북녘의 무당들 －어느 탈북 무녀(巫女)의 이야기－

Abstract

North and South Korea have adopted respectively a different political system since 1945. The lack of communication between the two Koreas has continued and we have very limited information about North Korea. Under these circumstances, I interviewed a female North Korean shaman and tried to examine the status and role of a shaman and further shamanism in North Korea, The findings of my research interview indicate that North Korean shamanism has contracted significantly due to the political repression, but it has not disappeared completely. Rather, shamanism seems to be widely practiced now in North Korea. North Korea's natural disasters, economic crisis and social unrest in the 1990s have led the growing number of people to look for a shaman, which strengthened the position of shaman in North Korean Society. Although North Korean Shamans can not perform kut(shamanistic rites) publicly, but most North Koreans know the presence of shamans and seek to help. However, the shaman's social status is double－bounded as is in South Korea. The presence and role of shaman is recognized by people but shamanic practices are not considered as a legitimate profession. North Korean government's repressive policies toward shamanism have made shamans to be called as fortunetellers and shamanism is officially considered superstition in North Korea. Traditional shamanistic rituals and songs have almost disappeared and were instead replaced with private rituals of individual shamans and minor healing practices of folk religion. As South Korean Shamans have put great importance to documents containing the contents of shaman rituals, the North Korean shamans of North Korea try not to reveal how they actually cure or heal the customers. However, North Korean Shamanism still survives and have fundamental characteristics of Korean Shamanism. Same with shamanism in South Korea, the so-called god-illness is unavoidable to be a shaman, which leads us to think about the essence of Korean shamanism.