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If you followed our story on Dujjonku — the viral Dubai-inspired Korean cookie that traveled back to Abu Dhabi under a new name — you already know that the cultural connection between Korea and the Arab world runs deeper than most people expect. Food opened one door. K-pop and K-drama opened others. Books are opening another. Quietly, and through an unlikely guide: a shaggy blue dog with fur so long it covers his eyes.
A Korean Author on Arab Bookshelves
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Hwang Sun-mi (황선미) is one of Korea’s most beloved authors. Her novel The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly (마당을 나온 암탉) — a fable about a factory hen who escapes her coop and chooses her own life — has sold over two million copies in Korea and been published in 27 languages across 29 countries. The Arab world edition was published by Arab Scientific Publishers in Lebanon, which holds the world Arabic rights to her work.
Arab readers who picked up that novel were not necessarily looking for Korean literature. They were looking for a story that felt true. A hen who wants freedom. A mother who sacrifices everything. Those themes do not need translation.
Hwang Sun-mi’s books have since found Arab readers in numbers that are remarkable given how few Korean titles exist in Arabic translation at all. When she appeared at the 2023 Sharjah International Book Fair — the Arab world’s largest literary event, with 2.5 million visitors, where Korea was the Guest of Honor — she described seeing her book in Arabic for the first time: she could not read a single letter, she said, and found it equal parts disorienting and miraculous. A book of hers, already in the hands of readers she had never met, in a script she could not decipher.
That gap — and the connection made across it — is what Korean literature is doing right now in the Arab world.
The Blue Dog Named Jangbal
Korea’s ancient ghost-chasing breed at the heart of Hwang Sun-mi’s novel.
The book Hwang Sun-mi brought to the UAE was The Dog Who Dared to Dream(푸른 개 장발). Today I want to talk about the dog in the story — and how it connects to Korean history.
Korea has a long tradition of animals that stand between the human world and misfortune. If you’ve watched K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix, you already met one — Doffy, the blue-tinted tiger who guards and guides. That instinct to name certain creatures as protectors runs deep in Korean culture. The dog in this novel carries the same kind of weight.
The Korean title — 푸른 개 장발 — tells you exactly what the dog looks like. His name is Jangbal (장발), a very Korean name meaning “scraggly” — the kind of affectionate nickname you’d give a dog with wild, untamed fur that goes every which way, and whose coat turns a faint blue in moonlight. But the breed itself tells a different story. The dog at the center of the novel is a Sapsali (삽살개), a Korean indigenous breed whose name is not decorative but descriptive: sap (삽, to expel) and sal (살, evil spirits and bad luck). A Sapsali is literally the dog that chases away demons. The breed has over a thousand years of recorded history in Korea, appearing in Silla dynasty paintings, folk songs, and stories passed down through generations. Its body is covered entirely in long shaggy fur — fur that falls over its eyes completely, so that from the front you cannot see its face at all. The head is broad and lion-like. For centuries, Koreans kept Sapsali dogs in their yards to protect the household from misfortune.
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Here is the history that the novel carries quietly inside it.
During Japanese colonial rule in the 1940s, Japanese forces systematically killed Korean indigenous dogs — including the Sapsali — to harvest their thick fur for military winter gear. The breed was nearly wiped out entirely. A rescue effort in the late 1960s gathered just 30 surviving animals. From those 30, the breed was slowly rebuilt. In 1992, the Korean government designated the Sapsali as Natural Monument No. 368 — the same protected status as the more internationally known Jindo dog.
A dog that survived colonial extermination to become a national monument. That history lives inside the novel, carried quietly in Jangbal himself.
“You Have to Live So That I Can Live Too”
The story is built around an old man and his Sapsali — a relationship made almost entirely of mutual irritation. They bicker. They misunderstand each other. The old man pretends the dog is a nuisance. The dog is proud and stubborn.
Then one of them begins to die.
What follows is based on something Hwang Sun-mi witnessed herself — her own father and the real Jangbal. As death approaches, the old man finds himself tending to the animal with a gentleness he never showed openly before. And the dog stays.
The line at the heart of the novel — words the author heard her own father say — is this:
“You have to live so that I can live too.”
Between an old Korean man and a shaggy blue dog. You do not need to be Korean to feel that.
If You Visit Korea: Two Dogs Worth Knowing
The Blue Dog, Jangbal may send you looking for a Sapsali in real life. They are rare — the Korea Sapsaree Foundation manages the breed carefully, and they are not common pets. But they exist, mainly in the southeastern regions of Korea where the breed originally came from. If you get the chance, it is worth seeing one in person.
The dog Korea is more internationally known for is the Jindo (진도개) — sleek, alert, fox-like, fiercely loyal. Also a Natural Monument, native to Jindo Island in the southwest. The Jindo survived Japanese colonial rule partly because it had already been designated a protected species — while the Sapsali was being slaughtered, the Jindo was spared. Both breeds carry Korean history in their bloodlines. You may have already seen a Jindo without knowing it.
If you are walking somewhere in the world and you pass a large shaggy dog with fur covering its eyes, looking quietly at something you cannot see — think of Jangbal. Think of the dog that chases away bad luck, survived near-extinction, and is now a protected national treasure.
And come to Korea. These dogs are here, waiting.
Editor’s Comment
If you want to see a blue dog glowing in moonlight, chasing away evil spirits with a thousand years of history in its fur — come to Korea. We will show you around.