The Bear and the Tiger, a Korean Folktale

One of my favorite parts about traveling is getting face to face with a culture's folklore. I have always been fascinated with culture period, but there is something about the stories and tales of the people that I find mind blowing. I am a firm believer that we live in an age where every story that can be told, has been told; I also believe that making something - even a story that has been told and retold and re imagined countless of times - your own is the beauty of our generation's creativity. Just as full disclosure, I love modern tales and stories and I doubt there will come a time where I won't find uniqueness and creativity in this world in regards of stories. 

But I digress. This is about folkloric tales. 

These are the stories where everything we know now rooted from. These are stories so old that could have been the first of their kind, and that through countless of oral retelling have, of course changed, but have never died. These are the stories so vital in the foundations of any and every culture. These stories are old - old as hell. 

On every opportunity I have to talk to someone from a different culture than my own I always ask about these stories. Sometimes the language barrier makes it difficult for me to understand them (I usually ask my students), but I'm always fascinated by how the generations of today still hold on to these stories, even if in their own ways.

I had the opportunity to teach a really clever 12 year old about a month ago who told me the tale about how Korea came to be. And it involves a god, a bear, a tiger and garlic. I'll retell it as I remember to keep up with the oral tradition, but I have linked the wikipedia page here in case anyone is interested to get something more structures. 

So, basically God lived in the heavens and he was happy and cool in heaven and there were no humans on earth, just mountains and green grass and pretty things. So then - I am not sure if it was either God or God's son, but he decided that he wanted to go down to where the pretty things were and live there. I think it was God's son because my student mentioned that he had to ask permission - so, God says "Yes, of course, go there and take all these other heavenly creatures with you since it's so pretty down there". 

So God's son - Hwanung goes down with all these other heavenly creatures- who are actually human people, and settles among the mountains and the meadows and the lakes and all the pretty things of this Earth. And they're happy and people are happy, and God's son is happy, and everyone is just merry. 

And then a Bear and a Tiger go up to God's son and they're like 

"Aw man, you're so happy, we want to be people too"
And God's son tells them "That's cool, you just have to eat garlic and this other thing, and eat NOTHING else and stay in this cave out of the sunlight for 100 days." 

So the Bear and the Tiger take the garlic and some other thing and go into the cave. And at first both are feeling pretty confident and they're like 'it's not so bad, we got this' but then somewhere along the way the Tiger gets really anxious and loses his patience and he's all like 'screw this, I'm out' so he leaves, but the Bear stays and completes the 100 days. Hibernation!

So when the Bear comes out, God's son turns her into a woman and they get married and they have a kid who turns out to  be God's grandson and he is called Dangun and he and his people is what started Korea. 

There is more to it. I have read more about the story, and it's really interesting and I would honestly recommend you to read more on it because I think it's cool - but I've written down the exact notes I took when listening to my student tell me the story. And that's one of the things I love about folklore - it's ok to not get it right. Hell, it's lived for ages, who knows what's been changed or left out or added on?