Main Piece: “ This is one of the most well known stories in Korea it is about two brothers. Heungbu and Nolbu were brothers. Nolbu, the older brother was super greedy and annoying but his younger brother Heungbu was kind and the opposite. The day that their father died, they learned that he was ordered to split his fortune in half for each of them. Nolbu tricked Heungbu’s family and threw them out in order to keep the entire fortune to himself.  But Heungbu didn’t complain. One day Hengbu helped a bird get away from a snake. The next year the bird  came back and gave Heungbu a seed as a thank you present. Heungbu planted the seed in his backyard and found gold inside. Since gold basically means that you are rich they bought a new house and became very wealthy. Nolbu ended up finding out about this and met Heungbu and asked him how he became so rich so quickly because he was jealous. Nolbu heard the secret and did the same with the bird. The bird brought Nolbu a seed the next spring, and Nolbu planted it. But there were no gold and instead his life sucked because there were only elements of destruction, like no wealth and stuff like that so Nolbu and his wife lost all of their wealth. But they finally realized their mistake and asked Heungbu to forgive them and they all lived together happily ever after.”

Background Information: The informant learned this Korean folktale from her parents and she was also born and raised in South Korea. This story is important to her because it taught her that what goes around comes back around and that people who treat others with kindness will always win.

Context: In the informant’s apartment

Thoughts: This story is interesting because of the dynamic of the two brothers, and that this story is about family compared to other folk stories that I have collected that are about individuals. This might suggest that family is very important in the Korean culture, and values like kindness and being humble are important as well.