In a previous cultural post, I talked about the cultural symbols that symbolize South Korea and the U.S to compare and contrast them. However, I purposely left out the symbol of the animal because it has a more complicated story that deals with an old myth, which I will explain now.
The myth that I am talking about is the tiger versus the bear story, which we learned about recently. This story begins with Hwan-In, a god, and his son, Hwan-Woong. Later in the story, there is a tiger and bear who desperately wants to become a human. Therefore, they seek advice from Hwan-In, who tells them that they can become a human if they eat garlic and mugwarts for 100 days in a dark cave. During this 100 day journey, the tiger could not do it anymore and gave up, while the bear endured and successfully completed the mission! As a result, the bear was turned into a female human and lived happily ever with Hwan-Woong.
Through this story, it would make sense that the national animal would be a bear because it was the one that was patient and did persevered. However, the complication is that some individuals adamantly believe that a tiger would be a better animal because it is more fierce and a better representation for their country.
This was very cool to learn because based on the story, the national animal should clearly be the bear, but I can see why they would chose the tiger instead. Nevertheless, this was definitely an interesting topic to learn about and it will be nice to learn about more myths in the future, next semester!
Comments
I agree! Thanks for your comment!
I always liked this story that my mom read to me from a book when I was growing up, but I didn't fully realize the significance behind it until relearning it now. Your post helped me understand why the national animal of Korea is a tiger but also makes me question why they didn't choose the bear instead. In my opinion, the bear would also make more sense because of its endurance and patience.
That's a good point! Also, that's a great connection to the Olympics-I totally forgot about that, but that makes sense now!
I also heard this story as a kid, and I wondered the same thing! I just thought that Koreans may prefer tigers over bears because bears have a sense of laziness and slowness, while tigers are more agile, ferocious and fearless. But then again, Koreans like to put them together, like the characters for the pyeongchang Olympics!