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Wood Imps, Ghosts, and Other Noxious Influences: The Ideology of Affliction in a Korean Village

1981; Rowman & Littlefield; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jks.1981.0010

2158-1665

Laurel Kendall,

Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis

Wood Imps, Ghosts, and Other Noxious Influences: The Ideology ofAffliction in a Korean Village LAUREL KENDALL The evil spirits are a sort of impersonation of ill-luck. They are forever wandering about, and seeking a baneful intimacy with frail mortality. . . . One of their most common noxious pursuits is as the bearers of disease. In fact, one is tempted to style the cult the worship of bacteria—bacteria of the mind, body, and estate. Percival Lowell, 1886 The nineteenth century saw in the primitive religions two peculiarities which separated them as a block from the great religions of the world. One was that they were inspired by fear, the other that they were inextricably confused with defilement and hygiene. Almost any missionary's or traveller's account of a primitive religion talks about the fear, terror or dread in which its adherents live. Mary Douglas, 1966 Ivorea, in the waning years of the Yi dynasty, was hardly a primitive society, but when missionaries and travelers wrote of Korean folk beliefs, they were true to the genre Douglas describes above. In his pioneer account of Korean folk religion, the Reverend Jones was frankly boggled by a plethora of "daemons." He deemed Korean My remarks in this paper are based on a year and a half of field work in a place I call Enduring Pine Village, a prosperous rural community north of Seoul. My research in Korea was made possible by grants from the International Institute for Education, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation. I am also indebted to the shamans and housewives in and around Enduring Pine Village who tolerated my often incomprehensible questions and tried to teach an ignorant young woman. Special thanks to Dawnhee and Roger Janelli for detailed comments on an early draft of this paper, to Gari Ledyard, who saved me from numerous blunders romanizing Korean terms, and to Homer Williams, who questioned my prose style. The limitations of the final product are, of course, my responsibility. 113 114Journal ofKorean Studies spirits "a motley crew, a dismal company," and pondered "the condition of mind and heart which continues under their dominion and in their service . . ." (Jones 1902, p. 58). Out to win his own hearts and minds, the missionary lamented the tribulations of Korean brethren suffering under demonic oppression: "They lie in wait for him along the wayside, in the trees, on the rocks, in the valleys and streams. They keep him under a constant espionage day and night" (ibid.). Another early account of the Korean supernatural relates: "If a man is taken suddenly ill, or if his symptoms seem in any way strange, the inference is that it is caused by an evil spirit." Listing the diverse causes of supernatural affliction—failure to feed hungry ghosts, showing lack of respect to ancient trees, disturbing earth spirits—this observer surmises: "It is evident that the credulous must everywhere be in fear of these occult agencies. The very air seems peopled with them" (Anonymous 1903, pp. 146-47). Bishop, the intrepid gentlewoman traveler, echoed the sentiments of her missionary hosts in a description of "daemons": "They touch the Korean at every point in life, making his well-being depend on a continual series of acts of propitiation, and avenge every omission with merciless severity, keeping him under this yoke of bondage from birth to death" (Bishop 1897, p. 228). Handmaiden to and most direct beneficiary of this supernatural tyranny was the shaman: "In order to obtain favors or avert calamities it is necessary to employ the shamans as mediators, and it is their fees, and not the cost of the offerings, which press so heavily on the people" (ibid., p. 227). As obviously biased as they seem today, these early accounts yet capture something of Korean folk religion as it was practiced at the turn of the century, and as it persists in Korean villages. Often in my own field work, I felt a jolt of recognition as I observed some practice I had read about in a moldering book. The folk pantheon is complex, a diverse scheme of supernatural entities. One or several baleful forces may be the perceived source of affliction. Stubborn...