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

In this special CAT WEEK episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the magical tiger and magpie from the 2025 film "KPop Demon Hunters."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
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,

(00:32):
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

(00:52):
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

(01:16):
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

(01:39):
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

(02:01):
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

(02:21):
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.

(02:43):
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

(03:06):
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

(03:27):
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,

(03:47):
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

(04:09):
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

(04:29):
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

(04:52):
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

(05:14):
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

(05:37):
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.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.