Dried Persimmons:
“…and I’m bringing the thing that’s scarier than a tiger.”
It took me all 10 seconds to interpret my father’s email a few days before his visit.
The Korean folk tale about dried persimmons goes something like this. Once upon a time, a mother was trying to calm her crying baby. She said, “if you don’t stop crying, a tiger will take you away.” The baby, now more scared at the thought of a tiger, cried louder. The mom was frustrated and didn’t know how to stop this mad crying from her son, so she gave in and said, “ok, if you stop crying, I’ll give you a gotgam (곶감; dried persimmon).” The baby, thinking of a sweet, soft gotgam, finally stopped crying.
All this time, a tiger was eavesdropping from outside. When gotgam finally stopped the baby’s crying, the tiger said to himself, “this gotgam thing, whatever it is, must be something really scary, even scarier than me!” So the tiger ran away before the scary gotgam made its entrance.
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1 comment:
Great story! I love the simple stories (sometimes with deep meanings rooted inside them) that are passed down from generation to generation throughout the milleniums! Each one has a distinct flavor of the culture in which is originates. In this case, the flavor of a gotgam!
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