In the first place, there is no cultural history of Komainu in Korea, and the Chinese character, "高麗", has been used just to borrow the sound; Komainu was never meant to be a dog from Korea, but was thought to be an imaginary divine beast, and Shishi, the other in pairs, is a lion, which had never been witnessed by the Japanese at that time.
また、朝鮮に狛犬の文化は無く、高麗とは音から来る当て字で「高麗の犬」という意味ではなく、あくまで「狛犬（こまいぬ）」という想像上の神獣であり、同じく対になる獅子も当時の日本人はライオンを見たことが無い。