KOREAN LITERATURE CORNER - May 2026

By Josh Kim

The Salt Millstone - 소금 맷돌

Illustration by Lee Su-heen

Our myth this month tells us why the sea is salty…

Once, as with many a Korean myth, there was a poor farmer. One day, after using the last of his money on rice and walking home, he saw an old man who had fallen on the road. Next to the old man was a millstone that the old man had been carrying. 

The farmer helped the old man up and brought him back to his home, giving him a warm meal of the new rice. In appreciation, the old man gave the millstone to the farmer and left.

The poor farmer, however, had nothing to put in the millstone, so he would spin it while saying to himself, “It’d be great if rice came from this millstone nonstop.” Astonishingly, after he said this, rice poured from the millstone. 

The farmer took a beat. Then he tried again, spinning the millstone and this time saying, “It’d be great if rice cakes came out of this millstone.” And again, rice cakes came out nonstop. The joyful farmer passed out the rice cakes to his neighbors.

A thief heard about this though. In the night, the thief broke into the farmer’s house and stole the millstone and rowed a boat far into the ocean to escape.

Money was always on the mind of the thief, and since salt was expensive, the thief spun the millstone in the boat and said, “It’d be great if salt came out of this millstone nonstop.” And then it did. The greedy, excited thief kept spinning the millstone and repeating the phrase. More and more salt came. There was so much salt that the boat began to sink but still the thief would not stop. 

Finally, the boat, salt, millstone, and thief all sunk into the ocean’s depths. And from that night on, the ocean has always been salty. You can read the book in Korean here.