KJCKorea
Journal Central

I pondered on how and in what ways to develop our characters and moral imagination by reading the Korean Tiger story, <the magic cloth-wrapper a tiger offered>. The story is about the very poor-man destined to be punished by reason of having a pee and pooh everywhere in the mountain in winter. But the tiger, who was dispatched by the Mountain-God to punish the offender, only to care for him and eventually helped him out to get married and be rich. It was because the tiger was deeply moved to hear that the poor-man talked to himself worrying about the tiger's feeling cold. Ever since then, the tiger had repeatedly observed that he expressed his sympathy of the tiger. At last, the tiger impressed by his empathy with the tiger, made up its mind to help him rich. So, the poor-man could cure the sick daughter of a rich man owing to the magic cloth-wrapper which the tiger had provide for him, and consequently he got married to her to be rich and lived happily ever after. In this story, I observed the aspect of communication and feeling empathy presented between the tiger and the poor-man. In fact, the poor-man could be exempted from punishment by the Mountain-God because he had voluntarily expressed his sympathy with the tiger. And the tiger practiced its "Ethic of care" for him by the mutual understanding and communication between them. This storyline has very important meaning which can be applied to our modern social life. Especially, I would emboss the tiger's carrying out "Ethic of care" showed to the poor-man. I supposed communication, feeling empathy and "Ethic of care" are very necessary for the happiness of our community today. That is, the story shows us we all in our community can be happy only when the social concept should become widely accepted in the community, that the administrative subject and the citizen are "we" who cooperate in harmony for our common interests and happiness. In conclusion, this paper could prove this story is a work of great educational value, that can let the students know about the ethics of community by effectively arousing their moral imagination.

Korean Tiger story, Communication with each other, Feeling empathy, Ethic of care, Literature education, Moral imagination