I was on reddit one day when someone in the Korea community posted that the Korean fairytale version of 'Once Upon a Time' was 'Back in the day when tigers used to smoke cigars' ('호랑이 담배 피우던 시절'). From what my colleagues told me, the saying has its origins in that only the yangban, ruling class, used to be able to smoke as it was considered a luxury in the Joseon Dynasty. The phrase refers to a time when not only all humans were equal but also humans and animals were equal parts of nature, and tigers used to smoke cigars like the yangban. Another colleague said that it was just a phrase to indicate that the story was from so long ago that even the now unbelieveable act of tigers smoking cigars used to be possible. Who knows what happened in the past!
I personally found the imagery very inspiring. It was creative and funny. Knowing the Koreans' love for all things cute and idiosyncratic, I thought 'how hilarious would it be if there was a saying "Back in the days when tigers used to swing dance"?'. I had been making some designs to put on merchandise to support my swing dance club and thought it would be cool to put a swing dance spin on such a popular expression. Not knowing if it was just me who found it funny, I sent the phrase "Back in the days when tigers used to swing dance (호랑이 스윙댄스 추던시절에)"to my friend and asked her what she thought of it. I received a whole lot of 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 as a reply. Taking that as a good sign, I went ahead and made a piece with tigers dancing.
It started out as a personal joke but the idea snowballed into something bigger as so many of our friends loved it. We printed them out on t shirts and small flasks and sold them to our swing dance community to help raise funds for our bar which was suffering to pay rent because of lack of patronage during COVID times.
