Jangsan beom, the Jangsan tiger

An urban legend from South Korea about a white, tiger-like creature on Mt. Jangsan in Busan that copies human voices. Korean Wikipedia dates the legend to 2009, and it spread widely after a 2013 webtoon.

Korean Wikipedia calls the jangsan beom an urban legend that started in Daegu and is known from 2009. The creature is said to look like a tiger with white fur and to imitate human voices. The mountain it is named after, Jangsan, is in Haeundae-gu, Busan. English Wikipedia's page on the 2017 film adds that it is said to eat people, to have sharp teeth, to move fast through the hills and to draw people in with a sound like a woman crying.

The Busan Ilbo reported in 2017 that the story spread widely in 2013, when a web portal ran a summer horror webtoon called Jangsan beom about a boy who meets the creature without realising what it is. The name shot up the portal's live search rankings and internet users kept retelling the tale. Asia Today said the same year that the jangsan beom had circulated as a ghost story on internet forums. The paper added that the SBS programme Curious Story Y looked into the legend and interviewed people who said they had seen the creature, and noted that none of this has been proven scientifically.

The legend reached cinemas in 2017 as The Mimic. The Korean Film Council says the film draws on the Mt. Jang tiger, a legendary creature that imitates human sounds. Asia Today reported that the film also drew on other stories, including the fairy tale of the sun and the moon and the story The Black Cat.