[2022] A summary of the year of the tiger in 2022
"The tiger comes down. The tiger comes down. A beast descends from the deep valley of the pine forest."
This is one of the songs 'Beom Comes Down' by the Korean traditional music group Il-chi that once shook the whole country. Zara, who came out to the land in search of the rabbit's liver, lost strength in her jaw and was looking for 'To Saengwon', so he sang 'Ho Saengwon', and a tiger ran down the mountain. In this case, the tiger is a humorous animal that is foolishly harassed. The tiger, considered a wild beast among wild beasts, is a symbol of bravery and spirit, and sometimes a symbol of humor. It has been with our lives for a long time and has established itself as a representative animal that symbolizes Korea. It is not difficult to find tigers in stories handed down from time immemorial, such as myths, legends, and folktales. Among the zodiac (十二支), the tiger is considered the most friendly animal to Koreans. 2022 is the year of the 'black tiger', the year of Imin (壬寅年).
1. Korea with tigers for over 100,000 years
According to documents such as the Dongguk Segi period, our ancestors put a tiger painting on the gate every year on the first day of the new year. It is to drive out evil spirits through tigers and prevent various disasters and to get rid of samjae. I wrote the 'Tiger Amulet' to pray for good luck and good luck to Daegil and the family. The tiger, which was called the mountain god, the mountain god, and the mountain group, and was the object of worship, was regarded as a strong guardian deity of the nation. It ranges from the mountain gods who guard the mountains behind the village to the zodiac gods (in) who keep time and space, and the four gods who keep the order of the universe (white tigers in the west).
Tigers have lived on the Korean Peninsula for at least 100,000 years. The Korean Peninsula, which is connected by mountain ranges with more than 70% of the land being mountainous, was well suited to the habitation conditions of tigers. The tiger bones found in the cave ruins of Durubong in Cheongwon-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do (currently Cheongju-si) are estimated to be at least 120,000 years old. It is first revealed in the Bangudae Petroglyphs in Daegok-ri, Ulju, painted in the Bronze Age. A tiger is engraved as one of the hunting items such as whales, turtles, deer, and wild boar. In the hunting map of Musongchong, a tomb of Goguryeo in the 5th century, a tiger chased by a hunter on horseback appears. There is also a white tiger in the Shinigami. Commonly referred to as Namjujak, Bukhyeonmu, Dongcheongryong, and the West White Tiger. Sashindo is also found on the murals of the royal tombs of the Joseon Dynasty. As mentioned earlier, there are many paintings of tigers as folk customs attached to the gates in hopes of warding off bad luck and bringing in good fortune. Tigers appear abundantly in various folktales, paintings, ornaments, stone statues, proverbs, legends, and folktales. There were so many stories of tigers that Joseon could be called Hodam-guk (虎談國).
2. The symbol of the tiger??
The name 'Horang' is a combination of the Chinese characters ho (虎) and rang (狼), that is, beom and iri. It used to be a general word for a scary animal, but gradually it became a name for a specific animal called a tiger. All over the world, tigers were distributed only on the Asian continent. Among them, the Korean tiger has the same roots as the tiger that lived in northeastern China and the Russian Far East. one lineage We called them Baekdu Mountain Tiger, Korean Tiger, and Korean Panther. Although it is well known worldwide as the Siberian tiger, there are currently no tigers living in Siberia, Russia. Currently, there are about 500 surviving animals, mainly in the Russian Primorsky Territory and the border areas with China, North Korea and Russia.
Historically, the tiger and the Korean people seem to have maintained a balanced relationship for thousands of years. It was after the founding of the Joseon Dynasty that the national level started to get rid of tigers. It is distinct from Goryeo, which forbids killing based on Buddhist ideology. During the reign of King Taejong of the Joseon Dynasty, a separate unit for hunting tigers, 'Chakhogapsa', was first installed in the center. At that time, removing compatibility was a matter directly related to national security and maintenance of the system.
Joseon was a country with a lot of tigers, to the extent that tigers frequently appeared in the city of Hanyang. There is a record that a tiger gave birth to a cub in Changdeokgung during the reign of King Seonjo, and the number of tigers appearing in the palace only three times during the reign of King Yeongjo. When a tiger appeared in the palace, it was considered an ominous sign such as war or famine. The civilian casualties were also severe. From the summer of 1734 to the autumn of 1734, 140 people from all over the country suffered compatibility. In this situation, in the 'Mokminsimseo' by Jeong Yak-yong, a Silhak scholar in the late Joseon Dynasty, the leader chose three evils to be eliminated for the people: thieves, ghosts, and tigers. In the East Coast region, a beomgut was held to comfort the souls who died due to compatibility and to prevent compatibility. As a result of continuous tiger hunting for 500 years during the Joseon Dynasty, the number of tigers in the Korean Peninsula has drastically decreased.
3. Japan's Seawater Relief Policy
It was during the Japanese colonial period that the tiger's lifeline was completely cut off. In the name of protecting the colonial people from harmful beasts, the Japanese undertook a large-scale hunting of wild beasts (seawater relief policy). In the end, the last tiger disappeared from South Korea in 1924 in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. In North Korea, the last tiger caught was a male tiger caught in Jagang Province in 1987. The limitations of Japan's seawater relief policy at that time are obvious in that it was a project that led the eradication and capture of wild animals without a systematic conservation policy for wild animals in the Korean Peninsula. It has been pointed out as the decisive cause of the extinction of large predators on the Korean Peninsula, such as the Baekdusan tiger and the Amur leopard. However, the claim that the Japanese imperialists annihilated tigers to remove the spirit of the Korean people has not been confirmed.
Although the legacy of the Korean peninsula has been cut off, the tiger still occupies an important place as a symbol of our history, folklore, language, and culture. In particular, in the early 20th century, against Japan, which compared the shape of the Korean Peninsula to a chicken or rabbit, we started to draw our territory in the shape of a tiger. Perhaps because of this, there is also a study that more than three-fourths of Koreans think that the tiger is a symbol of Korea. Just looking at the mascots of the 1988 Seoul Olympics ('Hodori') and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics ('Suhorang') are tigers.
4. Tiger, the representative animal of Korea
The tiger has been with our people in mourning for a long time in folk tales. Once the amount is large. More than 1,000 tiger-related legends can be found in the Korean oral literature, and more than 700 records can be found in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. The vast traces of tigers in the two documents, represented by oral and written records, are evidence that tigers have been with our lives for a long time.
In the myth of Dangun, which tells the story of the establishment of the first nation on the Korean Peninsula, it is the tiger that competed with the bear for the position of Hwanung's wife. The bear who survives eating mugwort and garlic eventually becomes the winner, but in our folklore, tigers appear far more often than bears.
It is also characteristic that the appearance and personality of the tigers depicted in these stories vary. According to the Tiger section of the Korean Folk Symbol Dictionary published by the National Folk Museum of Korea, △ a deified tiger who protects heroes △ a tiger as a helper who recognizes filial piety and heat △ a tiger of god who knows how to repay favors △ a vicious and ungrateful tiger △ a foolish fool It is divided into 5 types, including the cute tiger. For Koreans in many ways, tigers are animals that retain the emotions and culture of our people.
5. 2022 Year of the Black Tiger
The year of 2022 is the year of the 'black tiger'. Since ancient times, tigers have been considered by people to be brave, protect humans, and have magical powers to discriminate between evil and evil. For this reason, on New Year's Eve, people put munbaedo with tigers on their entrances and gates to ward off evil spirits and bad spirits and pray for good luck. Among tigers, black tigers have meanings such as strength, independence, challenge, and wisdom, so ancestors valued them more preciously. On the other hand, if we look at the fortunes of the year of Imin, if the Year of the Pig, the Year of the Rat, and the Year of the Ox on the Moat Year are the water-breathing countries in winter, then the Year of the Tiger, the Year of the Rabbit, and the Year of the Dragon in Inmyojin. Mokbangguk is a shape that is entering the spring when new vitality sprouts.
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