One of the things I've done since becoming housed again is buy a
laptop, and one of the things I've done since getting access to a
computer again is return to watching, and writing about, Korean TV
dramas.

The latest drama, which I finished last night, is the third in a
string of speculative dramas I'm finally watching. It's one I'd
actually checked out from the Seattle Public Library before the
lockdowns, but hadn't had a chance to watch yet when those hit. It's
an extremely loose adaptation of a Korean comic (manhwa), which in
turn borrowed at least one name from Korean mythology. The drama, if
not the manhwa (which has been Englished; I tried to read it once and
found it impenetrable), also refers to another legendary story.

So it occurred to me that I had space in an existing section of the
introduction, on religion in K-drama, to talk about Korean "folkore",
meaning, essentially, the Korean stock of fantastical and mundane
stories from before the modern era, whether passed down in writing or
collected as actual folklore.

That and some other recently written sections finally showed me that
I couldn't control my urge to write enough to justify writing about
K-dramas in general on this group. I'd been uncertain throughout the
recent work whether it would really end up here or on the Web, and
the introduction's bloat is one of several reasons I've finally had
to decide on the Web, scary as it is to write without the protection
of being one-eyed among the blind, rather than among the two-eyed, so
to speak.

But as it happens, the Korean stories section essentially exists to
point to written works which read as speculative today, even if they
weren't originally so intended. In other words, it's actually on-
topic here.

So I've started this thread to make room for reviews of various
Korean "folklore" collections and related works. I have no idea when
or whether the research library that offers me access to most of
these works will re-open to the public, nor whether I'll have the
money to borrow books from it if it doesn't re-open any time soon.
So I don't know how many books are in question, but at least four
men who rendered Korean stories into English died long enough ago,
and published long enough ago, that both in the US and in countries
where the Bern convention applies their writings are in the public
domain. And one important block of stories is available free online
in much more recent translations. So I can at least start.

In this post I want to talk about two things that will help a lot in
reading these books.

The first is the early modern Korean caste system.

I don't yet know enough about the dynasty that ruled a country whose
Korean name is now Romanised as Kory� or Goryeo - the country from
which the usual European languages' name for Korea comes - from A.D.
935 to 1392 - to know how far back this system reaches, but in
particular Goryeo's aristocracy was differently constituted. I also
don't know enough yet about the succeeding dynasty, 1392-1910, whose
country's Korean name is Romanised as Chos�n or Joseon, to
chronologise this much; I don't know how far back each piece of the
caste system reaches, nor when exactly, in the 19th century, each
piece was dismantled.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_in_the_Joseon_Dynasty#Structure>

But basically, there were four castes, the bottom-most of which comes
in lots of smaller parts.

Yangban were on top. Like most aristocracies, they were based on
land ownership, but their ideological justification was different
from European aristocracies; it was learning rather than martial
skill. The yangban aristocracy was big as aristocracies go, around
10% of the population.

Chungin were a weird little caste not accounted for in the ruling
ideology. They tended to be merchants, minor government officials,
etc. Some chungin were born to chungin families, but also, children
of yangban with lower-caste women became chungin, as did yangban
themselves who flunked too many examinations (and didn't have enough
money to bribe the examiners).

Sangmin were the commoners, estimated at 80% of the population.

And then there's the cheonmin. Most cheonmin were slaves. There
were several slave revolts during the Joseon years whose object was
not actual revolution, but just to destroy the records documenting
the rebels' status as slaves.

But also, several other groups were classified as cheonmin. These
include innkeepers and butchers, prejudice against whom in modern
Korea has come up in several dramas I've watched. But they also
include several flashier groups: gisaeng (courtesans not *too*
different from Japanese geisha), shamans, and entertainers. Which
brings me to the second topic.

In southwestern Korea, which for over a thousand years has been a
deprecated part of the country - it's no accident that the famous
1980 massacre happened in Gwangju - there was a shamanic tradition in
which the women were the actual shamans, but the men worked as
entertainers.

In the 18th century, yangban started to notice these entertainers
doing something called pansori. Pansori is a storytelling musical
genre. We don't know much about it before the 19th century, but do
know that its later forms are descended from what 18th century
yangban noticed. Korean scholars like the idea that pansori arose
in the 17th century, when, thanks to Manchurian invasions, society
was pretty disrupted.

Those 18th century yangban started a slow fad, and by the early 19th
century pansori is pretty well documented in yangban writings. The
yangban decided that there were twelve pansori stories, though they
couldn't agree on *which* twelve of whatever actual number there were.
As time passed, and morals changed - non-trivially under the
influence of the "Victorian" West - they settled on five as morally
acceptable, and these are the only ones that survive as music.

Other pansori stories survive mostly as novels, though we have an
actual libretto for one. A yangban active in the mid-19th century
wrote that one and the surviving five out. He also fostered the
training of the first woman, a gisaeng, to become a pansori singer.

By the end of the 19th century, pansori was in trouble, seen as old-
fashioned in the slowly modernising country. Aware of Chinese,
Japanese, and European traditions of musical theatre - "opera",
broadly defined - groups of pansori singers started acting out their
stories. This is called changgeuk. Changgeuk too fell on hard times
during Japanese rule, 1905-1945, but an offshoot performed entirely
by women - former gisaeng and newer recruits - did a little better.

The 1950s were too poor for much attention to tradition, but by the
1960s the then-current dictator liked the propaganda effects from
supporting dying arts. Since then, the South Korean government has
been the main support for pansori and changgeuk. Both are now
largely dominated by women, but the all-female changgeuk variant of
the mid-20th century is nearly dead.

Three of the five "surviving" pansori stories are fantasy, as are
several of the others.

Well, I'm out of time for tonight; my computer is loud, and my house
has a "quiet time" starting at 10 P.M. The first review tomorrow.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

On Friday, August 6, 2021 at 5:55:55 AM UTC+1, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> One of the things I've done since becoming housed again is buy a
> laptop, and one of the things I've done since getting access to a
> computer again is return to watching, and writing about, Korean TV
> dramas.
>
> The latest drama, which I finished last night, is the third in a
> string of speculative dramas I'm finally watching. It's one I'd
> actually checked out from the Seattle Public Library before the
> lockdowns, but hadn't had a chance to watch yet when those hit. It's
> an extremely loose adaptation of a Korean comic (manhwa), which in
> turn borrowed at least one name from Korean mythology. The drama, if
> not the manhwa (which has been Englished; I tried to read it once and
> found it impenetrable), also refers to another legendary story.
>
> So it occurred to me that I had space in an existing section of the
> introduction, on religion in K-drama, to talk about Korean "folkore",
> meaning, essentially, the Korean stock of fantastical and mundane
> stories from before the modern era, whether passed down in writing or
> collected as actual folklore.
>
> That and some other recently written sections finally showed me that
> I couldn't control my urge to write enough to justify writing about
> K-dramas in general on this group. I'd been uncertain throughout the
> recent work whether it would really end up here or on the Web, and
> the introduction's bloat is one of several reasons I've finally had
> to decide on the Web, scary as it is to write without the protection
> of being one-eyed among the blind, rather than among the two-eyed, so
> to speak.
>
> But as it happens, the Korean stories section essentially exists to
> point to written works which read as speculative today, even if they
> weren't originally so intended. In other words, it's actually on-
> topic here.
>
> So I've started this thread to make room for reviews of various
> Korean "folklore" collections and related works. I have no idea when
> or whether the research library that offers me access to most of
> these works will re-open to the public, nor whether I'll have the
> money to borrow books from it if it doesn't re-open any time soon.
> So I don't know how many books are in question, but at least four
> men who rendered Korean stories into English died long enough ago,
> and published long enough ago, that both in the US and in countries
> where the Bern convention applies their writings are in the public
> domain. And one important block of stories is available free online
> in much more recent translations. So I can at least start.
>
> In this post I want to talk about two things that will help a lot in
> reading these books.
>
> The first is the early modern Korean caste system.
>
> I don't yet know enough about the dynasty that ruled a country whose
> Korean name is now Romanised as Koryô or Goryeo - the country from
> which the usual European languages' name for Korea comes - from A.D.
> 935 to 1392 - to know how far back this system reaches, but in
> particular Goryeo's aristocracy was differently constituted. I also
> don't know enough yet about the succeeding dynasty, 1392-1910, whose
> country's Korean name is Romanised as Chosôn or Joseon, to
> chronologise this much; I don't know how far back each piece of the
> caste system reaches, nor when exactly, in the 19th century, each
> piece was dismantled.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_in_the_Joseon_Dynasty#Structure>
>
> But basically, there were four castes, the bottom-most of which comes
> in lots of smaller parts.
>
> Yangban were on top. Like most aristocracies, they were based on
> land ownership, but their ideological justification was different
> from European aristocracies; it was learning rather than martial
> skill. The yangban aristocracy was big as aristocracies go, around
> 10% of the population.
>
(trimmed)
I wondered once if a culture based on learning (especially mathematics) would be an advantage amounting to a superpower. It would seem that the small and rather isolated culture which somehow ended up ruling an Empire on which the sun did not set was _not_ Korea, and in fact was renowned, if anything, for pig-headed insularity, at least from the point of view of its more cosmopolitan members and its continental competition. What went wrong with my theory?

Andrew McDowell <mcdowell_ag@sky.com> wrote in
news:6f5d824e-95b8-4643-9722-e68074270625n@googlegroups.com:

> On Friday, August 6, 2021 at 5:55:55 AM UTC+1, Joe Bernstein wrote:

>> Yangban were on top. Like most aristocracies, they were based on
>> land ownership, but their ideological justification was different
>> from European aristocracies; it was learning rather than martial
>> skill. The yangban aristocracy was big as aristocracies go, around
>> 10% of the population.

> I wondered once if a culture based on learning (especially
> mathematics) would be an advantage amounting to a superpower. It would
> seem that the small and rather isolated culture which somehow ended up
> ruling an Empire on which the sun did not set was _not_ Korea, and in
> fact was renowned, if anything, for pig-headed insularity, at least
> from the point of view of its more cosmopolitan members and its
> continental competition. What went wrong with my theory?

Well, for one thing, Chinese society was similar in that regard, and
China is much, much bigger. So Korea was, well, not in the same
position as England / the U.K.

Also, Korea was renowned for pig-headed insularity. I *think* it's
the place for which Americans coined the name "Hermit Kingdom".
While that was a self-serving exaggeration, it was in fact government
policy to limit outside contacts for a very long time.

So basically, it lacked the relative advantage but had the relative
disadvantage.

I also think you overrate East Asian and underrate British math.

(Japan, which won in the medium term, was in this regard *not*
similar to Korea and China. The equivalent of a ronin in Korea would
be a poor yangban scholar.)

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

Last night I wrote in part:

> But as it happens, the Korean stories section essentially exists to
> point to written works which read as speculative today, even if they
> weren't originally so intended. In other words, it's actually on-
> topic here.
>
> So I've started this thread to make room for reviews of various
> Korean "folklore" collections and related works.
[difficulties]
> at least four
> men who rendered Korean stories into English died long enough ago,
> and published long enough ago, that both in the US and in countries
> where the Bern convention applies their writings are in the public
> domain. And one important block of stories is available free online
> in much more recent translations. So I can at least start.

Because I ran out of time last night, I left out plenty about pansori,
notably including links to performances at YouTube. There'll be
occasion to get back to that later in the thread; what I did have
time for is enough introduction for today.

All four of the men known to me as the first Englishers of Korean
traditional stories were missionaries to the Far East.

Horace Newton Allen, 1858-1932, was born in Ohio and went to school
there up to his medical degree. He then was sent to China as a
Presbyterian missionary. In less than a year, he moved to Korea. A
plot resulting in grave injuries to the queen's nephew, injuries
Allen successfully treated, gave him an in with the government, and
in 1885 the first Western hospital in Korea was founded under his
direction. He also started a medical school in 1886. In later years
he was a Korean diplomat in the US, *then* a US diplomat in Korea.
The US dismissed him in 1905 thanks to his opposition to the Japanese
takeover that year, which probably also made it difficult for him to
stay in Korea, so he went back to Ohio.

I don't know of a full biography, but a reference from English
Wikipedia gives a good account of the Korean years:
<https://eymj.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3349/ymj.2017.58.4.685>
There are dissertations about his work in Korea which *might* say
something about his post-Korea life, but I wouldn't know.

He wrote the book in question in 1889, in the US, while working for
the Korean legation, basically because everyone he met urged him to
write about his unique experiences. He chose to do so mainly
through translations. The book has nine chapters in 193 pages.
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Korean_Tales/DgeQVx0KS_sC>

I. Introductory, pages 5-14.
The preface mentions some ignorant ideas about Korea; this chapter is
the one meant to correct them, a general account of the country in
the second half of the 1880s.

II. Descriptive, pages 15-27.
Seoul, broad outline, description of the streets and of changes over
the course of the day, ending with an account of the palace and
things royal.

III. The Rabbit, and Other Legends: Stories of Birds and Animals,
pages 28-39.
The first six pages mention, and sometimes tell stories of,
particular flowers and birds. The last five render the shortest of
the pansori tales, about a rabbit, a turtle, and the Sea King. This
is a basically comic story; Allen's prose isn't that heavy, but isn't
light enough to make it funny for me.
I think it's very probable that Allen translated all his pansori
stories from novels, rather than from performances or librettos.

IV. The Enchanted Wine-Jug, or, Why the Cat and Dog Are Enemies,
pages 40-55.
Another quasi-comic animal story, but not so intrinsically funny, so
I thought it worked better. Given the rest of the book, this should
translate something, but I haven't found out what.

V. Ching Yuh and Kyain Oo: The Trials of Two Heavenly Lovers, pages
56-88.
And here begins the meat of the book. The collections I've read
include quite a few stories of separated lovers. This one starts
with their prototype, the Chinese legend of lovers separated by the
Milky Way, for two pages, but the rest of it is set on Earth;
children born to childless couples by supernatural agency meet and
fall in love, which of course doesn't go well in a land of arranged
marriages and wicked officials.
The most famous of these stories by far is also the most beloved
and longest of the pansori stories, also by far, <Chunhyang>. This
is a more timid story - our lovers are both yangban, so socially OK
for each other - but also fantasy (not just in the intro) and with
a surprising amount of action thanks to a military McGuffin. You
pays your money and you takes your pick. I like this version (for me,
the best thing this book offers), just finding it a shade too light.
Although I don't know the specific source, I have absolutely no
doubt that it's some 19th century novel.

VI. Hyung Bo and Nyal Bo; or, The Swallow-King's Rewards, pages 89-
115.
This is the second of the three fantasy pansori tales. It concerns
two brothers, who behave differently towards defenseless birds, as
they do towards each other, and who reap appropriate outcomes. It
has fun fantasy elements but is a shade too moralistic for me, so I
don't really have an opinion of Allen's version specifically.

VII. Chun Yang, the Faithful Dancing-Girl Wife, pages 116-151.
The two non-fantasy pansori stories are the least popular, the only
one Allen didn't do, and this, the most popular. <Chunhyang> is one
of the great Romantic tales, has repeatedly been filmed, and is the
kind of thing Allen's prose was made for, so of course his version
works fine. Strictly speaking it isn't *quite* non-fantasy; in the
story, a yangban gets away with marrying a gisaeng. In the real
world, things didn't work that way.
(I've watched a drama focused on the hospital Allen built, in
which he's a prominent character. The drama, now that I think of it
probably not coincidentally, features three gisaeng who become early
nursing students; the missionaries insist their yangban lovers either
marry them or part from them. Ha. I haven't got a VPN set up; the
drama, <Jejungwon> or <Jejoongwon>, doesn't seem to be available at
law-abiding streaming sites from the US, but I don't know about other
countries. I found it too nationalistic to treat its Japanese
characters as human beings, but otherwise reasonably good; many
Korean-American commentators thought it incredibly perfect.)
(I don't know of any drama of this century, so at all likely to be
lawfully available, that adapts <Chunhyang> with any fidelity.)

VIII. Sim Chung, the Dutiful Daughter, pages 152-169.
This is the last of the fantasy pansori tales. It can be somewhat
problematic for modern readers, because it depicts the amazing filial
piety of a yangban girl who makes a deal: she'll be cast into the
sea as a human sacrifice, in return for enough rice to fulfill a
promise her father foolishly made. Of course in the story she
doesn't die, but gets rewarded through the Sea King, in another kind
of Romantic tale Allen could write well, but here it just strikes me
as creepy.
This is the story alluded to in <Bride of Habaek>, the fantasy
drama I mentioned in the previous post. This one *is* law-abidingly
available in the US:
<https://www.viki.com/tv/35438c-bride-of-the-water-god>
but is problematic because, having given away the ending in the title,
it feels too obviously fictional; disbelief is too hard to suspend.
Still, and despite some plot holes, I found it worth watching; just
YMMV.
There is a 21st century drama about Shim Chung, but it's a two-
episode holiday drama, and like most such, never Englished. Although
it's basically the #2 pansori tale, it doesn't get filmed much either.

IX. Hong Kil Tong; or, The Adventures of an Abused Boy, pages 170-
193.
Hong Gil-Dong is usually referred to in English as the Korean version
of Robin Hood. While this is true as far as it goes, Hong is
actually a magician as well as an outlaw. In other words, *the only
non-fantasy story in the book is <Chunhyang>*. Allen's version tames
the fantasy only a little, and is serviceable, but there are better.
Several dramas based on Hong Gil-Dong leave the fantasy out
entirely. I know of none that leave it in.

Allen chose superbly. He hit all kinds of main points in this book,
and on the whole did them creditable service. He seems to have
thought so too; in 1904 it was reprinted as the first half of <Korea:
Fact and Fancy>:
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Korea_Fact_and_Fancy/H0A6AQAAMAAJ>
repaginated, with footnotes updating the first two chapters, but for
the stories only one note, indicating that he'd really done not
translations but "adaptations".

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

"Bride of the Water God". I thought a bell rang.
<https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/aint-gonna-drown-in-the-water>
Over a dozen expensive volumes at Amazon, and some
stuttering on product information:

Bride of the Water God Volume 5 by Mi-Kyung Yun(February 9, 2010) Paperback
Jan 1, 1702
Paperback
Hmm.

I wrote last night, inter alia:

> at least four
> men who rendered Korean stories into English died long enough ago,
> and published long enough ago, that both in the US and in countries
> where the Bern convention applies their writings are in the public
> domain.

Eli Barr Landis, 1865-1898, was born in Pennsylvania to a Mennonite
family; he was the only one to go away, to pre-med and then medical
school, and while at the latter switched to high church Anglicanism.
He initially worked at his hometown hospital, but in 1890 arrived as
part of a mission to Korea. Most members of the mission wound up in
Seoul or other places where converting was going on, but Landis
stayed where they'd disembarked, in what is now Incheon, He worked
on many things, partly as the mission's only constant member in his
town, partly because he was also its best student of Korean, but his
main job was running a hospital. A patient there left her son in his
care, which led eventually to his running a small orphanage, boys
only; it would outlive him by over 70 years.
He went all-in for Korea, in his own way, wanting not to spend
much time with fellow Westerners, and to live among the natives
instead. He adopted one of the orphans. He wrote at least 23 papers,
on a wide variety of topics. And he died young.
The main source on him is a paper by Richard Rutt, "An Early
Koreanologist", published in 1979 by the Korea branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society. It's available, probably not legally but not, near
as I can tell, unsafely, several places online.

I knew of one paper to start with, and only upon finding Rutt learnt
that there were two more, one of which has the same title as the one
I started with. So today is the first time I've read ?all of
Landis's folk tale papers, one after another. They all came out near
the end of 1897. They include 16 stories total, quite a few of which
have orphaned boys or young men as protagonists. Rutt is probably
right that these papers were by-products of the orphanage.
That said, these are the first Korean stories published in English
which can reasonably be considered "folk". They don't read like
written stories, even if, as you read, you edit out what are
obviously Landis's asides to the reader. They certainly don't read
like late 19th century written stories. They're pretty fast reading
and pretty fun.

They introduce some of the cast later to become part of the standard
ideas about Korean myth, legend, and folktales, notably tigers and
foxes, but since Landis rendered all supernatural beings (except
supernatural tigers) as "fairies" and "demons", they don't introduce
any of those I know from dramas and movies. (For some reason, the
were-tigers extremely prominent in most Korean folktale collections
I've read are almost completely ignored in Korean fantasy dramas,
movies, and websites.)

"Korean Folk-Tales". Pp. 282-292 of Volume 10, Number 39, October-
December 1897, of <The Journal of American Folklore>. Four stories.
The second is at least arguably not fantasy.
It's at JSTOR and at the Internet Archive.
<https://archive.org/details/jstor-533279/>
<https://www.jstor.org/stable/533279>

"Korean Folk Tales". Pp. 693-697 of Volume 22, Number 5, October
1897, of <China Review>. Seven stories. The second, third, and
maybe fifth are at least arguably not fantasy.
It's at Google Books and, not downloadably, at the University of Hong
Kong Library, which has a somewhat better scan.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=1RZBAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA693>
<https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209495j>
(in the latter, you want about page 10)

"Folk Tales of Korean Children". Pp. 1-6 of Volume 5, Number 4, 1897,
of <Journal of the Buddhist Text and Anthropological Society>.
Five stories. The fourth could perhaps be read as not fantasy, but I
don't buy it.
I only find it at Google Books.
<https://books.google.com/books?id=ekhBAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA5-PA1>

He also published, in two journals and three parts, "Rhymes of Korean
Children". I haven't looked it up; see Rutt for references.

Good night. I'm not sure when I'll come back with the other two
missionary men; I've sort of blown my drama-watching schedule,
writing one post and reading/researching and writing another today,
and their books are longer.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

I recently read a minor chess anecdote, on Quora perhaps.
It was on the subject of "promoting" the minor chess piece,
a pawn, into a powerful queen, and how rarely its other
promotion options are considered. I think it came mangled
but the gist was that player A expected player B to make a
queen and produce stalemate, but actually B intended to
make a _____ leading to checkmate.

My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
be a tiger?

Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.

ObSF, where everyone in the world became a vampire,
well now what.

On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 07:34:33 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>I recently read a minor chess anecdote, on Quora perhaps.
>It was on the subject of "promoting" the minor chess piece,
>a pawn, into a powerful queen, and how rarely its other
>promotion options are considered. I think it came mangled
>but the gist was that player A expected player B to make a
>queen and produce stalemate, but actually B intended to
>make a _____ leading to checkmate.

Probably a knight--the other options are rook and bishop, and queen
can do everything that either of them can do, but a knight has a
unique move.

>My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
>to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
>be a tiger?

When you're stranded in the middle of the ocean? A dolphin or a
seagull would be a damned handy thing to be at a time like that--a
tiger not so much. And any time you're locked in a cell a cat or
other critter that's small enough to slip through the bars would be
handy. And then there's the fly on the wall . . .

>Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
>yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
>is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
>home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.
>
>ObSF, where everyone in the world became a vampire,
>well now what.

In article <mb7tgg58pdrnk7736mfpikgaf1jh95vau0@4ax.com>,
J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 07:34:33 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
><rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>
>>I recently read a minor chess anecdote, on Quora perhaps.
>>It was on the subject of "promoting" the minor chess piece,
>>a pawn, into a powerful queen, and how rarely its other
>>promotion options are considered. I think it came mangled
>>but the gist was that player A expected player B to make a
>>queen and produce stalemate, but actually B intended to
>>make a _____ leading to checkmate.
>
>Probably a knight--the other options are rook and bishop, and queen
>can do everything that either of them can do, but a knight has a
>unique move.
>
>>My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
>>to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
>>be a tiger?
>
>When you're stranded in the middle of the ocean? A dolphin or a
>seagull would be a damned handy thing to be at a time like that--a
>tiger not so much. And any time you're locked in a cell a cat or
>other critter that's small enough to slip through the bars would be
>handy. And then there's the fly on the wall . . .
>
>>Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
>>yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
>>is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
>>home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.
>>
>>ObSF, where everyone in the world became a vampire,
>>well now what.

http://columbiaclosings.com/pix/21/07/boffo_bite.jpg
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On Saturday, August 7, 2021 at 3:34:36 PM UTC+1, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> I recently read a minor chess anecdote, on Quora perhaps.
> It was on the subject of "promoting" the minor chess piece,
> a pawn, into a powerful queen, and how rarely its other
> promotion options are considered. I think it came mangled
> but the gist was that player A expected player B to make a
> queen and produce stalemate, but actually B intended to
> make a _____ leading to checkmate.
>
> My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
> to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
> be a tiger?
>
> Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
> yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
> is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
> home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.
>
> ObSF, where everyone in the world became a vampire,
> well now what.

When the later Harry Potter books were coming out, I thought about what my reaction would be in his place. I decided I would study to be an Animagus and hope for something like Herring Gull - reasonably common and with a wide range, so hard to track down any particular Herring Gull, reasonably long lived, travel is easy so good for interest as well as evasion. Tigers would find it harder to hide, especially starting out in the UK.

(Not a very Potter-like reaction, I agree - in fact I think I can boil the Potter strategy down into three points - which may possibly apply to other stories or more widely)

1) Do whatever you have to do to survive

2) Never stop looking for an opportunity

3) When one comes, grab it with both hands and run with it.

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote in
news:3b3356ad-e488-4dd3-8498-5943d45c63d9n@googlegroups.com:

> My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
> to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
> be a tiger?
>
> Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
> yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
> is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
> home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.

I should probably have known better than to write "were-tiger".

What it actually is, is that tigers in Korean folklore have a wide
range of abilities. Regardless of special abilities, they're often
stupid, but not always. Some are simply tigers, perhaps exceptional
but basically the natural animal. Some can talk to other animals.
Some can talk to people. And some can disguise themselves as human,
which is what I actually meant by "were-tiger". Some of these last,
in fact, are portrayed as kings of tigers.

Korea is mostly mountains, so used to have lots of tigers; back then,
"a tiger bit me today" might not have been that unusual, except that
the person saying it would have been a ghost. They were eradicated
during Japanese rule, and it doesn't look like re-introduction is
being seriously considered in the South; who knows about the North.

I don't know of anything much resembling Western lycanthropy in Korea.
No connection to the moon, no vulnerability to silver, no spread by
being bitten. There doesn't seem to be anything much like a vampire
in Korean legends, but there are lots of dramas about vampires; yet
in the one I've so far watched [1], becoming a vampire takes drinking
the vampire's blood, not the vampire drinking the human's.

I've watched two short dramas about tigers, both from 1996 and not
subtitled.[2] I'm not aware of *any* later drama starring tigers,
though my knowledge of the short dramas of 1997-2010 isn't good.

Anyway, sorry for the poor word choice.

Joe Bernstein

[1] <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood. It's
just five episodes - originally intended as a movie. It's at YouTube,
probably illicitly, without English subtitles; it's at non-law-
abiding streaming sites with English subtitles; and the English-
subtitled DVD set I originally watched was until recently still in
print from the publisher, and seems to be easy to find. It's dark
and worth watching.
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99B83D3F342C54DD>
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Freeze>

[2] I watched them at YouTube in certainly illicit uploads. They're
parts of an omnibus which the relevant network, KBS, handles
distinctively, unlike any other part of their intellectual property
I've noticed. Probably illicit uploads currently at YouTube:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7VHU4Mgyqg> (the first part of one)
I currently don't find the second part.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKR6E-byY8> (the other)
In this latter one (spoiler), the tiger actually is a sort of were, a
powerful magician who's figured out how to turn himself into a tiger
without paying enough attention to the consequences.
The two-episode one has OK special effects; the one-episode one's
were phoned in.
Information about the 1996 season of the omnibus these two dramas
were part of:
<https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98_%EA%B3%A0%ED%
96%A5_-_1996%EB%85%84>
About the 1996-1999 and 2008-2009 seasons:
<https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98_%EA%B3%A0%ED%
96%A5>
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Hometown_Legends> No tigers.
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Hometown_Legends_(2009)> No tigers.
The 2008-2009 series are licitly available subtitled and paywalled:
<https://www.kocowa.com/en_us/season/18862632>
<https://www.viki.com/tv/37429c-korean-ghost-stories-2008>
<https://www.kocowa.com/en_us/season/18864528>
<https://www.viki.com/tv/37430c-korean-ghost-stories-2009>
(KoCoWa hires professional subtitlers; Viki uses fan subtitlers.
Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, in my opinion,
but for one's first K-dramas, pro subs are preferable.)
As the English title the network has given these seasons indicates,
most of the individual dramas are about ghosts. This was not true of
earlier versions of the omnibus.
The best page on the original 1977-1989 series:
<https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98%20%EA%B3%A0%ED%96%A5>
None of the surviving episodes/dramas I've watched from the original
series (five of them) features tigers, but that's less than 1% of
total episodes.

--
Joe Bernstein, sometimes inept writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 19:09:42 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
<Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

>Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote in
>news:3b3356ad-e488-4dd3-8498-5943d45c63d9n@googlegroups.com:
>
>> My point is that if you can magically turn yourself from human
>> to animal and back, then when would the best animal to be not
>> be a tiger?
>>
>> Or, if being bitten by a were-thing turns you into a were-thing
>> yourself, then perhaps the animal most likely to bite a person
>> is always a tiger. Although how likely it is that the person comes
>> home and says "Hey, a tiger bit me today", is a different question.
>
>I should probably have known better than to write "were-tiger".
>
>What it actually is, is that tigers in Korean folklore have a wide
>range of abilities. Regardless of special abilities, they're often
>stupid, but not always. Some are simply tigers, perhaps exceptional
>but basically the natural animal. Some can talk to other animals.
>Some can talk to people. And some can disguise themselves as human,
>which is what I actually meant by "were-tiger". Some of these last,
>in fact, are portrayed as kings of tigers.
>
>Korea is mostly mountains, so used to have lots of tigers; back then,
>"a tiger bit me today" might not have been that unusual, except that
>the person saying it would have been a ghost. They were eradicated
>during Japanese rule, and it doesn't look like re-introduction is
>being seriously considered in the South; who knows about the North.
>
>I don't know of anything much resembling Western lycanthropy in Korea.
>No connection to the moon, no vulnerability to silver, no spread by
>being bitten. There doesn't seem to be anything much like a vampire
>in Korean legends, but there are lots of dramas about vampires; yet
>in the one I've so far watched [1], becoming a vampire takes drinking
>the vampire's blood, not the vampire drinking the human's.
>
>I've watched two short dramas about tigers, both from 1996 and not
>subtitled.[2] I'm not aware of *any* later drama starring tigers,
>though my knowledge of the short dramas of 1997-2010 isn't good.
>
>Anyway, sorry for the poor word choice.
>
>Joe Bernstein
>
>[1] <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
>sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
>Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood.

Charlaine Harris' vampires feed off a commercial blood substitute,
that's in 2001. And in Season 1 episode 7 of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer (1997) Angel's refrigerator contains a number of blood packs.

>It's
>just five episodes - originally intended as a movie. It's at YouTube,
>probably illicitly, without English subtitles; it's at non-law-
>abiding streaming sites with English subtitles; and the English-
>subtitled DVD set I originally watched was until recently still in
>print from the publisher, and seems to be easy to find. It's dark
>and worth watching.
><https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99B83D3F342C54DD>
><https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Freeze>
>
>[2] I watched them at YouTube in certainly illicit uploads. They're
>parts of an omnibus which the relevant network, KBS, handles
>distinctively, unlike any other part of their intellectual property
>I've noticed. Probably illicit uploads currently at YouTube:
><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7VHU4Mgyqg> (the first part of one)
>I currently don't find the second part.
><https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKR6E-byY8> (the other)
>In this latter one (spoiler), the tiger actually is a sort of were, a
>powerful magician who's figured out how to turn himself into a tiger
>without paying enough attention to the consequences.
> The two-episode one has OK special effects; the one-episode one's
>were phoned in.
> Information about the 1996 season of the omnibus these two dramas
>were part of:
><https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98_%EA%B3%A0%ED%
>96%A5_-_1996%EB%85%84>
> About the 1996-1999 and 2008-2009 seasons:
><https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98_%EA%B3%A0%ED%
>96%A5>
><https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Hometown_Legends> No tigers.
><https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Hometown_Legends_(2009)> No tigers.
> The 2008-2009 series are licitly available subtitled and paywalled:
><https://www.kocowa.com/en_us/season/18862632>
><https://www.viki.com/tv/37429c-korean-ghost-stories-2008>
><https://www.kocowa.com/en_us/season/18864528>
><https://www.viki.com/tv/37430c-korean-ghost-stories-2009>
>(KoCoWa hires professional subtitlers; Viki uses fan subtitlers.
>Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, in my opinion,
>but for one's first K-dramas, pro subs are preferable.)
> As the English title the network has given these seasons indicates,
>most of the individual dramas are about ghosts. This was not true of
>earlier versions of the omnibus.
> The best page on the original 1977-1989 series:
><https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%A0%84%EC%84%A4%EC%9D%98%20%EA%B3%A0%ED%96%A5>
>None of the surviving episodes/dramas I've watched from the original
>series (five of them) features tigers, but that's less than 1% of
>total episodes.

On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 20:09:46 UTC+1, Joe Bernstein wrote:
> <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
> sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
> Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood. It's
> just five episodes - originally intended as a movie. It's at YouTube,
> probably illicitly, without English subtitles; it's at non-law-
> abiding streaming sites with English subtitles; and the English-
> subtitled DVD set I originally watched was until recently still in
> print from the publisher, and seems to be easy to find. It's dark
> and worth watching.
> <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99B83D3F342C54DD>
> <https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Freeze>

Well, Western productions _Love at First Bite_ (1979)
and _Forever Knight_ (1992-1996) portray vampires
who are using blood banks or bottled blood. And there
was the other blood bank vampire who was fired for
drinking on the job. I'm not sure how to date a joke?

I'll try to remember that a Korean were-tiger is probably
a tiger with the ability to turn into human, not the other.
Maybe that is the better survival strategy... I think I
mentioned a Marvel Comics story (!) where a humanoid
fox-spirit with more tails than usual, I think she /was/
Korean, had to restore herself by draining most of the
soul energy or something from her human boss. She's
nominally the hero so I assumed she didn't kill him,
but they didn't say... I think it's not clear what some
original European legend vampires are consuming,
only that you'd better stop them. Others are found in
their graves with blood on their lips - messy eaters.

On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 15:30:18 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 20:09:46 UTC+1, Joe Bernstein wrote:
>> <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
>> sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
>> Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood. It's
>> just five episodes - originally intended as a movie. It's at YouTube,
>> probably illicitly, without English subtitles; it's at non-law-
>> abiding streaming sites with English subtitles; and the English-
>> subtitled DVD set I originally watched was until recently still in
>> print from the publisher, and seems to be easy to find. It's dark
>> and worth watching.
>> <https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99B83D3F342C54DD>
>> <https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Freeze>
>
>Well, Western productions _Love at First Bite_ (1979)
>and _Forever Knight_ (1992-1996) portray vampires
>who are using blood banks or bottled blood. And there
>was the other blood bank vampire who was fired for
>drinking on the job. I'm not sure how to date a joke?
>
>I'll try to remember that a Korean were-tiger is probably
>a tiger with the ability to turn into human, not the other.
>Maybe that is the better survival strategy... I think I
>mentioned a Marvel Comics story (!) where a humanoid
>fox-spirit with more tails than usual, I think she /was/
>Korean, had to restore herself by draining most of the
>soul energy or something from her human boss. She's
>nominally the hero so I assumed she didn't kill him,
>but they didn't say... I think it's not clear what some
>original European legend vampires are consuming,
>only that you'd better stop them. Others are found in
>their graves with blood on their lips - messy eaters.

Foxes of one kind or another are something of a fixture in East Asian
folklore--if I understand correctly they are all shifters of one kind
or another with the details being regional--generally though a
beautiful woman is within their range, some have other options as
well. Some have nine tails and some have one.

There's a Love, Death, and Robots episode (S1E8--"Good Hunting")
featuring the 9-tailed Chinese variety. I've seen others, I just
don't recall in what.

On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 19:09:42 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
<Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

<snppo; topic is Korean traditions about tigers, and vampires>
<topic is two illegally-uploaded videos>

> The two-episode one has OK special effects; the one-episode one's
>were phoned in.

I watched /Raya and the Last Dragon/ yesterday and the credits
indicated that it was created in "over 400 homes".

Now, I found it to be excessively serious and humor mostly failed for
me, but I doubt very much that the quality of the animation could be
described as "phoned in" in the pejorative sense. Although it
undoubtedly /was/ "phoned in", over the Internet.

So we may need a new insult for performances, animation, special
effects, etc, that we really don't like than "phoned in".

<snippo rest>
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote in
news:f6qtgg1i6q75sun57b6ravg0d7nls9cio3@4ax.com:

> On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 19:09:42 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
> <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

>>[1] <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
>>sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
>>Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood.

> Charlaine Harris' vampires feed off a commercial blood substitute,
> that's in 2001. And in Season 1 episode 7 of Buffy the Vampire
> Slayer (1997) Angel's refrigerator contains a number of blood packs.

Thank you very much. I'd suspected it wasn't original to <Freeze>
(K-dramas in 2006 were hardly known for spec-ficnal originality), but
Spoor's were the only things that came up in Google searches. I own
a bunch of Harris's books and will probably try to read them soon,
may even own <Buffy> season 1 and try to watch it soon, but am in
general ignorant of US vampires just as I am of Korean ones.

-- JLB

Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote in
news:njvvgg1r75kr8hidgjcfq43b2podgrin7k@4ax.com:

> On Sat, 7 Aug 2021 19:09:42 -0000 (UTC), Joe Bernstein
> <Kdeurama@gmail.com> wrote:

> <snppo; topic is Korean traditions about tigers, and vampires>
> <topic is two illegally-uploaded videos>

Mmmm. Probably illegally. The uploads don't have the style the
originating network's uploads normally have, but present themselves
as its work, and have survived at YouTube rather longer than uploads
of this series have in the past. So until/unless they get pulled, I
won't be quite sure they're illicit.

>> The two-episode one has OK special effects; the one-episode one's
>>were phoned in.

> I watched /Raya and the Last Dragon/ yesterday and the credits
> indicated that it was created in "over 400 homes".
>
> Now, I found it to be excessively serious and humor mostly failed for
> me, but I doubt very much that the quality of the animation could be
> described as "phoned in" in the pejorative sense. Although it
> undoubtedly /was/ "phoned in", over the Internet.
>
> So we may need a new insult for performances, animation, special
> effects, etc, that we really don't like than "phoned in".

Sigh, you're probably right. I just keep putting foot in mouth here.

I watched the start of each to make sure I had the right ones, and
the one-episode one's start reminded me that basically the special
effects amount to footage of a tiger pacing and roaring. I am not
making this up. They're really bad. It's late in the sequence of
that season, though still before an exceptional show with lots of SFX
[1], but anyway, maybe budgets were strained. Or maybe animal rights
types got to them.

Joe Bernstein

[1] That show adapts a myth of Korean shamanism, and is by far the
narratively strangest K-drama I've watched. The myth is fairly well
documented online in English, because lots of subsequent works have
been based on it; the search term is "Baridegi", which also Romanises
the show's title, and means "the abandoned one". A royal couple with
lots of daughters get one more, and the angry king throws her in the
river. (This is one of two dramas in the 1996 season that I read as
hostile to sex-selection abortion [2], which was a big concern at
that time in South Korea.) Needless to say, they later find that
they need her help. That's basically the first episode. In the
second, providing that help takes her on a *very* strange journey. I
think it's one of the season's three best shows.
Let's see...
This is long enough, it might be both episodes:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbCznb3pfJ4>
The other two best. A peasant accidentally kills the yangban woman
he's desperately in love with, and enshrines her body in a hidden
place, which leads to a spectacular performance from the lead actor
[3] as he goes mad under ghostly punishment.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOHQwlISKs>
A woman whose yangban husband is both physically and mentally ill,
leaving her vulnerable to all sorts of social attacks, undertakes to
cure him with a desperate remedy. Colloquially known as "Give me
my legs!"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92sbfda1I1U>

[2] The other is only minimally speculative, but is a tragedy, and
features pansori singing in short, palatable amounts, by a woman who
is now a highly respected pansori singer but was then young and
appearing in a few TV shows, wearing in this one rather less than K-
drama heroines usually wear.
Let's see...
OK, I guess that settles it: the uploads are illicit, because this
one was at YouTube the last time I looked and now isn't.
No, wait, the uploader has re-uploaded it, monkeying with the title:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmu_nZjXrgY>
But that still, I think, establishes the uploads as illicit.

[3] Kim Kyu-Chul starred in two other shows in that season, and more
in other seasons, and appeared in smaller parts in something like a
dozen speculative dramas later, of which I've so far seen only his
version of a mad scientist in <Oh My Geum-Bi>, 2016-2017, one of my
favourite dramas, which of course has already been consigned to the
lawbreakers, sigh...
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Kyu-chul>
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/Kim_Kyu_Chul>

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote in news:a1821dcb-991e-
47d8-bfb6-1098714710e4n@googlegroups.com:

> On Saturday, 7 August 2021 at 20:09:46 UTC+1, Joe Bernstein wrote:
>> <Freeze>, 2006, possibly the first vampire K-drama, but I'm not
>> sure yet. I'm also not sure whether its vampires pre-date Ryk
>> Spoor's vampire in feeding off black market packets of blood.

> Well, Western productions _Love at First Bite_ (1979)
> and _Forever Knight_ (1992-1996) portray vampires
> who are using blood banks or bottled blood. And there
> was the other blood bank vampire who was fired for
> drinking on the job. I'm not sure how to date a joke?

Thank you for even earlier examples.

> I think I
> mentioned a Marvel Comics story (!) where a humanoid
> fox-spirit with more tails than usual, I think she /was/
> Korean, had to restore herself by draining most of the
> soul energy or something from her human boss. She's
> nominally the hero so I assumed she didn't kill him,
> but they didn't say...

The fourth of the early writers has the first stories about the
Korean version to appear in English. What the "gumiho" wants varies -
sometimes human life energy as in this Marvel example, sometimes just
our livers - though the paradoxical goal, to become human herself,
stays the same. (Wait, you have to murder a hundred humans just to
become one? So then you're vulnerable to being murdered by your own
next of kin?)

Gumihos are all over K-dramas, in large numbers. I think the reason
they've thrived while tigers haven't is that there's nothing remotely
sexy about tigers (when they turn human in the stories, it's usually
as presumptively celibate Buddhist monks), whereas gumihos are
traditionally beautiful women who try to seduce at least some of
their victims. [1] Much easier to twist into K-dramas' romance
template.

Joe Bernstein

[1] I'm currently watching a drama titled after a Korean supernatural
introduced into English by the third early writer, today's subject.
While watching dramas these days, I've been listening to the
soundtrack songs released as singles during the initial run,
alternating with the episodes, so although I'm watching this one on
DVD, I keep going to YouTube for those songs, and the streaming site
Viki, to which I've already pointed to in this thread, is advertising
two speculative dramas to me relentlessly, both paywalled.
<https://www.viki.com/tv/37776c-doom-at-your-service>
and
<https://www.viki.com/tv/37880c-my-roommate-is-a-gumiho>
In the latter case, the gumiho is a hot man instead of a hot woman.
This is mildly unusual, but not original to this show.

There's only one gumiho story in the 1996 season of "Hometown Legends",
and sure enough, it features a female monster with sex appeal (plus
another without):
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ShZS7xS6I>

One of my favourite K-dramas is usually titled in English <My
Girlfriend Is a Gumiho>. Paywalled:
<https://www.viki.com/tv/956c-my-girlfriend-is-a-gumiho>
DVDs exist.

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

I wrote, some days ago:

> So I've started this thread to make room for reviews of various
> Korean "folklore" collections and related works. I have no idea when
> or whether the research library that offers me access to most of
> these works will re-open to the public, nor whether I'll have the
> money to borrow books from it if it doesn't re-open any time soon.

That library, at the University of Washington, has now announced that
it'll re-open September 22, but not whether it'll admit the public
then:
<https://www.lib.washington.edu/coronavirus>

I seem to have finished at least five still-copyright books of Korean
stories when I tackled this years ago, and at least started one more.
That last was only available then at Seattle University, and another,
rather important, book is now best available there. (Because my
reading damaged UW's fragile copy.) SU's library has been open all
summer, but not to the public:
<https://libguides.seattleu.edu/blog/Summer-2021-Library-Hours-and-Services-Update>

All the books then known to me that I hadn't yet reached, in total
some two dozen, were then at the UW, but many only at its Tateuchi
East Asia Library, which doesn't re-open until September 29, and
again, may not re-open to the public then. I have, of course, no
idea how much time I can devote to finishing this long-abandoned
project, either, so in turn no idea how many books I'll try to review
in this thread.

For now, Seattle Public Library's inter-library loan fee is waived.
I don't know when they plan to restore it.
<https://www.spl.org/books-and-media/interlibrary-loan>
So that's also an option, currently at one book per week. (It was a
limit of five requests per week pre-pandemic, but also with fees for
each one.)
<https://www.spl.org/books-and-media/interlibrary-loan>

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer <Kdeurama@gmail.com>

A few days ago, I wrote, in part:

> at least four
> men who rendered Korean stories into English died long enough ago,
> and published long enough ago, that both in the US and in countries
> where the Bern convention applies their writings are in the public
> domain.

I subsequently wrote that

| All four of the men known to me as the first Englishers of Korean
| traditional stories were missionaries to the Far East.

This, it turns out, was a bit of an exaggeration.

William Elliot Griffis, 1843-1928, did go to Japan, where he set up
schools and taught in them, and did become a minister, but although
Wikipedia on him (the best source I found online) calls him a
"missionary", technically he probably wasn't (which in turn is
probably why he doesn't have a non-Wikipedia biography online).
He grew up in Philadelphia, fought in the Civil War, then went to
Rutgers. There he tutored the school's first Japanese student.
After graduation and a Grand Tour, he started at seminary, but then
got an invitation from his student's home province, to come and teach.
He worked there for two years, 1870-1872, then in Tokyo for two more.
Then he returned to the US, finished seminary, and worked from 1877
to 1903 as a Congregational pastor. He also wrote a ton of books,
and in 1903, sixty years old, he retired to write more and also go on
lecture tours.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Elliot_Griffis>

Already in the 1880s he'd published two books on Korea, which he
hadn't visited while in Japan, and based mainly on Japanese sources.
But most of his books were on Japan, and the rest ranged pretty
widely, as we'll soon see. However, in 1880 he'd published a book
titled <Japanese Fairy World>, and in 1908 either a new edition or a
new book, <The Firefly's Lovers>. In 1911 came <The Unmannerly Tiger>,
Korean stories. On the strength of these, in 1918-1921 each year
brought a book of European fairy tales, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss and
Welsh, and then in 1922 came a new edition of <The Unmannerly Tiger>
and either a new or revised Japanese book.
1911: <https://books.google.com/books?id=lJrAQ1PeeewC>
1922: <https://archive.org/details/koreanfairytales00grif/>

I was biased against Griffis from getgo when I first read his Korean
fairy tale books. This is because I'd already read his Dutch book,
and posted here about its faults:
<https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.sf.written/c/soFUtvMswFw/m/oWTWCJ8nWf8J>
My charges were: 1) All the stories went to explain something,
either strictly Just So or at least some historical fact. 2) They
all got fit into a historical scheme. 3) He was much too rigid with
his fairies. And 4) He was much too didactic.
1918: <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dutch_Fairy_Tales_for_Young_Folks/JZA6AQAAMAAJ>

In addition, his was the first full-length collection of Korean
"folklore", in the mixture of literary and folk sources typical
thereafter, and like all such, borrowed from predecessors. Since I
haven't read much of the periodical literature, I don't know how
*much* he borrowed, but given that he never got to Korea until
1926 or 1927, it was probably considerable. At the time, since I was
trying to read in chronological order, I actually doubted the stories
I couldn't source were actually Korean; but later writers from Korea
told the same stories, so I was wrong about that. Anyway, though,
his *first story*, the title story of the 1911 edition, is retold
from E. B. Landis's <China Review> article, its story 6. He also
retold three of H. N. Allen's chapters, including two pansori tales,
and based three more of his stories on shorter passages in Allen's
book. He dedicated the book to Allen, which seems fair, but the lack
of credit to Landis really pissed me off. However, lack of credit
has been the norm in kids' fairy tale books since long before, and I
was really wrong about that too, however unfair to Landis it was.

So here I am, at least two years later (I'm really unsure just when
I did this work, but 2018-19 seem the likeliest possibilities), and
can I get over all this bias to be fair to Griffis?

Well, after the Landis retelling, the book proceeds to a succession
of three major introductions of Korean stories, and they're all
kiddified. No doubt that's what his publishers wanted, but in the
case of the first, it's really problematic. "Tokgabi and His Pranks"
is the first English-language account of a specifically Korean
supernatural being, and it presents the critter known online as
dokkaebi more or less as a Puck. It does some systematising too,
trying to turn dokkaebi from a story into a species, but not that
much, and Griffis doesn't then insert dokkaebi into all his stories,
though he does show up in one where he doesn't belong (one of the
new elements in Griffis's versions of Allen's tales).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokkaebi>
I'm watching a drama at the moment *titled* <Dokkaebi>, or in
English <Goblin>. The titular character is the leading man, and
although this isn't one of the harsher K-dramas, he definitely is
neither as chaotic nor as trivial as a Puck.
<https://www.viki.com/tv/31706c-guardian-the-lonely-and-great-god>
(paywalled)

Next comes a pseudo-historical section. He did indulge his taste for
historicising fairy tales enough for this: He gave the first
accounts in Korean "folklore" of three major foundation myths.
(I don't know whether they'd already appeared in histories of Korea,
though.) "East Light and the Bridge of Fishes" concerns a king
usually, in English, called Jumong.
<https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=121572>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongmyeong_of_Goguryeo> (tough reading)
This story is known from a 5th century A.D. inscription and books
starting in the 12th century.
Several K-dramas, of which <Jumong> is pretty famous, retell
Jumong's story 100% mundanely.
Somewhere at Amazon with Prime, but neither Google nor Amazon wants
me, not being a Prime member, to tell you where.
<https://tv.apple.com/us/show/prince-of-the-legend/umc.cmc.290paklyuyq2tnyfi63upf0sh>

After this, he told the story of Dangun, which is known from books
starting in the 13th century. Dangun is supposed to have been a
younger contemporary of the Chinese Emperor Yao, in the 24th century
BC. This is why Koreans claim Korean history spans five millennia.
Dangun is supposed to be the son of a god and a woman who'd started
life as a bear. He's supposed to have founded an advanced society
in the early Bronze Age. Conveniently, this society would've been in
North Korea, so we don't know much about the archaeology, but I'm
sceptical. In Korean historiography, picking Dangun as progenitor
suggests Korean nationalism. In this book, "Prince Sandalwood".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangun>
A fantasy K-drama set mainly around AD 400 also features scenes
showing something close to the Dangun story, depicted as much earlier.
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/The_Legend> (the lawbreakers)
His just-so-ing, in this and the next story, focuses heavily on
top-knots, for some reason. He's fascinated, in this book, with hair
and hats.

Following the first straight retelling of an Allen pansori tale comes
the remaining "historical" bit. During the Han Dynasty in China, a
sage documented in earlier sources was turned into the founder of a
state in Manchuria or, again, North Korea, a state whose certainly
historical last dynasty the Han would conquer in the 2nd century BC.
Kija is supposed to have lived in the 12th century BC. Picking Kija
as progenitor suggests traditional Korean looking up to China. In
this book, "Topknots and Crockery Hats", the first chapter expanding
one of Allen's shorter passages. This story is technically non-
speculative, but too silly to be mundane.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jizi>

Although Griffis occasionally mentions one of these three guys
thereafter, he doesn't, in this book, indulge the historicising bent
I found so annoying in the Dutch book to anywhere near the extent I
remember. He was also far less didactic in this book than the way I
remember the Dutch one.

In the 1922 edition another historical story follows, but I'll save
the extra stories from that edition for last. The next four stories
in the 1911 version are all ordinary Korean "folklore", and more or
less wry. The last, 1911 "Peach-Blossom", 1922 "The King of the
Flowers", is technically not speculative. Then comes an inferior
retelling of Allen's chapter 4, another wry Korean fantasy (Just So-
ish), and Griffis's last major introduction, the first English
version of what's known as the Korean equivalent of "Cinderella",
"Kongji and Patzzi" or some such.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kongjwi_and_Patjwi>
I don't find this version as filling, so to speak, as "Cinderella";
it has less conversation, and its magic is more mundane, but then,
"Cinderella" has never been one of my favourites anyhow. In this
book it's "Pigling and Her Proud Sister".
A couple of Korean Web dramas with "Cinderella" in their titles
are speculative (<Cinderella and the Four Knights>, which I haven't
seen, and <Ghostderella>, which is incomplete and is an OK pun in
Korean). Most K-dramas with such titles, including <Cinderella's
Sister>, which I've seen, are not speculative; this is also true of
<My Love Patzzi>, which I haven't seen. (Patzzi is the bad sister.)
<https://www.viki.com/tv/36746c-cinderella-and-four-knights>
(free, but not well spoken of)
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9T2y1i5vEjYer7zUR44xyb3TRTrMBs2>
(law-abiding uploads)
<https://www.viki.com/tv/37075c-cinderellas-sister> (free)
<https://wiki.d-addicts.com/My_Love_Patzzi> (the lawbreakers)

Among the things Joe Bernstein wrote:

> I don't know of anything much resembling Western lycanthropy in Korea.
> No connection to the moon, no vulnerability to silver, no spread by
> being bitten. There doesn't seem to be anything much like a vampire
> in Korean legends, but there are lots of dramas about vampires; yet
> in the one I've so far watched [1], becoming a vampire takes drinking
> the vampire's blood, not the vampire drinking the human's.

Quite a bit of modern Western lore came from Curt Siodmak for the movie "The Wolf Man"
_The Book of Were-wolves_ by S. Baring-Gould
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5324
and possibly _Werewolves_ by Elliott O'Donnell, which I've just run across
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26629
show intermittent connection to a full moon, make only one mention of silver in a cure (and allow other cures), and, at a quick search, don't mention it spread by bite.

Also, Baring-Gould says there is a paucity of werewolf tales from England, because of a paucity of wolves in England. Hmm... there is also no rabies in England, not sure whether the three share some causal connection. One would imagine sighting a wolf would raise a ruckus even without the supernatural element. Big cats are being reported in the rural US. I'm thinking of some tale of a Korean tiger with an airplane ticket and an incorrect view of the world... I'd want a comedy, but the shape of the tale I'm seeing is a tragedy.
--
-Jack

On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 10:46:25 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn
<jack.bohn64@gmail.com> wrote:

>Among the things Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
>
>> I don't know of anything much resembling Western lycanthropy in Korea.
>> No connection to the moon, no vulnerability to silver, no spread by
>> being bitten. There doesn't seem to be anything much like a vampire
>> in Korean legends, but there are lots of dramas about vampires; yet
>> in the one I've so far watched [1], becoming a vampire takes drinking
>> the vampire's blood, not the vampire drinking the human's.
>
>Quite a bit of modern Western lore came from Curt Siodmak for the movie "The Wolf Man"
>_The Book of Were-wolves_ by S. Baring-Gould
>https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5324
>and possibly _Werewolves_ by Elliott O'Donnell, which I've just run across
>https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26629
>show intermittent connection to a full moon, make only one mention of silver in a cure (and allow other cures), and, at a quick search, don't mention it spread by bite.
>
>Also, Baring-Gould says there is a paucity of werewolf tales from England, because of a paucity of wolves in England. Hmm... there is also no rabies in England, not sure whether the three share some causal connection. One would imagine sighting a wolf would raise a ruckus even without the supernatural element. Big cats are being reported in the rural US. I'm thinking of some tale of a Korean tiger with an airplane ticket and an incorrect view of the world... I'd want a comedy, but the shape of the tale I'm seeing is a tragedy.

The reports I've seen (rare as they are -- I think the last one turned
out to actually be a bobcat) locally aren't rural. They aren't even
suburban (well, maybe in Spokane they are); they are urban.

It is, however, true that most of the reports are from people hiking
in the woods, far from the city, and so can be considered "rural".
Some of these produced the advice: if you see one, stand up and do not
lean over -- if you lean over, you will look like prey to them. This
generally follows a tragic incident involving someone who did /not/
take that advice. Or a couger which, when caught and euthanized,
turned out be very ill-nourished and so thought to have been starving.

As to werewolf lore, it is indeed my understanding that a /lot/ of it
was invented for the Lon Chaney movie /The Wolf Man/. Which is, of
course, in agreement with your statement above.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

On Monday, August 9, 2021 at 1:46:27 PM UTC-4, jack....@gmail.com wrote:
> Among the things Joe Bernstein wrote:
>
>
> > I don't know of anything much resembling Western lycanthropy in Korea.
> > No connection to the moon, no vulnerability to silver, no spread by
> > being bitten. There doesn't seem to be anything much like a vampire
> > in Korean legends, but there are lots of dramas about vampires; yet
> > in the one I've so far watched [1], becoming a vampire takes drinking
> > the vampire's blood, not the vampire drinking the human's.
> Quite a bit of modern Western lore came from Curt Siodmak for the movie "The Wolf Man"
> _The Book of Were-wolves_ by S. Baring-Gould
> https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5324
> and possibly _Werewolves_ by Elliott O'Donnell, which I've just run across
> https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26629
> show intermittent connection to a full moon, make only one mention of silver in a cure (and allow other cures), and, at a quick search, don't mention it spread by bite.
>
> Also, Baring-Gould says there is a paucity of werewolf tales from England, because of a paucity of wolves in England. Hmm... there is also no rabies in England, not sure whether the three share some causal connection. One would imagine sighting a wolf would raise a ruckus even without the supernatural element. Big cats are being reported in the rural US. I'm thinking of some tale of a Korean tiger with an airplane ticket and an incorrect view of the world... I'd want a comedy, but the shape of the tale I'm seeing is a tragedy.

The eradication of rabies in the UK is fairly recent, around 1900.

Pt

Paul S Person wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 10:46:25 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn
> <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Also, Baring-Gould says there is a paucity of werewolf tales from England, because of a paucity of wolves in England. Hmm...
>One would imagine sighting a wolf would raise a ruckus even without the supernatural element. Big cats are being reported in the rural US. I'm thinking of some tale of a Korean tiger with an airplane ticket and an incorrect view of the world... I'd want a comedy, but the shape of the tale I'm seeing is a tragedy.
> The reports I've seen (rare as they are -- I think the last one turned
> out to actually be a bobcat) locally aren't rural. They aren't even
> suburban (well, maybe in Spokane they are); they are urban.
>
> It is, however, true that most of the reports are from people hiking
> in the woods, far from the city, and so can be considered "rural".

The local ones have been on farmlands, and have been dismissed as a large dog or small deer.
Now, deer downtown, there people have been calmer enough to gather photographic evidence,
or we have the physical evidence of a store's shattered window when it leaves.

--
-Jack

On Tuesday, 10 August 2021 at 19:37:44 UTC+1, jack....@gmail.com wrote:
> Paul S Person wrote:
> > On Mon, 9 Aug 2021 10:46:25 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn
> > <jack....@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Also, Baring-Gould says there is a paucity of werewolf tales from England, because of a paucity of wolves in England. Hmm...
> >One would imagine sighting a wolf would raise a ruckus even without the supernatural element. Big cats are being reported in the rural US. I'm thinking of some tale of a Korean tiger with an airplane ticket and an incorrect view of the world... I'd want a comedy, but the shape of the tale I'm seeing is a tragedy.
> >
> > The reports I've seen (rare as they are -- I think the last one turned
> > out to actually be a bobcat) locally aren't rural. They aren't even
> > suburban (well, maybe in Spokane they are); they are urban.
> >
> > It is, however, true that most of the reports are from people hiking
> > in the woods, far from the city, and so can be considered "rural".
>
> The local ones have been on farmlands, and have been dismissed as a large dog or small deer.
> Now, deer downtown, there people have been calmer enough to gather photographic evidence,
> or we have the physical evidence of a store's shattered window when it leaves.

Ok, are we talking about avoiding wolves, or werewolves,
or Korean magic tigers?