Once upon a time in a village, there lived two boys named Dori and Dukkeobi. The name of the first boy, Dori, means “stone” and the other one Dukkeobi means “toad.” They were best friends and always hung out together. While Dori was the son of the richest man in the village, Dukkeobi’s family was very poor. That made Dori worried about his friend’s future. He wondered how he could help his buddy.

One day, Dori got a bright idea. He hid his father’s expensive silver spoon and then told his friend Dukkeobi about his plan. “Listen, Dukkeobi. Everyone in my house will soon be looking for the lost spoon, and I’ll tell my father that you, Dukkeobi, are a good fortuneteller. When my father asks you about the missing spoon, just pretend to be fortuneteller and tell him where it is. My father will be impressed, of course, and your story will spread throughout the village and people will come to you to have their fortunes told. But we’ll think about it later. Let’s just focus on the spoon now.” With these words, Dori told his friend where he had hid the spoon. Dukkeobi didn’t really like the scheme, but he didn’t want to disappoint his friend, either. So, he followed Dori’s instructions and did exactly as he said.

As expected, Dori’s father was able to find his favorite silver spoon with the help of his son’s friend, and rumors of Dukkeobi’s marvelous power of divination spread far and wide. Now, Dori advised his friend to study the art of divination to be a real fortuneteller. It turned out Dukkeobi was quite good at this. More and more people visited him to have their fortunes told and before long, he was a lot better off. Dukkeobi’s reputation as an excellent fortuneteller spread all around the country.

At the time, the king in the country lost his royal seal. He had well-known fortunetellers find the important thing, and Dukkeobi was one of the diviners entrusted with the mission. He was ordered to find the seal within ten days, but like other fortunetellers, he had no idea where the seal was. As the deadline approached, his heart was filled with anxiety. While wondering what would happen to him if he failed to find the seal, he happened to see the paper weather strip on the door quivering. A paper weather strip is called munpungji in Korean. Unconsciously, he said to himself, “Why are you trembling that way munpungji?” To his surprise, a man suddenly barged into his room and fell on his knees. He begged the fortuneteller to forgive him, saying “How did you know my name is Mun Pung-ji? To tell the truth, I stole the royal seal. I never thought I would be discovered. But after I heard you were coming to the palace, I hid myself near your room to see what you were doing. Now that you have called my name, I’m doomed. The seal is hidden at the bottom of the pond in the backyard of the palace. Please forgive me.” So, the thief’s name was no other than munpungji, the paper weather strip. How lucky he was! Dukkeobi pretended to have known all about it beforehand and told the thief to go away. Needless to say, the king was pleased to recover his seal and gave Dukkeobi a lot of money as a reward.

However, there was a court official who suspected that Dukkeobi hid the seal himself because he found it too easily. So the official decided to put the fortuneteller to a test. He showed a stone box to Dukkeobi and told him to figure out what was in it. Dukkeobi felt hopeless. He had just saved his neck, only to face another difficulty. He thought of his friend, Dori, who had started all this. Thinking that he shouldn’t have listened to Dori in the first place, he muttered, “Alas, innocent Dukkeobi was trapped by Dori.” It was the court official who was dumbfounded. When he opened the stone box, a toad jumped out. As mentioned earlier, Dukkeobi means toad, and Dori means stone. So, the fortuneteller had given an exact picture of a toad locked in a stone box. From then on, no one ever doubted the reliability of such a good diviner. Dukkeobi returned home and lived happily ever after, sharing friendship with Dori throughout his life.