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 fiction — fiction that addresses 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 sores of late Joseon society: class inequality, the decay of power, the hypocrisy of the feudal family structure. The author of the tale, scholar and thinker Ho Gyun (1569–1618), belonged to the high class, but fought all his life against social inequality and abuses of power. In his work, he openly criticizes injustice and social distortions, not fearing to question the foundations of his time. The basis of this edition is one of the surviving versions of the text, the so-called "Gyeongpahan Bon". This edition reproduces it completely in Hangul, without the use of Chinese characters, which makes the text more accessible to the modern reader.