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[그렉의 한국 엿보기] The Rabbit in the Moon
From the window of my apartment at night I can look out and see a neon toad squatting on top of a building, providing advertising for the samgyeupsal restaurant on the first floor. To me, the toad represents something unpleasant, but as I've come to learn, in Korea the toad is also a symbol of wealth. Farther up, above the toad, I can see the moon. The moon tonight is approaching full and is especially bright and, if I look at it like one of those magic eye puzzles, it seems to contain the face of an old man, one that I was brought up to believe lived on the moon.
During class one day I was teaching, "What does it look like?" and so I brought in a variety of ink blob pictures for the students to look at and imagine what they could see. The answers were varied; in some pictures students would see everything from butterflies to axe murderers. Finally, expecting a unified response, I showed them a picture of the moon and pointed to the outline made by the darker spots on its surface. "What does it look like?" I asked. The response was far from what I expected and caught me off guard. "It looks like a rabbit," they all said together.
 [그렉의 한국 엿보기] The Rabbit in the Moon 청취
After the initial surprise I tried to reason with them. I showed them the eyes and the mouth and the way the moon looks like a face. They in turn showed me how the outline is that of a rabbit sitting and make rice cakes. After a while we agreed that it was possible for it to be both. It seemed to me a bit like the way two people can see a variety of shapes in the clouds. Where one person sees a battleship the other sees an elephant. It just depends on the perspective of the person looking.
My Korean colleague confirmed the existence of a rabbit on the moon. There is an ancient Buddhist story where a poor old man draws a rabbit on the moon in return for the sacrifice the rabbit makes for the old man. From this and perhaps other sources the rabbit came to live on the moon. The Western cultural belief of a man on the moon comes from various sources religious and secular. This is what I grew up to see.
However, if I look at the moon tonight from a different angle I can see a rabbit there too. Now both images are present and I'm able to accept either interpretation. Pulling away from the moon my eyes are now back on the toad and I realize I've gotten hungry. Even if I'm not sure which way to approach the toad I want to go its restaurant. It has some of the best samgyeupsal around.
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 / 입력시간: 2008. 03.25. 09:51
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