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A study on intercultural education using the motif of the ‘maternal image with eating up’ from the Korean folktale of “Sister and Brother Who Became the Sun and the Moon” and the Kyrgyzstani immigrants’ folktale of “Grandmother with Copper Fingernails and Two Girls”

  • The Research of the Korean Classic
  • 2021, (55), pp.195-229
  • DOI : 10.20516/classic.2021.55.195
  • Publisher : The Research Of The Korean Classic
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature > Korean Literature > Korean classic prose
  • Received : October 25, 2021
  • Accepted : November 9, 2021
  • Published : November 30, 2021

Jungeun Kim 1

1건국대학교 서사와문학치료연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to reduce the discomfort in accepting different cultures, affirm both one’s own culture and other cultures, and form an attitude that communicates differences. To achieve this, the study attempted to create familiarity by identifying similar motifs in oral folktales that reflect the cultures of different countries. It presented a five-step process for intercultural education that includes overcoming experienced by immigrants through the use of and differences between heterogeneous motifs. The study focused on the Korean folktale “Sister and Brother Who Became the Sun and the Moon” and the Kyrgyztani immigrants’ folktale “Grandmother with Copper Fingernails and Two Girls”. In the two folktales, the ‘tiger who wears mother’s clothes’ and the ‘grandmother with copper fingernails’ are characters who trigger the ‘maternal image with eating up’, modif. Further, after comsuming the sacrificing mother, they attempt to devour the mother’s children. When the children face the predator, they experience fear; but as they move through space with this as an opportunity, they achieve a symbolic leap forward for growth. The two girls in the Kyrgyzstani folktale, unlike the brother and sister in the Korean folktatle exhibit the difference in experiencing three times maternalism again. This difference can be interpreted in terms of social maternity of relationship expansion that can overcome the confrontation between a sacrificing mother and a maternity with eating up. This thesis suggests that the anxiety regarding children’s education in multicultural families should be resolved by referring to the criterion of social maternity.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.