" 'I pulled a hatchet from my jacket and whacked off my brother Hansel's legs, and then I went after my mother who tried to prevent me from running away,' said Gretel. 'My mother got killed because she treated me badly and my brother didn't respect me.' "

Do these sound like the sweet and innocent fairy tales that once entertained us in our youth? No way. But these are what today's teenagers are reading -- and writing -- online, circulating twisted tales in cyberspace in a genre known as horror fairy tales.

Combining violence and sexual perversion, formerly wholesome fairy tales are being distorted into cruel, graphic and provocative thrillers. In these stories, once lovable characters are now depraved maniacs and the happy ending is a blood-soaked, horrible demise.

A collection of horror fairy tales including "Cruelty Behind Grimm's Fairy Tales (That You Never Knew)".

And if you think you won't find these tales in your house, think again. A Korean mother named Han was shocked late last year when she discovered that her daughter, a middle school student, was reading the book "Cruelty Behind Grimm's Fairy Tales (That You Never Knew)". The book, written by a Japanese author, reinterprets the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and fills them with sex and violence.

"The book had a small R-rated warning, but my daughter didn't pay attention to that," Han said. She was shocked to learn that more books of this type were in wide circulation among her daughter's classmates.

Choi Young-ju, a visiting fellow from Hanuri Reading Campaign Center, said that today's youth are desensitized to violence. "Children are so accustomed to today's extreme pop culture that they're no longer moved by 'innocent' fairy tales," she said. These new horror tales, Choi pointed out, are not only violent, but contain extreme sexual content, which young people find intriguing.

Even more frightening is that Korean kids aren't content with simply reading these sick stories -- they're writing them, too. In fact, some teenagers push each other to concoct ever more twisted tales in competitions to see whose mind is sickest.

Check out online portals like Naver and Daum and you'll find dozens of communities where members swap their own horror fairy tales. Some sites have more than 2,000 postings. The origins of the trend are much more wholesome, said Chung Sun-gyeong, a host of online novel-writing community Ingizzang. She said the new fables grew out of stories called "fan-fics", in which young writers wrote fictional tales about celebrities and pop culture characters. "But they grew tired with fan-fics, and teenagers seem to be excited with this new emerging genre," Chung said.

Experts have voiced concern about the fad, saying it should not be dismissed as simple youthful curiosity. Shin Ui-jin, a professor with the Pediatric Psychiatry Department of Younsei Medical School said, "Driven into cutthroat competition from early age, children these days have no way to release their stress other than the Internet." He warned that if children pursue distorted extremes at the age when their personalities are being formed, they are highly likely to be violent when they grow up.

Park Gwan-seong, a research fellow at Korea Youth Counselling Institute agreed that the impact of these violent fables could be serious. "Since elementary school students can't always distinguish fantasy from reality, they might believe these cruel stories are part of the real world." Park recommended legal intervention, such as restrictions on online search results for murder and violence.

(englishnews@chosun.com )