Hong Gildong Jeon = The Tale of Hong Gildong

«The Tale of Hong Gildong», also known as «The Story of Hong Gildong» — is not just the first novel written in the Korean language, but a great socio-political work that became a harbinger of modern Korean artistic prose — prose directed at the people. Through the story of Hong Gildong — a young man born of a concubine and not allowed to call his father «father» — the author exposes the wounds of late Choson society: class inequality, the decay of power, the hypocrisy of the feudal family structure. The author of the tale, the scholar and thinker Ho Gyun (1569–1618), belonged to the high class but throughout his life fought against social inequality and abuses of power. In his work, he openly criticizes injustice and social distortions, not afraid to question the foundations of his time. This publication is based on one of the surviving versions of the text, the so-called «Gyeongp-han Bon». The present edition reproduces it entirely in Hangul, without the use of Chinese characters, making the text more accessible to the modern reader.