KOREAN LITERATURE CORNER - Feb 2026

By Josh Kim

The Story Ghost - 이야기 귀신

Once there was a boy who loved listening to stories. Only listening though; he did not like to tell stories. When he heard a story, he wrote it down on a piece of paper and put it in his story pocket. The boy became a man, and the stories lived in the story pocket for a long time. So long, that they became ghosts. 

A day before the man’s wedding, he and his friend were drinking in celebration. They fell asleep. The friend, however, woke up after hearing voices from the man’s pocket. The ghosts were speaking to each other. 

“Let’s kill him,” one ghost said. “I will pretend to be a pear so when he gets hungry, he’ll eat me and die.”

“I’ll pretend to be a needle”, another ghost said. “So if he sits on the cushion next to the bride, he will die.”

The friend didn’t bring this up to the man when he woke; the friend must have been hearing things. They went on the road to the wedding. The man got hungry and saw a pear on the roadside. The friend interrupted him, though, and walked them quickly past the pear. 

At the bride’s house, the man wanted to sit on the cushion next to the bride. He was about to do so, when his friend saw a needle in the cushion and pushed him to the ground, past the cushion. 

The man was angry and confronted the friend. The friend confessed to what he heard last night; he was worried the man wouldn’t believe him. 

The man saw his friend’s care. He apologized to his friend and said he did in fact believe him. He opened his story pocket and released the ghosts.