Hong Gildong, Korea's Outlaw Hero: The Novel, Its Disputed Author and Why Koreans Still Use His Name

The Tale of Hong Gildong (Hong Gildong jeon) is a Korean novel from the Joseon period whose authorship has traditionally been credited to the statesman and writer Heo Gyun (also spelled Hŏ Kyun), although recent scholarship has seriously questioned that attribution and some researchers now date the surviving text much later. So the honest short answer to "who wrote it?" is: Heo Gyun, according to a tradition that goes back to the seventeenth century, or an unknown writer, according to a growing number of scholars. What nobody disputes is the story itself: Hong Gildong, the illegitimate son of a nobleman and a lowborn mother, gifted with brilliant intelligence and supernatural powers, who robs rich and corrupt aristocrats and ends up founding a kingdom of his own.

A hero born on the wrong side of the family

To understand why this story hit so hard, you need one fact about Joseon society. A son born to a nobleman and a concubine or servant was a seoja, a secondary son, and no matter how talented he was, the law and custom of the time kept him away from the honours his half-brothers could expect. The novel turns that injustice into its opening problem. Hong Gildong is born after his father, a high minister, wakes from an auspicious dream and lies with a lowborn maid. The boy grows up mastering physical, mental and magical skills, yet he cannot even call his own father "father" in the normal way. That small, painful detail is the emotional engine of the whole book.

The Korean Wikipedia article describes him as the son of a minister in the reign of King Sejong, a young man who learned martial arts and manners but lamented that his birth prevented him from fulfilling his ambitions. Readers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not need that explained. Many of them knew exactly what it meant to be talented and shut out.

The story in three acts

The many versions of the novel differ in detail, but they share the same skeleton, which scholars usually divide into three parts set in three different places.

The first part takes place in the Hong family house. Gildong's gifts make him a threat to people inside the household, and an assassin is sent to kill him. He defeats the assassin and then leaves home, unwilling to go on living as a second-class son. It is an unusual beginning for a hero: he does not leave to seek adventure, but because the house that should protect him has tried to destroy him.

In the second part, Gildong becomes the leader of a band of outlaws and names it the Hwalbindang, often translated as the "league of those who help the impoverished". The band steals from places where wealth is concentrated, such as storehouses and temples, and as its robberies grow bolder, Gildong attracts the attention of the king himself. According to the Korean account, the court cannot catch him because of his magical skills, so it tries a different approach and offers him the post of Minister of War. Gildong appears before the king, politely declines the post, announces that he will take his followers and leave the country, and vanishes into the air.

The third part moves overseas to the land of Yul. Gildong rebuilds the Hwalbindang on an island, overthrows the king of Yul and becomes king himself. He rules as a benevolent monarch and raises a family in which all of his sons are treated equally. That last detail quietly answers the wound of the first chapter: the boy who was denied equal status creates a world where no son is second-class.

Who wrote it? The case for Heo Gyun

Heo Gyun (1569–1618) was a Joseon novelist, poet and politician from a distinguished family; his older sister was the poet Heo Nanseolheon. He passed the highest civil service examination in 1594, held senior posts, was exiled several times during political feuds, and was finally executed on charges of treason during the reign of Prince Gwanghae. Because he is remembered as a progressive thinker who wanted a fairer society, the novel's attack on class discrimination has long seemed to fit him.

The main written evidence comes from Yi Sik (1584–1647), Heo Gyun's former student. In his collected works he wrote that Heo Gyun composed a Hong Gildong in imitation of the Chinese novel Water Margin. Supporters of this view argue that a student who knew Heo personally, and who was only fifteen years younger, was a reliable witness, and later writers repeated his statement. Interestingly, the link to Water Margin also appears from the Chinese side: the scholar Ellen Widmer has described Hong Gildong jeon as a work that draws heavily on that novel and is easy to identify as its descendant.

The case against

The problem is that the text we actually have may not be the text Yi Sik mentioned. Professor Lee Yoon-suk points out that the surviving novel refers to Jang Gil-san, a real bandit of the late seventeenth century, and to an eighteenth-century government office, both of which would be impossible for a writer who died in 1618. He also notes that the other novels written purely in Hangul tend to appear in the late eighteenth century. In 2013 the historian Minsoo Kang went further, arguing that the claim for Heo Gyun rests on flawed and biased scholarship and that the extant version was probably written around the mid-nineteenth century, or not long before, by an anonymous writer of secondary or commoner status.

There is a middle position too. It is possible that Heo Gyun did write some kind of Hong Gildong story, and that the Hangul novel we read today is a later, reworked descendant. That is one reason more than 34 manuscripts survive and why scholars are still unsure which, if any, is the original; some evidence suggests a manuscript known as pilsa 89 is the oldest. For a learner, the safest phrasing is "traditionally attributed to Heo Gyun". It is accurate, and it shows you know the debate exists.

Was there a real Hong Gildong?

Yes, in a sense. Historical sources mention a bandit named Hong Gildong who was arrested in 1500, and the English-language scholarship also points to the famous early sixteenth-century outlaw Im Kkeokjeong as an inspiration for the character. But the novel deliberately moves its hero to the reign of King Sejong, and the Korean article notes that the historical bandit was a very different figure from the boy wizard of the book. The fictional Gildong is a symbol first and a historical person second.

Themes: class, justice and a dream of elsewhere

On the surface, Hong Gildong follows a familiar pattern of East Asian heroic fiction: noble lineage, a humble birth, extraordinary abilities, a series of crises and their final conquest. But the novel goes further than the simple success stories that were popular entertainment at the time. It asks what a gifted person should do when the system refuses to use his gifts, and its answer is radical: leave, build something better, and treat everyone in it fairly.

The story is also more complicated than a straightforward fantasy of justice. Gildong never really wants to destroy the kingdom of Joseon; he wants recognition from his father and his king, and when he finally receives it, he leaves peacefully. Some Korean critics have even pointed out an uncomfortable irony: a hero who suffered from being treated as an outsider ends the book by conquering another country and imposing his own order on it. Reading the book with that tension in mind makes it far richer than a children's adventure.

Why Koreans still use his name

Hong Gildong has become one of the most familiar figures in Korean culture. In Korea today his name works as a common placeholder, much like "John Doe" in the United States: you will see it on sample forms and example documents. The translator Minsoo Kang has called the story arguably the single most important work of premodern Korean prose fiction, both for its literary achievement and its influence on the wider culture. Critics have also called Gildong one of the first truly "Korean" main characters in an early Hangul novel, although the novel's status as the very first all-Hangul novel is itself a subject of controversy.

The adaptations never stopped. There were animated feature films in 1967 and 1969, a North Korean martial arts film in 1986, video games in the 1990s, and a 1998 SBS television series that drew viewership ratings above 30 percent at its peak. Jangseong County, traditionally considered the character's birthplace, has a Hong Gildong theme park and an annual festival. Outside Korea he is often compared with Robin Hood, which is a useful shortcut, as long as you remember that Robin Hood never became the king of an island nation.

Learn with Hong Gildong: Korean words

Korean	Meaning	Example
의적 (uijeok)	a righteous bandit	홍길동은 조선의 의적이다.
서자 (seoja)	a son born to a concubine	길동은 서자로 태어났다.
아버지를 아버지라 부르다	to call one's father "father"	그는 아버지를 아버지라 부르지 못했다.
집을 떠나다	to leave home	길동은 결국 집을 떠났다.
나라를 세우다	to found a country	그는 율도국에 나라를 세웠다.

Try this: Write three short Korean sentences about a time you left somewhere to start again, using 떠나다 and 세우다.