The Monstrefact: The Tiger and Magpie of "KPop Demon Hunters"

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Laman. This is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. I'm more than a month laid on this, but the twenty twenty five Sony Pictures animated film K Pop Demon Hunters, released on Netflix is already a huge hit, weaving a stylish tale of Korean pop music, folklore, and mythology. I'll admit that I might not be the target audience for this film, but my kid and all their friends love it, and hey, I love a good demon horde battle, so I'm in. The film primarily concerns a trio of demon hunters who protect the mortal realm from otherworldly demonic hordes via expert sword play and the power of popular mute. Complications arise when the demons try to beat them at their own game, introducing their own K pop boy band Excellent. Along the way, we meet a pair of magical animals, inspired in part by traditional Korean Minhi folkart, a blue tiger and a six eyed magpie. In the film, the Magical cat and his avian companion occupy important supporting roles and of course provide some cute comic relief. The duo has become quite the sensation, popping up on all sorts of official and unofficial bits of merch and fashion. The magpie appears wise, sneaky, give a little aloof while the tiger is sweet but perhaps a bit foolish. Now stretching beyond the folkloric roots here, the tiger is of course based on the Siberian tiger that once ranged across the Korean peninsula but when extinct in the wild during the early twentieth century, and the magpie would be based on the Oriental magpie, still found throughout Eurasia, but known as the Korean magpie in Korea, the magpie and tiger are a common pairing in Korean folk cart or, meanwhile, making up an entire subgenre. The tiger is indeed sometimes depicted as foolish, while broadly the tiger is a symbol of strength, power, and other noble attributes in Korean traditions, here he seems meant to mock aristocratic authority. Meanwhile, the magpie generally depicted off to the side in these works of art, looks quite dignified. As Robert Minz points out in a twenty twenty three article for Apollo Magazine titled The Tale of the Magpie that Taunted a Tiger, the two first began to appear together in folk paintings during the sixteenth century. Mint stresses that the magpie is a protector of human beings while the tiger is a destroyer. Thus they can be seen as two opposing forces between which the human experience is suspended. He also describes the expression of the tiger here as more of a smirk, as if the tiger knows that he may be cheated out of a rightful meal by the protective interference of the magpie. Mince also stresses the folkloric context of the two creatures, a story that Dale Corrington of Korean Temple Guide dot Com lays out rather succinctly. The story concerns a woodcutter and a tiger, as do other tails. I'll get to one in a second, but in this particular tale, the woodcutter liberates a starving tiger who has been stuck in the mud for several days. The tiger then decides, to, of course eat the woodcutter. The woodcutter pleads with both an ox and a tree for judgment on this, and both end up siding with the tiger. Yes, go ahead and eat him. This is what tigers do. This is only right. But then a magpie weighs in and tells them, well, I really need you to re enact this encounter so I can properly judge this situation. Thus, the tiger slips back into the mud and the woodcutter season the opportunity runs away to safety and there. Of course, as is often case with tails like this, there are different variations on exactly how all of this goes down, but essentially, the tiger is tricked and the magpie plays a role in it. Now, there's another Korean folk tale concerning a woodcutter and a tiger that I'll mention here because it presents the tiger in a different light. In this one, the woodcutter is approached by a hungry tiger, and thinking quickly, he greets the tiger as a long lost sibling, one who has apparently been magically transformed. It informs him that their mother has recently died, so he fools the tiger in this escapes with his life, but the tiger, showcasing his lawful honor as well. Here brings a gift to the woodcutter's mother's grave each year. But when it comes to the foolish faced tiger, be it in folk art or k pop demon Hunters, the root does seem to be satire concerning power and authority, subverting the image of the noble and powerful tiger. Naturally, the tiger is often used as a signifier of might and ferocity wherever human cultures have encountered it, admiring and fearing it in equal measure, leading to traditions of tiger transformations, tiger demons, and tiger deities. The magpie, likewise, is broadly associated with luck and happiness, a bringer of good news, and so we see these two again brought together as kind of these different forces between which humans are suspended, on one hand, a protector wise and on the other hand a powerful adversary, but one that may be subverted either through trickery or honor, depending on the telling. Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster Factor, the Artifact or Anomilius to pend him each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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