A Korean Folktale of a Tiger, a Thief, and a Very Scary Sweet
Original Korean title: 호랑이와 곶감 · Ages 4-8 · about
2 minutes to read aloud
Pure comedy, and the best read-aloud of the lot. A tiger listens at a window while a mother fails to quiet her crying baby, then succeeds instantly by mentioning a dried persimmon — and the tiger concludes that a gotgam must be the most terrifying creature in Korea. Give the tiger a voice and this one runs itself.
One cold winter night, a big hungry tiger came down from the mountain. Far below, one small light glowed in the village.
The tiger slipped into a farmyard, quiet as a shadow. In the barn slept a fat brown ox. "Mmm," thought the tiger. "Dinner!"
But inside the house, a baby was crying. "Hush!" said the mother. "A tiger is coming!" The baby cried on and on.
The tiger froze. "That baby is not afraid of me?" He pressed his ear close to the wall and listened.
"Look, a gotgam!" said the mother — a sweet dried persimmon treat. Right away, the baby stopped crying.
The tiger began to shake. "A gotgam stopped the crying, just like that? It must be scarier than ME!"
Just then, a sneaky thief climbed over the wall to steal the farmer's ox. He did not see the tiger creep into the barn to hide.
The barn was dark, dark, dark. The thief patted something big and warm and furry. "What a nice fat ox!" he said, and climbed on.
The tiger's heart went THUMP! "The gotgam! The gotgam has GOT me!" And he ran.
Away they raced, over fields and over hills. "Wow, what a fast ox!" shouted the thief, holding on tight.
Morning came. The thief looked down and saw stripes. "This is not an ox," he gasped. "I am riding a TIGER!"
Quick as a wink, the thief grabbed a branch and swung up into a tall tree. The tiger did not even look back.
The tiger ran and ran, deep into the mountains. "Phew! I got away from the terrible gotgam!"
Back home, the baby laughed and ate the sweet gotgam. And they say tigers never came down to that village again.
About This Story
The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon (say ho-rang-i-wa GOT-gahm) is one of Korea's favorite funny folktales, told for hundreds of years — the story of the fiercest animal in the land defeated by a sweet.
A gotgam is a dried persimmon, Korea's beloved winter treat. In late autumn, families peel ripe persimmons and hang them in rows under the eaves. Over the cold weeks they turn soft, chewy, and honey-sweet, with a fine white dusting of natural sugar.
In Korean folktales the tiger is the biggest star of all — sometimes fearsome, often fooled. Many old stories even begin, "long, long ago, back when tigers smoked pipes." A tiger who runs from a snack fits him perfectly.
Korean parents once hushed crying children just as the mother does here — and the joke is that the tiger, listening through the wall, thinks a gotgam must be a monster even scarier than he is. The scariest things, the tale winks, are the ones we have never seen.
It is the tale's oldest joke: the great tiger was chased away by a little sweet.
Korean Words in This Story
Gotgam — a dried persimmon, Korea's favorite winter sweet: soft, chewy, and dusted with its own white sugar.
Gam — a persimmon, the bright-orange autumn fruit that becomes gotgam when dried.
Horangi — the Korean word for tiger, the biggest star of Korean folktales.
Chogajip — a small house with a roof made of thatched straw.
Saekdong — the happy rainbow stripes on the sleeves of a Korean child's jacket.
Maru — the wooden porch of a Korean house, warm and sunny in the morning.
Say them out loud together!
Say them out loud together.
What it is about
A comic misunderstanding — and what fear is actually made of.
Questions worth asking
The tiger is frightened of a sweet. What made him so sure it was a monster?
Have you ever been scared of something that turned out to be small?
