KOREAN LITERATURE CORNER - August 2026

By Josh Kim

Pigeons gathering on the tile roof of a temple

The Priest and The Pigeon

This month’s myth tells the story of friendship and sacrifice between man and nature, as told by Kim So-un and Frances Carpenter in their book “Korean Folktales”. 

A flock of pigeons once made their nests beneath the eaves of a Buddhist priest’s temple. The kind man fed the birds and set out water for them.

When Spring came, there were eggs in the pigeons’ nests under the temple eaves. And when the eggs hatched, there were baby birds. One day, a long, slinky snake crawled out from under the tiles and crawled towards the nests. Quickly before their enemy could reach the young birds, the priest struck the snake down, killing it with his walking stick.

The next afternoon, the priest set out on a journey. With his wooden begging bowl in one hand and with a sturdy staff in the other, he asked for money and food from the goodhearted people he met. When night came, he was quite a distance from the temple, so a local farmer offered him shelter in his hut, and he went into his hut. The tired priest sat down in comfort on the warm floor of the farmer’s house, and he quickly drifted off to sleep.

A statue of a buddhist monk with his staff and bowl in Haenam

Now, one of the thankful doves from his own temple had followed the holy traveler to watch over him. While the man slept, the pigeon sat on a tree just outside the door. So it saw the snake that was silently slithering toward the farmer’s house.

Somehow it knew that this was the spirit of the snake the priest had killed. It had come to get even.

“How can I warn the priest before the snake reaches him and kills him?” the pigeon thought. “My voice is too faint. I must somehow sound the temple bell. That surely will waken him.”

With flapping wings, that pigeon flew back to the temple. With the help of the rest of the flock, it tugged at the immense beam used to ring the bell. But their beaks weren’t strong enough. Then one of the pigeons flew with full force against the side of the bell. Boom! The sound of the metal, struck by the blow of the bird’s dive, rang over the countryside. But the poor pigeon fell wounded onto the ground.

Boom went the bell again, as a second pigeon sacrificed itself for its good friend, the priest. One after the other, the birds flew against the temple bell. The priest came running up the path to find out what the matter could be, waking up just in time to escape the approaching snake bent on revenge. When he saw the poor birds lying wounded on the ground, he knew they had rung the bell and saved his life.

A temple bell