This paper investigates on the constructions for introducing characters into a
scene in a story, mainly in the three novels: Hototogisu in Japanese, its Korean
translation Pulyegwi, and its Korean adaptation Tukyenseng. Traditionally, the
constructions used to introduce characters into a scene in a story has been the
existential construction(There lived/was/were ~) or the background construction(i.e.
showing the character’s background) in Korean novels. But in the novels in
question, there is another one: cleft construction. Using cleft construction in order
to introduce a character into a scene remains in so-called ‘genre’ novels in
Present Korean. This character introducing device is usually adopted when the
character appears dramatically, and it seems that the construction spotlights on the
action or the mood, like slow-motion play, of the character. The existential
construction or the background construction are easily found in the old Korean
scripts, however, the cleft construction in question never found before the
translated novels.