The 22-year-old informant was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at a very young age. She chose to share this story because it is commonly told in Korean culture.

“So there’s this woodcutter, and he’s in the woods and he walks to find some water and he comes down to this lake and sees all these angels bathing in the lake. So he keeps coming back day after day to watch these angels bath, and he notices that when they bath, they take off their wings and all their clothes and everything. So one day, he just picks one of the angels and grabs her wings so she can’t fly back up to the heavens when all the other angels go. So she’s lost there and crying and he comes up to her and is like, ‘Hey do you wanna come home with me and be my wife?’ and she says yes. Basically the woodcutter had found out to take the wings from this old fortune-teller, so after the angel takes the woodcutter home, he goes back to the fortune-teller and is like ‘Ok now what do I do?’ and the fortune-teller’s like, ‘Make sure to not give her back her wings until you have more than 2 children’ and the woodcutter’s like, ‘Ok sure.’ So basically they live together and they’re happy and they have 2 babies, and he remembers that the fortune-teller said to wait until after 3 children, but he’s like, ‘Eh whatever, I really love this person and she loves me,’ so he gives them back to her and she puts them on and takes one kid in each arm and flies back up to the heavens. So then the woodcutter is left alone without children.”

I found this story to be quite sad, despite the wrongdoing of the woodcutter in the first place. If there’s a lesson, I believe that it’s “What goes around, comes around,” for the most part. Sure, the woodcutter and the fallen angel were happy and had a family together, but that was all because he stole her wings so she couldn’t fly back up to the heavens. So, in the end, the woodcutter kind of got what he deserved.