before. In 1876, by means of the gunboat diplomacy first demonstrated by the West, Japan forced Korea into signing the unequal Treaty of Ganghwa, which opened the country to trade with the island nation.
In 1894–1895, China—Korea’s long-standing “big brother” state—and Japan went to war, principally over control of Korea. Japan’s victory ended Chinese influence over the peninsula and coincided with the official ending of the Joseon social structure based on yangban, jungin, sangmin, and cheonmin classes. A process of brutal colonization culminated in the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910, granting Japan “all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea.”
The Modern Era
The period of 1910–1945 represents a nadir in Korean history. It was the first time that this oft-invaded nation had fallen under the full control of a foreign power. Japan ruled the country through governors-general who imposed order via police and military force and punished dissenters severely. It is, however, an uncomfortable fact that Japanese political control was implemented not only by Japanese administrators but with the help of large numbers of Korean collaborators, who ranged from ex-Joseon officials and landowners in the governor-general’s pay to people from the lower classes who took work in the police or as informers.
Particularly during the 1930s and early 1940s, Japan governed Korea with extreme cruelty. As many as 200,000 women were made into sex slaves. Men were used as forced laborers. All people were required to take Japanese names, speak Japanese, and worship at Shinto shrines. And while Japan did pursue industrialization, particularly in the north of Korea, the beneficiaries of the ensuing economic growth tended to be either Japanese, or their Korean collaborators.
Though the defeat of Imperial Japan in 1945 resulted in Korean liberation, joy was short-lived. The Allied victors, the United States and the Soviet Union, occupied and divided the country on a supposedly temporary basis (without consulting Koreans), with the former responsible for territory south of the 38th Parallel and the latter the north. The original intention was to reconstitute Korea as a free, independent country, and the newly formed UN drew up plans to hold elections to determine a Korean government. However, Moscow opposed this. Instead, in the North a new regime led by former independence fighter Kim Il-sung was formed, under the tutelage of Joseph Stalin. In the South, the U.S. military backed a staunchly anti-Communist, American-educated candidate named Syngman Rhee. Rhee would lead the South until 1960.
The two superpowers quickly turned from allies to enemies. By 1948, the U.S.-backed South was holding elections, which the Soviet-backed North boycotted. Rhee, the ultimate victor in this process, became president of South Korea and formally assumed power from the U.S. military, inaugurating the new Republic of Korea on the August 15, 1948, under a constitution promulgated one month previously. On September 9, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed, with Kim Il-sung as its prime minister. The formal establishment of two independent states completed the division of Korea.
Neither North nor South Korea viewed this division as acceptable in the long term. Both parties had launched border raids and skirmishes across the 38th parallel, but on June 25, 1950, the North began a full-scale invasion. Kim Il-sung’s forces made rapid gains and by August controlled the entire Korean peninsula, save for a small area around the southeastern port city of Busan.
On September 15, acting for UN Command, U.S. general Douglas MacArthur staged a landing at the west coast city of Incheon, with 40,000 American and South Korean troops. By September 25, they had retaken Seoul and began pressing into North Korea, with the intention of reaching the Chinese border. China, which had been under Communist control since the previous year, sent 200,000 troops down into Korea across the Yalu River on October 25, in support of Kim Il-sung. For the rest of the war, the South Korea-UN and North Korea-China forces fought each other to a stalemate.
By the time the armistice agreement was signed on July 27, 1953, an estimated three million people had lost their lives as a result of the three-year conflict. Of this total, around 2.5 million were Korean civilians. The total combined population of North and South Korea at the time was just 30 million. Furthermore, the peninsula’s infrastructure—roads, government buildings, bridges—was almost completely destroyed. The destruction of around half of all houses on the peninsula resulted in destitution for millions of those who had managed to survive the war itself.
South Korea was born into ruin and poverty. Even at the end of the 1950s, GDP per capita was well below $100. Life expectancy was around fifty-four years. The political situation was equally dismal: the nation was presided over by an authoritarian, corrupt regime under President Rhee. It could maintain power only through violence and did little to improve the people’s standard of living.
In the intervening half-century though, South Korea has somehow overcome the weight of its tragic history to become arguably the greatest national success story of recent times. It is a story of rapid economic, political, cultural, and artistic achievements. These advances alone deserve our attention, but the overall story of the people and culture from which they sprang should also be more widely known.
PART ONE
Foundations
Chapter 1
Shamanism and the Spirit World
Primary colors blur as she spins repeatedly, entranced and led on by clanging cymbals and the insistent beat of drums. She sings and dances as a means of communicating with the spirit world. She enters into what appears to be a trance, speaking with the voice of the departed. This is her gift, and her curse—to be a musok-in, a Korean shaman. The ceremony she is performing, the gut, lasts all day long and may serve to calm malign spirits, purify the soul of the recently deceased, or ask the gods for a good harvest or success in a business venture. She is part of a tradition that stretches back forty thousand years and has its origins in Siberia. Musok, or shamanism, has been practiced on the Korean peninsula for far longer than the concept of Korea, the country, has existed.
Though Musok is ancient and seems remote from the South Korea of today—a wealthy, technologically advanced, and increasingly globalized country—it is woven into the fabric of Korean society and still exerts an influence over the most rational of city folk.
What is Korean Shamanism, and How Popular Is It?
Musok is a set of disparate religious or superstitious practices based in the belief of a natural world animated by spirits, and aimed at bridging between those spirits and living human beings. Usually, a believer will turn to Musok in order to produce some sort of benefit—good fortune or the removal of evil spirits—or to learn something about his or her destiny. Practitioners may follow a great many different gods and spirits, and the way these are followed depends on a number of factors, including the practitioner’s personality and the region she comes from. According to the musok-in Hyun-ju (her working name), who has practiced Musok for over twenty years for a large variety of clients, at the heart of Musok is simply a “belief in nature.” As she explains, everything in nature—be it a person, an animal, a tree, or even a rock —has a spirit. Musok offers a way of communicating with those spirits, and possibly using them for some earthly benefit.
Since each musok-in follows different gods and spirits, there is a pantheon in only a very loose sense. Researchers have documented more than ten thousand gods worshipped by Musok practitioners, and, in reality, there are likely to be many more. Individual musok-in have their own principal gods—Hyun-ju’s is an ancient Chinese monk. There have been those who have followed Jesus Christ; and, after his daring Incheon landing during the Korean War, some even worshipped General Douglas MacArthur.
Similarly, since there is no overarching set of rules and no bible or orthodoxy, ceremonies that have formalized rituals involving dances, songs, and incantations—such as the Seoul danggut, which calls for a good harvest—are recognized and transmitted on a regional or town level. Musok-in learn those that apply to their home regions. In addition, according to Hyun-ju, musok-in often find it hard to collaborate since they each believe “their gods are the