Korean Shamanism: The Cultural Paradox.(Book Review)

Korean Shamanism: The Cultural Paradox. By Chongho Kim. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing. 248 pp. $29.95 paper.

This work is a volume in Ashgate's Vitality of Indigenous Religions series and it represents a reworking of Kim's dissertation in social anthropology at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales. So, it has both the strengths and weaknesses of such a volume. On the one hand, the research is fresh and Kim offers important correctives and expansions on the fieldwork of Youngsook Kim Harvey and Laurel Kendall's with Korean shamans, and yet it suffers from some repetition and distracting jargon that often marks a published dissertation. The content is based on work first begun in 1991, but the main fieldwork was carried out in 1994 and 1995 in Soy, a rural area of South Korea.

I was surprised to find that so many of the issues I encounter in my own research with contemporary daoshi in Fujian province were also frustrations that Chongho Kim found in his work in Korea. Gaining the confidence of practitioners and developing a reliable set of informants is a common challenge for those wishing to guide study of contemporary religious traditions with on-the-ground observation and documentation.

Kim's findings rest largely on observations of fifteen kut (shamanistic rites) and intensive personal contact with several shaman and those who sought them out. Kim defines a shaman as a ritual practitioner who deals with matters of misfortune. Kut rituals are ceremonies in which the principal activity is that spirits (kwisin) speak through persons who are either in a trance or in some form of possession. But shamans also perform other functions, some of which are associated with versions of Daoism that migrated into Korea. For example, Kim reports a ghost marriage ceremony performed by a shaman, and this is also sometimes done by a daoshi. Accordingly, Kim agrees with the Korean government that shamans are not health care delivery personnel. They routinely perform kut to provide solutions for troubles other than medical ones, even if they do also prescribe traditional ...