The Korean Tiger > IDEAS & IDEALS

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"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
          In the forests of night,
          What immortal hand or eye
          Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
                                   William Blake (1757-1827) 

     Amid the flood of big, sensational, and even somewhat grim news in the newspapers and on the television screens over the North Korea's clandestine development of nuclear bomb, there was also a small, but delightful as well as auspicious one: Korean tigers are back. In honor of President Kim Young-sam's official visit to China last March, and as an expression of friendship and goodwill, Jang Zemin, president of China, very wisely and thoughtfully decided to present us none other than a pair of Korean tigers. The precious as well as very meaningful gift has finally arrived at Kimpo airport, and the arrival was a real news to me, more important to me than Jimmy Carter's visit to North Korea in order to arbitrate the nuclear dispute between the South and the North.

     According to the news report, the two tigers, male(3 years and 9 months old) and female (2 years and 7 months old), are the third or fourth generation offsprings of two tigers captured in 1955 and 1977, each on Mt. Paektu, the highest mountain in the Korean peninsula, located on the border between China and North Korea. Up until now the two tigers had been kept and raised at a zoo in Manchuria, and from now on they were to be shown to the public from the end of June at the zoo in Seoul Grand Park after a month of adjustment period.

     For most Koreans who are nursed upon the numerous nursery rhymes, folklores, fables and tales that are related with the tiger, and who grow up, live in and with the tiger-related folk paintings, dancings, sculptures, legends, myths, superstitions, expressions and proverbs, that are by turns funny and serious, ludicrous as well as educational, realistic and romantic, superstitious and truthful, and who selected it, among so many choices and possibilities, as the mascot for the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988, the return of the Korean tiger, which had long been supposed to be extinct in the South  since 1930 approximately, could not be seen or met without some emotion and sentiment. For me, a self-proclaimed tiger buff, and for someone who are more interested and more sensitive, it is like the return of a dear relative who had been taken to be dead until now, but whose high fame and good reputation had been talked so much about. The Chinese people could not have selected a better present for us, because for them the Land of Morning Calm was not only a "Country of Courtesy in the East"; it was also a "Country of Tiger Stories." Tigers abounded in Korea, and so did the tiger stories.

     The Land of Morning Calm, in fact, was not so calm as the old name of our country suggested. It was always noisy and tumultuous with the internal as well as external conflicts, and the calm and peace in this land was constantly and mercilessly riven by the roaring of too many tigers. They stalked not only through the high mountains and deep forests at night preying on small animals; instead, more often than not, they  came down to the villages and towns for easier preys including man even in broad daylight. Even the kings' palaces in Seoul were not safe. They were often spotted in the courtyard of the palace. One of the kings in Yi dynasty(1392-1910), being unable to go to sleep at night because of the tigers' roarings, once ordered all the hunters of the country be mobilized and assembled in Seoul to get rid of these rude disturbers of his sweet sleep. Some small villages in the remote countryside were often devastated by the tigers' rampage, and huge loss of human lives and livestock were caused by the tigers' attack. Journeys at night in the countryside were always accompanied with the fear and threat of the tigers, and people had to band together even in daytime before they crossed high mountain passes. Once, for quite long time in this Korean peninsula, tigers were the scourge of people, and embodiment of fear, terror and evil.

     Very fortunately, however, they have suddenly disappeared. All of them. In other words, we have succeeded in wiping out this evil completely from our land, forests, woods, and mountains. The Korean War, growing population, dwindling forests and preys, all powerful and accurate hunting-rifles, and most of all, human intelligence and ingenuity, boundless greed and cruelty, have contributed magnificently to the destruction and annihilation of this accursed beast in the South of the peninsula at least, and we have become free and safe at last.

     But personally, I feel very sorry for the fact. Unfortunately, the tiger I can see with my eyes is the only one in the zoo. It is not the one that roams the forests or the mountain ranges freely at night with its eyes burning bright. It is mostly dozing or yawning, or just walking around from time to time without any special purpose, most probably by instinct or out of boredom of being confined within a limited enclosure. But whenever I go to the zoo, I find myself unmistakably being drawn to the tiger and watching it with more patience as well as with admiration. It must be so because, I have to admit, from my childhood I have heard and read so much about this legendary animal, about its unbelievable and incredible power and prowess, and thus it has come to have a powerful grip on my imagination in spite of myself.

     Truly, the Siberian tiger I watch in the zoo is far different from many other captive animals first and foremost with its outward appearance. I am struck, first of all, by its big and majestic symmetrical size. Of course there are many animals, like the elephants or the rhinoceros, much larger than the tiger. But comparing a tiger with these animals is like comparing an eagle with a flamingo. That is, pointless. Look at the giraffe with its too slender, long legs and the elongated neck, but so mall a head at the end of it, and you will find yourself laughing with fun and amusement. Take a good look at the huge grizzly bear with too large a rump, walking awkwardly on its hind legs, and there you have just a giant teddy-bear that you can buy at a toy-store. The hippopotamus is also a very large animal, but it is only an enormous lump of flesh before your eyes. The physical size of a tiger is matched with its might and majesty, and mystery.

     Animals you see in the zoo are not so fascinating to look at as you may think or as some zoologists maintain. Most of them look pathetic in captivity, deprived of their freedom, their natural habitat, and way of life. They look dirty, lazy, and ludicrous in their forms and behaviour. The legs of the rhinoceros are simply too short and thick to carry that huge and heavy belly effectively, and the eyes are so small and look so sad and tender in striking contrast to the fiercely-looking big horn on their head between their eyes. Elephants are mostly busy collecting a tiny piece of biscuit thrown by small children by employing their great, boa-like, majestic proboscis, namely their nose. In short, most of the animals in the zoo are far from the ones that live in our imagination. They are mostly objects of children's fun and ridicule, and of adults' pity and pathos.

     But, even in captivity, the tiger is different. It still inspires awe and fear from the viewers, whether it walks, crouches, or even yawns. Watching it so closely through my binoculars(I bring them with me whenever I go to the zoo), I cannot but admire its massive shoulders and forelimbs that are supposed to be able to bring down or prey upon preys far larger than itself, a full-grown wild ox, for example, that weighs more than a ton; and the powerful jaws and the dagger-like teeth that can rip victim's throat or sever its spinal column and make the quick and silent work of kill possible; and the browny, and bluish green eyes that are supposed to burn bright at night and pierce your heart with fear; the yellowish white color of the fur striped vertically with black,--a perfect camouflage that enables it to merge and melt with the surroundings, here in one instant and gone next, just like a vision in a dream.

     Truly, tigers live more in our dreams and imagination than in reality. Except for some professional hunters few people have ever met or seen a tiger in its natural living conditions. With its extreme carefulness and watchfulness, with its almost perfect protective coloring and walking so noiselessly, this night-faring carnivore has always been beyond our direct observation, and appeared only in pictures, stories, legends and folklores, and in hunting accounts. You are either an idiot or a superman, they say, if you confront a tiger (a real tiger I mean, not the one in the zoo) and do not faint on the spot, and I agree. Chinese hunters in Manchuria are said to have given up their guns and laid themselves prostrate on the ground, whenever they met with a tiger, throwing themselves entirely on its mercy, and I think them wise, not cowardly. The roar of a tiger at night from nowhere, from very far, can not only stop a baby from crying; it congeals, they say, the blood of the most seasoned hunters, and I agree. I have several times heard it roar during my tiger-watching in the zoo. It was in the broad daylight, and it was not a roar in real earnest, but it was frightening enough to chill and silence the chattering children and adults alike for a moment. No wonder we have endowed it with some kind of deity or divinity.

     Not many people know that we have at least one genuine Korean tiger other than the  two precious guests that have just arrived from China. On January 1, 1911, a tiger fell into a pit near Mt. Pulgap, Youngkwang-gun, Cholla-namdo. It was captured, killed and bought by Mr. Harakuchi Sajiro, a wealthy Japanese resident there at the time for 350 won. Then it was stuffed, and presented to Yudal Elementary School in Mokpo. It is still there, and it is the only specimen of a Korean tiger we have in the South.

     On January 24, 1980, the whole country was thrown into the uproarious excitement by the appearance, nay, the re-appearance of the disappeared species. A mountain-climber witnessed a tiger on a high mountain somewhere in Kyongsang-pukto, and very fortunately as well as very unbelievably, took a picture of it with his camera. He sent the photo to Dong-A-IL-Bo, one of the major daily newspapers. And the paper, very excited, carried an article with a sensational headline in bold type along with the tiger photo. KING OF ANIMALS, TIGER IS BACK AFTER HALF A CENTURY. The news triggered the same excitement and enthusiasm in the other daily newspapers, and they all carried the similar fictitiously fabricated articles on the tiger that had returned. Mr. Park (I cannot remember his first name) who took the picture was interviewed by many journalists, and many self-appointed tiger experts in the nation rushed to the spot where the picture was taken, and the Department of National Forestry issued a special decree strictly prohibiting poaching in the area. All this hustle and bustle continued for several days until the photograph turned out to be a fake. Mr. Park, another tiger buff besides me, had taken the photo of the tiger in the Children's Grand Park in Seoul, and simulated natural surroundings around the tiger. Asked why he did it by the police and the news reporters, he said apologetically, "I love tigers."

     On the first day of public display of the two Korean tigers from China at the zoo in Seoul Grand Park, I was in the first row of the milling crowds assembled in front of the enclosure made tentatively for the newly-arrived guests of honor. The two were separated by an iron fence. It never occurred to me that such a large crowd of people would turn up braving rainy weather. Men and women, old and young, from all walks of life and from near and far, were there. A white-haired old grandmother in a wheelchair said that she came from a remote village far from Seoul to see the Korean tiger for the last time, probably before she dies. When she was a small girl, she said very proudly and excitedly, she confronted a tiger herself and fainted. People were eager to see the majesty of this rare animal, at least, the walking of the tiger, but to their great disappointment, they could not, because it was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and it was time for the tigers to take a nap after lunch.

     For all the hullabaloo of our people over the pair of Korean tigers, there is, in fact, no Korean tiger in the world known by that name. Academically speaking, all the tigers living in the area covering China, Siberia, and the Korean peninsula are classified under the scientific name of "Panthera Tigris Altaica," more commonly called "Siberian tigers." No one can tell whether the ancestors of the two tigers which have arrived from China had really ever lived for any length of time on Mt. Paektu, simply because tigers are great travellers in search of food. What is certain is that Mt. Paektu and even the whole of the Korean peninsula can belong to their sphere of action and area of distribution.

     But, what is important here and now is not the genuineness or authenticity of the two tigers. It is the confirmation and verification of our people's love and enthusiasm for tigers that exceeds that of any other people in the world. Although we have lost the natural ties with these mighty and mysterious creatures for about half a century or so, our fathers lived with them for thousands and thousands of years from time immemorial. Tigers were so abundant, plentiful and ubiquitous that our fathers were in constant danger and fear of these animals, real as well as imaginary. They not only entered into our real life, but also into our psyche and consciousness resulting inevitably in revulsion against as well as affection for them, and came to take a part and place in our culture. Like poetry, we Koreans came to read tigers more with our imagination than see them with our eyes.

     It is not very likely that we are going to have tigers back in our forests or mountains in the near future. We will keep them or protect them only in the zoo. That makes me sad. Watching the Korean tiger or the Siberian tiger crouching in the enclosure, I pictured to myself it jumping at me over the iron fence in one bound in order to wreak its pent-up fury on me, and I shivered. Are we really safe, I asked myself, with not a tiger roaming freely in our forests?
               (July 11, 1991)