American Power in Korean Shamanism

Abstract

Abstract:The Korean War was a formative event in the making not only of Korea's contemporary political geography, but also of its religious landscape. This is the case with shamanism as well as other more institutionalized religions. Focusing on the originally northern-Korean Hwanghae shamanism tradition now based in Incheon, this paper examines how rituals of this tradition engage today with legacies of the 1950–1953 war. In Incheon, an important episode of this war was the amphibious landing in September 1950 led by Douglas MacArthur; a notable change in Incheon's Hwanghae shamanism in the postwar era has been the introduction of the persona of MacArthur and other emblems of American power to its ritual world. This article asks how foreign these apparently foreign symbolic entities are and whether they can be seen as a manifestation of Hwanghae shamanism's authentic, traditional ritual order confronting a new historical and physical environment.