merose hwang

The Mudang
The Colonial Legacies of Korean Shamanism

Fifteen years ago, if someone would have asked me what I thought of Korean
shamanism, I would have had to plead absolute ignorance.1As an undergraduate
Religious Studies major, studying Native American shamanism at the time, I
understood shamanism to be a primordial religion similar to animism, practiced
only by indigenous communities in a type of contradistinction from the governing
state. It was then that a fellow student first revealed to me the existence of
Korean shamanism. I was confused and captured by the possibility that Koreans
identified with being “modern” and “indigenous” at the same time (but I was
yet to make the important connection between the ideology of “indigenous”
governance and colonial history until much later). In less than two decades,
Korean shamanism went from being a virtually non-existent topic in Korean
studies to making familiar appearances in many East Asian studies arenas. It
has been examined through a wide spectrum of empirical and methodological
research ranging from recording liner notes to ritual songs (Howard) to exploring
consumer patterns for shamanistic services on the internet.2 Most of the 1980s
and ’90s research on Korean shamanism were in the spirit of preservation.
Field researchers went through great lengths to record and document mudang
physiognomy, cosmology, epistemology, etc. But recently, with inspiration from
post-colonial historians, shamanists have begun to question the very notion
of “shamanism” in Korea (see Ch’oe; Han). Some scholars began to explore
the nomenclature of “shaman” and of mudang (where previously, it was taken
for granted that they were synonymous; see Kim, T.).3 A few historiographers
have concluded that the Japanese colonial government used Korean shamanism
to serve imperial interests (Kim, S.; Walraven). Such patterns in scholarship
have caused shamanists to deal with issues of race, gender, colonialism, and
nationalism.4 The conclusion post-colonial scholars have claimed is that
“…the indelible Japanese imperial legacies of conquest and racism that were
integrated into precolonial traditions of lineage-identity politics continue to

103
 merose hwang

dominate contemporary Korea’s nationalist reconstruction of Korean ancestors

and founders” (Pai, H. 20). To understand the mystique of Korean shamanism,
it is necessary to trace its academic genealogy in Korea.

Mudang, Colonialism and Notions of Modernity

The emergence of shamanism in Korea is best understood by identifying it

within Korean colonial history. The shaman subject was equated to a native
female subject known as mudang. The first people to document mudang as
“shamans” were British and American travel writers and Christian missionaries
in Korea in the 1890s (Walraven). At first, westerners characterized mudang as
female shamans who practiced “devil-worship” or who spread “superstition”
(Bishop).5 This mudang subject serves as a lens through which it is possible to
assess the intellectual field of this period. Mudang have appeared as a vehicle
to discuss an array of “modern” topics such as national history, science,
technology, military, economics, etc. By studying the ways in which Korean
intellectuals discussed mudang during the colonial period, it becomes apparent
that most people writing about mudang saw them as a menace to the nation.
They saw the nation (named variously as kukka, urinara, uri kukmin, chosŏn)
in peril.6 The nation retained agency insofar as it could be afflicted. Mudang
explicitly antagonized the nation.7 Most journalists that had anything to say
about mudang during the colonial period saw mudang as the anti-nation. And in
the most popular and political sense, writers who were invested in modernizing
the state presented mudang as disturbing the nation’s well-being. Mudang were
said to contaminate the nation by generating and spreading diseases, illnesses,
depleting national resources, and generally wreacking social havoc.
Mudang had an inherent impact on notions of the modern. This modernity
discourse was the paradigm by which to discuss all things Korean in the early
twentieth century.8 To view the emergence of this discursive subject within a
historical moment like the colonial period, it is worthwhile to situate it within
a larger historical framework. A few of those profoundly influential historical
incidents will be laid out here: Korea was coerced into an unequal trade treaty
with Japan in 1876, which many historians have dubiously equated with the
necessary enforced “opening” of Korea to the rest of the world, introducing
the country to “modernity” (for a couple historiographical treatments of this
issue see Deuchler, Kim, K.).9 Japan’s victories in their wars against China in
1895 and against Russia in 1905 allowed them certain leverage in negotiating
political and economic territories throughout Asia. In 1905, Japan pressured
Korea into signing Japan into a protectorate treaty. Five years later, on August
29, 1910, King Sunjong was forced to abdicate his throne making Korea an
official colony of Japan. Japan continued to expand their colonial boundaries

104
 the mudang

throughout Asia over the next 35 years until they were taken over by the U.S.
on August 15, 1945. Japan surrendered itself to the U.S., and all of its colonies
were divvied up between U.S. versus Soviet allegiances, also splitting the
Korean peninsula between Sino-Soviet versus American military occupations.10
Even today, the mudang discourse continues to be a part of the state project
in South Korea.
Links have been commonly made between colonialism and modernity. The
assumption is that colonialism, foreign aggression, and domestic insecurities
caused colonized people11 to “wake up” to the dangers of not being modern.
Locating the “un-modern” subject—the shaman, the mudang (the Korean name
that has become the most common equivalent to “shaman’)—is a test of this
theory. It is certain that the first time mudang were relegated to “shamans”
was by foreign missionaries who wrote about devilish findings in Korea in the
1890s (Bishop; Landis; Wells). But, the discussion to chastise mudang was in
existence in the Korean courts hundreds of years prior to these missionaries
(Yi).12 Without using the actual term “un-modern” the subject was treated as “un-
civilized,” “heterodox,” and treated as subversive obstacles for the state.
Some major developments occurred just prior to and during the colonial
period, affecting the discussion of the “un-modern” subject. The most important
development was the emergence of popular presses in late nineteenth century
Korea (Anderson).13 In 1896, the first Korean/English bilingual newspaper,
The Independent, frequently wrote about the problems around and ways to ban
mudang from society (Schmid).14 Also beginning in the late 1800s, the Meiji
government erected academic institutions and commissioned ethnographic
studies of their newly acquired archipelago territories and continued issuing
state scholars to study the race and indigenous cultures of colonized subjects.15
Through this colonial initiative, Korean “shamans” became case-subjects for
Japanese imperial anthropology, ethnology, ethnography, and folklore studies.
Another notable shift to the mudang subject during the colonial-era was that they
became codified as women. Newspaper editors and ethnologists alike construed
mudang as a flawed female gender. Korean nationalists were aligned with
Japanese colonialists by correlatively discerning mudang as un-modern.
During the colonial period, the modern was unquestionably a part of the
national project. If it was not explicit, it was always of inherent importance.16 It
also seems to have been implicit through notions such as munmyŏng (civilization),
and yamanin (uncivilized people) (Taehan maeil sinbo 1910a: 2).17 Mudang did
not so much terrorize the “modern,” as they were a reverse to the “modern.”
The threat was not so much to the “modern” itself, but rather, to the people
and the nation that needed to “modernize.” Popular press intellectuals used
concepts like minkuk to inarticulately summon Korea as a national geo-political
body, a local government under the Japanese empire, a common people and

105
 merose hwang

a population. This nebulous geo-political body was composed of people.

When people were vulnerable or contaminated, the national body was weak.
Colonialists and nationalists alike pushed for the minkuk to become modern and
for people to do this by severing themselves from a part of themselves—the
part that supported mudang.
By no means was this mudang discourse a subject that stood on its own.
Many of the sources that touched on mudang during the colonial period were
those that dealt with a larger problem of misin (superstition).18 Misin was an
abstract phenomenon that permeated society and was a much larger issue than
mudang. Under the sanctions provided by the Government General on “official
religions” (Chang), various religious sects voiced their concerns over misin
and straying from “true” faith/ritual, to avoid being tagged as sacrilegious or
otherwise “unloyal” to the empire (Park, K. 84).19 Religious leaders served as
nationalist and colonialist agents as they asserted that their religions/faiths were
“modern” (Pak). They positioned their faith on a hierarchical model of reason
and logic that assumed “superstitious faiths” (like those carried by mudang)
contained no tenets or moral epistemologies and would hinder people’s abilities
to “spiritually advance.” Writers wrote to publically pressure mudang and their
followers to cognitively, spiritually change. When evangelism failed, criminal
correction was enforced. Colonialist and nationalist writers assumed to plea
for all Koreans but in singling out people like mudang they pitted individuals
against each other. Writers wrote to criticize a Korean racialized identity. The
narrative was wrought with ambiguities and contradictions while the mudang
remained a steadfast enemy.

Gender Implications of Mudang:

Constructing the Modern Korean Woman

Tension over individual rights and legislation were managed under a public
program that allowed privileged male intellectual Korean subjects to govern
their own affairs, by specifying the domains in which the local elites must
initiate social institutions and help set the basic moral parameters and criteria.
Discussion about the configurations and the boundaries of woman-ness
were expressed through bi-monthly popular women’s niche magazines like
Sin’gajŏng, Sinyŏja, Sinyŏsŏng, and Yŏsŏng,20 but the bulk of discussions around
the “woman” problem—like mudang—were found in the general dailies and
journals that were speaking to a male reading audience (Tonga ilbo 1933a).21
These intellectuals urged the government, colonial “thought” and “hygiene
police,” alongside colonized communities, to hunt down these socially aberrant
women (Kaemyŏng sibo 1935: 1).22 Mudang were accused of inhibiting public
peace, order, and regulation and were charged with adversely affecting public

106
 the mudang

health and hygiene (pogon uisaeng [Tonga ilbo 1939]).23 They were blamed for
disregarding “modern” notions of “order and efficiency.” Mudang were often
described as young children, and sometimes, explicitly as girls, that needed to
be taught a lesson or reprimanded through severe beatings. Such beatings were
either relayed through police reports or were requests made by the intellectuals
for the police to properly punish these evil women.24
The social implications of mudang as women incriminated all women. The
discursive mudang treated as a negative agent enabled a misogynist discussion
about women as punyŏcha (married woman; lady; women and girls; women-
folk [Tonga ilbo 1933a: 3; 1939])25 in order to segregate and control womanly
behaviour and activities. Mudang needed to be controlled for their trickery over
ignorant, uneducated, illiterate women (musikhan punyŏ [Tonga ilbo 1933b;
1939]). Women at large were charged with enabling and promoting these
mudang. Men set the gendered benchmark and under misogynist normative
discussions where women became the deviants. Women were seen as the ones
most closely tied to “old customs,” with a natural affinity for things un-modern.
They were blamed for supporting these enemies of the state just as mudang
were used as a device to pressure, regulate, and control women. Women-at-
large were implicated in jeopardizing the nation.
Women were a concern for the nation because they were seen as having the
social duty to be competent bearers of future generations and mothers of the
Korean people. Not only were mudang depictions of “wrong” women, but
they were also discursive designs to create and manage gendered behaviour.
Women were cast into the periphery of “modern civilization” by associating
their gender to mudang. The displacement of mudang subjects was part of a
masculinist model to categorize and totalize a multitude. These male-oriented
writings consistently identified women in association with mudang as fool-
ish, silly, stupid, simple, half/slow-witted, dull-headed (musikhan, ŏrisŏk
[Tonga ilbo 1939]) presenting a public need to excise or cultivate parts of the
population.
Mudang were entrenched in male intellectual prejudices against unregulated
women’s social spheres and boundaries. They were chastised for openly
banging on drums and for disturbing public morals in broad daylight. They
were accused of littering public spaces with ritual paraphernalia and berated
for haplessly throwing precious food out onto the streets. They were seen as
a nuisance to public safety, cleanliness, and order. They became trespassers
and loiterers of the conceptual “modern space.” They were often described as
hiding and lurking in the dark. They were everywhere, yet suspiciously out of
place, untraceable, and contagious. Mudang were unruly and wild. When the
colonial space was a rare and coveted commodity meant only for people who
could be properly confined, uniformed, and designed for proper behaviour,

107
 merose hwang

there was no place for women like mudang.

This premise was clearly laid out, not only in women’s journals, or niche
magazines, but in daily papers from this period. Through such writings, mothers
were rallied to properly educate their children. They were also coached in
respectable self-governance, among which included repelling mudang and
misin-related activities. Urging these women to break from their “old habits”
and to gain new knowledge, training, behaviours, etc. … assumed that Korea’s
past generations were somehow insufficient or unproductive in the past. This
coincided with larger discussions that grew especially towards the latter part
of the colonial period, on “new women” and the “modern girl.” Women as
representatives for the nation played tenuously against a nation that was seen as
too feminine. Colonial-era writers identified the national problem by rendering
Korea as a weak and un-masculine nation (Taehan maeil sinbo 1910b).26

Cleansing the Nation: Mudang and Hygiene

A part of the “good mother” mobilization project included tutoring women on

proper health and hygiene. This discourse was a common way of depicting the
un-modern. Women were held responsible for dirtying and cleansing the nation.
Again, mudang were typecast as obstacles to public health. They were seen as
inherently dirty, foul, or otherwise unclean and unhygienic. Their “filth” was
considered communicable, endangering the public. The mudang and hygiene
connection revealed a relationship between controlling the physical and the
spiritual bodies commonly found in modernity discourses (Foucault).27
One Christian journal, the Kyŏnghyang chapchi, captured this moment
brilliantly in 1915. The writer juxtaposed a backward and non-believing mudang
against a soon-to-be-Christian subject. In this story the writer claimed that a
mudang, who had kept two bibles in her toilet stall, stumbled upon a soon-
to-be-Christian proselytizer who asked her to give them to him, which she
eventually did. There was no mention of why the mudang kept the bibles in the
toilet but one can conjecture that these bibles were not only being neglected,
they were being misused. Kept in the foulest part of the mudang residence,
the bibles were defamed in the foulest way, making her actions and herself,
not only sacrilegious, but also altogether contaminated. For the unknowing
outsider, by keeping the bibles in her toilet stall, the mudang could have been
seen as an oracle of defecation and her sanctuary a space that collected bodily
waste. But, from the mudang perspective, the toilet stall was a space where
dangerous and powerful spirits presided and the mudang could have deliberately
placed the bibles there to rid the bibles of their spiritual efficacies (Kendall).28
Although the original text did not describe the motive/reason behind the mudang
actions, it was clear that it revealed an antagonism between Christian and misin

108
 the mudang

epistemologies. The writer associated her actions with her toilet that made her
private, un-clean, and dangerous. The mudang was clearly the antagonist who
starkly contrasted the Christian protagonist.
This article further mentioned that after the man received the bibles, he was
baptized and became fully converted and fully Christian. He later converted
several members of his family. Once the man had the bibles out of the mudang’s
possession, they were saved from defilement and destruction. The man became
a hero for standing in harm’s way by asking for, receiving, and using objects
that could have been contaminated. Furthermore, not only were the bibles not
wasted (figuratively and literally), they were constructively used to create new
spiritual beings. The rightful, wholesome bearer was able to recover the bibles’
productive potential. At the same time, this story reveals a moment when mudang
and her actions (whether they were unwitting or deliberate) were inefficacious
in transmitting filth. This type of story also successfully outlines a pattern in
colonial-era discourses where the negative subject is treated as both a real and
dangerous threat versus an immaterial and inconsequential nuisance.

Undermining the Power of Western Medicine and Science:

Mudang as Threats to Physical Health

The portrayal of the unclean, unhygienic mudang worked in conjunction with

mudang who created an environment of physical danger. Health issues, such
as preventative medicines/practices, potential diseases, deaths, epidemics,
and even uncleanliness (issues that may now be thought of as innocuous)
were topics that were pervasive throughout the early twentieth century. The
basic argument was that believing and participating in mudang services was a
liability to one’s health. One daily newspaper put it this way, “… when one’s
family is ill, they wander about not taking medicine until it becomes serious,
and they go find mudang and p’ansu and buy ginseng medicine” (Taehan maeil
sinbo 1908). Mudang, and those that sought them out, hindered the promotion
of proper health care. These writers assumed that mudang and their patrons
were opposed to “modern” forms of medical science. They depicted mudang
as superstitious and “un-scientific.” Mudang were depicted as disseminating
wrongful and harmful information about preventative and curative procedures/
medicines to the masses. A popular journal stated:

…when a superstition believer comes down with an illness, despite their

symptoms, usually they first plead and ask the mudang or p’ansu, and
after that process, go to get medicine. The fact exists that severe cases,
that should be caught in the nick of time, are delayed, and innocent lives
are lost…. We gravely regret these supposed medical cures’ ill effects

109
 merose hwang

that secretly seem not to cure people’s illnesses and obliterates people’s
notions of science (Kaemyŏngsibo 1935).

Such writers advocated western-style hospitals and, on rare occasions,

promoted licensed Chinese medicine (Shin).29 Meanwhile, this meant that
medical practices that were not publically recognized were totally inefficacious,
if not dangerous. It could be further argued that these anti-mudang medicine
writers were actually concerned with what they considered unsystematized,
unregulated, uninstitutionalized and untraceable methods/products of health
care.30
No Profits for the State: Mudang and the National Economy

Japanese colonial administrators worked alongside Christian missionaries to

systematize, institutionalize, and centralize medicines and medical treatments
throughout the colonial era. The Government General made this decision in
order to back their “political ideology of the time as Western medicine was
not just considered to be simply a form of medical treatment, but was also
part of an ideology which justified Japan’s rule over Korea” (Park, Y. 174).
State advocates of western medicine did not merely criticize mudang-related
health care as an alternative to other forms of health care. What was inherently
at stake for the government was that such mudang services were a source of
untapped capital. Nationalist writers also relayed the need to extinguish mudang
practices for the interests of the national economy. It was understood that,
“… mudang… wished on outcast people’s good or bad fortunes, to swindle
them out of their money” (Taehan maeil sinbo 1910b: 1). And, the reason that
people relied on and supported mudang was because the masses were ignorant
and bound by mihok (confusion, bewilderment, delusion, infatuation [Taehan
maeil sinbo 1910b: 1]). Just as people were accused of wasting their precious
resources, mudang were chastised for swindling. Mudang were also accused
of illegal money-lending.
Mudang stood in the way of developing the state economy. The colonial
government made the centralization of Korea’s banking system a primary object
for state agenda. But before the colonial period, many people in urban and rural
areas of Korea participated in informal kye (rotating credit) systems.31 Some
notable characteristics of the informal kye was that they were mostly run by
random groups of women as a means of savings, loans and investments—often
for women who wanted to invest in small ventures or for family emergencies.
The kye system usually operated on small-scale financial investments/returns
and offered women credit alternatives independent of their husbands/in-laws
decisions and without state-controlled centralized banking systems.
Mudang was intimately involved and invested in kye. She counseled and

110
 the mudang

mediated on behalf of a kye recipient in a crisis situation. Mudang involvement

in kye is best illustrated through the funerary or widow’s kye (sangbogye)
in which a community invested in mutual aid and reciprocity over a crisis
situation. When widows became the primary decision makers over their homes,
they were responsible to negotiate and cover costs for emergency household
expenses like funerary processes (i.e., mudang charges to prepare and mum-
mify the body and to conduct rituals for the deceased spirit and the surviving
family). Women sought out mudang advice and services over their familial and
communal crisis. Women participated in kye as proactive measures to secure
and save their monies independent of their family’s dictates. They voluntarily
invested in kye associations through word-of-mouth and they were meant to
operate collectively but because they were based on the good faith of each of
its members they were not without risk.
Mudang thus directly challenged such state-governed public initiatives.
Colonialists recognized that they were overlooking useful resources through
such undocumented workers. They found it in their best interest to spearhead
the mudang project. Under the guise of cultural tolerance, the Japanese colonial
government enstated “The Regulations of the Preservation of Korea’s Ancient
Remains and Relics” in 1916 and erected Korea’s first colonial museum in the
following year. The colonial government started the tradition of preserving
mudang as shamans (Pai and Tangherlini; Pai). Mudang were registered as
colonial relics. They were then recognized by the state, granted special tax
exemptions, and given license to conduct official “indigenous” ceremonies
(Siddle).32 The Korean dailies reported exclusively on unregistered mudang as
criminals (rather than as women whose work was not good or useful enough
for colonizing purposes). While this registry was presented as a part of the
government’s endeavour to appear culturally sensitive and accepting of “things
Korean,” it enabled the government to further control its colonial subjects by
identifying mudang and their associates whereabouts, tracking their activities,
income, etc. to bolster the state. But the preservation project did something
even more powerful for the colonizer—it enabled them to unify and personify
a Korean racialized subject through the negative depictions of mudang.

Criminalizing Mudang and Strategies of National Revival

Korean nationalists believed that unregulated bodies meant a loss of resources

and a loss of production for the country. The concern to accumulate wealth was
shared by colonialists and nationalists alike. A Taehan maeil sinbo editorial
traced the wasteful life of a mudang named Suryun. In one issue, the editor
implied that Suryun continued to throw away her money on mudang activities
while the editor was, “left eating cold rice” (1910c: 2). One pervasive theme

111
 merose hwang

throughout the colonial period was that mudang caused national waste. A
Kaemyŏngsibo article estimated the total amount of money lost to mudang.
They claimed that there were approximately 18,000 mudang in Korea.33 The
conclusion was that over 4,471 schools could have been built in the amount
of money that was wasted on mudang. This article lamented how rice was so
scarce and yet so much of it was being wasted on and by mudang (1934: 6).
Rice was wealth and mudang represented the hole in the national basket through
which it was lost. From the 1930s onward, the Korean population underwent
grave rice shortages and famines as a direct result of the Japanese mass war
mobilization policies. This crisis caused many colonial era writers to use the
rice shortage issue to rally public concern. The conclusion here was that the
economy that circulated around the mudang was a useless and calamitous burden
on the nation and its people. The waste of rice often arose in these arguments,
not only to recall the tax burden issue in people’s minds but it was often used
metaphorically to provoke a sense that the nation and its people were being
starved out in order to feed greedy and selfish mudang.
The solution to this problem was to criminalize mudang in order to suppress
and eventually eliminate their activities. While a few mudang were made to
officially represent the Korean race, others were fined, beaten, incarcerated,
or continued their work under the radar of the state and police. This animosity
towards mudang continued after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial
rule but it did not succeed in ridding the nation of them. Instead, the Korean
cultural revisionism project in the form of a Cultural Protection Policy that
started in the 1960s (Yang) borrowed directly from the colonial preservation
project. President Park Chung-hee adopted colonial era techniques and strategies
to design and mobilize a hyper-industrialized Korea (Choi). Still today, mudang
represent the nation, to rally and orchestrate the Korean citizenry around a
primordial mother. The current Korean shamanism field is a cultural relic of
Korea’s dynastic, colonial, and post-liberation statecraft and continues to be
a technology of national governance (Choi).

Un-hinging Mudang from Colonialism

This paper has attempted to deal with the movement to expel mudang in Korea
during the colonial period. My goal was to raise issues that would offset our
current images of Korean shamanism as a naturally recognized Intangible
Cultural Property (Yang). Shamanism, as I understood it several years ago,
was an alluring image that represented national pride (primordial, indigenous
mother). It was during my senior year at the University of Colorado that I
studied my first image of a mudang on the cover of “The Shaman’s Drum.”
I was mesmerized by the possibilities and significance of this “modern indi-

112
 the mudang

gene” in Korea. Several years later, I learned to credit the popular narrative
that glorified this tradition back to the so-called “ethnic nationalists” of the
colonial era, such as, Yi Nŭng-hwa, Son Chin-tae, Ch’oe Nam-sŏn, and even
Sin Ch’ae-ho. These scholars envisioned shamanism as Korea’s philosophy,
epistemology, and origin.
The modern South Korean state’s promotion of shamanism has untraceably
purified the unclean body of an earlier discursively “contaminated” mudang.
This post-colonial state project has subsequently erased the fact that nationalists
under the hegemony of “colonial modernity” once urged Koreans to expunge
all traces of mudang from the nation at the same time the Government-General
was displaying them as icons of their indigenous Korean colonial subjects. The
far more pervasive notion that “mudang contaminated” the nation (which was
a concern for local intellectuals for the larger part of the twentieth century) has
just begun to gain attention in contemporary shamanism studies. A few historians
have recently explored the collaborative efforts of Korean intellectuals and
Japanese colonial administrators to repress shamanism in Korea. But in order
to step back through the process of uncovering how an abhorred “indigene”
becomes a symbol of a “glorious” nation, I have attempted to look at the
ways in which mudang were used to identify notions of “indigeneity” for the
purposes of the state
Throughout Korean history, mudang were subjects that put the country at
risk. The dialogue was largely internal, involving Korean authors and subjects.
These writers were connected to their “indigenous” subjects, raising the stakes
in the mission to “other” these subjects. They lambasted mudang in order to
overcome their own selves, to create newer subjects for a foreseeable modern
nation. This focus has allowed a glimpse into the complexities around these
early twentieth- century Korean intellectual debates. Nationalists envisaged a
homogenous modern nation while they were immersed in colonial ideologies
in a copasetic struggle to become a modern Asian race, capable of overcoming
colonialism and gaining “independence.” Via the assistance of shamanism
scholars, the South Korean state has regulated mudang and their practices/
services in such a way that has aided nationalist projects and further excluded
an already disenfranchised and alienated population of “indigenous” spiritual
experts, calling “liberation” from colonialism into question. The current
national celebration of mudang reveals the amnesia of the earlier colonial
project that inspected, categorized, criminalized, and ostracized mudang.
This national ideology is uncritical and non-reflexive of how and why they
use “culture.” While the South Korean government continues to sponsor kut
(mudang rituals) to promote cultural nationalism, they need to first summon
their own colonial legacies, and reconcile the violence and oppression Koreans
continue to experience under the post-liberation “indigenous” government in

113
 merose hwang

order to ultimately exorcise the ghosts of colonialism.

1
Shamanism might be defined as “a religion practiced by indigenous peoples
of far northern Europe and Siberia that is characterized by belief in the unseen
world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits responsive only to the shamans;
also: any similar religion” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2001: 1073).
2
Google provides over a million hits under the search: “Korean shamanism” and
is featured on the Korean Tourism Board (see, for example, <http://mudang.
view.co.kr> and <http://shamanism.view.co.kr>).
3
Tae-kon Kim was among the first modern scholars to question the legitimacy
of mudang and the application of the term “shamanism.’
4
What continues to be missing from this discussion is the relationship between
class, economy and shamanism—this is telling to the fact that the ones that write
about shamanism in Korea continue to be the educated middle-class, unable
or unwilling to discuss the problems of being self-appointed ambassadors for
the often poor, rural, and otherwise disenfranchised women they are meant to
represent. I am also implicated in this.
5
These days, it might be less objectionable to characterize mudang as spiritual
mediators who intervene in family and community crisis by being mediums and
intercessors between disgruntled ancestor spirits and their living descendants.
Laurel Kendall has conducted the most prolific research on contemporary western
understanding of mudang (or what she more respectfully calls manshin).
6
These obfuscated concepts of the country have been interpreted into present
notions of nation.
7
At times some other subjects were categorized alongside mudang, such as the
p’ansu and chŏmchaengi, but the most commonly accused were mudang.
8
Because of the limits of the scope of this project, this essay can only lay out
a very superficial outline surrounding this historical period. The moments
that are highlighted here have been commonly seen as some of the most
important moments in Korea’s modern history but should not be interpreted
as comprehensive in any way nor should they be understood as ruptures in
Korean history.
9
This teleological understanding of Korea’s “awakening to modernity”
problematically privileges western imperialism and Meiji Japan’s adoption of
western “gunboat diplomacy” while ignoring Korea’s long history of active
non-western trade relations with Tsushima, Ch’ing, and Southeast Asian
countries in the “late pre-modern” period.
10
Some modern Korean historians have argued that Korea was never released
from colonial rule—and that even today, South Korea suffers from an American
form of economic and military colonialism.

114
 the mudang

11
This typically referred to non-white nation-states, where the power divide
was clearly demarcated between white and coloured race-based nations. But
in the Korean case, it was between Japanese and non-Japanese. A similar kind
of logic was used during the colonial period where Japan fluctuated between
distancing themselves as the “westernized” Asians one the one hand, while
claiming themselves as the pioneers of “pan-Asianism” on the other, in order
to assert their racial authority and to foster their expansionist endeavours in
Asia.
12
In 1927, Yi Nŭng-hwa, accompanied by Ch’oe Nam-sŏn were the first scholars
to trace the historical roots of musok (“shamanism”) in Korea’s pre-modern
Chosŏn period.
13
Benedict Anderson popularized the theory that nationhood and nationalism
derive from the development of print capitalism.
14
The Korean language version of this paper, entitled Tongnip sinmun, was
published strictly in vernacular han’gŭl without the use of Chinese characters,
which was a radical literary innovation. This press was shut down in 1899.
For an in-depth look at the controversy around early pre-colonial presses, see
Schmid.
15
For an in-depth treatment of the Meiji government’s race-research projects
on its “internal colonies,” see Siddle.
16
I am interpreting ideas of the modern from words that I have found from this
period, such as kŭndaesahŏe and hyŏndaesidae.
17
A good illustration of the impacts of mudang on the “modern” can be seen in
this article in which a Japanese man ias alleged to have requested permission from
the government to worship mudang. In a later article, the same man allegedly
encourages the works and worship of mudang. The editor suggests that this was
unthinkable in Korea when Korea was a more civilized (munmyŏng) country
than Japan—a country of evil spirits (makui)—Ilinchyungmok iranchyanŭn
(A Japanese person by the name of Chungmoku).[IS THIS A REF? SHOULD
IT BE: (Taehan maeil sinbo 1910a).
18
During the Chosŏn dynasty, the term was used to equate “heterodoxy” as a
challenge to Confucian state ideologies of “orthodoxy” (see Han; Walraven).
This discussion became especially pronounced during the colonial period
where people were writing about proper types of religious faiths as they were
juxtaposed to misin under the restrictions of the Government-General’s religion
policy (see Chang). A good example written during the colonial period can be
found in religious journals such as the Chŏndokyo hŏewolbo.
19
During the colonial period, two major streams of debates around religion
flourished. The first was the “discourse of religion as a sign of civilization:
which asserts that religion can control and lead the development of civilization.”
The second was the “discourse of religion as a tool of edifying people: which

115
 merose hwang

holds that religion plays a central role in establishing national identity and
edifying people.”
20
Women’s magazines were mostly in publication from the mid 1920s through
1940. Nearly 90 percent of the Korean population was literate in the 1920s.
Of this group, literate women comprised a very small and nearly negligible
percent.
21
This article entitled, “Controlling Mudang: Deceiving Rural Women in
Namhaesŏ District” effectively illustrates the misogynist paternalistic concern
over the female population.
22
This editorial states that mudang were “violating public order and good
customs … we sincerely hope that social oppression and government will be
more strictly enforced.”
23
This particular article comments on the “appropriate” incarceration of mudang
in the Sŏdaemun office—a colonial-era prison known to be the closest proximity
to the capital city centre.
24
However, it would be misleading to say that the female subject was the only
gender that was “divisive,” especially when, as noted above, p’ansu were
commonly named alongside the mudang.
25
Sometimes spelled: punyŏ (abbreviated form).
26
In this newspaper article, the editor explains that the weak Korean nation
can become strong if they do things such as abolishing mudang and building
up the military. The editor foresees this as the method for Korea to become a
strong twentieth century nation.
27
Michel Foucault details this theory and its application in much of his work,
but can be seen especially in his book, The History of Sexuality.
28
This second interpretation was explained to me by Dr. Laurel Kendall (a
leading Korean shamanism expert) while she chaired our panel at the Women’s
World Congress in Seoul, 2005.
29
Standardizing Western medical practice versus Chinese or “Eastern” medicine
was a much-contested issue under Japanese colonialism.
30
During the Chosŏn, there were also discussions to discourage mu-related
medicines—musihan (“ignorant” meaning unregulated medicines)—in favour
of Chinese medicine. Such discussions did not include notions of modernity
per-se, but were nonetheless “pre-modern” state objectives to centralize
medical practices.
31
This system has commonly been used in pre-modern China, Korea, Japan,
Taiwan, and Indonesia. It is still very common practice throughout South Korea.
It is a system of mutual aid and cooperation through a social mechanism that
effectively draws unrelated women together for a common financial purpose
of lending and borrowing money from amongst each other.
32
Long before the colonial period, mudang were considered illegal and were

116
 the mudang

forbidden within the limits of the capital city. Such restrictions were not heavily
regulated and many instances were found when mudang appeared within the
Chosŏn courts. Generally speaking, mudang had a long history of condemnation
where their work was not secured in private nor in public. So, there were
often stories about how mudang were caught and incarcerated for disguising
themselves as other professional trades in order to earn their keep. When mudang
were unregistered they were invisible, and due to the lack of such records, it is
difficult to know for certain what their numbers were. The important shift that
occurred with colonialism was not in officiating and criminalizing mudang, but
rather in the importance of “indigenizing” this process to localize a “foreign”
colonial government. Richard Siddle makes a persuasive argument on how a
similar method was used to mobilize the Ainu community.
33
The editor states that the estimates and figures were originally printed in the
Asahi newspaper (no date or issue) and does not explain how these numerical
figures were originally calculated.

References

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. 1983. London: Verso, 1991.

Bishop, Isabella Bird. Korea and Her Neighbours. 1898. Seoul: Yonsei
University Press. 1970.
Chang, Pyŏng-kil. “Chosŏn ch’ongdokpu chonggyo chŏngch’aek” (Religious
Policy of the Chosŏn Government-General). Hanguk chonggyo wa chonggyo
hak. Seoul: Ch’ŏngnyŏnsa, 2003. 217-233.
Choi, Chungmoo. The Competence of Korean Shamans as Performers of
Folklore. Unpublished doctoral disseratation, Indiana University, 1987.
Ch’oe, Sŏk-yŏng. Ilje ha musokron kwa shingminji kwŏllyŏk (Discourse on
Shamanism in Colonial Korea). Seoul: Sŏgyŏng munhwasa. 1999.
Deuchler, Martina. Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys: The Opening
of Korea, 1875-1885. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Foucault, Michael. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Trans. Robert
Hurley. New York: Random House, Inc., Vintage Books Edition, 1990.
Han, Do-Hyun. “Shamanism, Superstition, and the Colonial Government.”
The Review of Korean Studies 3 (1) (2000): 34-54.
Howard, Keith. Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals: Folk Music in Korean
Society. Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1989.
Kaemyŏngsibo. “Chŏnjosŏn ŭi mudang i sipp’alchŏn sŏk ŭl mŏkŏpse:
ilnyŏnkan ŭi t’onggye” (Chosŏn’s mudang consume 180,000 sŏk of rice:
Statistics over one year). 6 July 1934: 6.
Kaemyŏngsibo. “Misinpangmyŏng ŭi undong ŭl ch’okham” (Demand for
movement to exterminate superstition). 15 May 1935: 1.

117
 merose hwang

Kaemyŏngsibo. “Misin pangmyŏl ŭi undong ŭl ch’oknam” (The urgency for

the movement to exterminate superstition). 15 May 1935: 1.
Kendall, Laurel. The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman: Of Tales and
the Telling of Tales. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988.
Kim, Key-Hiuk. The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order: Korea, Japan,
and the Chinese Empire 1860-1882. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1980.
Kim, Seong-nae. “Hanguk ŭi syamŏnichŭm kaenyŏm hyŏngsŏng kwa chŏnkae”
(Development and Foundation of the Basic Concept of Korean Shamanism).
Hanguk syamŏnichŭm hakhoe. Seoul: Syamŏnichŭm yŏngu, January 2003.
Unpublished.
Kim, Tae-kon. Korean Shamanism: Muism. Seoul: Jimoondang. 1998.
Kyŏnghyang chapchi. “Mudang syŏngkyochaek ŭl chŏnhayŏk: tyŏnchu
kyohŏeb” (A Bible that was Given to a Mudang: Roman Catholic Church
Report). 9 (326) (May 1915): 221.
Howard, Keith. Bands, Songs, and Shamanistic Rituals: Folk Music in Korean
Society. Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1989.
Landis, E. B. “Notes on the Exorcism of Spirits in Korea.” Journal of the
Buddhist Text and Research Society 3 (3) (1895).
Merriam-Webster. Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Definition entry page
1073. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2001.
Pai, Hyung-Il. Constructing Korean “Origins”: A Critical Review of
Archaeology, Historiography and Racial Myth in Korean State-Formation
Theories. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2000.
Pai, Hyung Il and Timothy R. Tangherlini, eds. Nationalism and the Construction
of Korean Identity. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of
California, 1998.
Pak, Sa-chik. “Ch’omisinchŏk yŏ ŭi chonggyokwan” (The Religious View
of Transcendental Superstition). Chŏndokyo hoewolbo 179 (August 1925):
5-8.
Park, Kyutae. “Religion, National Identity, and Shinto: A Comparative Study
on State Shinto in Japan and Colonial Korea. The Review of Korean Studies
3 (1) (July 2000): 76-92.
Park, Yunjae. “Anti-Cholera Measures by the Japanese Colonial Government
and the Reaction of Koreans in the Early 1920s.” The Review of Korean
Studies 8 (4) (December 2005): 169-186.
Schmid, Andre. “Censorship and the Hwangsŏng Sinmun.” Korea Between
Tradition and Modernity: Selected Papers from the Fourth Pacific and Asian
Conferences on Korean Studies. Ed. Institute of Asian Research. Vancouver:
University of British Columbia, 2001. 158-171.
Shin, Dongwon. “‘Nationalistic’Acceptance of Sasang Medicine.” The Review

118
 the mudang

of Korean Studies 9 (2) (June 2006): 143-163.

Siddle, Richard. Race, Resistance and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge,
1996.
Taehan maeil sinbo. “Kyŏngdyech’yŏcha pyŏnginamyŏn” (When one’s family
becomes ill). 30 August 1908: 2.
Taehan maeil sinbo. “Ilin chyungmok iranchya nŭn” (A Japanese person by
the name of chungmoku). 19 February 1910a: 2.
Taehan maeil sinbo. “Isipsyegŭi sŏmun” (Twentieth-century nation). 26
February 1910b: 1.
Taehan maeil sinbo. “Mudang yomul syuryun i” (Suryun, a wicked mudang).
10 March 1910c: 2.
Tonga ilbo. “Kiinp’yŏnmul ŭl jŏnŏpŭ ro mudang dobae rŭl ŭngjing” (Mudang
who did deceptive work). 2 March 1939: 2.
Tonga ilbo. “Mudang ŭl ch’uich’e: nongchon ŭi punyŏ rŭl soki nŭn haeng ŭi
namhaesŏ esŏ” (Controlling mudang: deceiving rural women in namhaesŏ).
24 June 1933: 3.
Tonga ilbo. “Sahoe rŭl tokha nŭn mudang” (A mudang who is poisoning
society). 29 October 1933.
Walraven, Boudewijn. “Popular Religion in a Confucianized Society.” Culture
and the State in Late Chosŏn Korea. Eds. Jahyun Kim Haboush and Martina
Deuchler. Cambridge, Mass.: London: Harvard University Press, 1999.
160-198.
Wells, Kenneth M. New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction
Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1990.
Yang, Jongsung. Cultural Protection Policy in Korea: Intangible Cultural
Properties and Living National Treasures. Seoul: Jimoondang, 2003.
Yi, Nung-hwa. “Chosŏn musokko” (A Study of Korean Shamanism). Kaemyŏng
sibo (Enlightenment Bulletin) 19 (1927): 4-85.

119