Novel
The Story of Hong Gildong
홍길동전
Heo Kyun · 1612
Synopsis
Hong Gildong is born in the house of a minister, the son of a servant, Chunseom, whom the minister has taken as concubine. Gifted with rare intelligence, he cannot call his father father, and his birth closes public office to him. Another concubine, jealous, calls on a fortune-teller and then on killers; he escapes them by magic and leaves his family. Having become the leader of a band of brigands, he plunders a monastery and a governor, both greedy, without touching the common people, and splits himself into eight straw men to mislead those the king sends in pursuit.
Context
The attribution to Heo Kyun, fixed in 1933 by the historian Kim Tae-jun according to Professor Yu Gwang-su, is disputed: the Korean institute responsible for translations notes that most scholars doubt it, the author's known works being in Chinese and the oldest version in Korean dating from the late nineteenth century, and Minsoo Kang, its English translator, finds no attested reader before the second half of that century. The Complete Review counts thirty-four manuscripts, almost all different. An English translation by Horace Newton Allen appeared as early as 1889.
Who it is for
A short adventure tale in Old Korean; translated into French in 1994 and into English in 2016.
Prizes and reception
Read as a critique of the social hierarchy of Joseon, according to the Korean library of translation.
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