DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Korean Tales" (Being a collection of stories translated from the Korean folk lore, together with introductory chapters descriptive of Korea) by Horace Newton Allen. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

11 Classic Korean Narratives including Myths, Folktales, Sino-Korean Novels and Poetry Readers can come to know not only the pleasure of reading stories, but also delight in learning about Korea through this book, like Korean culture, Korean history and Koreans' ways of thinking in the old days. Even though this book consists of only Korean classic narratives, this doesn't mean that only Koreans can understand it. Everyone can understand and enjoy a “Classic.” What Brings "Classics" Alive is the Readers' Empathy A lonely boy becomes a hero who establishes a nation; a daughter who is abandoned becomes a goddess who manages death; a wife and husband, both ordinary people, become a queen and king in a foreign country or gods of a country. These stories show that if people take advantage of their merits and use their power in support of others, they can accomplish wonderful things and gain happiness even when they possess nothing special. The reason that these stories survive for such a long time without being forgotten and move the people who read them is that people consider the thoughts and feelings in these stories to be precious. A Way of Communicating with Time: The World of Classical Imagination Reading the classics is similar to the experience of communicating across time. The world of classics, which appears interesting and mysterious, also contains the dreams and hopes of contemporary people. Even though the past has disappeared, we are encountering the dreams and hopes of people from olden times as you read the classics and fall into the world of these stories.

P'ansori, the traditional oral narrative of Korea, is sung by a highly trained soloist to the accompaniment of complex drumming. The singer both narrates the story and dramatizes all the characters, male and female. Performances require as long as six hours and make extraordinary vocal demands. In the first book-length treatment in English of this remarkable art form, Pihl traces the history of p'ansori from its roots in shamanism and folktales through its nineteenth-century heyday under highly acclaimed masters and discusses its evolution in the twentieth century. After examining the place of p'ansori in popular entertainment and its textual tradition, he analyzes the nature of texts in the repertoire and explains the vocal and rhythmic techniques required to perform them. Pihl's superb translation of the alternately touching and comic "Song of Shim Ch'ong"—the first annotated English translation of a full p'ansori performance text—illustrates the emotional range, narrative variety, and technical complexity of p'ansori literature. The Korean Singer of Tales will interest not only Korean specialists, but also students of comparative literature, folklore, anthropology, and music.

The Digital Library of Korean Classics is a project undertaken by Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) to digitalize selected translated titles of Korean classics published in the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. LTI Korea is an affiliate of the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism of the Republic of Korea that seeks to promote Korean literature and culture around the world. This e-book was made by scanning and converting the original book using OCR software. We have made every effort to ensure the book is free of any errors or omissions, but if you discover any, please email us so that we can improve the quality of the book.

This book contains 175 tales drawn equally from the ancient and modern periods of Korea, plus 16 further tales provided for comparative purposes. Nothing else on this scale or depth is available in any western language. Three broad classes of material are included: foundation myths of ancient states and clans, ancient folktales and legends, modern folktales. Each narrative contains information on its source and provenance, and on its folklore type, similarities to folklore types from China, Japan and elsewhere.

The term Fengshui, which literally means 'wind and water, ' is the ancient Chinese art of selecting an auspicious site to provide the most harmonious relationship between human and earth. The term is generally translated as "geomancy," and has had a deep and extensive impact on Korean, Chinese, and other East Asian cultures. Hong-key Yoon's book explores the nature of geomantic principles and the culture of practicing them in Korean cultural contexts. Yoon first examines the nature and historical background of geomancy, geomantic principles for auspicious sites (houses, graves, and cities) and provides an interpretation of geomantic principles as practiced in Korea. Yoon looks at geomancy's influence on cartography, religion and philosophy, and urban development in both Korea and China. Finally, Yoon debates the role of geomancy in the iconographical warfare between Japanese colonialism and Korean nationalism as it affected the cultural landscape of Kyongbok Palace in Seoul.