31
Chapter Two
SHAMANISM: THE RELIGION OF HAN
Korean Shamanism
Sounds of music. 'The whole town is already excited
by the clang of symbols and the beat of drums. Neighbourhood
children are dancing towards the house where the music comes from. But there is
no circus in town. There is trouble, perhaps sickness or death. It is the mudang's music for a kut. The
troubled house must be exorcised of evil spirits. Neighbourhood
women are so curious as to what is happening to that
house that they have to go to see the mudang and the kut.
I too want to go and see what is happening. I like that kind
of music. I like to see the evil spirits being exorcised. I want to see the mudang dance. But I cannot go. My father is a Christian
minister, and I am a Christian. My mother wouldn't let me go to see the mudang, because Christians are not supposed to be mixed up
with other religions such as Shamanism. For me, they say, it is a sin to see
the mudang and participate in the kut.
Besides, I am supposed¦ be contaminated by the evil spirit just by watching the
kut.
Korean Christians have been isolated from the other
religious cultures of Korea. The missionaries taught us thati
accept Christianity means to cut ourselves off from the
32
old way of life — the old way of religion. To become Christian means that
we must get rid of the household spirit shrines and forget about them. This is
conversion, and an act of conversion. We were told that Mudang
and kut have nothing to do with Christianity; or in
other words, Christ is against our culture, no matter how old and how strong it
may be. Christianity is different from other native religions, and it is better
than the rest. This we were to accept and believe.
Despite the missionaries' teaching, Shaman music and dances
are still attracting women and children and sometimes men. And Shaman faith or
custom is the most pervasive form of religious culture in Korea. There are many
shamans around an urban neigbourhood, with green or
white flags on the roof alongside the tall television antennas. Korean
Christianity, although so western in its liturgy and appearances, is obviously
quite shamanistic in its belief and behaviour. In the
final analysis, we may be all shamanistic and Korean Christianity may be
characterized as Shamanistic Christianity. The Shaman ritual, the kut, gives expression to the very soul and essence of the
Korean people and their culture.
Shamanism is the pervasive religious custom and culture? of the Korean minjung. But Shamanism has no hierarchy, no
church, no building, and no doctrine. It is practised
inside and in the courtyards of ordinary houses. A mudang,
a Korean female shaman, comes to a house to perform a kut.
She brings a drummer girl with her for the music and dancing. But for a special
occasion, one could arrange a big kut in a shaman
shrine on top of the nearby hill in Seoul. There are two shaman shrines in
Seoul. But the one that I visit regularly ha a seating capacity of les than 30,
in contrast to a big Christian church in Seoul that seats more than 10,000.
Basically, Shamanism builds no temples. It is practised
at home, or even in front of an elm tree on the road leading to a village.
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Mudangs/Female Religious Leaders
Mudangs may be called the priests of Korean
Shamanism. A mudang is usually a woman. Some are very
young and some quite old; most are middle aged. Most of the mudangs
I have seen and met have husky voices, rather refined body movements, are
beautiful, and stand out from the other women attending shaman rituals. Korean
shamanism has no known founder or prophet, or leading priest(s). Korean
shamanism is a religious practice centered around the mudang. A mudang's dance and her
music are the liturgy of Korean shamanism. In her ritualistic trance she utters
the "words of spirits" or "words of god". There are no
scriptures, no written rubrics of religious practice. Therefore, the mudang is the single-most important figure in Korean
shamanism.
The group of women who perform kut or the shaman ritual, are known by different common
name for women who mediate between gods and people.
The shaman is a recognized professional who manifests the
gods in her own person at will and interprets the words and visions they send her.
One does not become a mudang
through a process of education, examination and ordination. Mudangs
simply learn the mudang "skill". They
usually inherit the tradition from their families, learning an orthodox ritual
preserved in the family for five or six generations.
Most revered and respected are the “real” mudangs who have become mudangs
through divine inspiration or “spirit illness” or (shinbyung).
In the literal translation, they are described as women who “entered into the
gods” and “upon
whom gods have descended”. When spirits and gods enter into a girl, she becomes
sick. This “spirit illness” or shinbyung syndrome
seems to be a form of mental illness, hysteria or psychosomatic disorder. The
[symptoms of one destined to be a shaman' include a
34
persistent illness without apparent cause, loss of appetite,
unwillingness to eat meat and fish, craving for cold water, weakness or pain in
the limbs, dreams, hallucinations and crazed wandering.
During and after the spirit illness the mudang-to-be
sees hallucinations and dreams about mountain spirits or soldier spirits on
horseback. Then she goes to a mudang for consultation
or for exorcism. There and then she may begin to dance in the kut or just start fortune telling for others. Thus, a new mudang begins her apprenticeship for the professional job
of practicing kut.
A distinction can be made between a god-descended person and
someone struck temporarily insane. According to the mudang,
"insane people look like they are in pain, but god-descended people wander
here and there, singing out, 'I'm this god, descended person,’ an initiation kut is performed in which the initiating mudang invites the gods to complete their descent and allow
their chosen one to dance and sing as a mudang. Thus
ushered into mudang-hood, as it were, the initiated
is called upon to bring blessing to the living by appeasing spirits and gods in
the invisible world, am curing illness by exorcism.
A 1972 survey estimated that there is one mudang of some sort or other for every 314 people in Korea.
This is a very high density. By comparison, the 1982 government! statistics indicate that there are some 35,000 Protestant
ministers in Korea, or one for every 1,000 people. According to the same
statistics, there were even fewer Buddhist monks (20,755) than Protestant
preachers. It is interesting that the 1982 government statistics do not include
the number of mudangs, or the number of people who go
to a mudang for kut and on
various occasions for religious need. The Ministry of Culture and Information,
which complies and issues such statistics, does not classify
35
shamanism as a religion. This is understandable, since mudangs have no church where they practice their religion.
There is no mudang organization which produces statistics
for the Ministry which oversees the religious affairs of the nation. And mudangs would be the last to acknowledge, on their
"citizen's identification card" or on their tax return, that their profession is mudang.
Scholars of Korean shamanism carefully avoid the term
"religion" in defining the mudang
phenomenon. In Korea, they call it "customs of mudang";
not "kyo" (religious teaching) but "sok" (custom). And Musok, or
the customs of mudang, may be defined as "a form
of people's faith in traditional religious phenomenon centered around the mudang". When
scholars call this religious phenomenon "customs of mudang",
they contrast it with religion, which has teachings and doctrines. They want to
call it "people's faith", or "folk beliefs".
Despite its lack of teachings or doctrines, Korean Shamanism
still deserves to be called a religion. The Latin religio
is derived from religare, which means "to
bind" or "to attach" and "to relate". The original
meaning of the term religion, "a contractual obligation with a divine
being", is fulfilled in the "customs of mudang",
which is the Korean folk religion or the faith of Korean people. This religion
is "folk", "popular" or "people's" and now
"minjung", not only because it is shared by the majority of the Korean
people, but also because it has been officially ignored, if not openly
persecuted, first by the literati of the Yi dynasty, and then by the new and
modernized governments both Japanese and then Korean. This is a proper Korean
religion because it predated Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism or Christianity. It
is a religion which is pervasive in Korean minds, and which is alive in the
Korean way of life. It may not be properly called shamanism and we have no
popular Korean term for
36
it. It cannot strictly be called an "ism" because it has neither
an explicit doctrine nor sacred texts. It is no ideology, nor does it have
systematic teachings. It may be called the religion of mudang,
but it is not practised by mudangs
alone. It is the basic religious mind-set of the Korean people — both high and
low and hence, the basic religious mentality of the Korean people. It is an
old, indigenous, informal and nearly unconscious kind of popular religion and
can be rightly called the religion of the Korean minjung.
Although Korean shamanism is not organized with am
established hierarchy and political representation, it is I pervasive in Korean
political life. And although it has no permanent shrines or sheltered places of
assembly, no institutions for the training of workers, no press or any other
audio-visual means of propagation, it is everywhere in Korean life — in all the
formal religions, in the educational system and in the media. It is a religion
completely secularized in the everyday life of the Korea people; and it is more
than any other religion, for it incorporates the traditions and the spirit of
the Korean people. Because the customs of the minjung, the common folk, do not
involve a dogmatic belief system, they can¦ exist side-by-side with other
religions. It is a nameless entity, a nameless religious phenomenon without a
belief system. But it is a religion, and the religion of the Korean minjung has
sustained them through the crises and perils of this world and the other-world.
The
Shaman Rituals
Korean shamanism is a religion of wish-fulfillment and it is
practised by the deprived. Since it is practised by female mudangs and
by the women of the household, it may be called a religion of Korean women.
Women and oppressed groups in Korea participate in mudang
religion — a primitive or peripheral religion — in order to redress
37
the deprivation inherent in social peripherality.
Or perhaps, the Korean mudang religion is primitive
and peripheral because women and the oppressed minjung participate in it.
Shamanism in Korea is the least respected religion sometimes even despised. Its
practitioners are the most despised and oppressed. Korean shamanism is a
religion of the Korean minjung. The Korean minjung turn to the Korean mudang religion out of their social deprivation, poverty,
ignorance, suffering and misfortune, imposed upon them by their social fate. In
this religious practice Korean minjung can bring their han,
their troubles, their tears, and their frustrations. The Korean mudang religion is an expression of the powerlessness of
the Korean Minjung.
Besides the rather simple form of household kut for blessings or for a sick patient, there are two
kinds of full-dress mudang kut:
one for the cure of the sick and another for the dead in the family. Commonly
in these elaborate mudang kut
the mudangs follow twelve steps to complete the whole
ceremony. The steps may be divided into five parts: (a) prelude, (b)
protection, (c) exorcism, (d) blessing, and (e) postlude. No matter what the
external form or name of the mudang ritual, the basic
structure remains essentially the same. First, an invitation
to the gods to descend. The mudang dances and
sings "Chungbae-Ka", — the song of divine
invitation:
When you come, oh gods of eight provinces come
with blessings
to the sons and daughters;
around their neck
tie the iron necklace
of long life...
We pray and we pray
Please accept our small offerings
oh, fathers and gods of the mountains and rivers.
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While the mudang sings and dances
slowly to staggered beat of the drum, she goes into a trance. Eventually the
drum beat becomes faster and the mudang jumps higher
and higher. During this ecstatic dance, the spirit comes down and possesses her
body. The mudang might look like she has blurred
vision, for her eyes seem to lose focus; she looks at no one around her, but
gazes into nothingness.
The second general step is to "play" with the gods
with songs and dances. In between songs and dances the mudang
relays the message of the gods to the participants, usually the sponsoring
person or family, friends and visitors. The messages of the gods are usually
from the spirit of an ancestor summoned by the mudang
in trance. A dialogue ensues between the ancestor-spirit and the family. The mudang and the family talk back and forth about the
situation. Sometimes the deceased comes back through the mudang
to describe his or her tragic death in a traffic accident. At other times, a
deceased father may Complain about the mistreatment of
his son or daughter- in-law; or sometimes the ancestors and the spirits called
upon by the mudang will ask for more money and more
food and drink. And sometimes, the members of the sponsoring family will
negotiate with the summoned ancestors or the spirits for more blessings for the
family, in return for more offerings and money. (This is the way the mudang receives generous "tips" for the kut). At the end of this part of kut,
the mudang concludes by singing:
Thus
says the spirit
he will receive your small offerings
as a big mountain; and
he will bless you;
put aside your worries, for
he will take care of you.....
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During this dialogue the summoned ancestor or the powerful
spirit, speaking through the mudang, give directions
for the family well-being, suggests medicinal remedies for sickness, and gives
good counsel to various members of the family. Sometimes, the mudang will cry aloud, become hysterical or angry and smoke
cigarettes and drink rice wine as the summoned relative or ancestor would have
done while they were alive. At times she will joke with the members of the
sponsoring family. This is a lively session, with songs, dances, costume
changes, tears, shouts, jokes and laughter. This is essentially an
entertainment session, bringing all the family troubles and problems into the
open.
The third and final stage of the kut
may be called a postlude in which the mudang sings
and dances briefly. The songs of the final stage are usually pleasant ones which praise the
good and big-hearted spirits or the ancestors and bid farewell to them. The mudang will come out of her trance or possessed state. And
she will sing:
Please stay and play;
Play with us,
O gods and spirits of the mountains
and spirits of fathers.....
The most elaborate and lavish kind of mudang
kut is the kut for the
dead. It is sometimes called Chinogi kut, a peace-giving ceremony for the dead, or the releasing
of the soul of an ancestor. Chinogi kut is usually performed three months after the death. A kut performed immediately after the death, for the
"freeing" of the dead, is usually called "shikim
kut". The kut for the
dead is to guide the dead soul to "heaven" in peace. When it is mixed
with the Buddhist ideas, this kut is to free the
souls of ancestors imprisoned in Buddhist hell and allow them to enter heaven.
In the northern provinces of Korea, it is called a
40
"bridge" kut (dari kut), building a symbolic
bridge to enable the dead soul to cross the chasm between this worldl and the other world. In a sense this is a mudang farewell ceremony for the dead, praying for a safe
and peaceful journey to the nether world. People in this world do not want to
be bothered or harmed because they did not send" dead parents and
relatives safely and properly to the place where they belong.
When a person dies he or she dies only physically. The soul
lingers around the body "observing" what the relatives are doing. The
soul is not dead yet: that is, the soul has not departed to its proper place. A
farewell kut is needed to help the soul to go to the
place for the dead. Some. dead
are not ready to die; some die by accident and some die too young. But the
death itself is something
sad and unhappy and unpleasant. There is a lot of "han"
in a¦death. Thus, the kut
for the dead is to release the sad feeling, or han,
which the dead person has accumulated during his life time. Even if the dead
person led a happy life without any han (which is most
unlikely), the death itself is a great han for him, and the person needs
release from the han of death itself.
At a kut for the dead, the dead
soul is called back by and through the trance of a mudang.
And through the words of then tranced mudang the dead person talks about the
enacts of his han-ridden life. Through such talk and enactment, the soul
releases its han, leaves its last words in the form of
a will and blessings to the family present, and sets off peacefully on its
final journey. The whole kut alsok
asks the heavenly officials of death (Buddhist origin) to¦ lead the souls to
the proper place. When this is done, a white cotton cloth is spread out in front of the foodofferings, to symbolize the road to the gate of heaven.
From the mudang ritual for the
souls of the dead, we learn an interesting idea of "life after death".
Korean shaman rituals do not describe heaven or hell except by
41
borrowing from Buddhism and other religions. There is no good place
or bad place to go after death. But it is good to die completely. That is,
one's soul should not linger around somewhere indefinitely, neither here
nor there, to bother the living. This is the most unfortunate state a soul can
be in. One should die "completely", and go to the proper place for
the dead.
Another point in the mudang ritual
for the dead is that the soul of the dead is not necessarily rewarded or
punished by what he or she has done in this life. There is no reward and
punishment system in the mudang "theory" of
life after death. The unknown area of death is primordial chaos, from which
life probably sprang. Life after death is immortal and the human soul is
eternal, but death is morally neutral; it is not caused by any form of
"original" human sin. And the nature of life after death is not
determined by the moral life of the living. The proper death is completed by
the mudang ritual. Dying is sad and horrible;
therefore, the soul wants to linger among the living. The soul should be sent
off properly by sincere performance of a mudang
ritual. And the han-ridden soul of the dead has to be gotten rid of, so that
the living can live in peace.
Another feature of mudang
understanding of the dead soul is that there is no notion of rebirth of the
soul, as in Buddhism or Hinduism. Once one dies and moves into the eternal
primordial chaos, that is the end of it. But an
interesting irony is that the living will not let the dead stay dead. The
people call the souls of the dead back again and again, through the help of a mudang's trance, and ask for blessing. The living want the
dead to be so, but at the same time they want the souls of the dead to come
back at their convenience to cure the sick in the family and for blessing. Dead
or alive one cannot escape a tight relationship with family and community.
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Mudangs and Minjung
A kut is full of symbols, gestures
and objects, and only a few words are spoken. There may be some words of
admonition and a few words of consolation. But a kut
is essentially a religious ritual without words or linguistic explanation.
There is no sermon to speak of. There is singing, chanting, drumming and
dancing to induce the spirits to this world and to please them. The mudang provides blessings in the present visible world by
invoking the spirits of the invisible world. The mudang
invokes the spirits of family ancestors — the spirits of the past which
"reside" in the invisible world. The mudang-shaman
is an intermediary between the world of the living beings (visible) and the
world of spirits (invisible). In order to make contact with the other world,
the shaman altar is laid out with a pig's head, cooked meat, sweet rice cakes
and white rice wine. Cooked grains are used to exorcise; dried fish and live
chickens to expel evil; and balanced swords to indicate blessing. The entire kut is a drama between humans and spirits, the spirits of
the past come into the world to give blessings to the people of the present. It
is a drama of cosmic fighting between spirits. There is singing and dancing.
There are tears and weeping which soon turn to joyous laughter and happiness.
There are jokes, and consolation and harsh words, all coming from the nether
world of the past.
No religion in Korea has been more suppressed and persecuted
than the mudang religion. A nationwide and systematic
persecution was launched by the neo-Confucian government of the Yi Dynasty. The
old Confucian kingdom prohibited all mudang practices
inside the four gates of the capital. The mudangs
were pushed out of the royal palace ground and into the countryside. The king's
court ordered all mudang books to be confiscated and
burned. The mudangs were outcasts and despised as the
lowest class of people. Despite such persecution, the
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mudang religion persisted among the
minjung of Korea and even among the people of the king's palace. The colonial
government of Japan saw the mudang religion of Korea
as an embarrassment to a modernizing nation. The Japanese despised the home mudang rituals, and barred community mudang
festivals on political, rather than on religious, grounds. The Japanese wanted
to eradicate anything Korean and they did not want village people to gather
together for religious festivals for fear that the group might turn into a mob
demonstrating against the foreign rulers. In spite of such suppression, and the
persecution, the minjung clings to this most despised, primitive mudang religion.
The Korean mudang religion is the
religion of minjung's "han". A han-ridden
Korean woman comes to visit the mudang, or invites
her to her home for a short mudang ceremony. The han of a woman is revealed to the mudang,
and the mudang exorcises it for her, chasing the evil
spirit out of the household. The mudang gives the
han-ridden woman consolation and prays for blessing. For the Korean minjung,
there is no other way to cure sickness in the family which has not been cured
by the modern doctors in a Western-style hospital. A modern hospital is a
prohibitive place for the Korean minjung too expensive, too foreign and too
clean. Family misfortune and family sickness are attributed to neglect of the
spirits of the dead in the family. One's fortune is directly related to the
doings and feelings of one's dead ancestors. These worldly happenings are
directly connected with the world of the invisible spirits. The helpless
minjung of this world have no other place to turn, except to the invisible spirits
of their ancestors. After all, parents and relatives are the only reliable
support, dead or alive, in this world of political suppression and economic
exploitation.
Psychological studies of the mudang
religion of Korea have shown clearly that the mudang kut is a dramatic
44
process of counselling. Projection,
catharsis, transference, consolation, admonition, release or salvation — all
these steps and processes are present. Projection and the power of suggestion
call forth excuses or reasons for a woman's illness and misfortune. Her
misfortune is projected out of herself. It is not her fault; it is because the
dead ancestors' spirits are bothering her worldly affairs. Since her misfortune
is the result of the doings of the spirits of her dead ancestors, she can talk
about it. That is, she can talk about, her han-ridden, unfortunate life. This
desensitizes her guilt feelings through the above action by means of the mudang's trance, talking with dead parents and explaining
away her worries. And she will have a catharsis. She can cry out loud. And
through her tears, laughter, rage and expressed frustration, she will relieve
pent up emotions and han, the unexpressed and
unresolved resentment. She reveals all her han to the mudang. It is a common thing to see — during the mudang dance — a daughter-in-law beating her mother-in-law,
or the lady sponsoring the kut beating the mudang.
Evil spirits and feelings are expelled by the use of
chickens, swords and other exorcistic devices. The
transference technique of the mudang removes the
cause of evil in a human body or family and "transfers" it to other
objects. The most interesting thing in the whole process is its community
centeredness. The kut is a family affair, if not an
affair of the whole village. Particularly in the mudang
kut for the spirit of the dead, the entranced mudang will give the whole family didactic instructions —
admonishing them to mutual cooperation, filial piety, to love each other, share
the wealth generously among the relatives and so on. Fundamentally, the mudangs seem to believe that the basic cause of sickness
and misfortune in the family is a lack of giving, care and concern and love
among the members of the family. When such an admonition is given through the
mouth of the entranced
45
mudang to the whole household, it turns
out to be group therapy. The mudang kut brings about a renewed spirit of love among the members
of the family.
The mudang religion of Korea, in
spite of and because of its pervasiveness among Korean minjung, has been
criticized for its projective approach towards all human problems. All problems
are attributed to spiritual causes or forces apart from individual awareness
and responsibility. Sickness comes from the petty anger of the spirit heroes of
the past, of an ancestor who is still suffering in purgatory. It is not because
of the behavior of the living; it has nothing to do with loose living, bad
food, or poverty, or an immoral life. One has no responsibility for sickness or
misfortune, and thus does not have to take action to eradicate suffering. The mudang is asked what to do. And the entranced mudang will provide a message from the most feared ancestor
or powerful spirit.
The mudang religion does not teach
any sense of moral responsibility, or give a sense of independence to do
whatever is necessary to eradicate pain and suffering in the family and in the
society. A complete dependence on ancestral or unknown spirits of the past in
the invisible world is encouraged. The minjung is completely powerless, and the
minjung of Korea has been told repeatedly that they are incapable of doing
anything for themselves. They have no other place to turn for help and
salvation from the worldly suffering and pain of han.
The han-ridden minjung of Korea has been taught to rely on the spirits of the
family dead. Only the dead spirits of their ancestors can help them — they are
much more powerful and benevolent than the living members of the family. The
dead spirits of family ancestors are much more reliable than any powerful
government. The government has betrayed minjung many times, but their father's
spirit will not betray them. This illustrates dramatically the complete
46
powerlessness of the Korean minjung, their han, and the han-ridden life
of helplessness.
The mudang knows what to do. The mudang will not preach to them. The mudang
understands them, their han-ridden life of trouble and tribulation as powerless
and oppressed persons. She will listen to their han-ridden story of life, and
she understands, for she herself has experienced the han-ridden life of the
oppressed and despised, as a woman and as a Korean mudang.
The mudang was once sick with a mental sickness (Shinbyung). She was once called mad and spirit-possessed.
The mudang has the experience of overcoming and
transcending her illness, spiritual illness and the suffering of mental
sickness. Therefore, she understands her patient's grievances and suffering.
She will resolve their han. Shd¦
will cry with them, she will laugh with them, and she will hold his hands
tightly and give them sincere and heart warming consolation. The mudang is full of Jung (heart- warm feeling). Han can be
resolved only through the jung
of others. And when han is resolved, the feeling of jung is created between persons. A persons han being resolved, he or she can live in this terrifying
world with the warm feeling of jung in the family and
among the people of his society.
Michael Saso has this to say about
the "positive" or humanistic approach in understanding the mudang religion:
In the best sense of the kut's
social and cultural impact on the community, the Shaman rites definitely
promote a sense of peace and smooth functioning of society in the Korean
traditional mentality. A sense of historic significance, of social importance
of touching the deepest sensitivities inside the human psyche, perhaps for
years behind social sublimation, are a part of the kut
experience.
47
One
feels that the best and worst of the human condition is touched and appreciated
in the symbolic drama of the mudang.
The mudang religion may be
criticized as manipulation of the Korean minjung for submitting them to their
fate and to the powerful. But this mudang religion
has enabled the Korean minjung to survive their fate and the exploitation of
the powerful.
Another point to be mentioned with regard to the humanistic
approach to understanding the Korean mudang religion
is that while it projects problems to unknown and invisible spirits in the
other world, it does not project life itself into the other world. The Korean mudang religion is thoroughly 'this-worldly'. It affirms
the importance of the living and the life of this world. It is not pessimistic
about this world, and it does not long for the other world. It is not cynical
about this life, although it is filled with suffering, pain and han. One's lian-ridden life is
still precious, it should be cured and blessed with
health, wealth and success. The Korean mudang
religion does not question the importance of this world and this life.
Religious salvation in the mudang religion is not a
release from the life of this world. The mudang does
not pray for a better life in another world, but for this life in this world.
Earlier, I mentioned the festiveness of the mudang kut. There is plenty of
food, and there is a lot to drink. The whole process of mudang
kut is singing and dancing. It is a festival
religion. There is laughter and joy. It is a free religion. People come and go,
take a break for coffee or for lunch or dinner. This is a religion of dialogue
between the mudang and "congregation" — a
lot of give and take occurs between them. Anyone can participate fully in the mudang kut, singing and dancing
together with the mudang and the other participants.
It is in a way a liberating religion, liberating the people from the stiff
48
proceedings of a religious ritual. It gives a sense of liberation.
People loosen up and sing and dance together. This is a religion of songs and
dances. It is a very dramatic religion. Although it has no cathedral to speak
of, it is filled with color and art and symbols. It has no wealth to boast; it
has been the religion of the poor and oppressed minjung for many centuries.
The
Shamanized Christians in Korea
When Christianity came to Korea, conversion meant conversion
from the mudang practices to Christ. The mudang religion was despised by Christian missionaries and
Korean Christians. It was a "Christ against Culture" model par
excellence. It required a radical conversion — burn
all the mudang stuff — before one came to Christ.
Early mission success stories featured the new converts burning all of the
house spirits of the mudang religion. But now we ask
whether the success stories of Christian mission did not come about because of
the culture of the mudang religion in Korea. The
growth of Koreanj Christianity has a lot to do with
the shamanistic mind-set of the Korean people, despite the fact that
Christianity in Korea opposed Shamanism and set out to destroy the mudang religion. Korean Christianity was able to set deep
roots in the religiously fertile soil of the mudang
religion. And the branches, the healthy leaves and the various fruits of Korean
Christianity grew out of the soil of the Korean mudang
religion.
Korean shamanism is by no means monotheistic. It is a
religion of many gods and many spirits, as we have seen. There are debates and
disagreements among scholars on the question of whether there is a supreme
being or spirit or god in Shanamism which stands
above all other "nature" and house spirits. To the Shamanist,
perhaps, the Christian or Western missionary God is much more powerful than
Shaman gods. The Western missionary God
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will do better things for the people; this God will bring more .money and
success to your family, and this God is modern, enlightened and enlightening.
But in Shamanistic "monotheism" there is no sense of history,
prophetic function, or moral understanding of a supreme being. The Shaman
concept of Hananism (God) is ahistorical
and amoral. To this ahistorical, amoral and even
asocial notion of Hananim the Judeo-Christian God was
added, making Korean Christianity conservative, ahistorical,
amoral and asocial in many ways. The ahistorical,
asocial or apolitical parts of the Judeo-Christian deity were readily accepted
by the religious mind-set of the Korean people. But the moral and political
aspects of Judeo-Christian deity have to be understood by way of another
element of the Korean religious tradition, Confucianism.
There is almost a complete lack of a framework in Shamanism
to understand Christology as such. There is no understanding of a personal Hananim who would "send" His only begotten son to
this world. There is no concept of divine incarnation, coming to this world for
the salvation of the secular world. There is no "humanity" of God or the spirits to facilitate
understanding of the human Jesus. Jesus might have been a great mudang who performed miracles, cured the sick and cast out
evil spirits. Jesus might have been the greatest counselor mudang
for the poor and deprived. But in the shamanistic mind-set, the idea of Jesus
as the son of God is beyond comprehension.
However, the possession of a mudang
may be very directly connected with the Christian charismatic movement. The mudang's possession-sickness is directly interpreted as the
possession of the Holy Spirit. To receive the Holy Spirit in Christian terms
and be converted to the Christian religion is to be possessed by the Christian
spirit. With the power of the Christian Holy Spirit of Christianity, one can
speak in tongues and cure the sick as the mudang used
to do. To be a Christian is to be possessed
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by the Holy Spirit. The mudangs' understanding
of the world of spirits and spirit-possession, in other words, make it possible
for Koreans to understand the nature of receiving the Holy Spirit of
Christianity and its great power. Christian faith is almost exclusively
interpreted as receiving the Holy Spirit, as the mudang
falls into possession-sickness. The signs of receiving the Holy Spirit are
similar to the signs of the possessed mudangs who
cure the sick and exorcise evil spirits. But the Christian pentecostals
in Korea who claim to cure the sick and exorcise spirits disclaim the mudang origin of their practice and understanding, although
many of them come from shaman backgrounds. It is a matter of degree in
different churches in Korea: spirit-possession is transferred to faith in the
Holy Ghost. The practice, theology, and structure of spirit possession is the same in the mudang religion
and Korean Christianity. This may be the strength of Korean churches. But it is
also an extreme case of the seduction of the spirit, as Harvey Cox has seen it.
Korean Protestantism has almost been reduced to a Christianized mudang religion. That is, the form and language of the
worship service are Christian, but the content and
structure of what Korean Christians adhere to are basically the mudang religion. Although missionaries rejected shamanism
and thought it had been destroyed, Korean Christianity has become almost
completely shamanized.
When Christianity was accepted by the Korean people and the
Korean minjung, it was accepted within the mind- set of Korean shamanism, for
Korean Shamanism is the religion of the Korean people and the Korean minjung.
For the powerless minjung, the power of the spirit, more particularly the power
of the Holy Ghost, is most respected and awed. To become a Christian is to
believe in the power of the Holy Ghost which is much more powerful than their
shaman spirits. Korean Christians have made the Christian worship service more
casual and freer than traditional
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Western style worship. They sing loudly and well, like in a mudang kut. There is a sense of
joy in their service, and even the sense of festivity they experience in the mudang kut. They experience a
close sense of community, relatedness and togetherness with other persons in
the serivce, as in the case of the mudang kut. They share their
sorrows, sufferings and pains as the poor and deprived and oppressed, and they
also share a sense of liberation and salvation in the act of sharing. The mudang pathos is embodied in Christian worship and
Christian pastoral care. A young Korean Presbyterian pastor who works in a
Seoul slum church once remarked that he is not ashamed of being called a
"Christian mudang". He does not want to
seduce and manipulate religiously the spirit of the people. He acts as a
Christian mudang to take care of the "han"
of the people. He would be with the people, suffering together with them in the
midst of their everyday existence and sharing their tears and laughters. He would exorcise the evil spirits in people and
the evil spirits in the politics of society, to set free the oppressed and
deprived, the poor and the sick.