Review
Korean Folktales is a retelling of a collection of Korean folktales by award-winning memoirist, novelist, translator, and scholar, Heinz Insu Fenkl. After reading this, I am suddenly curious if folk tales are just dark fairy tales. There must be a reason why they are dark. Maybe some type of warning for humans and a method of instilling lessons. The stories seem to be metaphors about dangers in the real world. They seem to give insights about how the world was way, way, way back. I used to be a sucker for folk tales when I was way much younger, and I don't remember when I stopped getting interested in such stories. But after reading this, it made me realize there are so many fascinating Korean folktales, so this book was fun to read. The stories are different from the folktales in my country and before reading this, I've honestly haven't heard of any Korean folktale other than those that were made into K-Dramas and I'm pretty sure those weren't completely based on the original folk tales ‘because they’ve obviously added more or changed some details to make them more entertaining. But for me, I always root for the original. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and I'm giving it 5 out of 5 stars. Highly recommended to those who are interested to learn about Korean folktales.
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