Korean Mythology: Captivating Myths, Legends, and Folktales from Korea by Matt Clayton

Author:Matt Clayton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

Part III: Family Tales

Kongjwi

The common trope of an abused young woman briefly encountering a well-off young man who then seeks out the woman because he wants to marry her occurs in many cultures’ folklores. Westerners know this story as “Cinderella,” but in Korea, the Cinderella character is named Kongjwi, and she exhibits all the qualities one might expect in this instance. Kongjwi is kind, patient, generous, and hardworking and endures much abuse with equanimity. Just as in the Western version of the tale, Kongjwi’s nasty, selfish stepmother and stepsister get their comeuppance for their mistreatment of Kongjwi and attempts to lie their ways into a marriage with the powerful government official who is looking for Kongjwi so that he can give her back her slipper.

A long time ago, a government official and his wife lived very happily together, but they had no child. They prayed and prayed, and finally, they were blessed with a little daughter, who they named Kongjwi. Unfortunately, Kongjwi’s mother died when she was still a very young child.

For a time, Kongjwi’s father remained a widower and looked after little Kongjwi by himself. But as the little girl grew, the magistrate thought it might be best for her to have a mother teach her what she needed to know, so he began to look for a new wife. Eventually, he married a widow who had a daughter herself, a little girl named Patjwi, who was about the same age as Kongjwi. At first, everything went well, but once Kongjwi’s stepmother had established herself as the lady of the house, she began to mistreat Kongjwi. She never did this when Kongjwi’s father was home, but only when he had gone out on business or visited friends. Kongjwi bore this all bravely because she knew her father loved her, and she didn’t want to upset him with tales about how she was being treated.

Not long after Kongjwi’s father remarried, Kongjwi’s fortunes truly turned for the worst. Kongjwi’s father died, leaving poor Kongjwi with no other family than her cruel stepmother and stepsister. Kongjwi’s stepmother turned her stepdaughter into a servant, forcing her to do laundry, tend the garden, clean and cook the rice, and do many other tasks. Patjwi, on the other hand, was treated as though she were a princess. She never had to do any work. She had the finest clothes and ate the finest foods. And she followed her mother’s lead in her behavior, also treating poor Kongjwi very badly indeed.

One day, Kongjwi’s stepmother handed her a wooden hoe and demanded that she go to the farthest field from the house and dig up all the weeds. Kongjwi dutifully took the hoe and went to the field, but there were so many stones in the soil that she had barely pulled any weeds at all by midday. Kongjwi saw how little she had accomplished after so much work and began to cry.

“I can’t go home until the whole field is clear of weeds,” she sobbed, “but I don’t see how I will ever finish this.

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