I found a book in my University library yesterday called “토끼의심판” or “Rabbit’s Judgement”. The book is bilingual, with the story written in both Korean and English. There are other rabbit stories; I recently read one called “Rabbit’s Escape”, so I think the rabbit is a fairly common character in folktales.
In “Rabbit’s Judgement” a poor tiger (호랑이) has fallen down a hole and cannot get out. A man sees him and at first refuses to get him out, believing he will be eaten. The tiger promises him that he won’t eat him. However, once the man let’s him out the tiger is starving and decides to eat the man. NO! Cries the man and begs to ask a Pine Tree what they should do–the tree says the tiger can eat him, because we cut the trees down and chop them up. Next they ask an Ox and he says for the tiger to eat him too, because once they grow big, people kill them and eat them.
Lastly, a rabbit hops by and the man begs to ask him. The tiger agrees, getting ready to eat the man. The rabbit asks them to show him exactly where they were at the start of the problem–so the tiger jumps back in the hole and the man stands at the edge. The rabbit tells the tiger he should stay in the hole for being so mean after the man was so kind and they leave him there!!
My son almost cried for the tiger, saying “Poor tiger, he’s sooo hungry!” It was very cute.
In other news, I am currently attempting to write a presentation in Korean. It’s rather hard!! I’ve chosen to talk about the Korean poet 구상 (Ku Sang). He was born in Seoul in 1919 and died there on May 11, 2004. When he was a small child his family moved to the north-eastern city of Wonsan, where he grew up. His parents were Catholics, his elder brother became a priest but Ku Sang underwent a crisis of faith during his student years in Japan, where he studied the philosophy of religion, and he only slowly found his own understanding of Catholicism. He returned to the northern part of Korea and began work as a writer and journalist, but after the Liberation in 1945 he was soon forced to flee to the south because of his refusal to conform to the ideological standards of the Communists when he tried to publish his first volume of poems. He was persecuted by both North and South Korea during his lifetime. Some of his translated poems can be found here.
