The Fox Sister

SP is a Korean American from San Jose. She is a Communication major at USC.

“There was this guy with three sons but he wanted a daughter so he prayed for one, even if she was a fox. And his wife got pregnant and they had a daughter but when she grew up, their cows started dying so the dad told his sons to watch over the cows and tell him what was going on. And they watched and whenever there was a full moon, they saw their sister going to the cows and killing them but the dad thought they were lying, so he disowned them and they wandered around for a while. And then they met their sister by chance and she told them their parents died, so that they could come back. And they stayed with her and were sleeping, but one of the brothers woke up to the sound of crunching and discovered that the sister was eating the other 2 brothers’ livers and she was like ‘I just need one more to be human.’ He sets her on fire and she dies. The end.”

“Hm…interesting. Where did you learn about this story?”

“Foxes are regarded as very dangerous in Korea, and I think I read it in a children’s book, but I found it online when I was researching Korean culture pretty recently.”

I thought this story was rather strange and had an abrupt ending. It doesn’t seem to have a clear moral to the story except for the fact that it seems to portray foxes as evil and secretive. This tale is of Korean origin, but I found it interesting that similar to many stories from Western culture, the fox is depicted as a villain or antagonist of some sort.