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Seoul, the Widow, and the Mudang: Transformations of Urban Korean Shamanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Alexandre Guillemoz

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Does Seoul, a city of eight million inhabitants, one of the planet's ten megalopolises, still have shamans? Can there be a place for shamanism in a country like South Korea, which is striving to be modern? Can shamanism survive at all in a country where the successes of Christianity have been celebrated by Westerners? Can it adapt itself to religious pluralism? What is shamanism's role in the urban setting? How does the fast pace of urban life affect its rituals? How is shamanism presented in the mass media? Is it beginning to emerge from the centuries-long ostracism imposed on it by official ideologies?

These questions will be explored in this article on the basis of data gathered on-site in the city of Seoul between the years 1982 and 1991. We will attempt not only to highlight several important facts but to grasp the overall process of transformation that the city is imposing on shamans and shamanism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 40 , Issue 158 , June 1992 , pp. 115 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. Korean Overseas Information Service, Ministry of Culture and Information, A Handbook of Korea, 7th edition, Seoul, Samhwa Printing Co. 1988, p. 130. The fifth edition of the same work gives considerably different figures (1983, p. 207), which causes some doubt as to the validity of the information.

2. The category of “followers” designates believers, adepts, etc., Each religious association discloses their number to the Ministry of Culture and Information.

3. The category of “permanent members” comprises monks, priests, pastors and all others whose livelihood depends exclusively on the offerings of the faithful.

4. Ky6ngsin hoebo, 1984, 4. p. 4. This is the Bulletin of the Korean Federation of Associations for Victory over Communism and the Respect of Religious Faiths, more commonly known as the union of shamans (Mudang hy5p-hoe.), a grouping of Korean shamans and seers. This number too is accurate to no more than an order of magnitude. Its membership, according to the Bulletin, was unchanged over many years and then suddenly was not recorded at all because the shaman's union failed to pay its dues. The main purpose of this association, which was first registeredwith the Ministry of Culture and Information in 1971, was to reinforce the anticom munist spirit and to defend its members against pressures applied by administra tive authorities bent on repressing “superstitions.” Currently it is also responsible for the training of new mudang and to present groups of mudang at regional and national folklore festivals.

5. Cf. A. Guillemoz, Les algues, les anciens, les dieux: la vie et la religion d'un village de pêcheurs-agriculteurs coréens, Paris, le Léopard d'or/1983; in particular the chapter on gods, beliefs and familial rituals, pp. 119-222.

6. Citing statistics from the Ministry of Planning, Le Courrier de la Corée, 17 August, p. 21, says that 8,660,428 Koreans moved in 1986, which is 21.3% of the population; 0.1% less than the year before. The population shifts were generally either toward the big cities or from Seoul toward the periphery.

7. On June 23, 1981, Mrs. Ch'ae Hûi carried out a kut of descent under the direc tion of Kim Kûmhwa. The Korean mass media made a big deal out of the supposed fact that Mrs. Ch'ae-Hûi was a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles; in truth she had just completed her graduate studies. This kut became a media event that supposedly proved “even American professors can not resist spir its.” Even a book about it, filled with photographs, was published: “Ch'ae Hûi, a member of the department of ethnic dances at UCLA, learned the Indonesian trance dance and the American dance of Kiva. She felt the power of the mudang enter her and for a year afterwards suffered from the spirit sickness. During a trip to Korea to gather materials for her dissertation Ch'ae-Hûi was watching a documentary movie about a kut, carried out in the province of Hwanghae, when her body suddenly began to tremble and her upper back was seized with violent spasms […]. She acknowledged having known since she had come down with the spirit sickness that it was her duty to become a mudang.” Kim, Inhoe Ch'oe (Chongmin, Hwanghae-do naerim kut (The kut of descent in the Province of Hwangae), Seoul, Yôrwhadang, 1983, p.84).

8. I would like to thank Professor Yi for having informed me that this kut was to be held.

9. Choi Chungmoo, “Nami, Ch'ae, and Oksun, superstar shamans in Korea”; Ruth-Inge Heinze, Shamans of the Twentieth Century, New York, Irvington Publishers, Inc. pp. 51-61.

10. This is according to Kim Kûmhwa herself (sixty years old, an officially desig nated “living cultural treasure”), in interviews granted in August 1990 to several female-oriented monthly magazines: Yôsông chungang, p. 308, Umôn sensû (Woman Sense), p. 309.

11. Kim Chimi is considered one of Korea's greatest actresses. She has appeared in more than eight hundred films (Sisa chônôl [Sisa Journal], January 17, 1991, p. 42) and currently appears in between thirty and forty in a good year.

12. The meeting took place on June 20, 1990, according to Umôn sensû [Woman Sense], p. 309; K'win [Queen], August 1990, p. 169; Chubu saenghwal, August 1190, p. 218; in the middle of May (to be precise, May 20), 1990, according to Yôsông chun gang, August 1990, p. 307.

13. Yôsông chungang, August 1990, p. 307.

14. Yôsông chungang, August 1990, More precisely, the article speaks of a “second spiritual daughter after Professor Ch'ae Hûi.” On the subject of the latter cf. supra.

15. K'win[Queen], August 1990, p. 167 (sub-title of the article) and p. 170 (in the text).

16. This date is given in the first lines of the articles in the four magazines sur veyed : Yôsông chungang, August 1990, p. 307; Umôn sensû, August 1990, p. 308; K'win, August 1990, p. 168; Chubu saenghwal, August 1990, p. 218.

17. This was written by Cho Hûngyun, Professor of Religious Anthropology at the University of Hanyang. The other articles were written by journalists assigned to the cultural section of the weeklies.

18. Sisa chônôl, January 17,1991.

19. Cf. Keith Howard, Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals: Folk Music in Korean Society, 2nd edition, Seoul, Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch 1990, pp. 241-262; “Namdo tûl norea Ritual and the Korean Intangible Cultural Asset System,” Journal of Ritual Studies, 1989, 3, 2, pp. 203-216, and “Tashiraegi. En Corée, pas de retour après la mort si ce n'est dans un Tresor culturel intangible,” Cahiers de musiques tradi tionelles, Genève, 1990, pp. 119-139.