The Aspects and Meaning of Animal Stories in Modern Korean Fairy Tales

This paper examines the nature and meaning of animal stories in modern Korean fairy tales by classifying them into ‘animal tales’, ‘human–animal relationship tales’, and ‘humorous tales’. The research subjects are Takagi Toshio’s New Japanese Educational Tales (新日本敎育昔噺. 1917), the Joseon Governor– General’s Joseon Fairy Tales (1924), Sim Ui–rin’s Joseon Fairy Tales Collection (1926), and Park Yeong–man’s Joseon Traditional Fairy Tales Collection (1940).<br/> The main animals appearing in ‘animal tales’ are rabbits, frogs, foxes, tigers, deer, toads, goats, and moles. The animals appearing in ‘human–animal relationship tales’ and ‘humorous tales’ are tigers, frogs, swallows, toads, magpies, pheasants, squirrels, foxes, turtles, toads, crabs, pigs, bears, cows, deer, ants, mosquitoes, snakes, roosters, dogs, cats, and carp. The most frequently appearing animal in modern Korean fairy tales is the tiger, and it is usually depicted as a foolish or inexperienced animal, giving familiarity and enjoyment to young readers. There are 17 types of gratitude tales, which are also numerous in quantity, showing that humans and animals have interacted in various ways. The main characters of animal gratitude tales are swallows, magpies, pheasants, toads, carp, fish, squirrels, and deer. The story of gratitude shows that if humans treat animals that humans feed on or live around humans well, they can repay humans with a reciprocal relationship. Such works have the effect of giving young readers a good perception of the existence of the animals or of animal species in general.