There is a knock at the door. A voice outside says, "It's me, open up." The voice is a little too rough, and the hand that pokes through the gap is a little too hairy. Inside, the children hesitate. Children all over the world have been hesitating at this door for hundreds of years.
In Korea, the creature outside is a tiger, and the story is Haewa dari doen onui, “the brother and sister who became the sun and the moon”. In Europe it is a wolf, and the stories are Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that versions of the Korean tale are found across the world, and that its battle between children and a beast is especially close to tales from China, Taiwan and Japan.
The Korean tiger
A mother leaves her children at home and goes out to work for the day. On her way back over the hills, a tiger meets her at the first pass and demands a rice cake. Then at the next pass it demands another, and another, until she has nothing left to give, and it eats her. It puts on her clothes and goes to the house.
The children notice that “Mother’s” voice is strange and her hand is rough and hairy. In the encyclopedia’s summary, the tiger finally gets in by saying the baby is crying and needs feeding, then eats the baby. The older two run out and climb a tall tree beside the well. When the tiger asks how they climbed up, the brother tells it to rub sesame oil on the trunk, and it keeps sliding down. But the little sister blurts out that it should cut footholds with an axe.
The children pray to heaven. A strong new rope comes down, and they climb up to the sky. The tiger prays too, and gets a rotten rope, which snaps. It falls into a field of sorghum and is pierced by a stalk, and its blood stains the sorghum red forever. In the sky, the brother becomes the sun and the sister the moon, until the sister, frightened of the dark, asks to swap.
The European wolf
In Charles Perrault’s French version of 1697, Little Red Riding Hood is sent with a cake and a pot of butter to her grandmother’s cottage. A wolf meets her in the woods, learns where she is going, races ahead, eats the grandmother and gets into her bed. The famous exchange follows: “Grandmother, what big eyes you have!” “All the better to see you with.” Perrault’s version ends with the wolf eating the girl, and a warning to young people about smooth-talking strangers. In the Brothers Grimm’s German version, a huntsman passing by cuts open the sleeping wolf and the girl and her grandmother step out alive.
The Grimms also tell The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, which is even closer to the Korean opening. A mother goat goes out and warns her kids not to open the door. The wolf comes and they refuse him because his voice is rough and his paws are black, so he softens his voice and whitens his paws with flour, and they let him in. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that in Europe, the tale is usually a pure animal story, between a wolf and goats.
Asian cousins
The tellings nearest to Korea’s, the encyclopedia explains, come from elsewhere in East Asia. In Taiwan, a tiger disguises itself as a grandmother to get at a brother and sister, who outwit it and kill it. In China, the beast is usually a wolf, and where it falls from the sky, cabbages spring up, which the children sell to become rich. In Japan, the attacker is a demon, and the children climb to the sky and become stars.
What changes and what stays
The beast changes with the landscape: a wolf in the forests of Europe, a tiger in the mountains of Korea and Taiwan, a demon in Japan. What never changes is the door, the disguise and the moment a child notices that something is wrong. The Korean tale stands out for its ending. Instead of being rescued by a passing huntsman, the children save themselves by climbing to heaven, and are rewarded by becoming the lights of the sky. The tale is still inspiring writers today: Tae Keller’s novel When You Trap a Tiger, which draws on Korean tiger stories, won the Newbery Medal in 2021.
Talk about it
Why do you think so many cultures tell a story about a monster in disguise at the door? Which children are braver, Red Riding Hood or the Korean brother and sister? What would the beast be if this story were told in your town?
Words to know
Onui (오누이) means a brother and sister. Horangi (호랑이) means tiger. Dongajul (동아줄) is a thick rope. Susu (수수) is sorghum, a tall grain with reddish stalks.
Where this story comes from
What it means
The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture reads the Korean tale as a coming-of-age story. Facing the tiger without their mother is the children's first test of growing up and leaving her protection, and becoming the sun and the moon means becoming beings that shine with their own light. Little Red Riding Hood has often been read in a similar way, as a story about a child learning to recognise danger on her own.
The Korean tale is also unusual because it mixes three kinds of story at once. Explaining where the sun and moon came from makes it a myth; explaining why sorghum stalks are red makes it a legend; and the clever chase between tiger and children makes it a folktale. The encyclopedia notes that its movement upward, from earth to the sky, reflects a very human-centred way of seeing the world.
Sources & further reading
The Korean tale and its international relatives are summarised from the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture entry "해와 달이 된 오누이". The details of Little Red Riding Hood are from the well-known versions by Charles Perrault (1697) and the Brothers Grimm (1812).
- Encyclopedia of Korean Culture · 해와 달이 된 오누이 (the siblings who became the sun and moon) ↗
- Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture · 해와 달이 된 오누이 ↗
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