The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon - Korean

The cold wind whipped through my magnificent orange and black stripes, but I paid it no mind. I am the king of this mountain, the most powerful creature in all of Korea, and a little snow has never bothered me. Hunger, however, was a different story, and my empty belly led me down from my peak toward the warm, glowing lights of the human village below. This is the story of how I, a great and mighty tiger, learned a most humbling lesson, a tale the villagers now call The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon. My plan was simple: slip into a barn, find the plumpest ox, and be gone before the humans even knew I was there. I was certain of my success. After all, what creature in the world did not tremble at the thought of my claws and the sound of my earth-shaking roar?

As I crept silently on my padded paws toward the nearest house, a terrible wail pierced the quiet night. It was a human baby, crying with the force of a winter storm. I crouched behind a fence, listening. “Hush now,” a woman’s voice pleaded. “The big tiger is outside!” I puffed out my chest, my whiskers twitching with satisfaction. Of course the child was afraid of me. But the baby only cried louder. Then, the mother’s voice changed. “Oh, look! Here is a gotgam. A sweet dried persimmon for you.” Instantly, the crying stopped. Silence. My magnificent stripes suddenly felt cold against my skin. What was this… this ‘dried persimmon’? It had to be a creature more terrifying than me, a monster of unbelievable power to silence a child so completely. My mind raced, picturing a beast with a hundred teeth and eyes of burning coal. Can you imagine what sort of monster I pictured? Just as my fear peaked, a shadow slipped into the barn ahead of me. It was a thief, come to steal the very same ox I had my eye on. In the deep darkness of the barn, he saw my large shape and, thinking I was the ox, he leaped onto my back.

“The Dried Persimmon!” I bellowed in pure terror. It had found me. It was on my back. I didn't wait to see its fiery eyes or feel its hundred teeth. I bolted from the barn with a strength born of sheer panic, running wildly into the forest. The creature clung to my back, its grip like iron. I ran faster than I had ever run in my life, leaping over fallen logs and splashing through icy streams, desperate to shake off the horrifying monster. The thief, I later imagined, must have been just as terrified, holding on for dear life to what he thought was a runaway ox. Finally, with a mighty buck, I threw the creature from my back and fled deep into the mountains, not daring to look back. I never bothered that village again. It took me many seasons to learn that a ‘gotgam’ is just a sweet, wrinkled fruit that humans enjoy. This folktale is now told to share a laugh and a valuable lesson: sometimes our greatest fears are born from a simple misunderstanding. It reminds us that things are not always as scary as they seem, and that a good story can teach us more than we could ever imagine.