Background Information: Summary and Context Behind Byeol Ju Bu Jeon [The Hare’s Liver]

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Cover Illustration of ‘The Hare’s Liver’, illustrated by Ye Jung Jo

 The Hare’s Liver, also known as The Story of the rabbit, is a traditional Korean fairytale and a type of Aesop’s Fable (stories revolving around animal characters to teach moral to children) which criticises the division between the rich and the poor (between the royalty and the common folk during its time of creation) and how the weak can overcome crisis through wit and wisdom. Below is the overview of this story by KOREA.net (Ministry of Culture):

‘As the story goes, the Dragon King, the king of the sea, was deathly ill. His subjects suggest that a hare’s liver could cure him, yet none of them are brave enough to venture onto land to get the liver— that is, until the turtle volunteers. Once ashore, the turtle finds a rabbit and persuades him to visit the underwater kingdom, where great riches, beauty, and honor—the turtle claims—await. The rabbit agrees. 

Back underwater, in the audience of the Dragon King, the rabbit is restrained and regretfully informed that he must sacrifice his liver (and his life) to save the king. The rabbit cleverly tells them that he would be honored to help save the king’s life but has left his liver in the woods. 

Rabbits, he tells the king, knowing the value of their livers, hide them aboveground in secret places. The hare says that he would be honored to retrieve it and give it over to the king if the king would send the turtle to escort him. The Dragon King is won over by this cavalier flattery and sends them back. Once on shore, the rabbit runs safely away from the turtle, telling him that they will never get his liver, that they were fools to believe him, and that the Dragon King will just have to die. Then he vanishes.’

 The rabbit, or the hare, is the metaphor to the weak in this story while the king and his subjects are the rich taking from the common folk. They are also shown to be deceitful, using lies to trick the hare to take whatever they need, even taking organs if necessary. While not as intense in modern context, this idea still applies to this day in different forms from big corporations and capitalism in general. This metaphor could be used as stylistic differences between the characters or scenes to make a greater contrast, and could possibly be used as details in creating the toys.

 Otherwise, the rabbit has been a character symbolising witty, smart and a cunning (not necessarily in a bad way) person, acting as a character who foils the plans of the evil in different fairytales. One example of this is in another Korean fairytale ‘The Rabbit and the Tiger’, where in multiple instances does the tiger try to prey upon the rabbit only to be tricked by it and end up failing in eating it. Rabbits are often the soft and the weak in many portrayals in both Western and Eastern cultures, and as a symbol for fertility associated with Aphrodite in Greek mythology, so it is an interesting to see rabbits as the triumphant one in these types of stories.


References:
KOREA.net (2014) Lessons learned from tortoises and hares. Available from: https://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/viewarticleId=120938&pageIndex=104. (Accessed: 22 April 2023).

Ye Jung, J. (2015) 별주부전. Available from: https://product.kyobobook.co.kr/detail/S000001734436. (Accessed: 22 April 2023).

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