Kongjwi and Cinderella, Two Lost Shoes

A girl loses her mother. Her father remarries, and the new stepmother brings a daughter of her own. The stepmother piles impossible work on the girl and spoils her own child. Magical helpers come to the rescue, the girl goes to a grand occasion, loses a shoe, and is found again by a man of high rank who marries her. If you grew up in Europe or America, that is Cinderella. If you grew up in Korea, it is Kongjwi.

Folklorists file both stories under the same heading. In the international catalogue of tale types created by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, they belong to type 510, the Cinderella type. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that stories of this kind are found right across Europe, East Asia, Africa and the Americas. What makes them fascinating is not just how alike they are, but where they part ways.

The same beginning

In the Korean tale, Kongjwi’s stepmother sets her tasks that no one could finish. She must hoe a stony field with a wooden hoe, fill a jar that has a hole in the bottom, and hull a mountain of rice, all before she is allowed to go to a party. A cow comes down the slope to help with the field. A toad plugs the hole in the jar with its own body. A flock of birds pecks the husks off the rice. In some versions, a weaving goddess helps her too, and she is given clothes and shoes fit for the party.

Cinderella has her helpers too. In Charles Perrault’s French version of 1697, a fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a coach and mice into horses. In the Brothers Grimm’s German version, Aschenputtel, the helpers are birds who live in a tree growing on her mother’s grave, which is closer in spirit to Kongjwi’s animals than to the fairy godmother most people know from films.

Then comes the shoe. Kongjwi hurries across a stream on her way to the party and drops one of her flower-embroidered shoes. A magistrate finds it, searches for its owner, and marries her. Cinderella loses her glass slipper on the palace steps, and the prince tries it on every girl in the kingdom.

Where Cinderella stops

Cinderella’s story ends here. The wedding is the happy ending, and in the Grimm version the stepsisters are punished on the spot when birds peck out their eyes.

Kongjwi’s story does not end at the wedding. That is only halfway.

While the magistrate is away, Patjwi lures Kongjwi to a pond, pushes her in and drowns her. Then she puts on Kongjwi’s clothes and takes her place as the magistrate’s wife. But Kongjwi does not stay dead. She comes back as a lotus flower in the pond. When the magistrate passes, the flower smiles at him; when Patjwi passes, it tugs at her hair. Patjwi throws the flower into the kitchen fire, and in the ashes it becomes a jewel. An old woman from next door, borrowing embers, finds the jewel and takes it home, and out of it steps Kongjwi. She invites the magistrate to the old woman’s house and opens his eyes to the truth. Patjwi is put to death, and the stepmother is made to see what has become of her daughter.

Cousins across Asia

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that this second half, with its murder, rebirth, transformation and switched bride, is missing from Western Cinderellas but is typical of the Cinderella stories of East Asia. Vietnam’s tale of Tấm and Cám follows almost the same path: Tấm is killed by her stepsister and comes back as a bird, a tree and a fruit before she returns to her husband. China’s version, recorded by the scholar Duan Chengshi in the ninth century, is one of the oldest Cinderella stories written down anywhere, and its heroine, Ye Xian, also loses a golden shoe that leads a king to her.

Talk about it

Why do you think European tellers stopped at the wedding while Korean tellers kept going? Which ending feels more satisfying to you? Kongjwi has to come back three times, through water, a flower and fire. What do you think each one stands for?

Words to know

Kong (콩) means bean and pat (팥) means red bean, so the sisters are named after two beans. Gyemo (계모) means stepmother. Kkotsin (꽃신) are embroidered flower shoes. A tale type is a family of stories that share the same plot.