Hello everyone! Here’s the thread for the 흥부전 lvl 13?? book club from the 다락원 series. As the third book in this series, it is supposed to be at the B1 level.
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Would you prefer
- an informal book club
- a more structured book club
- either one
0
voters
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Sorry, I’ve been kinda busy lately with the end of the semester coming soon. We can try doing a more informal book club. I hope I can finish 흥부전 by the end of the year, but we’ll see how that goes.
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Blockquote I’m not sure if I’m doing the blockquote right, can you tell me if it shows up right?
Yep, that looks right to me.
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Perfect then, I didn’t want to accidently spoil
I finished chapter 1! It definitely felt like a jump in level from 콩쥐팥쥐전 lv12, with a lot of new vocab and some intermediate grammar as well.
I’m not sure I understand exactly how the will and inheritance are set up. Do the brothers both have equal parts, or does 놀부 have most of the land?
So far, I’m also not sur about 놀부’s perspective on 흥부. Obviously, 흥부 is said to be kind while his older brother 놀부 slaps people who’ve done nothing wrong, if I understood correctly. But I didn’t get wether 놀부 works or not, because if he did he would be somewhat right in a way to tell 흥부 to get a job instead of doing nothing all day. Although I’m also curious as to whether that’s just 놀부’s skewed perspective/excuse or if that’s actually the case. Still, 놀부 is definitely the villain here, with him casting out 흥부 from his own land!
The timeline also seems pretty unclear to me. Is 흥부 cast out right after the death of his father? Or several years after? And how come 흥부 has so many young children?
There’s one sentence that I found particularly interesting, although it took me a while to get the meaning.
흥부는 울고불고 사정했지만, 놀부는 들은 척도 하지 않았어요.
so something along the lines of “but 놀부 didn’t even pretend to listen”. Pretty interesting, as I’d never seen ㄴ 척하다 used with 지 않다 before.
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Ah, you probably want spoiler quotes instead then; blockquotes just formats the text to stand out more, haha. For spoilers, you can enclose text in a [spoiler]text goes here[/spoiler] to hide it; you can either type it out manually or use the spoiler tag shortcut button on, as seen below:
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it’s fixed now, thanks!
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I am planning on starting this this weekend! 
In too many book clubs right now, but I think I can make time to read this.
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I’ve had a lot going on (+ I am in too many book clubs…), but I finally started this today and tackled chapters 1 & 2.
It was a good review of intermediate grammar points and there were a lot of idioms I didn’t know yet, which was great. 
Chapter 2 - I didn’t expect this to be a feel good story, but 놀부 is awful. 
I guess that fact will make the payoff at the end of the story better.
@HopeWaterfall you have probably read further already since I’m joining very late, but to answer some of your questions…
Because 놀부 is the older brother, he gets all of the inheritance (there was a little note that it was typical in the Joseon era to give everything to the eldest son), but their parents told him that he should also take care of 흥부 (which he doesn’t do…)
I’m not sure, but I got the impression that the family was well off as they had land and a big house with servants, so I don’t think either of them were working…maybe we will find out!
My impression was that 놀부 casts 흥부 out right after the father dies and he inherits everything. Up until then, 흥부 had been living in the same family house with his wife and children. If you read ahead to the first page of chapter 2, it’s explained that 흥부 and his wife got along really well, so that’s why they have so many kids (lol)
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Just finished chapter 1! I chuckled at the example showing what a terrible person 놀부 was: he poops in wells! Diabolical.
I don’t know that the setup is quite as effective at eliciting sympathy for 흥부 as it may have been in yesteryear - I can just imagine a modern newpaper article praising 놀부 for forcing his brother to find work and support his wife and 10+ kids. 
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