Story by HK, Summer 2023
I was born in South Korea, and even after I moved to the United States, my mom made primarily Korean food at home. I always ate dried persimmon, called gotgam in Korean. This fruit stars in one of the stories my grandfather would always tell me, called The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon. In the story, a woman and her baby climb a mountain while trying to avoid a tiger. The baby cries, and the mother tries to get it to stop crying by mentioning that its crying will attract the tiger. The baby doesn’t understand, and keeps crying. The baby only stops crying once the mother mentions getting dried persimmon, which the baby understands is a treat. However, the tiger (who was listening in on their conversation) misunderstands this interaction, and comes to the conclusion that gotgam must be a being even more terrifying than the tiger. The tiger runs away in fear of this “gotgam”, and the mother and baby cross the mountain safely.
This story has a few variations, but this is the version my grandpa always told me (I believe the most popular variation is a bit different). I asked him to tell me this story very, very often (almost every night), and I also ate the fruit very, very often. I believe you’re not supposed to eat too many, due to their sweetness. This made it a perfect snack for me as a child.
I think that persimmons in general are not very commonly eaten in the United States. I have a regional connection with this plant, of course, but I associate it most strongly to that folktale due to my personal memories. Tigers are also very culturally significant to Koreans, especially post-WW2, so dried persimmons being something tigers are scared of, places the fruit in a comically reverent position for a lot of Koreans.