Stone Boy Guardian

People of Jeju had maintained a long tradition of laying a child stone statue(동자석) for a grave built in the middle of a farming field or upon a gentle hilltop. It is a Jeju's own tradition established even before the arrival of a confucian custom to the island by which stone images of "civil guardians" and "military guardians" were erected at a tomb. The child stone statue exhibits a round face with arms and hands holding a symbolic object carved in a delightfully simple manner as if to represent the traditional aesthetic sensibility of Jeju islanders. As for the child stone statue shown here, the spear held in his both hands reveals that he is a guardian deity.