Lessons with Gum Gang: Prayer

One of the major aspects of my time with Gum Gang was looking at the importance of prayer to his and his clients’ lifestyle. Even many different people followed different faiths, from Buddhism to ancestor worship to Christianity, everyone who visited Gum Gang’s home took the time to pray. During this time Gum Gang taught me the many values of prayer to how we think, how we interact with each other and how we choose what is important to us.

Below is another excerpt from the e-book I am currently working on, detailing Gum Gang’s methods and advice for prayer. Prayer is different for each person, but this can form a solid base for anyone who feels that, in the hustle and bustle of modern life, they may have forgotten how to pray.

Lessons with Gum Gang: Su Chon Gua

A large part of the lessons I’ve learned with Gum Gang don’t just come through the knowledge of the remedies themselves, but different approaches to cooking them that can save time, money and keep up health on a budget. One of the most important benefits of traditional knowledge is the fact that it is made to be an accessible and affordable alternative for the sake of minor health problems. For example as someone who has dealt with allergies since the age of six, drinking this recipe called Su Chon Gua can clear my sinuses and help me breathe easy without needing antihistamine. However I have met Gum Gang at times when my allergies were so bad he saw antihistamine as necessary. These remedies provide a different approach to varied levels in our health problems.

Su Chon Gua is not so much an exclusive Mudang remedy as a traditional Korean recipe. On the other hand Su Chon Gua can be hard to come by outside of the occasional traditional restaurant or tourist trap. Additionally, these brews of Su Chon Gua might not be as potent as the remedy version as an effective batch can taste quite strong. People like Gum Gang keep this remedy in connection with its older purpose as a “poison that removes other poisons.” This concept was frequent in East Asian traditional medicine and was thought important in various ingredients from ginseng to dog tongue. The idea is that by putting a small amount of certain elements into your body that it will process out, you will encourage other poisons which we ingest on a regular basis to leave the body as well.

Lessons with Gum Gang: Homemade Remedies

A large tub of Umeshu – preserved plum juice with healthy side effects

As much as a shaman performs or gives counsel to help others, their attachment to well-being and tradition touches many different parts of daily life. One of these is in diet and remedy, taking as much care with what we put into our bodies as what we do with them. Healthier people make happier people, and in turn a better community. As a result understanding traditional medical knowledge was and still is a large part of the role that Mudang play as social guides. Just as 1+1= a bigger 1, proper circulation and staying active throughout the day play a large role in how we live our lives, and in turn the quality of work we produce. These easy recipes  address different long term afflictions that may not be easily (or cheaply) answered through modern methods.

Whether or not one puts stock in these recipes, they also represent an important aspect of tradition and culture that figures like Mudang preserve. These different natural remedies were used to heal in ancient Korea, remnants of an older way of life that we can learn from and cherish. These remedies don’t just represent something we can use today, but also display a way of thinking that we often pass over in modern life.

Shamanism in the Modern Era

A pig ready to be balanced on a pitchfork, offered to the Gods, then eaten by all

             I stand amidst a rural garden, listening to constant drumming and chanting, surrounded by close friends and strangers from distant cities.  I traveled to a small town outside of Seoul to witness a Korean shaman’s ritual, but I did not only find superstitious elders and a rural population.  Instead, at this ritual in the middle of nowhere I found CEOs, politicians, artists and scholars, all in attendance out of respect for this Korean shaman and the necessity of this ritual to their lives.  Here I saw that the Kut (the Korean traditional shamanist ritual) remains alive as an integral part of modern Korean life.

             A Mudang is a profession and lifestyle that can take 2 minutes or 2 weeks to explain, and even in my extensive time working with Korean performance I have not fully grasped it.  At its core, a Mudang is someone who becomes possessed by what they call a “ghost” or a “god,” using the Mudang’s body as a translator between the material world and what Mudang call the “spirit world.”  This results in a period where the Mudang becomes possessed by their ghost and enters what anthropologist Michael Harner calls the SSC – a shifted state of consciousness.  During this shift, the Mudang’s ghost may tell fortunes and give advice on the future, perform a Kut (which ranges from dancing on knives to the slaughtering of a pig), or simply enter a clever banter with the client, remarking on their dress or demeanor. 

Traditions through Change: Korean Performance in Modern Society

The K-pop band “Rainbow” at the DSP family festival. We often associate K-pop with Korean performance, but what about the older aspects of Korean culture, both as an alternative and an influence?

In a stadium 45 minutes outside of Seoul, eight thousand fans gather to watch the national finals for League of Legends.  At the same time in the Itaewon district north of the river, a Mudang balances an entire pig on a pitchfork to dispel evil spirits.   Somewhere South of the river, nearby to Gangnam, a group of B-boys, poppers and lockers gather for an organized dance battle, competing with dancers from China, Japan and the U.S.  Korea is a dynamic country where ancient performance traditions exist side by side with the popular culture of E-sports and K-pop.  Oftentimes as countries develop economically traditions will die out or become commoditized purely for tourism.  However, South Korea has managed to maintain a cultural identity in the performance arts, maintaining the traditions of ancestors while modernizing for the global cultural landscape.  While all of these performances are radically different on the surface, much of the core stays the same throughout.  Tae Oh’Sok, one of Korea’s most prominent modern playwirghts, describes the nation better than I could:

“Listen to Korean music and its chang’dan.  It never keeps the same beat.  Our tradition has always avoided set forms.  It has descended to us not in a fixed state, but in an ever-flowing fashion.  Our tradition has grown spontaneously.  It constantly changes, reflecting current situations because it is innately fluid.” – Tae Oh’Sok