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영어

According to time and places to see animals even if they are same, the fortune telling point of view concerned with animals is totally different.
From the prehistoric age, people used animal symbols representing a certain meaning to demonstrate a variety of living culture, religion, and thought of the time. Many animal images were shown in drawings incised on rocks and cave paintings as well as mural paintings in the graves, clay dolls, and pottery. These animal symbols are reflected in people's conscious world of those days and depict a part of living culture. Koreanancestors embossed the symbolic and suggestive meanings manifested in the outward figure and behavior of animals. Most animal figures appeared in ancient relics and sites can't be wholly interpreted. Cultural and ideological backgrounds of the time should be first understood and their contexts studied to understand the animal symbols precisely appeared in Korean culture.
The folklore related to animals approves their spiritual power and represents the relations between human and nature and the understanding and interpretation of many-sided human life. Relics decorated with animal figures reflect the conscious world of ancient people and include a part of living culture. Research on the folklore as to animals can be started from this point of time.
The approaching system on animal folklore can be classified into three basic kinds : diachronic and synchronic approach, the use of folkloric and scientific models, and the approaching system understanding the spatial world structure via animals. I investigated animal symbols shown in Korean culture by employing these approaching systems.
Unlike the folkloric study of other fields, the study on the folklore in regard to animals deserve notice in the concrete objects expressing animals such as archaeological excavations and artistic materials and their basic characters. The language comprises the sign system to deliver information. The diversity of animals appeared in Korean culture act as the symbolic system of signs and characters in various cultural relations and deliver the cultural information throughout all periods and fields. Animal symbols serve as a password and a key to the secret of culture.