Roles and Tasks of Korean Classical Literature in Metaverse Era

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the ‘metaverse’ has emerged as an important topic in various fields of our society. Translated into ‘transcendent world’ or ‘virtual world’ in Korean, this term reproduces various activities of people similar to reality in a virtual space that seems to have copied the real world. In this context, discussions on metaverse utilization are already actively underway in various fields. In this paper, the role and tasks of Korean classical literature in the metaverse world have been discussed. On the contrary, it is also a discussion about how to use the metaverse in Korean classical literature. To this end, this paper first discussed the changes in the learning environment and the problem of learning subjects that the digital generation faced. Unlike the past, the digital generation has positioned itself as a ‘learning subject’ rather than a ‘educational object’, and has the characteristic of becoming a ‘content producer’ rather than a ‘content consumer’. Next, based on these characteristics, the role and tasks of Korean classical literature in the metaverse era were examined. First, on the premise of accurately interpreting and understanding individual works of classical literature, the reasons for moving from the sharing of universal emotions to personal acceptance were discussed. Next, considering the characteristics that variations and processing are easy in the metaverse world, the possibility of using classical literature as a learning material was examined. The concept of the metaverse is not yet familiar to everyone. In particular, it is an even more unfamiliar concept to classical literature majors. However, it is necessary to make efforts to enhance the modern value and utility of classical literature by using a platform familiar to the digital generation.