Heungbu and Nolbu: Two Brothers, a Swallow and the Gourds That Changed Everything

Heungbujeon (The Tale of Heungbu), better known as Heungbu and Nolbu, is a Korean story from the late Joseon dynasty about two brothers: poor, kind-hearted Heungbu, who heals a swallow's broken leg and is rewarded with gourds full of treasure, and his greedy older brother Nolbu, who breaks a swallow's leg on purpose and gets gourds full of trouble. Its obvious moral is that good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished. But Korean scholars read a second, sharper message underneath: a satire of a society in which newly rich commoners and impoverished nobles were turning the old social order upside down. The writer is unknown, and today the story is one of the most common bedtime stories for Korean children.

The story in brief

Heungbu and Nolbu are the sons of a rich man. When their father dies, he leaves orders that his fortune be split in half, but Nolbu, the older brother, tricks Heungbu and throws him and his family out so he can keep everything. Heungbu does not complain and accepts a life of poverty.

One autumn the harvest fails and Heungbu's children have nothing to eat, so he goes to his brother's house to beg. Nolbu's wife, who is as cruel as her husband, refuses and strikes him in the face with her rice paddle. In one of the most famous moments in Korean storytelling, Heungbu calmly scrapes the sticky rice off his cheek and asks her to hit him again, so that he can collect the rice from the other cheek and take it home to his children. It is funny and heartbreaking at the same time, which is exactly the tone of the whole tale.

On his way home, Heungbu sees a snake creeping towards a baby swallow. He chases the snake away and treats the swallow's broken leg, and his children care for the bird until it can fly. The swallow later returns with a seed and drops it into Heungbu's hand. He plants it, and the vine produces huge fruits. When the family cuts them open, out come treasure, fine fabric and even servants.

News of Heungbu's sudden wealth reaches Nolbu, who asks how it happened and copies every step, except that he breaks a swallow's leg himself. His swallow also brings a seed, and his gourds also open, but the first releases dokkaebi, Korean goblins, who beat and scold him for his greed; the second brings debt collectors demanding payment; the third pours out a flood of muddy water that swamps his house. Nolbu and his wife lose everything, finally admit their mistake and ask Heungbu for forgiveness, and the brothers live together happily.

Gourd or pumpkin?

If you read English retellings, you will sometimes see "pumpkin" and sometimes "gourd". The pansori version is literally called Bak taryeong, the "Gourd Song", and its plot summary speaks of a gourd seed that yields treasure. The Korean word is bak, the bottle gourd that Koreans traditionally dried and cut into ladles and bowls. The Korean Wikipedia calls the swallow's gift a baksssi, a gourd seed, and explains that the swallow is a migratory bird that flies south every winter and returns the following spring carrying the seed as repayment. So "gourd" is the more accurate translation, and the image of sawing open a hard, dried gourd is central to the comedy.

The main characters

Heungbu is the younger brother, honest and generous to a fault. In the Korean reading he is someone who tries hard but is crushed by the social contradictions of his time, and who shares his new wealth with other starving people once he is rich. Nolbu is the older brother, greedy and spiteful, who drives his brother out. Nolbu's wife is just as cruel, the one who slaps Heungbu with the rice paddle. And the swallow is the quiet hero, an animal that repays kindness with kindness and harm with harm.

An older, longer version makes Nolbu even worse. It describes him as having an organ filled with spite, a simsulbo, sticking out from under his left ribs, and paints him as one of the most wicked characters in Korean literature.

From folktale to pansori to novel

Heungbujeon is classed as pansori-based fiction, a novel shaped by the sung storytelling of pansori. Its sung form, Heungbuga, is one of the five pansori that are still performed today, together with Chunhyangga, Simcheongga, Sugungga and Jeokbyeokga. Among the five, Heungbuga is loved above all for its humour, and its most famous passage, a portrait of "Cranky Nolbu" and all his petty acts of malice, is sung in the fast jajinmori rhythm. Interestingly, singers and critics often consider the second half weaker than the first, perhaps because later generations of singers did not polish it as much.

The roots go even deeper. The tale is a classic mobangdam, a story in which one person succeeds by doing something and another fails by imitating him. Two older stories share its shape: the Story of Bangi from the ancient kingdom of Silla, in which a kind older brother is helped by magic and his cruel younger brother is punished, and a Mongolian tale about a maiden who heals a swallow's broken leg and receives a gourd seed full of treasure, while her jealous neighbour gets gourds full of poisonous snakes. Scholars still argue whether the Mongolian story came from Korea or the other way round.

The surprising history of its versions

The two editions usually treated as representative are the Seoul woodblock edition, probably published around 1880, and the Bak-taryeong of Shin Jae-hyo, estimated to date from 1870 to 1873. A handwritten copy now at the Harvard-Yenching Library was made in 1897 by a Japanese man, Akimi Hashimoto, who was learning Korean and transcribed a text from 1853.

The earliest known version, Heungbo manbo-rok, is presumed to have been copied in 1833, and it differs from all the others in two striking ways. It sets the story in Seochon, near Pyongyang, rather than in the southern provinces, and it gives Heungbu a real surname, Jang, saying he passed the military examination and became the founder of the Deoksu Jang clan. Most other versions either give the brothers no surname or call them Bak or Yeon, puns on the Korean words for "gourd" and "swallow".

The hidden satire

Korean scholars describe two layers of meaning. The "apparent theme", inherited from the folktale, is simple: good is rewarded and evil is punished. The "ulterior theme", added through pansori, is that the rise of a rich lower class and the decline of poor nobles were disrupting the existing hierarchy, and most scholars consider this second layer the more important one. Seen this way, Heungbu looks like a ruined aristocrat who cannot support his family, and Nolbu like a grasping new merchant class. The Korean summary adds that the tale satirises both at once: Heungbu's helplessness and Nolbu's greed.

There is a family-values twist too. The story has cultural weight in Korea because it challenges the traditional idea that the eldest son is the most important child. Here the eldest is the villain, and the younger brother is the moral centre.

The story today

The town of Namwon has branded a district as "Heungbu Village", based on scholars' theories about where the brothers lived, and the story has been adapted into novels, poems, songs, plays, musicals and madang nori performances. One recent version is the 2018 film Heung-boo: The Revolutionist. The tale also reached English early: H. N. Allen published a version in his Korean Tales in 1889, and Homer B. Hulbert retold it in 1925. If it reminds you of the French fairy tale Diamonds and Toads, you are not alone; it is often compared with it.

Learn with Heungbu and Nolbu: Korean words

Korean	Meaning	Example
형제 (hyeongje)	brothers	흥부와 놀부는 형제다.
욕심이 많다	to be greedy	놀부는 욕심이 많았다.
은혜를 갚다	to repay a kindness	제비가 은혜를 갚았다.
박을 타다	to saw open a gourd	흥부는 박을 탔다.
부자가 되다	to become rich	흥부는 부자가 되었다.

Try this: Write three Korean sentences about someone who repaid your kindness, using 은혜를 갚다 and 부자가 되다 or 형제.