Episode 44 – What’s Up, Doc? – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 44 Show Notes

Source: Korean Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’ll make our first foray into Korea. You’ll learn why rabbits don’t like to swim, why you should never accept a ride from a talking turtle, and why you can’t use fake eyes in medicine. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a tricky spirit with a love of games and a great big magic stick. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 44, “What’s Up, Doc?”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
It’s been a busy, heavy few episodes, so I thought we could head somewhere new for a light-hearted fairy tale about fishies. To that end, we’re headed off to Korea to gawk at some legitimate animal royalty.
All was not well in the Kingdom of the Fish, far below the waves. The king was in dreadful pain, and as anyone who has ever worked a corporate job knows, shit rolls downhill, so everyone in the kingdom was swimming as quietly as they could to avoid drawing his wrath, or the wrath of those who had to endure the king’s wrath, and so on down the chain of screaming. See, one day, the king had been out for a little swim to clear his head and had chanced upon a tasty looking morsel floating in the water. He’d worked up an appetite by this point, so he chomped down on the appetizing piece of colorful something.
Some fishy version of a Spider Sense pinged in the king’s head before he finished biting, and he pulled desperately back from what he was now worried was bait. You don’t stay alive and powerful for as long as the Fish King had without developing good instincts, and this was no exception. He managed to avoid swallowing the awful hook hidden inside the tempting flash of color, but alas, he did not escape unscathed. In a bolt of red agony, the hidden hook caught in his gills and embedded itself in his flesh.
In a little wooden boat far above, a fisherman felt his line go taut and tried to reel in the massive fish, but the king was too strong and too wily, and he managed to pull just so, snapping the line and winning his freedom. The struggle embedded the hateful thing deeper in his gills though, and the king soon developed a fever from the infected wound, which left him in terrible agony.
The king returned to his palace as fast as he could (which wasn’t very fast since he could hardly even see straight, let alone swim smoothly) and summoned all of his advisors. “Someone get this damned thing out of my face!” Word was sent out through the wide ocean, summoning all of the wisest creatures around for their aid from the old leatherback turtles to the idle jellyfish, from the smallest guppy to the largest whale. Many wise creatures and marine doctors came to look at the king and try to solve his problem. Countless fins were wagged and foggy eyes were blinked in the king’s direction, and many sage old heads huddled together in council to discuss the issue.
Turtles live a long, long time, and so they were regarded as the wisest and most learned of all the sea creatures. The other sages deferred to the wisdom of the old Dr. Turtle, who had heeded the king’s summons, as he felt for a fishy pulse (how is unclear) and peered into his mouth at the glinting steel hook. Finally, after much examination and many consultations with the other doctors that had fins and tails and shells and scales, it was decided that only one thing could possibly clear up the infection, loosening up the hook and allowing it to be removed: a poultice made from rabbits’ eyes, a very exotic medicine for sea creatures.
Dr. Turtle announced this prognosis with the gravity befitting an old turtle, waiting for the king’s reaction. “Okay, great. Who’s going to go get those rabbit eyeballs for my medicine?” There was an awkward silence as everyone assembled slowly turned to stare at the oblivious Dr. Turtle. After a long moment, he realized that every eye was on him as the only amphibian in attendance. “I guess I’ve been voluntold, huh?” “Great, it’s decided. Dr. Turtle will go to the surface, find a rabbit, and convince him to come down here deep under the sea so that we can rip out his eyes and turn them into a poultice for my gills. Off you go!”
Dr. Turtle realized he didn’t have much of a choice so off he went indeed. It was a long swim from the Fish Kingdom to the surface, but he eventually surfaced and walked up onto the beach. Quickly (or at least, quickly for a turtle on land), he headed inland to try and find Mr. Rabbit’s burrow. He came to a tall hill not far from the edge of the beach. Shading his eyes, Dr. Turtle could just make out the form of a bunny strolling along the top of the hill on his after-breakfast constitutional. The way was steep and rocky and, by the end, Dr. Turtle was huffing and puffing hard enough to blow a house down.
“Good [huff huff] good morning, Brother Bunny [huff puff]. How are you today?” “What’s up, Doc? I’m doing just fine. It’s good to see you up here on my little hilltop. You can see the land for miles from here. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” “It is, Brother Bunny, but it’s shaping up to be quite a hot one.” He pulled a handkerchief out of somewhere (his shell, I guess?) and wiped his scaly forehead, even though turtles definitely do not sweat. Putting the cloth back to wherever it came from, Dr. Turtle began to clean sand from his claws. It was nice to be on solid land for a while, but it was always annoying crossing the beach; that infernal sand always managed to get absolutely everywhere!
“I suppose so, Doc, but the scenery is worth it. You surely don’t have mountains as fine as those on the horizon under the sea.” I mean, they definitely do, but Mr. Rabbit had no way of knowing that. “There’s no land as lovely as our beautiful Korea, is there, Doc? The soaring mountains, the rushing rivers, the jeweled seashore, the deep forests, the riotous flowers…” Dr. Turtle broke in, knowing full well that Mr. Rabbit would ramble on in praise of his beloved home for hours if allowed, and by then, who knew if he’d even remember why he’d come here today? The king was suffering, and the longer Dr. Turtle took, the longer he had to suffer the agony of that cruel hook.
“Yeah, the dry world is quite cute, I guess, but it’s nothing compared to the breath-taking, awesome grandeur of the world beneath the waves. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the jagged purple peaks surging out of the depths to dwarf any puny mountains you have here on the surface. And the flowers? They’re fine if you’ve never seen the tropical beauty of a reef, swarming with living jeweled fishes.” Mr. Rabbit’s ears visibly perked up at this news. He’d never heard that the undersea world was so beautiful. As far as he’d ever known, there was nothing underwater except some boring brown fish and drab seaweed (neither of which smelled terribly sweet when they washed up on the shore), but maybe he’d misjudged the sea. Maybe he was only seeing the dead, decaying remnants of a glorious vista.
“You paint one hell of a picture, Doc. I’ll admit that I’m intrigued. Tell me more.” And Doctor Turtle did. He told Brother Bunny of the ragged peaks that plunged into deep chasms lit with the shimmering glow of molten rock. He spoke of the rare plants never glimpsed by surface dwellers forming a carpet of mingled red, blue, orange, and white that waved gently with the current and of golden and silver trees rising above flowers of every color, gently perfuming the water with the most delightful scents. He told him of the delicacies to be found there: rare and exotic foods paired with subtle and intoxicating drinks that the sea creatures enjoyed while listening to strange, enchanting music and softly swaying dances that were impossible in the harsh confines of gravity. He told him of the fair forms of the citizens of the Fish Kingdom, where even the servants and the maids were beautiful.
“That all sounds absolutely magical, Doc. I wish I could see such sights.” Dr. Turtle looked thoughtful, as though this idea had never even occurred to him. “Well why don’t you, Mr. Rabbit? Come along as my guest. The Fish King is having a feast tonight, and he told me that I could invite someone from the surface if I wanted, since I travel both worlds. I’m sure he’d be delighted to meet you.” “Wait, really? You mean it?” Mr. Rabbit did a complicated twirling leap out of pure joy. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
The two creatures made their way down the hillside and onto the beach. They waded out into the water until Mr. Rabbit could just barely keep his footing against the rocking waves. “Grab onto my shell, Brother Bunny. I’m a much better swimmer, and I don’t think you’ll be able to swim all the way to the Fish Kingdom on your own.” Mr. Rabbit gratefully crawled onto Dr. Turtle’s shell and held on to the front, right above the turtle’s neck. “Hold on tight – we’re heading down!”
With that, Dr. Turtle dove, swimming hard down into the depths of the sea. Down, down they went, far beneath the blue waves, leaving the surface world behind. Now, in any reasonable world, Mr. Rabbit would have drowned within the first few minutes of being dragged deep underwater, but this isn’t a reasonable world – this is a fairy tale. Maybe they had access to some kind of unexplained water magic. I don’t know, and the story doesn’t care, so whatever. Just understand that, somehow, Mr. Rabbit was fine being underwater for an impossible amount of time. Anyway.
They dove down to the very ocean floor, where the undersea palace of the Fish King could be seen looming in the distance. If Mr. Rabbit had still had breath, it would have been taken away at the impossible sights he saw. It was true! Every last thing that Dr. Turtle had told him was true! He marveled at the incredible sights as they approached the castle, which was somehow even more spectacular than the other marvels he had seen. Dr. Turtle brought him inside and began to introduce him to everyone, who were all thrilled to be meeting a strange surface-dweller. He was basically Sandy Cheeks to Dr. Turtle’s Spongebob.
Mr. Rabbit was left to talk with the various princes and princesses of the kingdom while Dr. Turtle went to speak to the council of elders and wise creatures about his mission. Dr. Turtle assured Mr. Rabbit that it was all very boring and that he would have a much better time getting to know the royal house. Mr. Rabbit agreed that it did indeed sound quite dull and let him leave, but he had an insatiable curiosity and he couldn’t help but wonder what his friend might be saying about him while he wasn’t around. He decided to sneak up on them and hear first-hand what the sea creatures really thought of this exotic visitor.
Mr. Rabbit, who was a very confident bunny, was riding high on the love he’d felt so far from everyone he met, and he kind of totally expected more of the same from the council. He was in for quite a rude awakening. As he snuck close to the gathering, he heard Dr. Turtle being congratulated on succeeding in bringing a nice, gullible rabbit down into the depths and then he heard them begin to argue about the best way to remove his eyes from his motherfucking skull for the greatest potency. Some argued that he should be given a nice, painless poison and then have the eyes scooped out of his fresh corpse with a spoon; others worried that any poison in his system might taint the poultice and harm the Fish King more than the hook in his mouth. These argued that he should be tied down and have them plucked from their sockets like grapes while he was still alive and screaming in horrified agony. Mr. Rabbit was, naturally enough, not a fan of any of these options. He preferred a different alternative: namely, tricking those murderous assholes and escaping back to the surface world in the process.
The council eventually decided on a relatively forthright and honest approach: they sent the royal executioners (the story doesn’t describe them, but I’m picturing massive sharks) to speak with Mr. Rabbit. “Mr. Rabbit, it’s been a delight having you as our guest here in the Fish Kingdom, but I’m afraid that we need something from you in return now. You see, our king is very sick, and the only cure appears to be the fresh eyes of a bunny rabbit, so we’re going to need you to come along with us and be dismembered, if you don’t mind. You understand. Right this way, please.” As death threats go, it was very polite.
“Wait, really? Well why didn’t somebody say something before I came all this way? I would have brought my real eyes if I’d known.” “Well, I mean we were afraid you’d…wait, real eyes?” “Yeah. You mean you don’t know? I guess ocean-dwellers can’t be expected to know something just because everyone on the surface does. See, all bunny rabbits have removable eyes. You wouldn’t believe what a pain they can be to replace if you lose them, so when I found out I was going to be traveling so far from home (and under the sea no less), I traded my real eyes for these much more durable crystal eyes. They’re great for travel, but they’d be absolutely rubbish for making your king’s medicine. If I’d known you needed them, I’d have brought the real deal.” “Well that sucks. I don’t want to have to tell the king that we fucked up.”
Mr. Rabbit clapped his paws together and danced a little as though he’d just had a marvelous idea. “Say, I’ve got a swell idea: you boys go and fetch Dr. Turtle and tell him that the king needs me to go back to the surface to fetch something and then bring me back. I’ll grab the real eyes and come back with them, and you won’t have to tell your king that you’re the reason he’s going to die a slow, agonizing death. How about it?”
The executioners were terrified of the king’s wrath, especially since the whole hook thing, so they practically tripped over themselves in their haste to go fetch Dr. Turtle. In just a few minutes, the elderly amphibian made his way over to the tricky bunny. “What’s all this then?” Mr. Rabbit explained the situation to Dr. Turtle, including the bit about his fake eyes. Now, Dr. Turtle had never heard any such thing before, but land mammals weren’t exactly his specialty and, truth be told, he’d been out of med school a long, long time. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had surprised him with some newfangled bit of knowledge they hadn’t had back in his day. He didn’t want to look like a fool in front of Mr. Bunny, so he agreed to take him back to the surface to fetch his real eyes without asking any perfectly reasonable questions.
It was nearly sundown by the time the two reached the beach again, and Mr. Rabbit raced up the sandy beach towards his high hill without even bothering to shake himself dry first. “I’ll be right back, Dr. Turtle! I just have to go dig my real eyes out of my warren where I left them!” Dr. Turtle waited patiently as the rabbit raced off into the gathering gloom until all he could see was the bouncing flash of a white cotton tail. It too was soon lost to sight. The sun set and the stars came out, but Mr. Rabbit didn’t return. With growing anxiety, Dr. Turtle kept waiting all through the night. As the first rays of the new dawn began to lighten the sky, he was forced to admit to himself that his victim wasn’t coming back. He must have learned somehow what they really needed him for and decided to save his own skin. He could try to follow him to the burrow on the hill, but the bunny had probably already abandoned it by now. Even if he hadn’t, Dr. Turtle knew that there was no way he’d be able to get that fast fucker into the water against his will. With a deep sigh, he waded back into the water and headed for the Fish Kingdom. The whole way, he tried to figure out the best way to admit that the rabbit had tricked him and escaped, dooming their king to a lingering death that none of them could stop now.
As far as endings go, this one is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the innocent Mr. Rabbit succeeds in tricking the ocean-dwellers who want to pluck his eyes from his head to heal the king (never mind the fact that he wasn’t quite done with them yet); on the other hand, Dr. Turtle is probably going to be executed and the Fish King is probably going to die slowly and agonizingly, which may very well lead to civil war. Sure, it was kind of a dick move to try and kill one sentient creature to heal another, but they did ask politely first and there’s every chance that the seas are going to run whatever color fish blood is with the blood of dead fish in the coming war, so it’s kind of hard to feel too good about his victory.
The coming turmoil is inevitable now, so we might as well leave the ocean depths and head for Gods and Monsters instead. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monsters are the dokkaebi, or the Korean goblins.
Dokkaebi are nature deities or spirits with forms that vary wildly depending on the story you’re listening to at the moment. They are an incredibly popular mystical creature, popping up in all kinds of Korean folk tales, beginning with the story of Lady Dohwa and Bachelor Biyeong, which takes place during the First Century AD and was written down during the Three Kingdoms period, sometime around 1280. It’s a weird, wild story, but the basics of it are thus. The 25th king of the Silla period, King Jinjiwang, fell in love with a beautiful woman named Lady Dohwa. He was enraptured and, having never so much as courted her, he asked her to be his wife. She turned him down, because, as it so happened, she was already married (which is a lot more likely when you propose to women you know nothing about).
In time, he stepped down and abdicated the throne and died, being an old man I guess. Soon thereafter, Lady Dohwa’s husband also died, leaving her a suddenly eligible widow. The king had never gotten over his love of the beautiful woman and so his ghost made the arduous trek back from the land of the dead to be with her. It was difficult for the dead to stay in the land of the living, especially since he managed to maintain a corporeal body, so he and Dohwa made the most of their time together. During the 7 days he was able to stay on the earth, they fucked like coked-out bunnies, so it was only a little bit shocking when she got pregnant from their tryst.
She named her son Bihyeong, and the story of his incredible origin soon spread to the palace where his half-brother Jinpyeong ruled. The king invited his half-brother to live in the palace with him, raising him into a fine young man and eventually appointing him as his assistant. He went on to do some incredible things, including building a bridge overnight with the help of a group of ghosts he hung out with (aptly named Gwigyo, or Ghost Bridge). Bihyeong is said to have been the first of the dokkaebi, although there have been many since.
Not unlike the kamaitachi from back in Episode 28, dokkaebi are not really ghosts (though they apparently hang out together), but rather the spirits formed from the possession of an inanimate object, such as a discarded household item like a broom, or objects that have been stained with human blood. They are powerful creatures, possessing extraordinary powers, which they mainly use to either play pranks on hapless humans, to help out those in dire need, or to reward the righteous. Most are described as wearing a hanbok, a piece of traditional Korean formal attire; they may also have a gamtu, or hat, that grants them invisibility and a bangmangi, or club, that allows them to summon any item they require. Note that I said summon and not create – it’s basically a Korean version of the ‘accio’ spell from Harry Potter, bringing the item from somewhere else (and usually stealing it from some poor schmuck in the process).
The dokkaebi are extremely fond of sports and games, especially of ssireum, a Korean form of wrestling. In many tales, they will greet travelers and demand a match for the right to pass on down the road. They are extremely skilled at the sport, although they apparently have a known weakness: they cannot be beaten if attacked from the left, but are easily thrown from the right. You might also want to try hooking their leg out from under them as, in many stories, they only have the one (which seems like it should be more of a liability than it appears to be).
Given their immense powers, they were often worshiped in rural communities, where it was believed that they had the power to bring good harvests, large catches of fish, and great fortunes to lucky humans, as well as to ward villages from evil. On the other hand, if angered or just feeling like a dick, the dokkaebi can instead bring fires or plagues, and some villages hold rituals to chase them away.
There’s a pretty common story that I’ll end with, which does a pretty good job of demonstrating the fickle nature of these powerful spirits. There once lived an old man who wasn’t overly fond of other people, and so he had chosen to build his home on the slopes of the mountain above the village. It was a long and arduous climb which no one in the village ever bothered to make (the guy was a curmudgeon, so what would be the point?). You can understand why he was so surprised to hear a knock on his door one day. He opened it, confused, and found a dokkaebi standing there. Honestly, I don’t know whether he would have been more or less surprised if it had actually been a person instead.
He was a grump, but not a dick, so he offered his visitor his choice of alcohol like a good host. This pleased the dokkaebi, and the two soon became friends. They visited each other often, engaging in long, thoughtful conversations, and quickly became bestest buddies. At least, they were until the day that the old man went to take a walk in the woods by himself. He’d been walking a long time and he grew thirsty, so the man stopped at the river to drink. His reflection stared back at him from the water, only it wasn’t the reflection he remembered having. In fact, it looked an awful lot like… The man checked again, but it was no mistake – he was turning into a dokkaebi!
The story doesn’t explain why or how, but I can only presume that his erstwhile buddy had betrayed him, possibly in an attempt to make a friend who was more like himself (maybe he was a lonely dokkaebi?). Regardless, the man was certain that the dokkaebi was to blame and decided to do something about it. The creature was far too powerful to take on directly, so he knew he’d have to do something sneaky instead. After some careful thought, he concocted a plan and sent an invitation to the dokkaebi to come over for drinks.
After the creature had gotten more than a little tipsy (while the man had been careful to drink far less than his so-called “friend”), he steered the conversation where he wanted it to go. “You know, I’ve always wondered: you’re a crazy powerful spirit, so I don’t imagine that there’s much out there that can hurt you, but everybody’s scared of something. What about you? What are you most afraid of?” “Oh, that’s easy – blood. I’m extremely afraid of blood. Mine, somebody else’s, doesn’t matter. The sight of it makes me squeamish.” The dokkaebi shuddered at the thought. “What about you, friend? What scares you the most?” The man pretended to think about his answer, then feigned his own shudder. “Money. It’s weird, but I’ve always been extremely scared of money. It’s the root of all evil, you know. It scares me so much, in fact, that I moved up here on the mountainside, away from all of those townspeople and there horrifying money.”
Armed with this knowledge, the man drank the night away and said goodbye to the dokkaebi for the last time. In the morning, he slaughtered a cow and painted his house in its fresh blood. The stench must have been truly odious, but the blood did the trick. The dokkaebi, who had come back to check on his friend, was shocked and outraged at the man for using his secrets against him (even though he’d kind of started it by transforming the human without his knowledge or consent). “Fuck you, man! I’ll make you regret being such an asshole!”
The next day after that, the dokkaebi came back with sacks and sacks of gold. He was too afraid to actually approach the bloody house, but he hurled the sacks, full of an absolutely obscene amount of money, at the man. “See how you like being confronted with your greatest horror!” Satisfied that he had given as good as he’d gotten, the dokkaebi left forever, leaving the man the richest person in the town by a wide margin.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
So I am officially coming back to DragonCon this year, and bringing Mythology in Popular Culture with me. The schedule is still in flux, so I’ll have more details as I get closer, but I’ll make sure that my full panel schedule is available on Facebook once I have it. I’ll be doing a wide variety of things this year, so I hope you can come check out the fun.

Next time, we’re headed to ancient Mesopotamia for a listener request special. You’ll see that you should never try to start shit with your Goth sister, that some goddesses make love and war, and that you should never trust anyone who makes you strip every time you visit. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the older, more obscure cousin of the famous hydra. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.