Backstory: MOULTING No.3

“To speak is not about speaking louder, it is about feeling entitled to voice a wish.”

Things I Don’t Want To Know: On Writing, Deborah Levy

For MOULTING No.3, I decided to explore 선녀 sunyeo from The 선녀 Sunyeo and the Woodcutter, a Korean folktale. If you’re Korean, you will be familiar with the story. If you’re not Korean, I would be surprised if you’ve heard the story.

Here’s a simple retelling of The 선녀 Sunyeo and the Woodcutter. For those of you who are familiar with the story, I italicized the story, so if you wish, you can skip down to the rest of the post. For those of you unfamiliar with the tale, this is a very simplified version—I did not put in the time to make this a creative retelling, but am giving you the bare bones of the story:

Once upon a time, there was a woodcutter who lived with his elderly mother. One day, while he was cutting wood in the forest, a deer ran to him and said, “Please save me! There’s a hunter coming after me!” The woodcutter quickly hid the deer behind his pile of wood and sent the hunter off in the wrong direction. Once the hunter was gone, the deer came out of hiding and in thanks for saving her life, she granted the woodcutter one wish. The woodcutter wished for a wife. The deer instructed the woodcutter, “On the night of the full moon, go up to the pond on top of the mountain. When 선녀 come down to bathe, grab one of their 한복 and hide it so that she can’t fly back up to her home. Marry her and don’t give her hanbok back until you have more than three children.”

On the night of the full moon, the woodcutter did exactly what the deer had instructed. Only one 선녀 was left on earth while the rest returned to their home. While the 선녀 was weeping, the woodcutter slowly approached her with a dress belonging to his mother and coaxed her to come down the mountain with him.

In time, the 선녀 married the woodcutter, bore him children and seemed to live contentedly with the woodcutter and his mother. But she had moments when she would be overcome with sadness because she missed her home. In one such moment, the woodcutter, forgetting the deer’s instructions or acting out of compassion for his wife, brought the 한복 out and gave it to his wife. She immediately pulled it on, grabbed her children and flew up into the sky, disappearing from the woodcutter’s view.

The woodcutter went to the forest in search of the deer and told her everything that happened. The deer gave him more instructions, sending the woodcutter back to the pond on the mountain top on the night of a full moon. Since the 선녀 no longer came down to bathe in the pond, they sent down a bucket to fetch the water. The woodcutter climbed into the bucket and was lifted up into the sky. He reached the 선녀’s world and was reunited with his wife and children.

The woodcutter was happy for a time in the 선녀‘s world, but he worried about his aging mother. Eventually, he decided to return to earth to see his mother. His wife provided him with a winged horse, but before he departed, she gave him this warning: “Don’t let your feet touch the ground—if your feet touch the ground, you will never be able to return here.”

For a brief moment, the woodcutter was happily reunited with his mother. She was so glad to see him and asked him to come down from his horse and have some 호박 죽, his favorite dish, with her. He told her he couldn’t get off his horse, so his mother ran into the house and brought out a bowl of 호박 죽 for her son. As he took the bowl, he spilled some on his hands, burning himself. He dropped the bowl, spilling the hot 죽 on the back of the winged horse. The horse reared up and neighed, throwing the woodcutter off his back. The woodcutter landed on the ground and the winged horse flew up into the sky, returning to the 선녀‘s world without the woodcutter.

Grieving the separation from his wife and children, the woodcutter died and became a rooster who climbed to the roof of his house every day and, looking up at the sky, stretched his neck tall and cried at the sky.

Sketch of the 선녀 from my sketchbook

As a child, I loved this story. I’m not sure why because when I read this story as an adult, there are so many troubling elements. I have heard there are several adult interpretations of this story by Korean writers that explore aspects of these troubling elements, but I have not been able to get a hold of these books. Perhaps one day, if I’m able to return to Korea. But as a child, I remembered this story over all the others because there were no resolutions at the end of the story. I wasn’t troubled by the fact that the woodcutter hides the 선녀‘s dress to keep her with him. I was more concerned with how the woodcutter constantly failed to follow simple instructions! But mainly, I was troubled by the great divide that separated the woodcutter from the 선녀, always wondering what could be changed so that the woodcutter could be a part of both worlds.

I suppose, like any other child, I was seeing elements of my own life spilling into the world of the story. In my life, I had left South Korea far behind and something had been irrevocably severed by our family’s move to Kenya.

More than anything though, what has always struck me about this story is that we don’t hear the 선녀 speak. Sure, she gives her husband instructions before he sets off on the winged horse, but we never know what she makes of the woodcutter who has stolen her 한복, we never know what she thinks of life on earth, we never know what she thinks of the poverty she has been reduced to. We assume, based on her actions and the impact they have on the woodcutter, but we don’t have access to her mind the way we have access to the woodcutter’s. I suppose if we interpret the story as the man kidnapping a woman, then it makes sense that she has no voice and doesn’t speak until she is back in her own world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Deborah Levy’s quote above. Did the 선녀 not feel entitled to voice her wish? As an alien in the woodcutter’s world, she probably did not. I certainly have lived many years of my life as a foreigner in various countries, among people where I did not feel entitled to voice my wishes.

I was six years old when my parents moved from Seoul to Nairobi. I don’t remember them asking me what I thought about moving to Kenya. Perhaps they asked my brother who was four years older than me. But even if they had asked me, would I have known how to answer? Did I feel entitled to voice a wish? I think Kenya was portrayed as a place of adventure and I was promised that I would see lots of monkeys (and indeed, I saw many monkeys). I was completely unprepared for how I would be treated by the locals nor how the locals perceived me, and how these experiences early on would shape me.

I recently finished reading Chanel Miller’s Know My Name. What a powerful and moving story it was!! I’m grateful to Chanel for writing her statement that was read by people all over the world and gave voice to so many women who are survivors. But I’m also grateful to her for writing her story, for telling the story from her point of view, allowing us to hear her voice, because most of us only heard the story through the news that did not know her side of the story. I was really glad to be able to read this story and know that Chanel would not remain, like so many of the characters I’m taking on through MOULTING, unable to tell their side of the story.

Here’s to fighting against erasure and telling our stories on our own terms.

Soyoung L Kim