KOREAN LITERATURE CORNER - Mar. 2025

By Josh Kim

Hi everyone, March 8th is International Women’s Day, and our story this month centers around how three little girls became the sun, moon, and stars.

Sun, Moon, and Stars by Karl Wiener

Deep in the mountains there was a hut where a mother lived with her three daughters. The daughters’ names were Haesuni, Dalsuni, and Byeolsuni. 

One day the mother left her daughters in the house to go sell rice cakes at a distant market. She told them: “Daughters, be careful and do not open the door for anyone except me. There is a tiger roaming about and he may try to eat you.” The mother left them and started her journey to the market.

Along her way, the mother was attacked by the tiger. He ate her and her rice cakes. He wanted more rice cakes, so he put on her clothes and followed her footsteps back to the house. At the house, he knocked on the door and said: “Hello, mother has come back. Please open the door.”

Haesuni answered: “Mother, is that really you? Your voice is so different.”

The tiger: “Of course it’s me. I was invited to a feast and sang so many songs that my voice became hoarse.”

Then Dalsuni asked: “If you’re our mother, show us your eyes. We would know for sure.”

The tiger put his blood-shot eyes to the peepholes on the door. Dalsuni asked: “Why are your eyes so red?”

The tiger: “I helped grind some red pepper pods. The pepper got in my eyes, and that’s why they’re red.”

Then Byeolsuni said: “If that’s true, let us see your hands. Then we’ll know for sure.”

The tiger put his yellow paws to a crack in the door. Byeolsuni looked and said: “Why are your hands so yellow and strange?” 

The tiger: “I was helping others in a neighbor village plaster their house with yellow mud. That is why my hands look like this.” 

Korean Tiger Folkart

At this, the girls unlocked the door and the tiger walked into the house. He shed his disguise and smiled at them. The girls screamed and were able to run past him outside while he laughed. 

The girls ran to the big pine tree growing next to the well. They climbed the tree to the very top, scurrying away from the tiger. The tiger could not climb so he took an ax from the house and went to chop down the tree. Desperate, the girls prayed to the god in heaven: “Please help us and send down your golden bucket.”

While the tiger swung the ax, the girls’ prayers were heard. A golden well bucket descended from heaven. The girls climbed in the bucket and were taken to the sky. 

Frustrated that his meal was getting away, the tiger also prayed: “Please send down a bucket for me too.” To his delight, another well bucket descended and he climbed inside. However, this bucket’s rope was old and brittle. Halfway up to the clouds, the rope broke and the tiger crashed to earth in the middle of a millet field—and that’s why to this day millet can have red spots, from the blood of the tiger.

Now in heaven, each girl was given a special task to light the earth: Haesuni as the sun, Dalsuni as the moon, and Byeolsuni as the stars. And still they take turns brightening the world.