옛이야기 전승과 언어 제국주의 : 강제된 일본어 교육이 〈나무꾼과 선녀〉 전승에 미친 영향 = Korean Folktale and Linguistic Imperialism: the Influence of Japanese Colonialism on the Historical Transmission of “The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden”

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of the present study is to examine the way in which Japanese linguistic imperialism under Japanese colonial rule has influenced the historical transmission of the Korean swan-maiden folktale called “The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden”; and by so doing I will try to find out the way to reduce the detrimental effects that the ‘wild geese’ phenomenon and english immersion education may have on Korean traditional culture in the impending future.
Korean Tales and Proverbs collected by Takahasi Toru is a collection of Korean folktales which has had a great impact on the transmission of Korean folktales and fairy tales from 1910 up to the present time. Takahashi Toru was a Japanese scholar whom the Japanese colonial government had commissioned to study Korean folk religions and customs just before the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. He was a power-hungry elite and ardent imperialist who had racial prejudices toward the Korean people. He was a professor with political power to the extent that he exerted influence on the establishment of several major universities in Korea during the colonial rule. The folktales collected by him have been for long considered as authoritative texts by Japanese elites or Korean elites who had assimilated the Japanese language and culture.
The detrimental influence of his collection on the Korean folktale can be clearly seen in the historical transmission of “The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden.” There have been more than 100 variants of the tale which can be divided into the following four subtypes: (1) the heavenly maiden’s flight, (2) the woodcutter’s flight, (3) the woodcutter’s fulfillment of heavenly tasks, (4) the legend of the rooster.
Of those four subtypes, the oral variants of the third subtype, ‘the woodcutter’s fulfillment of heavenly tasks,’ had been the most collected during the period from the late nineteenth century until 1980. However, the second subtype first introduced by Takahashi in 1910 has been widely known up to the present. For, when south korea established the government of Republic of Korea, the national textbook editors who had been educated in Japanese language under Japanese rule preferred the second subtype collected by Takahashi (and his followers) to the third or fourth subtypes. The inclusion of the second subtype into national textbooks for 17 years (1955-1972) has been very detrimental to the oral transmission of the third type. Consequently, the latter has almost vanished from oral transmission and children’s picture books.
This decline of the third subtype is a great loss to the Korean cultural heritage because it surpasses the other subtypes in narrative values and artistic excellence. Moreover, it enables us to comprehend the cultural relationships between Korean folktale and Japanese myth. Such motifs as ‘mouse as a helper,’ ‘son-in-low tasks,’ and ‘arrow search’ are found in both the third subtype of “The Woodcutter and the Heavenly Maiden” and the Japanese myth of Okuninushi. It can be assumed from this that in ancient times, the Korean folktale exerted influence on the making of the Japanese myth of Okuninushi.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 머리말: 현재와 과거의 언어 제국주의
• Ⅱ. 다카하시의 『조선물어집』이 옛이야기 전승에 미친 영향
• Ⅲ. 『조선물어집』에 실린 「선녀의 날개옷」의 변개 가능성
• Ⅳ. 사라져가는 천상시련극복형과 그 가치
• Ⅴ. 맺음말: 〈나무꾼과 선녀〉 전승의 교훈과 영어 제국주의
• 참고문헌
• Abstract