The Nine-Tailed Fox Is Not a Good Thing in Korea: It Eats Livers

China's nine-tailed fox is sometimes an auspicious sign, sometimes a demonic concubine. Japan's nine-tailed fox is Tamamo-no-Mae. Korea's nine-tailed fox is something else entirely.

The nine-tailed fox of Korean folklore is a fox that has lived for a thousand years and transformed into a beautiful woman. She goes to graveyards at night, digs up people from fresh graves, or lures men on the road to eat their livers.

Legend says she must eat a hundred human livers before she can become a true human; some say a thousand. If she is exposed before that, she will die. She carries a fox bead on her person, called a 'yeowoo guseul'; whoever gets it can know everything under heaven and earth, and some say whoever swallows it will live a long life.

In Korean movies and TV dramas in recent years, the nine-tailed fox is mostly a tragic character: she wants to be human, but is continually harmed by people, and some even fall in love with mortals.

The older generation says, how do you identify a nine-tailed fox? They are afraid of dogs, afraid of barking, and their tails show at night.

When children are frightened into behaving, the family will say: Don't run around, watch out the nine-tailed fox will eat your liver.

#Ghosts #网络转载 #韩国怪谈