By: Dr. Clark Sorensen (University of Washington)
This paper is a first run for a final chapter to a manuscript I am writing called “Encounters with Korean Folk Religion”. The manuscript weaves together a number of stories in a memoir-like narrative. These stories are: (1) the story of an anthropologist’s encounters with Korean folk religious rites in a single village over a year’s fieldwork, and how he tried to understand them, (2) the story of the ageless seasonal rhythm of agricultural life punctuated by regular calendrical rites, and of weddings and bethrothals that occur mostly in the winter, contrasted with the life crisis rituals (funerals, ritual cures) that occur irregularly (3) the story of the sickness, shamanistic treatment, and death of a prominent village woman from May to November 1977, (4) the story of the shrine keeper shaman living at the top of the mountain who was driven off the mountain in 1982, but (I only found out recently) still lives in the area. This epilogue is an attempt to write the final chapter of this last narrative by reflecting on the shaman’s fate and nature of the mountain gods after interviewing her in May 2015 thirty-eight years after I last met her in December 1977.
The event is free and open to the public.
