Contemporary Korean Shamanism

From Ritual to Digital

Liora Sarfati

• Editorial: Indiana University Press
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780253057198
• Categoría: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoría: Folklore & Mythologie

Once viewed as an embarrassing superstition, the theatrical religious performances of Korean shamans—who communicate with the dead, divine the future, and become possessed—are going mainstream. Attitudes toward Korean shamanism are changing as shamanic traditions appear in staged rituals, museums, films, and television programs, as well as on the internet.

Contemporary Korean Shamanism explores this vernacular religion and practice, which includes sensory rituals using laden altars, ecstatic dance, and animal sacrifice, within South Korea's hypertechnologized society, where over 200, 000 shamans are listed in professional organizations. Liora Sarfati reveals how representations of shamanism in national, commercialized, and screen-mediated settings have transformed opinions of these religious practitioners and their rituals.

Applying ethnography and folklore research, Contemporary Korean Shamanism maps this shift in perception about shamanism—from a sign of a backward, undeveloped Korea to a valuable, indigenous cultural asset.

ONE

Gods on Stage

A Mediated Performance

SEPTEMBER 20, 2007—IT IS NOON on a cloudy autumn day in Seoul’s World Cup Stadium Park. This urban green space lies beside a huge stadium built for the 2002 World Cup games. Loudspeakers play traditional Korean music at full volume in the park, and a pond at the far end of a paved yard reflects the gray sky. A folklore performance of musok (Korean shamanism) will take place here this evening. Spirits and gods will deliver their divinations and blessings to the gathered audience through a human agent, the mansin (a Korean practitioner of possession trance rituals). She will mediate between the human world and other realms of existence.

Communication with the supernatural will be achieved not only through the skillful performance of the mansin but also through various intermediaries. Some are other professionals, such as a professor who will interpret the traditions shown onstage for the audience. Other mediating agents are material and technological. The spirits will be represented and appeased using various artifacts. Their presence and acceptance of ritual offerings will be mediated through the manipulation of objects. The voice of the mansin will be heard through a sound amplification system, and her dancing figure will be seen in the dark night thanks to electric lights. The whole event will be broadcast online for audiences who cannot come to the arena for the performance. These technologies mediate between the performer and audience in ways that augment the unassisted, private, traditional practice. The space inhabited by the supernatural entities, the mansin, and the audience will be filled with these objects, mediating the performance in many respects.

Near the ritual space, three cargo vans come to a stop. Five men jump out and begin unloading boxes, trays, metal and wooden poles, rolls of cloth, bundles of goods wrapped in pink handkerchiefs. Several women supervise the operation and give orders about where to put what. Within half an hour, the area is full of goods, and the vans leave. The men begin setting up a metal frame, about fifteen feet high and thirty feet long, close to the waterfront. They seem to be trained in erecting it, as they proceed in an orderly and synchronized way. The frame’s parts have been prepared to fit together smoothly; it takes less than an hour to put up this impressive metal structure.

After discussing whether the structure is stable enough, the constructors begin opening green plastic tubes and taking out rolled polyester sheets, about two feet in width. The workers climb tall ladders and hang these rolls on the frame. They let go of the edges and then, with a crisp sound, the polyester sheets unfold, revealing colorful paintings of gods and spirits. Each sheet has four different paintings, organized vertically, that are large and can be seen from a distance (fig. 1.1). They are copies of paper paintings used in Korean shamanic rituals (kut) as representations of the various spirits. These supernatural entities will soon be invited to the event, which has been well advertised and will be covered by the media. This evening’s performance will be a public Ch’oe Yŏng changgun tang kut ritual by the famous mansin Sŏ Kyŏng-uk, who was lately given the official designation of preserver of this ritual. The illustrious performer has not yet arrived at the scene. She trusts that her helpers are knowledgeable enough to mount the background set for her staged kut.

The event organizers have scheduled the ceremony to begin at 7:00 p.m., and there is much to accomplish before then. From the top center of the metal frame, where painted gods and spirits begin to rule the scene with menacing eyes, the men tie colorful cloth strings in red, green, blue, yellow, and white. The strings are spread out and attached to metal poles some three hundred feet away. They form a sort of circus tent over the performance area and the audience’s seats. The men arrange thick ropes from the edges of the frame to the sides of the ritual arena, and tie paper decorations onto them. These decorations mainly consist of a metal circle covered with colorful, patterned paper, from which paper streamers with god paintings hang down to create beautiful mobiles about two feet in diameter and four feet in height. Their edges flare in the windy afternoon, just above people’s heads. These objects do not have a specific religious significance, but they line the boundaries of the religious space with representations of supernatural entities. Other banners with musok symbols and texts, such as “State Mansin Sŏ Kyŏng-uk,” are hung along the ropes, adding an official appearance to the scene. This ritual is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, and the artifacts deliver two messages: one based on a religious worldview and the other a construct of national identity (Brennan 1990). These messages communicate to the audience that the mansin is endorsed by the state and thus mediate a separate social story of identity politics and hierarchies related to musok practice (to be discussed in chapters 2 and 3). These objects mark the mansin’s importance and emphasize the value of the coming performance.

Fig. 1.1 God’s paintings printed on polyester sheets, 2007, World Cup Stadium, Seoul. Credit: Author.

Each mansin’s ritual artifacts reveal her agency and power. Over the years, Mansin Sŏ has developed elaborate musok props suitable for outdoor venues, contributing a unique ingenuity to her kut staging. The polyester painting imprints were prepared to be rolled and carried conveniently, and they are rain and tear resistant. Most other practitioners have not adopted new materials in lieu of traditional paper paintings, even in rainy outdoor conditions, for fear that “fake pictures” might be perceived as a corruption of the traditional staging norms. However, in this ritual, no audience members or attending scholars remarked negatively about this innovation. One reason for accepting the printed images is that the mansin owns the original hand-painted paper versions and displays them in her home shrine. The most outstanding spirit among the thirty-three hanging paintings is that of General Ch’oe Yŏng (1316–1388), of the late-Koryŏ historic period, copied from a specially ordered centerpiece painting in Mansin Sŏ’s home shrine. He is painted with full armor, helmet, and sword. Colorful and awe-inspiring, General Ch’oe will preside over the event. He will also possess the mansin during the ritual and be the main provider of blessings for the audience, as he has been for Mansin Sŏ since her initiation. He is perceived as a very strong spirit-guardian in musok.

Mansin Sŏ owes the central position that she has achieved in the world of musok not only to her powerful supernatural protector but also to her own outstanding personal charm and abilities, which have resulted in a powerful and wealthy clientele. She regularly conducts consultations and rituals for politicians and businesspeople, and the large, official, black cars used by such figures can be seen daily in her front yard. Other mansin often state that she has earned her fame and fortune thanks merely to her indisputable physical beauty. However, her serious work and professional performances attest to more than that. She owns an impressive collection of musok goods of the Hwanghae-do style that she practices, and she conducts rituals mainly in her home shrine in Yangju-si, a twenty-five-minute car ride from Seoul’s city center. She maintains a personal web page to promote her public rituals and has been the topic of several newspaper articles (K. Kim 2008; Chŏng 1999).

Mansin Sŏ’s absence from the stage setup before the important World Cup Stadium performance is no coincidence. It is the deliberate choice of a conscious performer in a society characterized by theatrical commercialization. In preindustrial Korea, spiritual practitioners closely supervised the preparation of ritual altars in villages—as they continue to do in private contemporary rituals. Their main responsibility was to appease gods and spirits. Accordingly, they had to make sure that the offerings and decorations were prepared in accordance with custom. They worked in teams of initiated practitioners, apprentices, musicians, cooks, butchers, and general assistants. Producing a contemporary, urban, staged ritual also includes many other professionals. Positive evaluations of today’s urban mansin depend not only on her spiritual abilities but also on her production skills. These include prop management, voice amplification, lighting, media coverage, scholarly legitimization, and public relations. The success of today’s performance will rest in part on Mansin Sŏ’s ability to enable direct communication between humans and supernatural powers and in part on professional staging, including her makeup and meticulously cropped hair. Consequently, while her stage crew prepares the place where gods, spirits, and humans will meet within a few hours, another team of hair and makeup artists perfects the mansin’s appearance for this large-scale ritual.

The venues of public rituals have changed from village squares and palace halls to open-air stages, museum performance halls, and festivals. The production has increasingly incorporated technological innovation and mass media. The mansin no longer negotiates her performance directly with her client but through the mediation of academic referrals and festivals, at least in the case of staged performances such as the one discussed here. She no longer faces just a small audience with a few assistants and musicians; she reaches a large audience, many members of which she will never meet in person, using stage mics, camera angles, lighting, and makeup. Nevertheless, the sincerity with which performers treat the supernatural remains intact. Attention to detail, careful planning, and ritual expertise are still the driving forces of the mansin team, and for many viewers, ritual efficacy is still the main concern. In these respects, new performance venues have not changed the kut ritual’s cultural and personal message—that people and supernatural entities can and should interact in a controlled cultural performance, supervised by possessed practitioners who are well versed in the traditional scripts of the rite.

MEDIATING BETWEEN KOREANS AND THEIR HERITAGE: THE KOREA TRADITIONAL PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL

The Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival reveals how mediation by the government and academia affects choices of the particular rituals to be presented, selection of the mansin performers, and criteria for authenticity. I observed the first such festival at the World Cup Stadium Park on September 20–23, 2007. The location was central, easy to reach by public transportation, and spacious enough to allow a large ritual stage to be constructed. The second festival also took place at that location, and the third took place in the National Museum of Korea in 2009.¹ In the 2007 festival brochure, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Kim Chong-min, introduced the festival by relating it to broader political issues: “Among our splendid traditional arts, traditional performing arts are the most eminent treasures. . . . They can be developed as a cultural tourism product if their presentation is modernized. . . . Regrettably, however, such precious performance arts have been eliminated from people’s lives as a result of Japanese colonization and rapid industrialization. . . . The festival is the first attempt of its kind, organized and supported by the government to promote traditional arts, aiming to reach broader audiences nationally and internationally” (Traditional Performing Arts Festival 2007, 3). The text reveals the important role of politicians in financing and legitimizing large-scale ritual displays such as the one discussed here. This kut ritual, and other kut rituals that were performed in the two subsequent nights of the festival, was paid for by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Along with other music and dance performances, the festival offered the Korean public a free opportunity to experience staged reperformances of their folklore and heritage. The mansin acknowledged this event as a reperformance, because she viewed it as continuous in form and content with previous rituals, albeit shortened to a mere few hours for this event. For the festival organizers, the reperformed aspect was articulated in the title “Traditional Folk Art Festival,” which assumed that presenting various folklore activities required archiving them as folk arts by curators and experts. In this respect, bundling kut with secular folk arts allowed the minister to overlook the ritual’s religious aspect, and the mansin could publicly call the gods that she venerates to a sumptuous feast.

Her dispensation to do so derived from her performative rather than spiritual abilities, but her personal interest in participating included religious intentions. The festival was a venue in which to celebrate with the supernatural, as Mansin Sŏ expressed before the event: “In such a respectable event, the gods like to come and promise blessings to the country, Seoul, and the people. In the past, the queen used to sponsor such events, but now there is no queen to support out tradition, and the government has to supply the means.” Sŏ referred to the common assumption that in the nineteenth century, Queen Min (the last queen of Korea before the Japanese occupation) was a sponsor of musok (Simbirtseva 1996; Walraven 1998, 57–59). Sŏ’s dedication to the religious symbols of the event, the meticulous preparation of the offerings, and the elaborate costumes and props brought in several trucks from her home shrine demonstrate that she took the event’s efficacy seriously. However, such a religious agenda was not reflected in the words of the Minister of Culture and Tourism. Each person expressed a different meaning of the same phenomenon because of the inherent quality of such a symbolic practice: it can be interpreted in various manners and encapsulates the differential meanings simultaneously (Turner 1967/1972, 1969/1977, 1982/1992).

For Minister Kim, economic and diplomatic interests in tourism and international acknowledgment intertwined with national pride related to the dark period of Japanese colonization and to more recent Western influence. This combination of needs is why the kut ritual, a controversial religious activity, could be included in a formal government event as a demonstration of artistic ability and cultural uniqueness. This presentation was seen not as a religious ritual per se but rather as an artistic reperformance of ancient heritage, with new patriotic intentions. This stance was also professed when the performing mansin hung banners that endorsed her as a national shaman (narat mudang). In Western contexts, reperformance has been questioned as a legitimate means of exhibiting art, and some critics have disputed the benefits of a direct experience over a screened version of past performances (R. Morgan 2010). In contrast, the official, public, and religious discourse around Korea’s traditional arts has been widely appreciative of such staged reperformances as a viable means of preserving and promoting national heritage. Banned and ridiculed in the past, kut was presented in 2007 with monetary sponsorship from the state and academic approval from the festival’s advisers.

Each evening of the festival featured a kut ritual representing a different region. Dr. Yang Chong-sŭng, a government employee who served at that time as a senior curator at the National Folk Museum, was in charge of the arrangements for these three kut performances. Since the beginning of my fieldwork in Korea in 2005, I have worked closely with Dr. Yang, who introduced me to various mansin and showed me his extensive collection of musok art. Thanks to our research collaboration and friendship, I was able to observe the festival’s planning process. My observations convinced me that, in this case at least, the fact that the ritual was to be performed onstage mattered. In private rituals, a client meets a mansin for a specific purpose, and the mansin selects the ritual based on her skill set and her diagnosis of the client’s problem. Illness requires help from certain, mostly Buddhist spirits to whom dance and vegetarian oblations are offered, whereas business problems often call for the intervention of the spirits of generals such as the aforementioned Ch’oe Yŏng.

In contrast, in the festival setting, the interposition of the government and academia occasioned different choices. The most elaborate staging was expected, and the most colorful practices, such as dancing on sharp blades, had to be performed. There was no specific problem to solve for a client, and the main purpose of the performance organizers was to manifest onstage the richness and virtuosity of Korean folklore. Although the mansin perceived this performance as religious, she was well aware of how a staged ritual is expected to be performed. She met these expectations wholeheartedly because it was an opportunity to extend her clientele and potentially inform more people of her spiritual skills in case they need them in the future. Every mansin invited to participate in the festival accepted this opportunity.

It was not easy for Dr. Yang to choose only three performers among the many that he knew. He chose Sŏ Kyŏng-uk in part for her veneration of General Ch’oe Yŏng, a historic warrior who died as a national hero in 1388. His fabled strong character and bravery assured his status as a powerful spirit in the musok pantheon. He is also widely perceived as the protector of Korea; therefore, his ritual opened the festival with supernatural favor. Many mansin venerate this mythical figure, but Dr. Yang had to choose only one to participate in the festival. He chose this particular performer mainly for her attested knowledge of old ritual texts and protocols. For a regular client, this aspect of the mansin’s performance is far less important than her reputation for solving her clients’ problems. Still, being acknowledged by scholars certainly has its effect on the popularity of mansin, as discussed by Laurel Kendall (2009) and Chongho Kim (2003). The festival brochure noted that the ritual’s purpose was “national prosperity and the welfare of the people” (Traditional Performing Arts Festival 2007, 12). Staged kut are often dedicated to such general causes. An ancient tradition of village- and court-sponsored rituals for prosperity and health has been transformed into a new form of government-sponsored rituals that serve both a religious purpose and the national need for indigenous cultural icons that c...