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 socially charged work that became a precursor to modern Korean literary prose... — prose addressing the people. Through the story of Hong Gildong — a young man born of a concubine and without the right to call his father «father» — the author exposes the sores of the late Joseon society: class inequality, corruption of power, hypocrisy of the feudal family structure. The author of the tale, scholar and thinker Ho Gyun (1569–1618), belonged to the high class, yet spent his life fighting against social inequality and abuses of power. In his works, he openly criticizes injustice and social distortions, unafraid to question the foundations of his time. The basis of this publication is one of the surviving versions of the text, the so-called «kyeongp-han bon». This edition reproduces it completely in Hangul, without the use of Chinese characters, making the text more accessible to the modern reader.