한국의 몽골 민속연구 20년

Retrospect on Twenty Years of Mongolian Folklore Studies in Korea

In this article, I look into foot marks of academic research on Mongolian folklore in Korea since 1990, when Korea and Mongolia formally established political relationship, till today. For this theme academic journals, dissertations and published books concerning Mongolian folklore are carefully analysed. As a result, nine major folkloric areas are introduced as academic topics as well as research contents. It means that more or less nearly every sphere of Mongolian folklore during this period is broadly examined. The most distinctive point of Mongolian folklore studies in Korea is that certain folkloric fields, like folk literature, folk beliefs (ex. shamanism) or festivals, are overwhelmingly dominating as research subjects. This is because early studies on Mongolian folklore in Korea were not only closely linked to comparative perspectives with Korean folklore, particularly folk tales and shamanism, but also mainly relied on historical documents and written materials. For the same reason relatively visible research objects like festivals also were popular topics for folklore studies in Korea. Whereas in the middle of the 1990s folklore researchers, who carried out folkloric fieldwork in Mongolia, began to expand their research interests towards other folkloric fields such as folk society, folk arts, traditional food and costumes, rituals, folk language, animal symbols and others. In short, in retrospect of twenty years of Mongolian folklore studies in Korea it can be judged that an extraordinary broad research and overview was achieved, but more thorough and detailed analysis has yet to be accomplished. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that such a great effort by so many folklore researchers were made in various areas of Mongolian folklore studies. For the sake of systematic studies on Mongolian folklore, on the one hand, diversity of Mongolian ethnic tradition and culture has to be considered. On the other hand, for further solid research, surrounding Mongolian cultural regions, such as Inner Mongolia, Buriyat, Tuva, Altai and Kalmuk, have also to be included for research scrutiny.