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Kongjwi

Kongjwi (or also 콩쥐 in the original Korean version), is the main titular protagonist of the Korean fairytale, Kongjwi and Patjwi.

Personality

Kongjwi is the far most kind and caring person. Much like Cinderella, she lost both of her parents and got a step mother and step sister who treats her badly and nothing, but like a servant of the family. However, just like Cinderella, Kongjwi never complains about her doing all the work for her step family and is shown to be very selfless.

Physical Appearance

There is no original version of Kongjwi's looks and her appearance is different in every single version of the fairytale. However, in all of them, she is a young Korean girl who wears a hanbok with dark colored hair.

Role in the Fairytale

Kongjwi's story starts off with her living a happy life with her biological parents. Until one day, her mother was killed by a disease and her father got a new wife, who had a daughter named Patjwi who is younger than Kongjwi. Kongjwi's step mother was nice to Kongjwi when Kongjwi's father was present. Despite this, her true nature was shown whenever Kongjwi's father was not there, which was treating her horribly as a slave and making her do all the chores.

Then, unfortunately, Kongjwi's father died sometime after he remarried as well, making her step mother and Patjwi to mistreat her worse. For this information, the step mother only treated Patjwi with love and respect. One day, she called both Kongjwi and Patjwi to come out and told Kongjwi to tie the gravel field over the mountains with a wooden homi and Patjwi to pull out the grass at their house yard. She gave Patjwi an easy way to do it by giving her a iron homi to work with, but gave Kongjwi a hard way by giving her a wood homi. Because of the different types of tools that she had given, Patjwi was able to finish her work quickly and easily, Kongjwi, on the other hand, got her wood homi broken right after just a few digs to the ground which made her cry with sadness.

Therefore, out of nowhere, a cow came over to her and helped her by tying the whole gravel field instead of her. Because of the cow's support, Kongjwi was able to quickly go home.

Sometime later, the ruler of the village opened a party for the villagers.

Patjwi and the step mother were going. Rudely, the step mother told Kongjwi to do all her work before, going, which was to weave five fils of fabric, chop five pieces of rice, and to fill up the jars with water.

Kongjwi started to sob in sadness and concern, worrying of when she will finish everything. All of a sudden, a fairy arrived to weave five fils of fabric for her. Next, the birds came by and chopped the five pieces of rice for her. The last thing she had to do was to fill the jars with water, unluckily, one of the jars had a big hole at the bottom, making her unable to do it. Again, a frog came over and blocked the hole for her so Kongjwi can fill it up. She happily thanked the fairy and the animals very much for the help.

Since she was done with all of her work, Kongjwi dressed up in the gown and slippers that the fairy gave her. When she was about to cross the stream at her village, one of her slippers fell off and went into the water. The slipper was found by the village's ruler, he noticed the beautiful slipper and commanded his servants to find the owner of the slipper. Not much later, the word of finding the owner of the slipper was spread everywhere around the entire village.

All women of the village gathered up to try on the slipper, including Kongjwi's step mother and Patjwi. Patjwi tried it on, but it wouldn't. Then one of the servants requested Kongjwi, who was watching over right next to them, to try it on. The slipper fit on her foot perfectly that it surprised everyone. Lastly, the ruler came over to her and asked her for marriage, so Kongjwi and the ruler got married and lived happily ever after.

External Links

Trivia