Among the satirical tales the Koreans have passed on from old days there are anecdotes about Sondal Kim, nicknamed phoenix.
Sondal means a person who passed government examination but did not hold any official post in Korean feudal society. Sondal Kim was an actual person in the 19th century during the feudal Joson dynasty and was especially famous for exacting the exorbitant price of a phoenix from a greedy chicken seller. He used to ridicule the hypocrisy, avarice and haughtiness of the wealthy like landowners and noble ruling circles and the anecdotes about him spread widely centring on the Pyongyang area to form a type of story.
It is Yun Song Bae who collected and edited lots of stories about him.
“The Story of Sondal Kim, alias Phoenix is rich in local flavour and characterized by free use of humour and witticism and by novelty in dealing with events and broke original ground in satire,” said Ri Won Hui, director of the classical literature editing department of the Art and Literature Publishing House.
The six-volume book consists of a series of 75 stories in over 1 000 pages.
Yun was neither a writer nor a university graduate.
Born into a poor peasant's family in Sunchon, South Phyongan Province, in September 1933, he was fond of books in his childhood and had attachment to history and literature after Korea’s liberation.
During the Fatherland Liberation War (1950-1953) he served as a scout of the Korean People’s Army and spent his leisure time collecting local folk tales and telling his comrade-in-arms amusing stories.
Yun pursued his hobby of collecting folk stories even after the war.
“Our father told us children many folk tales including the stories about Sondal Kim. They were so amusing and edifying we anxiously waited for him to return home from work every day,” recalled his son Yun Kil Nam.
When he reached retirement age, Yun already collected lots of folk tales.
Therefore, after retirement, he came to write the book about Sondal Kim as serials.
It was not easy to vividly represent the events that took place centuries before, so he sometimes racked his brains for days to choose one word or complete one sentence and visited many units in search of historical evidence.
Only after over ten years could he complete the six volumes of The Story of Sondal Kim, alias Phoenix, which was published soon after.
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