The story of "Heungbu and Nolbu" reportedly took place about 200 years ago,[1] and was passed down through generations.
The day that their father died of old age, they learned that he had ordered to split his fortune in half for each of them.
[2] One autumn, the harvest was bad and Heungbu's family had nothing to eat, so he went to his brother's house to beg for some food for his children.
Heungbu chased the snake away and treated the swallow's broken leg, which had gone unnoticed initially.
By the time the swallow's leg was healed, it had learned to fly, so it flew away with what appeared to be the rest of its family.
When it was time to harvest, Heungbu was overjoyed to find the pumpkins filled with treasure, fine fabric, and servants.
Names like "Heungbu" and "Nolbu" might be unfamiliar to people in other countries, but the moral that good deeds bring you wealth and luck is similar to many other folk tales from cultures around the world.
This story also has great cultural significance in Korea because it challenges the common Korean value that the eldest son is the most important child of the family.
Recently, "Heungbu and Nolbu" was published in an American textbook named "Literary Place 2, 3".
[4] Heungbu-jeon is considered a pansori-based fiction, which refers to novels that have been influenced by the narratives of pansori (a genre of musical storytelling).
The two old folk narratives have similar narratives to Heungbu-jeon, which are Bangi seolhwa (방이 설화; ‘Story of Bangi’) from the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla and Baktaneun cheonyeo (박타는 처녀; 'A Maiden Who Sawed a Gourd') from the region of Mongolia.
In order to farm the land, Bangi went to his younger brother and asked for some crop seeds and silkworms.
The evil younger brother gave Bangi steamed crop seeds and silkworm eggs.
Upon learning about her neighbor's good fortune, she caught a swallow, broke its leg, and treated it.
Originally Heungbu-jeon had a structure of a folktale (mindam), and other aspects were added to turn it into a pansorititled Heungbu-ga (興夫歌 Song of Heungbu).
However, the pansori narrative of the same story reveals an ulterior theme—the emergence of a rich low class and poor yangban is disrupting the existing social order and hierarchy.
Heungbo-jyeon (hereafter, Yenching edition), housed at Harvard-Yenching Library, is a handwritten version created in 1897 by transcribing the text of Heungbu-jeon from 1853.
All other versions of Heungbu-jeon discovered so far have either not provided the surnames of Heungbu and Nolbu, or listed their surnames as either Bak (homonym of the Korean word for gourd) or Yeon (homonym of the hanja character meaning swallow), which are relevant to the plot of the story.
Although Heungbu-jeon has originated from a folktale and thus takes places in other settings as well beside Namwon depending on the version, the city of Namwon has branded Ayeong-myeon as Heungbu maeul, or Heungbu Village, and has been making the efforts to attract tourists to the town.
Heungbu-jeon has been rewritten as a novel and poem, and adapted into a song, play, musical, madang nori (a genre of traditional Korean performance art), and film.