’t be able to tell which of them was the fairy, and which was the

mortal. And I’m pretty sure, they themselves wouldn’t be able to tell either. But I can’t rewrite these

Korean folk tales. They’ve been handed down for generations. It’s the way things are.

Hur’s retelling of the “Woodcutter and nymph” is remarkable on several counts. It skillfully weaves

together a self-conscious knowledge of folkloric tropes in general, the Korean folktale tradition, and even

Disney’s imprint on the American fairy tale tradition with the frequent references to Tinker Bell (her

brother’s “fairy” girlfriend), Bambi, and even the evenings that Trina and Jerry spent together as kids

watching Disney videos at the Moons’ house. Hur, too, is concerned with nakedness vs. clothing, and with

the fear of stripping away our outer layers to reveal our inner, true emotions. The narrator’s failed

overture and rejection in the pool under the moon can be read both as an indictment of humans’ inability

to communicate with each other honestly, but also as a metaphor for the lack of communication between

the sexes, and for men’s inability to connect with and express their own emotions and selves in their

relationships with women they love.

Most interesting is the Freudian analysis implied in the prologue, where the narrator parodies

the original filial piety message of the traditional tale, finding instead that the moral of the story is “men

who are too attached to their mothers will never find themselves in a healthy relationship.” Just as

Western European fairy tales have attracted the attention of psychoanalysts for the light they shed on the

human subconscious, Korean fairy tales, including the “Woodcutter and nymph,” have been subjected to

psychological analysis. Indeed, Hwang Kyŏngsuk (1995), in her psychological analysis of the

“Woodcutter and nymph” tale, reaches conclusions nearly identical to those of Hur’s narrator. Hwang

reads this Korean fairy tale as a case of absence of the father and concomitant “mother complex” with

overdependence on and excessive satisfaction on the part of the mother. Thus, for Hwang, the traditional

fairy tale is an allegory of the (failed) rite of passage whereby a boy reaches manhood. The moral of the

story for Hwang is: boys who fail to overcome the mother complex and the protection of their mother,

cannot grow up to be an adult raising their own family.

27

3.0. Conclusions

In this paper I have examined six modern retellings of the “Woodcutter and nymph” story, by

Yun Hŭnggil (1988), Kim Chiwŏn (1992), Sim Sangdae (1990), Yun Yŏngsu (1997), Sŏ Hajin (1998),

and Angela Hur (2000), all written for adults. Yun Hŭnggil (1988) is set in 1980s Korea and narrated by a

white-collar middle-class husband, and comments on sexual politics in the modern husband-wife

relationship. Kim Chiwŏn (1992) embellishes the traditional tale with carefully selected poems by her

father, Kim Tonghwan, and preaches Christian lessons about the human body, clothing vs. nudity, the

miracle of life and filial piety. Sim Sangdae (1990) seizes on the nymph’s nakedness and sex for parodic,

humorous effect, and emphasizes the male sexual fantasy underlying the traditional male. In fact, Sim’s

story echoes Jack Zipes’s interpretation of “Little Red Riding Hood” as a parable of rape. In Sim’s

version, the fairy – like Little Red Riding – “wanted it,” and the nymph becomes a nymphomaniac, at

least for the first half of the story. Ultimately, Sim’s is a sober message about the moral and therapeutic

value of hard, physical labor delivered in the context of concern about the nymph’s children and their

future on earth (and hence, concern about the younger generation in Korea that has grown up without the

woodcutter’s work ethic).

Yun Yŏngsu (1997) is the most innovative with respect to narrative technique, being told

entirely in the deer’s voice. Labor plays a role in this story, too, but here it is the fairy’s weaving,

exploited by the woodcutter. This is also the most explicitly feminist of the six stories, and it parodies

rather mercilessly the exploitation and abuse of the fairy – so much so that it comes dangerously close to

falling into male-bashing “victim feminism,” but this darker, uncompromising pessimism is tempered in

the end by the story’s “green” message and by the ray of hope suggested by the deer in his final words as

he declares his desire to be reborn as a human.

Sŏ Hajin’s (1998) “Woodcutter and nymph” abandons the traditional characters and setting and

is more complex in its use of flashbacks. Like Yun’s version, this one is concerned with the fairy and her

suffering, and also ends in her suicide. This story, too, reflects the fairy’s anxieties about her children –

not their future, but their bodies and health, and disease in general emerges as the outcome of the fairy’s

28

original entrapment. This version also gives new play to the notion of “alienness” -- Chisu is far from

home in both Korea and Guam, and her “alien” status is neatly tied to the passport = wings metaphor.

This fairy has been trapped not by a theft of clothing, but by the theft of her travel documents.

Finally, Hur (2000) is a more explicitly and self-consciously intertextual use of the “Woodcutter

and nymph” story as an interpretive frame for a story of Korean American friendship and frustrated

romance that also carries a cynically Freudian message about the original filial piety message of the

traditional tale.

To sum up, the salient features that emerge in common from these six “parodic” retellings of the

“Woodcutter and nymph” tale are as follows:

1) Seduction/rape: the first encounter at the mountain pool is a seduction and/or rape leading

to entrapment, incarceration, and/or exploitation for sex and labor.

2) Clothing: the initial entrapment is effected by removal or theft of the woman’s clothes;

images of being disrobed by a man; and of getting naked for/by a man.

3) Nakedness: the nymph’s naked body as sexual object, the naked human body in general,

nakedness and clothing, covering, layers, concealment, and the inevitably related matters of

sex, sexual tension, sexual politics, sexual exploitation.

4) Nymph as mother: her body as female body, her experiencing of life on earth as a human in

a human body, childbirth, and anxieties over her children’s bodies, their health

(deformities) and their future on earth.

5) Nymph as alien: stranger in a strange land, stranded, removed from home, accentuated by

experiences of diaspora, woman’s desire to “go home, go back” to the maiden homestead.

6) Male-female, husband-wife sexual politics, male-female relationships and

Communication.

7) Filial piety, mother dependence, and their problematic nature from a Freudian perspective.

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