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Sep. 11th, 2016 09:45 pmSo to no one's surprise I guess it turns out The Story of Hong Gildong, historical Korean novel, is not much like Hong Gil Dong, twenty-first century kdrama. It is a pretty wild ride, though.
The Story of Hong Gildong begins when Our Hero's father has a vision that if he has sex RIGHT NOW, the resulting child will be the most impressive individual ever to walk the planet. However, when he approaches his wife to have sex RIGHT NOW, she's like 'honey, it's the middle of the day and we're middle-aged people, this is extremely undignified.'
Boy, does she regret that later when the household maid gives birth to the most impressive individual ever to walk the planet!
Everyone in the family, including Hong Gildong's father's wife, agrees from birth that Hong Gildong is indeed extremely impressive and it's a real shame that he's the son of a concubine, rather than a noble, and is therefore forbidden from taking public service exams or being an important and impressive general in the army or anything like that. In fact he is SO impressive that everyone starts getting really stressed about what he's going to do if he DOESN'T get to join the civil service or be an important and impressive general. PROBABLY SOMETHING DAMAGING TO THE STABILITY OF THE COUNTRY.
This concern that proves to be well-founded when, at the age of twelve, Hong Gildong utilizes his magic powers to kill some assassins sent against him in a convoluted murderous plot involving an evil physiognomist, leaves home, and promptly becomes chief of a gang of bandits who are very impressed by this very impressive twelve-year-old!
Hong Gildong proceeds to rob a monastery, create twelve identical copies of himself, and starts utilizing all kinds of clever tricks and schemes to Robin Hood his way around Korea, much to the consternation of the king and deep embarrassment of his father and older brother. In the one similarity between the book and the show, Hong Gildong's brother spends a while chasing him around in order to capture him and explain "THIS IS VERY AWKWARD FOR DAD, PLEASE STOP."
However, in a marked dissimilarity to the show, eventually Hong Gildong is able to explain to the king what an impressive person he is and how he would have been a patriotic general or civil servant if only the laws had allowed him to do so, and after a while the king is just like 'oh, that lovable and deeply impressive scamp! Certainly you can have several thousand bales of rice to take all your bandits and move to a neighboring island!'
(I mean presumably at that point he's happy to have him out of his hair, but.)
In the last portion of the book, Hong Gildong defeats a bunch of monsters, marries several beautiful ladies, conquers a neighboring kingdom, makes himself king of the neighboring kindom (the king of Korea: "I'm so happy I can establish trade relations with that lovable and deeply impressive scamp who spend five or six years terrorizing our kingdom!"), reconciles with his family, and immediately retcons his father, his mother, and his stepmother into being royalty.
...this also is a marked dissimilarity to the show which claims a moral of "NO KINGS, NO MASTERS, EQUALITY FOR ALL!" but nobody can deny that as far as our protagonists are concerned is concerned it is a much happier ending!
The Story of Hong Gildong begins when Our Hero's father has a vision that if he has sex RIGHT NOW, the resulting child will be the most impressive individual ever to walk the planet. However, when he approaches his wife to have sex RIGHT NOW, she's like 'honey, it's the middle of the day and we're middle-aged people, this is extremely undignified.'
Boy, does she regret that later when the household maid gives birth to the most impressive individual ever to walk the planet!
Everyone in the family, including Hong Gildong's father's wife, agrees from birth that Hong Gildong is indeed extremely impressive and it's a real shame that he's the son of a concubine, rather than a noble, and is therefore forbidden from taking public service exams or being an important and impressive general in the army or anything like that. In fact he is SO impressive that everyone starts getting really stressed about what he's going to do if he DOESN'T get to join the civil service or be an important and impressive general. PROBABLY SOMETHING DAMAGING TO THE STABILITY OF THE COUNTRY.
This concern that proves to be well-founded when, at the age of twelve, Hong Gildong utilizes his magic powers to kill some assassins sent against him in a convoluted murderous plot involving an evil physiognomist, leaves home, and promptly becomes chief of a gang of bandits who are very impressed by this very impressive twelve-year-old!
Hong Gildong proceeds to rob a monastery, create twelve identical copies of himself, and starts utilizing all kinds of clever tricks and schemes to Robin Hood his way around Korea, much to the consternation of the king and deep embarrassment of his father and older brother. In the one similarity between the book and the show, Hong Gildong's brother spends a while chasing him around in order to capture him and explain "THIS IS VERY AWKWARD FOR DAD, PLEASE STOP."
However, in a marked dissimilarity to the show, eventually Hong Gildong is able to explain to the king what an impressive person he is and how he would have been a patriotic general or civil servant if only the laws had allowed him to do so, and after a while the king is just like 'oh, that lovable and deeply impressive scamp! Certainly you can have several thousand bales of rice to take all your bandits and move to a neighboring island!'
(I mean presumably at that point he's happy to have him out of his hair, but.)
In the last portion of the book, Hong Gildong defeats a bunch of monsters, marries several beautiful ladies, conquers a neighboring kingdom, makes himself king of the neighboring kindom (the king of Korea: "I'm so happy I can establish trade relations with that lovable and deeply impressive scamp who spend five or six years terrorizing our kingdom!"), reconciles with his family, and immediately retcons his father, his mother, and his stepmother into being royalty.
...this also is a marked dissimilarity to the show which claims a moral of "NO KINGS, NO MASTERS, EQUALITY FOR ALL!" but nobody can deny that as far as our protagonists are concerned is concerned it is a much happier ending!
