Folk Tales from Korea
. Hollym International Corp. . Elizabeth, N.J. ,
GR342.F64 1982 (Carlson Fable Collection, BIC bldg)
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An excellent compendium of Korean folk literature. The fifteen-page section on fables (183-97) contains nineteen fables. The Bald Old Man (191) is very close to Aesop; the wife suspects a mistress and so the husband lets her pull out all the black hairs, and he is no longer attractive to the mistress. Most of these fables are stories about humans rather than animals; they are closer to our jokes than to our fables. Popular folk motifs show up: Show me how you did it ( The Ungrateful Tiger ); No, X is greater than I (which traces a circle in The Rat's Bridegroom ); and Give me the X who took my Y (a young man parlays one grain into an ox in A Grain of Millet ).