The legend of the Korean tiger

 The Korean tiger legend: a chronicle of cruelty

  On the Korean Peninsula, since pre-dynastic times, where most of the land was covered with forests, the carnivorous animal that reigned at the top was in very ancient times, the tiger, being present in its founding myths.

Upon entering the mountains, they prayed for safety at a shrine dedicated to the mountain god and used tiger claws as a talisman and the bones and whiskers of tigers are also valuable as medicine, and tigers were revered as special beings.

The tigers of the Korean Peninsula lived largely in wetlands, reed beds and hills. Deer, roe deer, wild boar, etc measuring 1.9 m,

Being highly cared for and revered in the peninsula during the Joseon dynasty era, being very present in their arts, poems and songs.

A horrible fate 

  This is the first uh ironically one of the last photos of the tigers that lived on the Korean peninsula.

This adoration and respect changed in 1914, at the beginning of the Japanese occupation of the peninsula, when by imperial orders not only the lives of human beings, but the large predators, put under a policy of "seawater relief" and began a plan to hunt and exterminate the large predators of the peninsula, but above all the tigers, since they saw them as a threat to the Japanese settlers and their animals.

In total, tigers, bears, wild boars, leopards and wolves were hunted, leaving some extinct in a large part of the peninsula, but the most particular case was this variety of tiger, which became completely extinct, without even having been studied, this hunt can be seen that it had several intentions, such as the spread of Japanese imperialist ideology, the promotion of Japanese military morale, the crushing of the hope of the Korean people, and the display of wealth.

The end of the legend...?

Currently, and despite the fact that there are a couple of supposed examples in museums, the discussion of its identity continues, being thought of as a branch of the Siberian tiger or the amoy tiger, although there is a theory that it is a separate subspecies, but because there is no certainty that the museum specimens belong to this variety it becomes impossible to verify.

Currently it is believed that these could survive in the demilitarized region of South Korea or even in North Korea.

     

     [Photo of a stuffed specimen]

The Korean tiger is a legend, now only admirable in museums, this added to the current situations in the world, can make us reflect that the true victims of conflicts are mostly wild animals, and we hope with all our hearts that cases like this, where unstudied animals become extinct due to senseless war conflicts.

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http://ecotopia.hani.co.kr/184517