Chilmoridang Yeongdeung gut

With Jeju claiming to have 500 temples and 500 shrines and literally hundreds of annual religious rites conducted by local shamans, to wonder why the Chilmoridang Yeongdeung ceremony draws so much attention is a natural curiosity. Why makes this one more special than the others?

The Korean national government decreed the ritual 'National Cultural Asset no.71', back in 1980, and more recently, in September of 2009, UNESCO accepted the ritual on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritages of Humanity - an acknowledgment that can garner international attention.

Chilmoridang Yeongdeung gut

Gut (굿):  This word is pronounced 'goot' and, in Korean, refers to a shamanistic festival or ritual.

Yeongdeung: this is a god/dess whose gender is fixed in neither the literature nor in Jeju folklore. These days, according to 'Island of the Gods - Jeju Myths and Legends', the goddess is known as Yeongdeung Harmang - literally, 'Yeongdeung grandmother'. The same book says s/he was originally a male god, as you can tell from the following Jeju myth (paraphrased by me) which the Yeongdeung ceremony addresses in performance:  

Long ago, fishermen of Hallim's Hansuri village were shipwrecked by a terrible storm in an unknown land of giant monsters of the genus cyclops; they were huge, human-eating beasts. Fortunately, Yeongdeung was there too and, being both a giant like the cyclopes, and "virtuous" unlike the cyclopes, he hid the fishermen from the monsters. When finally the seas found calm again, he told them to recite the words, "kanam bosal, kanam bosal' continuously until they reached home in their ship. And so with this instruction, he set them afloat, homeward bound.

The fishermen recited the charm...up to a point. After much time had come and gone, they could finally see their hometown and relaxed unduly, hence bringing them to forget their mantra. Immediately thereupon, a storm violently erupted and brought them back to the land of cyclopes. Yeongdeung was still there, luckily for them. The god saved their lives again, but on this occasion, the cyclopes knew of Yeongdeung's charitable work. In a fury, they cut the god into 3 chunks and threw him out to the sea piece by piece. Yeongdeung's head became Udo; the body became Sunrise Peak, and the feet landed at Hansuri, near the hometown of the fishermen. But despite this unhappiness, the fishermen were able to return home safely.

Many of Jeju's people believe, or used to believe, that Yeongdeung still visits their island yearly, arriving on the 1st day of the 2nd month (of the lunar calendar) and leaving on the 15th day of the same month. Hence, the 'gut', or shamanistic ritual, of which Yeongdeung is a center-piece.

Chilmoridang: the last syllable of this word, 'dang', means 'shrine'.  The chilmoridang is the name of a shrine that was once in Geo-nip village, on the slopes of Sarabong (the name of one of Jeju's many small volcanic hills). Though Yeongdeung rituals have been and are still held in various of the small island's villages, at this place it was most elaborately performed, owing to the amount of fishing and number of haenyeo (Jeju woman divers who hand-gather various seafood) who rely on the ocean for harvest.

Traditionally, the ritual's purpose has been to welcome and then bid farewell to Yeongdeung and pray also for safety in the ocean, as well as abundant harvests.

With the historical reliance on the sea for food, the significance of this ritual to the people can be readily appreciated; and it's for this reason mainly that the ritual has been added to UNESCO's list.

It is, however, slightly boring when compared with other shamanistic ceremonies on the island.  Mostly, it is prayer and costume sort of show.

 Kim Yoon Su, the male shaman in the pictures, spends much of the ritual reciting prayers while occasionally twirling slowly, or performing other rituals involving food preparation, presumably as an offering to Yeongdeung. *Yawn*

The atmosphere has a certain sacred oriental feeling, which is pleasant and often intensified by the drums and chanting, which rise and recede but then rise again to an emotional-charged pitch. 







Here are some photos of Kim Yoon Su dancing in costume to drums and chanting, for Yeongdeung.

 

(Left) A woman chanting in a hanbok (traditional Korean attire) and absolving bad luck ritualistically, with what I surmise are sacred pompoms.

(Right): A performance by a couple of women who I think are haenyeo or at least the representation thereof. The performance was semi-comedic. 

As the performance resolves, there appear 5 or 6 costumed folks representing Yeongdeung (below), and there is dancing and members of the audience are invited to the stage to dance in a circle. The audience is aged, though clearly the ritual summons a spirit of youthful in them, even if it fails to summon Yeongdeung himself.
 

UNESCO:

Kim Yoon-su, speaking on the ceremony's acknowledgment by UNESCO, says to Arirang, "I'm very happy to hear the news and I feel a greater sense of responsibility to work harder to preserve and develop the shaman rite since it's now a world cultural heritage."
A key benefit to UNESCO's tip of the hat, according to Korea's media, Arirang, is that "the value of the island's brand has increased. If the Yeongdeung Gut is developed for tourism purposes, it will contribute to the growth of the local economy".

As such, the likelihood is that the local government will provide funds to preserve the rite. Already the results can be seen. The performance photographed above was actually just that: a performance rather than a rite in the strict sense of the word. It was held 4 months off the traditional date, no doubt in an effort to gain attention rather than the religious/cultural impetus of yesteryear. 

What to make of this? Is it sacrilege to do Yeongdeung's song and dance for profit? 

I once heard the opinion of one of Jeju's locals whose name I can't recall, what she thought about the current state of shamanism, namely, that of it becoming a crowd-pleaser and a wallet fattener. Her response surprised me, and I'll try to paraphrase it as best I can: 'Better that it exists as a performance than to have it fade away entirely'. 

And fade away it would, and still might.  The audience that these kind of rites summon is an aging one, and the Jeju people of the younger generation (meaning aged 40 and under), if aware of these things at all, generally find shamans and these rituals sort of weird and tediously superstitious, but mostly irrelevant.