In spite of common stylistic features and purposes, proverbs reflect the specific cultures and tradition of their places of origin. Examine the Korean proverbs below, and guess what aspect of Korean culture they may represent. After losing a cow, one repairs the barn. A needle thief becomes a cow thief. One doesn't know the first letter of the alphabet even while looking at a sickle. It is dark beneath the oil lamp. Wheat hangs its head deeper as it ripens. An empty cart rattles loudly. Someone else's rice cake always looks bigger. Do these old sayings tell us anything about the way Koreans lived in the past? The answer is an obvious yes. The proverbs are closely related to how things were on the Korean peninsula hundreds of years ago. Korea used to be a farming society where most peasants owned a cow (an extremely valuable family asset) and a barn for keeping it. They usually worked in the field using sickles and other farming tools during the day and burned a small oil lamp for light at night. At harvest time, they noticed the heads of wheat and rice plants hang low. They used carts to transport their harvests and made rice cakes to celebrate a variety of special occasions.