New Technologies in Korean Shamanism:
Cultural Innovation and Preservation of tradition
by Liora Sarfati (2014)
in A. Citron, S. Aronson-Lehavi, D. Zerbib (Eds.), Performance Studies in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, pp. 233-245. http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/performance-studies-in-motion
in A. Citron, S. Aronson-Lehavi, D. Zerbib (Eds.), Performance Studies in Motion: International Perspectives and Practices in the Twenty-First Century, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, pp. 233-245. http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/performance-studies-in-motion
In contemporary South Korea, the performance of shamanic rituals (kut) is an appreciated cultural trait and a valuable commodity that produces economic gain.1 Kut rituals have been documented for hundreds of years; kut are performed both privately for clients (sonnim) who wish to appease their ancestors or other spirits, and publicly as symbols of national heritage. the cost of private rituals begins at 2,000 US dollars/day.2 Since the 1980s, the South Korean government and several municipalities have begun to sponsor apt performers of this tradition by monthly stipends. this is a new form of turning kut into a high-yield asset. The fast integration of new media into the shamanic world marks the vitality of this vernacular religion and its ability to adapt to changing cultural and technological contexts. It also demonstrates that continuity in tradition does not mean maintaining the same practices that existed in prehistory, rather constant adjustment to social conditions. New media has opened innovative arenas for discourse and communication among practitioners, and between them and the rest of the world.
In the past 100 years, Korea has undergone fast modernization coupled with occupation by the Japanese (1910–45) and a harsh civil war (1950–53), which ended in division of people and land into North and South Korea. One of the outcomes of this unstable period is a robust national effort to preserve traditional performances in order to construct a unique cultural identity. In the early 1900s, imperial powers, mainly the Japanese, often stated that Korea lacked a culture of its own, and therefore does not deserve political autonomy. South Korea has been struggling against such claims already before its independence and throughout its fast transformation from an agrarian society in the 1950s to a post-industrial one.
Korean shamanism (musok) has survived this political turbulence and is still widely practiced. During kut, Korean shamans (manshin) induce themselves into altered states of consciousness through dancing and drumming. Spirits of natural elements and ancestors descend into their bodies and are available for consultation by other ritual attendants for the purposes of healing, fortune- telling and blessings. In village settings and in Seoul during the 1970s, altars were mounted at houses of clients or manshin, and audiences included mainly villagers and their acquaintances.3
Twenty-First-century post-industrial Seoul offers a variety of technologies that enhance public visibility and easy access to musok practices. Manshin and clients travel a few hours by car to distant mountain shrines that used to require long foot-pilgrimages. These shrines provide larger and more impressive offering altars than the ones depicted in photographs from the late nineteenth century, because now, with relatively small investment of time, a manshin can purchase artefacts at stores rather than labour to prepare them. Electric light and sound amplification enhance the ritual’s effect. Practitioners advertise their services on websites, and people can watch filmed rituals at home before they choose a manshin. These technological innovations suggest that the framework of musok has changed significantly in terms of choosing a personal manshin, ritual locations, ritual preparation and altar presentation. At the same time, public and scholarly discourses in Korea echo the idea that a ritual is more valuable when it follows the ‘original form’ (wonrae ŭi mosŭp). In the discourse of Korea’s cultural preservation policy, original form means that rituals ‘remained truest to the celebration’s original form, capturing the very essence of this ancient festival’.4 In the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA)’s website, Kim Chan explains that ‘The Cultural Heritage Administration strives to conserve our precious cultural heritage in its original condition to bequeath to future generations, while promoting it as a catalyst for national development’.5 Since the 1980s, this effort to produce a homogenized genuine independent local culture brought musok to the fore.
Musok is viewed as the only indigenous religion of Korea, because Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism were imported from China. Despite Confucian and Christian objections to religious aspects of musok, the beautiful rituals have attracted policy-makers who offered official recognition of kut as artistic manifestation of the ‘Korean spirit’. This essay explores the context of Korean shamanism in the early twenty-first century describing how rituals and their role in society have changed following technological innovations. My anthropological research also revealed that musok is more prevalent in Korea than most Koreans are willing to admit. The official stance of the South Korean government has been that ‘Today, only token traces of this ancient indigenous religion can be found – and then rarely – in rural areas.’6 Such statements ignore more than 200,000 active registered practitioners.7
The official recognition of musok’s value as a national heritage is a novelty because throughout Korea’s history, the educated elites have regarded manshin with disdain because of their contacts with dangerous spirits and their strange behaviour.8 However, in the 1980s, the government began to acknowledge manshin as Holders of Intangible Cultural Assets (ingan munhwaje).9 Nominated manshin are expected to perform and teach specific rituals in a prescribed manner.10 The nomination committee ignores technological innovations in contemporary musok. It determines the correspondence of a kut to ancient ‘original forms’ using only verbal and musical criteria. Analysing the evaluation criteria that the Korean government uses in order to nominate rituals demonstrates that the main characteristic sought is affinity with historic performances, judged by comparison of the performed songs to documented ritual texts from 50 to 100 years ago.11 I suggest that the Korean CHA observes technological innovation in kut with caution because if technology incorporation is considered an alteration of the ‘original form ’, then it would be difficult to find performances that deserve preservation. Modern technology has become such an integral part of contemporary musok that it would be hard to imagine a kut without it. Had the nomination committee insisted on restricting the use of technological devices in kut for the sake of ‘authenticity ’, there would have been few manshin able to practise it. However, acknowledging that technology plays a part in the ritual would require constant updating of the preserved kut protocol. Finally, CHA itself uses multiple venues of mass media in all of its efforts to disseminate Korean heritage. Therefore, it would be unimaginable for CHA to demand that manshin would not document their own rituals. Such pragmatic arguments resulted in CHA’s overlooking technological aspects throughout the designation process.
During my fieldwork, I worked closely with Dr Yang Jonsgsung, whose research focused on the designation process of Korean performers.12 He has been a member of the Korean Committee for Cultural Assets since 1998, thanks to his academic and artistic acquaintance with musok that extends over three decades. A unique feature of his knowledge is that in his early twenties, he was an apprentice of a famous manshin. Two decades later, in 2007, he was the folklore researcher in charge of planning the kut ritual that was performed as the opening event of the first Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival.
In the past 100 years, Korea has undergone fast modernization coupled with occupation by the Japanese (1910–45) and a harsh civil war (1950–53), which ended in division of people and land into North and South Korea. One of the outcomes of this unstable period is a robust national effort to preserve traditional performances in order to construct a unique cultural identity. In the early 1900s, imperial powers, mainly the Japanese, often stated that Korea lacked a culture of its own, and therefore does not deserve political autonomy. South Korea has been struggling against such claims already before its independence and throughout its fast transformation from an agrarian society in the 1950s to a post-industrial one.
Korean shamanism (musok) has survived this political turbulence and is still widely practiced. During kut, Korean shamans (manshin) induce themselves into altered states of consciousness through dancing and drumming. Spirits of natural elements and ancestors descend into their bodies and are available for consultation by other ritual attendants for the purposes of healing, fortune- telling and blessings. In village settings and in Seoul during the 1970s, altars were mounted at houses of clients or manshin, and audiences included mainly villagers and their acquaintances.3
Twenty-First-century post-industrial Seoul offers a variety of technologies that enhance public visibility and easy access to musok practices. Manshin and clients travel a few hours by car to distant mountain shrines that used to require long foot-pilgrimages. These shrines provide larger and more impressive offering altars than the ones depicted in photographs from the late nineteenth century, because now, with relatively small investment of time, a manshin can purchase artefacts at stores rather than labour to prepare them. Electric light and sound amplification enhance the ritual’s effect. Practitioners advertise their services on websites, and people can watch filmed rituals at home before they choose a manshin. These technological innovations suggest that the framework of musok has changed significantly in terms of choosing a personal manshin, ritual locations, ritual preparation and altar presentation. At the same time, public and scholarly discourses in Korea echo the idea that a ritual is more valuable when it follows the ‘original form’ (wonrae ŭi mosŭp). In the discourse of Korea’s cultural preservation policy, original form means that rituals ‘remained truest to the celebration’s original form, capturing the very essence of this ancient festival’.4 In the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA)’s website, Kim Chan explains that ‘The Cultural Heritage Administration strives to conserve our precious cultural heritage in its original condition to bequeath to future generations, while promoting it as a catalyst for national development’.5 Since the 1980s, this effort to produce a homogenized genuine independent local culture brought musok to the fore.
Musok is viewed as the only indigenous religion of Korea, because Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism were imported from China. Despite Confucian and Christian objections to religious aspects of musok, the beautiful rituals have attracted policy-makers who offered official recognition of kut as artistic manifestation of the ‘Korean spirit’. This essay explores the context of Korean shamanism in the early twenty-first century describing how rituals and their role in society have changed following technological innovations. My anthropological research also revealed that musok is more prevalent in Korea than most Koreans are willing to admit. The official stance of the South Korean government has been that ‘Today, only token traces of this ancient indigenous religion can be found – and then rarely – in rural areas.’6 Such statements ignore more than 200,000 active registered practitioners.7
The official recognition of musok’s value as a national heritage is a novelty because throughout Korea’s history, the educated elites have regarded manshin with disdain because of their contacts with dangerous spirits and their strange behaviour.8 However, in the 1980s, the government began to acknowledge manshin as Holders of Intangible Cultural Assets (ingan munhwaje).9 Nominated manshin are expected to perform and teach specific rituals in a prescribed manner.10 The nomination committee ignores technological innovations in contemporary musok. It determines the correspondence of a kut to ancient ‘original forms’ using only verbal and musical criteria. Analysing the evaluation criteria that the Korean government uses in order to nominate rituals demonstrates that the main characteristic sought is affinity with historic performances, judged by comparison of the performed songs to documented ritual texts from 50 to 100 years ago.11 I suggest that the Korean CHA observes technological innovation in kut with caution because if technology incorporation is considered an alteration of the ‘original form ’, then it would be difficult to find performances that deserve preservation. Modern technology has become such an integral part of contemporary musok that it would be hard to imagine a kut without it. Had the nomination committee insisted on restricting the use of technological devices in kut for the sake of ‘authenticity ’, there would have been few manshin able to practise it. However, acknowledging that technology plays a part in the ritual would require constant updating of the preserved kut protocol. Finally, CHA itself uses multiple venues of mass media in all of its efforts to disseminate Korean heritage. Therefore, it would be unimaginable for CHA to demand that manshin would not document their own rituals. Such pragmatic arguments resulted in CHA’s overlooking technological aspects throughout the designation process.
During my fieldwork, I worked closely with Dr Yang Jonsgsung, whose research focused on the designation process of Korean performers.12 He has been a member of the Korean Committee for Cultural Assets since 1998, thanks to his academic and artistic acquaintance with musok that extends over three decades. A unique feature of his knowledge is that in his early twenties, he was an apprentice of a famous manshin. Two decades later, in 2007, he was the folklore researcher in charge of planning the kut ritual that was performed as the opening event of the first Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival.
New Technologies in the Shamanic Artefact Market
On a rainy evening in September 2007, Manshin Sǒ Kyǒng-uk performed at the World Cup Stadium Park. Near a lovely pond, altars for a staged kut were constructed and decorated. The ritual served as the opening performance of the first Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival, which has been repeated yearly, enabling wide public exposure to various traditional performances including kut. The rainy weather complicated mounting altars and background screens. Manshin Sǒ often performs in open air events and has therefore created unique, synthetic, factory-made ritual props that can endure stormy weather. Instead of displaying delicate gods’ paintings on paper, as manshin have apparently been doing for generations, she took photographs of some fine examples of this art at her home shrine, and used those images to create polyester banners. The banners can be rolled into plastic water-proof tubes. In harnessing technology to improve her paraphernalia, the manshin deviates from norms of producing musok goods by hand from natural materials. Many manshin in Seoul maintain their habit of hanging paper paintings even in wet weather, thinking that these artefacts signify the traditional value of the ritual. The academic discourse on ritual preservation that is practised by scholars who choose rituals for nomination as assets has thus increased the value of being true to ‘original form’. However, the vagueness of this term allows for different interpretations of its meaning and application. Interestingly, practitioners put much effort in material aspects that are hardly commented upon by scholars, who in turn avoid designing evaluation criteria for this aspect of the ritual.
Most manshin buy ritual artefacts from specialized stores that keep a constant inventory of drums, costumes, paper flowers, paintings and statues of gods. The Korean government did not nominate any musok craft artist as a Cultural Asset.13 Such designation would have entailed a new evaluation process and budget. With no official supervision, musok artists and art dealers are free to alternate the material aspects of kut to suit clients’ tastes and price ranges. Some shop owners have become so knowledgeable in ritual production that manshin ask for their advice when planning a kut. A common practice in the busy lifestyle of famous manshin is to send a driver to pick up ritual props trusting that the shop owner’s choice fits the needs of both the manshin and the gods. Old manshin have told me how in the past, the need for a new ritual prop was initiated by dreams in which gods and spirits asked them to prepare specific items. Nowadays, while associating with friends and shop owners, manshin are often tempted to buy various items on display. Shop owners intentionally exhibit beautiful kut costumes and decorations in order to entice manshin to purchase them.14 This alters the ritual both in the extent of personal involvement of manshin in the creation of ritual props, and in aspects of communication with the supernatural. Another outcome of commodification is that manshin have fewer opportunities for socializing within the performance team.
Manshin often gather with their assistants in the days before rituals in order to prepare together a pile of paper decorations. In such sessions of work that I observed, a sense of feminine communities was created. In urban settings, there are few other occasions for the whole team to get together outside rituals. Ready-made props result in loss of important opportunities for transmission of tradition and for group solidarity construction.
The commercialization of ritual props has influenced also the cosmology of musok because manshin show interest in costumes that attract clients’ appreciation rather than centring their choice on the identity of the worshipped supernatural entity. A beautiful costume presented in a store downtown might result in the incorporation of a less appreciated spirit into a kut, as happens with the nymph spirit (Sǒnnyǒ). That outfit was rarely purchased by newly initiated manshin in the past, but its bright pink sateen together with a decorated crown and sparkly hairpin have made it so popular that it is sold just as much as outfits for more powerful gods.15
Ordering musok costumes from famous wedding-dress designers or from specialized artists results in a homogenization of gods’ attires, which was not the case before commercialized musok artefacts took root. Manshin Kim Nam-sun states that she keeps her tradition of designing costumes individually, and indeed I have not seen similar ones in other practitioners’ collections.16 Designs appear while she dreams, and accordingly, she explains to the dressmaker how to draw them. Using the services of well-known costume designers rather than taking part in practices of commercial mass production asserts the manshin’s status as a successful professional. Popular new designs are later copied and mass manufactured. Mrs Lee, a musok goods shop owner in downtown Seoul, showed me several academic books that she consults while preparing kut outfits. I have seen her offer several design options to manshin clients while presenting drawings of historic attires and musok regalia from those books as proofs to her abundant knowledge and cultural expertise. The use of academic research in material religious context blurs the boundaries between the intended academic audience and artefact producers. Academic knowledge is, in this manner, disseminated through the print industry and applied to the religious realms of musok, reducing the need of direct inspiration from gods and spirits to earn the necessary knowledge about appropriate costume preparation. Filmed rituals also avail manshin with images of various costumes that other manshin use. The commodification of musok artefacts reduced the need of personal apprenticeship for manshin and musok artefact producers, and increased reliance on knowledge mediation by factory-produced images and texts.
During the first Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival in 2007, Dr Yang introduced the ritual as an ancient practice, ignoring completely the production process of the artefacts. As a senior curator of the National Folk Museum and an avid collector of musok art, Dr Yang knew that many artefacts were mass manufactured or prepared with new synthetic materials, but he did not mind this, as long as the ceremonial words matched officially legitimized ancient texts. The contradiction between the ritual’s reliance on technological innovations and its declaration as ancient was also not perceived by the manshin and her audience, who were concerned mainly with the ritual’s efficacy.
Most manshin buy ritual artefacts from specialized stores that keep a constant inventory of drums, costumes, paper flowers, paintings and statues of gods. The Korean government did not nominate any musok craft artist as a Cultural Asset.13 Such designation would have entailed a new evaluation process and budget. With no official supervision, musok artists and art dealers are free to alternate the material aspects of kut to suit clients’ tastes and price ranges. Some shop owners have become so knowledgeable in ritual production that manshin ask for their advice when planning a kut. A common practice in the busy lifestyle of famous manshin is to send a driver to pick up ritual props trusting that the shop owner’s choice fits the needs of both the manshin and the gods. Old manshin have told me how in the past, the need for a new ritual prop was initiated by dreams in which gods and spirits asked them to prepare specific items. Nowadays, while associating with friends and shop owners, manshin are often tempted to buy various items on display. Shop owners intentionally exhibit beautiful kut costumes and decorations in order to entice manshin to purchase them.14 This alters the ritual both in the extent of personal involvement of manshin in the creation of ritual props, and in aspects of communication with the supernatural. Another outcome of commodification is that manshin have fewer opportunities for socializing within the performance team.
Manshin often gather with their assistants in the days before rituals in order to prepare together a pile of paper decorations. In such sessions of work that I observed, a sense of feminine communities was created. In urban settings, there are few other occasions for the whole team to get together outside rituals. Ready-made props result in loss of important opportunities for transmission of tradition and for group solidarity construction.
The commercialization of ritual props has influenced also the cosmology of musok because manshin show interest in costumes that attract clients’ appreciation rather than centring their choice on the identity of the worshipped supernatural entity. A beautiful costume presented in a store downtown might result in the incorporation of a less appreciated spirit into a kut, as happens with the nymph spirit (Sǒnnyǒ). That outfit was rarely purchased by newly initiated manshin in the past, but its bright pink sateen together with a decorated crown and sparkly hairpin have made it so popular that it is sold just as much as outfits for more powerful gods.15
Ordering musok costumes from famous wedding-dress designers or from specialized artists results in a homogenization of gods’ attires, which was not the case before commercialized musok artefacts took root. Manshin Kim Nam-sun states that she keeps her tradition of designing costumes individually, and indeed I have not seen similar ones in other practitioners’ collections.16 Designs appear while she dreams, and accordingly, she explains to the dressmaker how to draw them. Using the services of well-known costume designers rather than taking part in practices of commercial mass production asserts the manshin’s status as a successful professional. Popular new designs are later copied and mass manufactured. Mrs Lee, a musok goods shop owner in downtown Seoul, showed me several academic books that she consults while preparing kut outfits. I have seen her offer several design options to manshin clients while presenting drawings of historic attires and musok regalia from those books as proofs to her abundant knowledge and cultural expertise. The use of academic research in material religious context blurs the boundaries between the intended academic audience and artefact producers. Academic knowledge is, in this manner, disseminated through the print industry and applied to the religious realms of musok, reducing the need of direct inspiration from gods and spirits to earn the necessary knowledge about appropriate costume preparation. Filmed rituals also avail manshin with images of various costumes that other manshin use. The commodification of musok artefacts reduced the need of personal apprenticeship for manshin and musok artefact producers, and increased reliance on knowledge mediation by factory-produced images and texts.
During the first Korea Traditional Performing Arts Festival in 2007, Dr Yang introduced the ritual as an ancient practice, ignoring completely the production process of the artefacts. As a senior curator of the National Folk Museum and an avid collector of musok art, Dr Yang knew that many artefacts were mass manufactured or prepared with new synthetic materials, but he did not mind this, as long as the ceremonial words matched officially legitimized ancient texts. The contradiction between the ritual’s reliance on technological innovations and its declaration as ancient was also not perceived by the manshin and her audience, who were concerned mainly with the ritual’s efficacy.
New Media Changes Musok Knowledge Dissemination
New media has become a lively arena for musok practitioners to communicate, advertise services and learn of upcoming staged rituals. Films and other digital documentations also serve as a means for learning about musok. Interestingly, while many Korean scholars are photographed and quoted on practitioners’ websites, discourse of new media usage in musok is absent from most academic publications by Korean scholars. The effort and time that is dedicated to filming and promoting the broadcasting of kut rituals on television and internet venues marks a shift of practice from word-of-mouth self-promotion and knowledge acquisition to media-mediated activities.
Professional manshin organizations established internet portals such as www. kyungsin.co.kr in the 1990s, when internet usage in South Korea expanded.17
Professional manshin organizations established internet portals such as www. kyungsin.co.kr in the 1990s, when internet usage in South Korea expanded.17
Figure 16 Manshin Kim Mi-ja performing in front of cameramen at a yearly ritual on Bonghwa Mountain. Photo by Liora Sarfati.
The portal www.neomudang.com offers an interactive map where one can click on a region of Korea and find a list of manshin who practise there along with their specialties. Service providers such as musok goods stores and shrines for rent use such portals for advertising. The result of online flows of knowledge has been increased numbers of manshin who practise a hybridized style of musok, overlooking the strict regional classification that Korean scholars regard as very important.
A common product of online musok is manshin’s personal website – hompeiji – in which visitors can learn basic facts about their line of religious practice, read their biography and communicate with them. Manshin Seo Kyeong-uk hired a professional IT specialist in the mid-1990s to construct her website www.mudang.co.kr. She updates her website regularly with photos and information of upcoming performances. She also replies to readers’ queries, and has included part of her introduction in English translation. She introduces herself with photos that can be interpreted as traditional dance. Those images convey elegance and grace without depicting intense ritual sequences that might be repulsive to some viewers, such as animal sacrifice or lewd humour. In other words, the website does not expose visitors to visuals that might cause uneasiness (especially people who have not been to such rituals), by limiting its scope to activities that do not contradict perspectives of modernity and progress. This is an intentional choice of the manshin in hope to diversify the clientele.
Manshin Lee Hae-gyǒng, the main protagonist of the documentary film Between, was interviewed in many newspapers, and has maintained a personal blog, www.manshin.co.kr since 2006.18 Such success in the media has often been criticized by colleagues and scholars as a sign for negligence of real healing in order to become a ‘superstar shaman’.19 However, as expected from a sincere spiritual healer, the daily practice of Manshin Lee consists mainly of treating the problems of her clients through supernatural communication.
Most manshin homepeiji are written solely in Korean. However, several manshin have extended their practice globally. Manshin Shin Myǒng-gi had a full version of her website, www.chuonbokhwa.com, in Japanese for several years as she used to also conduct services in Japan. Manshin Hi-ha Park, a UCLA graduate who has been initiated as a manshin in Korea, has been living in Germany for many years. Her website, www.hiahpark.com, which she calls Global Shamanic Healing, is in English and in German because she caters mostly to European clientele. On her website, Manshin Park advertises various workshops and performances that are far from being copies of ancient kut. Her terminology includes new age ideas that are absent from the Korean discourse of musok, such as unity of body and soul.20 Her musok practice marks a new intercultural communication through rituals that used to be more locally oriented.
A common product of online musok is manshin’s personal website – hompeiji – in which visitors can learn basic facts about their line of religious practice, read their biography and communicate with them. Manshin Seo Kyeong-uk hired a professional IT specialist in the mid-1990s to construct her website www.mudang.co.kr. She updates her website regularly with photos and information of upcoming performances. She also replies to readers’ queries, and has included part of her introduction in English translation. She introduces herself with photos that can be interpreted as traditional dance. Those images convey elegance and grace without depicting intense ritual sequences that might be repulsive to some viewers, such as animal sacrifice or lewd humour. In other words, the website does not expose visitors to visuals that might cause uneasiness (especially people who have not been to such rituals), by limiting its scope to activities that do not contradict perspectives of modernity and progress. This is an intentional choice of the manshin in hope to diversify the clientele.
Manshin Lee Hae-gyǒng, the main protagonist of the documentary film Between, was interviewed in many newspapers, and has maintained a personal blog, www.manshin.co.kr since 2006.18 Such success in the media has often been criticized by colleagues and scholars as a sign for negligence of real healing in order to become a ‘superstar shaman’.19 However, as expected from a sincere spiritual healer, the daily practice of Manshin Lee consists mainly of treating the problems of her clients through supernatural communication.
Most manshin homepeiji are written solely in Korean. However, several manshin have extended their practice globally. Manshin Shin Myǒng-gi had a full version of her website, www.chuonbokhwa.com, in Japanese for several years as she used to also conduct services in Japan. Manshin Hi-ha Park, a UCLA graduate who has been initiated as a manshin in Korea, has been living in Germany for many years. Her website, www.hiahpark.com, which she calls Global Shamanic Healing, is in English and in German because she caters mostly to European clientele. On her website, Manshin Park advertises various workshops and performances that are far from being copies of ancient kut. Her terminology includes new age ideas that are absent from the Korean discourse of musok, such as unity of body and soul.20 Her musok practice marks a new intercultural communication through rituals that used to be more locally oriented.
Documentation and Evaluation of a Kut Ritual
In the spring of 2007, Manshin Kim Nam-sun was getting ready to commence a kut in a rented shrine near Seoul’s downtown. The ritual was documented by Dr Yang. His positive impression of that performance contributed to Kim’s nomination as Regional Intangible Cultural Asset Holder. Manshin Kim was excited about obtaining the title and therefore initiated a special ritual for this occasion. She proposed to her acquaintances to sponsor a kut for a minimal fee in order to allow Dr Yang to film and interrupt it freely for better documentation.
Before the ritual began, Manshin Kim attached a portable wireless microphone to her chest and handed a printed booklet to Dr Yang, telling him that it is a transcription by Professor Kim Tae-gon of the same ritual performed a few decades earlier by her shinomoni (spirit-mother). In Korean society, a neo-Confucian tradition of not doubting superiors results in a tendency to consider findings of previous scholars as objective truths. Well aware of this approach, Manshin Kim obtained and learned the booklet that she handed to Dr Yang. The performer and the evaluator followed the rules of the designation game. She performed a close version of the old transcription, and he in return could convincingly confirm that it is true to the ‘original form’. No mention of the technological aspects of the performance appeared in the recommendation letter.
In the rented shrine, Manshin Kim began to sing and turn around repeatedly when the photographer noticed that the wireless microphone faltered. Dr Yang strode to the centre of the room and touched her wrist to suggest that she stops. A bit surprised, she stood still and allowed the two men to arrange the microphone again and test it before resuming her possession-trance dance. In an ordinary kut, a performer would not pause while becoming entranced, but in this new context, she was attentive to the scholars’ needs. Furthermore, her ability to control herself during possession signified high level of professional skills and strengthened her plea to be nominated Ritual Holder. The assistants were clearly annoyed at the interference, but nobody protested. They all understood the implications of the event on their professional futures and accepted the need of technology-aided documentation. In stepping into the ritual arena, Dr Yang became an integral part of the performance. The evaluator who used electronic recording intervened in the ritual process and determined its pace.
Before the ritual began, Manshin Kim attached a portable wireless microphone to her chest and handed a printed booklet to Dr Yang, telling him that it is a transcription by Professor Kim Tae-gon of the same ritual performed a few decades earlier by her shinomoni (spirit-mother). In Korean society, a neo-Confucian tradition of not doubting superiors results in a tendency to consider findings of previous scholars as objective truths. Well aware of this approach, Manshin Kim obtained and learned the booklet that she handed to Dr Yang. The performer and the evaluator followed the rules of the designation game. She performed a close version of the old transcription, and he in return could convincingly confirm that it is true to the ‘original form’. No mention of the technological aspects of the performance appeared in the recommendation letter.
In the rented shrine, Manshin Kim began to sing and turn around repeatedly when the photographer noticed that the wireless microphone faltered. Dr Yang strode to the centre of the room and touched her wrist to suggest that she stops. A bit surprised, she stood still and allowed the two men to arrange the microphone again and test it before resuming her possession-trance dance. In an ordinary kut, a performer would not pause while becoming entranced, but in this new context, she was attentive to the scholars’ needs. Furthermore, her ability to control herself during possession signified high level of professional skills and strengthened her plea to be nominated Ritual Holder. The assistants were clearly annoyed at the interference, but nobody protested. They all understood the implications of the event on their professional futures and accepted the need of technology-aided documentation. In stepping into the ritual arena, Dr Yang became an integral part of the performance. The evaluator who used electronic recording intervened in the ritual process and determined its pace.
Musok as an Emblem of the ‘Korean Spirit’
The need to choose preservation nominees among more than a hundred thousand practising manshin produced a complex designation process. A number of Korean folklore scholars, such as Dr Yang, are hired to evaluate various kut, and their conclusions are handed to a special committee to decide which rituals are the most valuable.21 When people become clients of manshin, they search for ritual efficacy, its power to heal them or solve their personal problems. When folklore scholars look for kut to designate, they search for well-established practitioners whose work has already been appreciated by many clients. Within the relevant candidates, scholars then evaluate rituals by measuring their affinity with what is deemed to be the ritual’s original form.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, musok was documented mainly by Japanese ethnographers and by Christian missionaries.22 The Japanese used musok to prove that Koreans and Japanese shared the same ancient culture, and through this common origins theory, they justified taking over Korea. Christian missionaries utilized their knowledge of folk religion to conceptualize Christianity in an appealing manner.23 Pre-modern Korean scholars did not describe musok because it was deemed a lowly tradition. However, when the Japanese used Korea’s vernacular culture for promoting their imperial goals, Korean scholars began to show interest in these folk beliefs. Local folklorists such as Ch’oe Nam-sŏn and Yim Suk-Jay discussed and documented kut in the early twentieth century and their valuable work became the oldest database for comparing contemporary rituals.24
Evaluating contemporary rituals through comparison with historic kut is problematic for various reasons. A lack of filming devices in the past produced mainly transcriptions of ritual songs with little attention to other performative aspects. The transmission of tradition is perceived in this comparison as an intergenerational imitation with no notice of manshin’s agency and creativity in adapting text to context and altering ritual form and meaning according to their personal preferences. Events that precede and follow the actual ritual, such as altar construction, have not been studied. Cultural performances are sponsored through the Cultural Heritage Protection Act only if they are proven to be ‘carrying great historic, artistic or academic values’.25 This statement demonstrates how the evaluation criteria are based on analytic categories formulated by scholars, and not by performers and patrons who would emphasize the efficacy which is based on religious belief.
Designating kut as Important Intangible Cultural Heritage encapsulates a paradox because the wish to petrify rituals in order to connect the present with pre-modern Korean culture requires detaching the performance from its religious intention. Tradition is ever-changing, as shown in various case studies.26 The Korean culture preservation policy seeks to establish a coherent corpus of officially recognized performances as a canonical representation of ‘the Korean Spirit’. Most preserved kut are a living tradition in the performers’ repertoire. However, contemporary kut are not always comparable to the ones archived by a previous scholar. Officially scripted rituals often prevent manshin from adapting the performance to specific needs of clients and are therefore performed for a general cause such as ‘blessing the audience’ or ‘the wellbeing of the nation’. These kut are not perceived as fake or secular re-performances because blessing the audience and the nation is regarded a worthy purpose. As they follow the ritual’s script, manshin feel comfortable to use various technologies such as sound amplification, lighting and impressive, commercially manufactured offerings to ensure the ritual’s success that is measured in this case not by its efficacy but by achieving audience solidarity and enjoyment.
This examination of affinity with an ‘original form’ resembles discourses of authenticity. A survey of authenticity-related debates conducted by Regina Bendix demonstrated that it has been embedded in most academic cultural analysis from the initiation of folklore studies about 200 years ago.27 While terminology such as authentic shamanic rituals has been utilized by many scholars of musok, it must be treated with prudence.28 Performance authenticity is judged by different criteria depending on context and participants, thus producing contradictory meanings and usage.29 Paradoxes and conflicts arise when some members of a community look for performers’ sincerity and ritual efficacy while others are concerned with ‘historic accuracy’.30 Rituals and performances that have no antecedents in history have often been called invented tradition, folklorism or fakelore.31 These labels suggest that some traditions are genuine and properly performed, while others are fake or contemporary inventions that have little value. Many of the examples set in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s book Invented Tradition analyse technological innovation as contradictory to performance authenticity. However, invented tradition as a means for value judgement has been challenged by many.32 Contemporary musok events in Korea might be labelled by some critics with the above quoted derogative terms, given all the technological innovations. Even musok practices that could be labelled genuine ‘old ways’ (following a continuous line of transmission), according to Hobsbawm’s terminology, have often been restructured to it new contexts and interests. An undisrupted line of transmission does not necessarily mean that contemporary performers are mere bearers of ancient traditions. Similar to Sponsler’s observation regarding European rituals, kut are produced in our times after ‘creative shaping to meet new ends’.33
The ‘original forms’ sought by Korean scholars are established on a shaky basis even in their own terms because the presumed originality of the earlier event to which they compare contemporary kut cannot be determined using the same standards. The documented performance eventually lacks a comparable antecedent. The scholars are let with the undisputable judgement of an earlier scholar as the sole originality determinant. The documentation process of an earlier scholar can be imagined as a quite arduous task as he writes down full transcription of ritual texts and a bit about the ritual’s sequence and segments. The scholar becomes a mediator between the past performance and contemporary audiences that might include manshin and other scholars. Richard Bauman theorizes that mediation is an indexical relationship between a sequence of dialogues. In our case, the source dialogue is transcription of a historic kut, and the target dialogue is contemporary ritual. The source dialogue, which is an artefact of scholarship, reaches ahead to and has formative effect on the target dialogue, which is a shamanic performance.34 The target dialogue reaches back and has a formative efect on the source dialogue because ‘the source utterance anticipates repetition’ and therefore ‘the shaping of the source utterance prepares it for this decontextualization and recontextualization’.35 Having a future repetition of the ritual in mind probably resulted in the scholar’s inserting some intentional and unintentional deviations from the actual occurrence.
Let us imagine that several manshin participating in kut began arguing about the proper dance sequence. The early scholar would have probably excluded this dispute from the transcription and taken side with the prevailing party by recording only their version. Richard Schechner showed how in the documentary film Altar of Fire in 1976, disagreements between different ritual organizers were perceived by scholars and film-makers as irrelevant to the documentary because they disrupted the expected flow of the performance.36 Dynamic attitudes to cultural research view such discrepancies and disagreements as opportunities to expose unspoken hierarchies and debates. However, the general tendency in early-modern Korea was to produce clear and consistent culture descriptions that seemed objective. Early scholars ignored not only moments of fuzziness within the research community, but also their own role in the event, as did the filming crew of Altar of Fire. Consequently, valuable descriptions of historic kut are lacking in context. Such stripped documentation processes used to be perceived as prerequisite for texts to outlive their time. Without filtering the complex and somewhat chaotic kut atmosphere, it would have been impossible to prepare a coherent ritual transcription that could serve future re-enactments.
Contemporary Korean scholars are expected to use these stripped descriptions when writing recommendations for designating rituals as National Assets. They are forced to speculate on aspects that are lacking in the historic document, such as altar settings and dance movements. As explained above, it is impossible to grasp a full effect of performance including its non-verbal aspects when it is transferred into an archived textual representation.37 In order to enrich the documentation, designated rituals are photographed and filmed, acknowledging more performative aspects, but few of the contextual elements. Such documentation is prepared mainly in order ‘to ensure that if a current heritage holder dies without leaving a successor . . . people will be able to revive their heritage by using these resources as points of reference’.38 In spite of existing video documentation, the official demand of designated manshin remains to re-perform the ritual, following closely the texts and sequences that have been described in words by the evaluator, while very little attention is dedicated to the mise-en-scène.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, musok was documented mainly by Japanese ethnographers and by Christian missionaries.22 The Japanese used musok to prove that Koreans and Japanese shared the same ancient culture, and through this common origins theory, they justified taking over Korea. Christian missionaries utilized their knowledge of folk religion to conceptualize Christianity in an appealing manner.23 Pre-modern Korean scholars did not describe musok because it was deemed a lowly tradition. However, when the Japanese used Korea’s vernacular culture for promoting their imperial goals, Korean scholars began to show interest in these folk beliefs. Local folklorists such as Ch’oe Nam-sŏn and Yim Suk-Jay discussed and documented kut in the early twentieth century and their valuable work became the oldest database for comparing contemporary rituals.24
Evaluating contemporary rituals through comparison with historic kut is problematic for various reasons. A lack of filming devices in the past produced mainly transcriptions of ritual songs with little attention to other performative aspects. The transmission of tradition is perceived in this comparison as an intergenerational imitation with no notice of manshin’s agency and creativity in adapting text to context and altering ritual form and meaning according to their personal preferences. Events that precede and follow the actual ritual, such as altar construction, have not been studied. Cultural performances are sponsored through the Cultural Heritage Protection Act only if they are proven to be ‘carrying great historic, artistic or academic values’.25 This statement demonstrates how the evaluation criteria are based on analytic categories formulated by scholars, and not by performers and patrons who would emphasize the efficacy which is based on religious belief.
Designating kut as Important Intangible Cultural Heritage encapsulates a paradox because the wish to petrify rituals in order to connect the present with pre-modern Korean culture requires detaching the performance from its religious intention. Tradition is ever-changing, as shown in various case studies.26 The Korean culture preservation policy seeks to establish a coherent corpus of officially recognized performances as a canonical representation of ‘the Korean Spirit’. Most preserved kut are a living tradition in the performers’ repertoire. However, contemporary kut are not always comparable to the ones archived by a previous scholar. Officially scripted rituals often prevent manshin from adapting the performance to specific needs of clients and are therefore performed for a general cause such as ‘blessing the audience’ or ‘the wellbeing of the nation’. These kut are not perceived as fake or secular re-performances because blessing the audience and the nation is regarded a worthy purpose. As they follow the ritual’s script, manshin feel comfortable to use various technologies such as sound amplification, lighting and impressive, commercially manufactured offerings to ensure the ritual’s success that is measured in this case not by its efficacy but by achieving audience solidarity and enjoyment.
This examination of affinity with an ‘original form’ resembles discourses of authenticity. A survey of authenticity-related debates conducted by Regina Bendix demonstrated that it has been embedded in most academic cultural analysis from the initiation of folklore studies about 200 years ago.27 While terminology such as authentic shamanic rituals has been utilized by many scholars of musok, it must be treated with prudence.28 Performance authenticity is judged by different criteria depending on context and participants, thus producing contradictory meanings and usage.29 Paradoxes and conflicts arise when some members of a community look for performers’ sincerity and ritual efficacy while others are concerned with ‘historic accuracy’.30 Rituals and performances that have no antecedents in history have often been called invented tradition, folklorism or fakelore.31 These labels suggest that some traditions are genuine and properly performed, while others are fake or contemporary inventions that have little value. Many of the examples set in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s book Invented Tradition analyse technological innovation as contradictory to performance authenticity. However, invented tradition as a means for value judgement has been challenged by many.32 Contemporary musok events in Korea might be labelled by some critics with the above quoted derogative terms, given all the technological innovations. Even musok practices that could be labelled genuine ‘old ways’ (following a continuous line of transmission), according to Hobsbawm’s terminology, have often been restructured to it new contexts and interests. An undisrupted line of transmission does not necessarily mean that contemporary performers are mere bearers of ancient traditions. Similar to Sponsler’s observation regarding European rituals, kut are produced in our times after ‘creative shaping to meet new ends’.33
The ‘original forms’ sought by Korean scholars are established on a shaky basis even in their own terms because the presumed originality of the earlier event to which they compare contemporary kut cannot be determined using the same standards. The documented performance eventually lacks a comparable antecedent. The scholars are let with the undisputable judgement of an earlier scholar as the sole originality determinant. The documentation process of an earlier scholar can be imagined as a quite arduous task as he writes down full transcription of ritual texts and a bit about the ritual’s sequence and segments. The scholar becomes a mediator between the past performance and contemporary audiences that might include manshin and other scholars. Richard Bauman theorizes that mediation is an indexical relationship between a sequence of dialogues. In our case, the source dialogue is transcription of a historic kut, and the target dialogue is contemporary ritual. The source dialogue, which is an artefact of scholarship, reaches ahead to and has formative effect on the target dialogue, which is a shamanic performance.34 The target dialogue reaches back and has a formative efect on the source dialogue because ‘the source utterance anticipates repetition’ and therefore ‘the shaping of the source utterance prepares it for this decontextualization and recontextualization’.35 Having a future repetition of the ritual in mind probably resulted in the scholar’s inserting some intentional and unintentional deviations from the actual occurrence.
Let us imagine that several manshin participating in kut began arguing about the proper dance sequence. The early scholar would have probably excluded this dispute from the transcription and taken side with the prevailing party by recording only their version. Richard Schechner showed how in the documentary film Altar of Fire in 1976, disagreements between different ritual organizers were perceived by scholars and film-makers as irrelevant to the documentary because they disrupted the expected flow of the performance.36 Dynamic attitudes to cultural research view such discrepancies and disagreements as opportunities to expose unspoken hierarchies and debates. However, the general tendency in early-modern Korea was to produce clear and consistent culture descriptions that seemed objective. Early scholars ignored not only moments of fuzziness within the research community, but also their own role in the event, as did the filming crew of Altar of Fire. Consequently, valuable descriptions of historic kut are lacking in context. Such stripped documentation processes used to be perceived as prerequisite for texts to outlive their time. Without filtering the complex and somewhat chaotic kut atmosphere, it would have been impossible to prepare a coherent ritual transcription that could serve future re-enactments.
Contemporary Korean scholars are expected to use these stripped descriptions when writing recommendations for designating rituals as National Assets. They are forced to speculate on aspects that are lacking in the historic document, such as altar settings and dance movements. As explained above, it is impossible to grasp a full effect of performance including its non-verbal aspects when it is transferred into an archived textual representation.37 In order to enrich the documentation, designated rituals are photographed and filmed, acknowledging more performative aspects, but few of the contextual elements. Such documentation is prepared mainly in order ‘to ensure that if a current heritage holder dies without leaving a successor . . . people will be able to revive their heritage by using these resources as points of reference’.38 In spite of existing video documentation, the official demand of designated manshin remains to re-perform the ritual, following closely the texts and sequences that have been described in words by the evaluator, while very little attention is dedicated to the mise-en-scène.
Conclusion
In contemporary South Korea, musok has been appreciated and preserved as an ancient indigenous tradition. The South Korean government understands the importance of indigenous culture to the nation-building process and funds selected manshin. Korean scholars participate in this enterprise by evaluating kut rituals for the government. During the process of nomination as National Cultural Assets, manshin attest that they are mediating a genuine tradition by striving to follow texts that transcribe historic kut rituals, rather than emphasizing their religious sincerity.
As members of a highly commercialized consumer society, contemporary manshin in South Korea enjoy the technological enrichment of their tradition. They buy factory-made props and offerings, including some made of durable synthetic materials. Rituals’ filming and recording are used for self-promotion, are sold in musok goods stores as ritual learning aids, and are broadcast on television and through the internet. Such innovations in musok are not perceived by Korean manshin and scholars as a signifier of tradition alteration because the evaluation of kut is based on assessing ‘original form’ by verbal measures. Material, performative and communicative aspects of kut beyond the ritual itself are absent from the evaluation criteria. The examples set in this essay demonstrate how technology is an integral part of culture and how Korean scholars and government agencies ignore the effect of technology on musok in order to maintain their stance of preserving ‘original rituals’ while at the same time using technology for the dissemination of ritual documentation in their effort to promote a unique national image.
As members of a highly commercialized consumer society, contemporary manshin in South Korea enjoy the technological enrichment of their tradition. They buy factory-made props and offerings, including some made of durable synthetic materials. Rituals’ filming and recording are used for self-promotion, are sold in musok goods stores as ritual learning aids, and are broadcast on television and through the internet. Such innovations in musok are not perceived by Korean manshin and scholars as a signifier of tradition alteration because the evaluation of kut is based on assessing ‘original form’ by verbal measures. Material, performative and communicative aspects of kut beyond the ritual itself are absent from the evaluation criteria. The examples set in this essay demonstrate how technology is an integral part of culture and how Korean scholars and government agencies ignore the effect of technology on musok in order to maintain their stance of preserving ‘original rituals’ while at the same time using technology for the dissemination of ritual documentation in their effort to promote a unique national image.
