East Asia
Korean Musok
musok · mudang · gut · kangsinmu · sesŭmmu
Korean peninsula, with strong regional variation
EthnographyHistory
Korean musok is a largely female-led ritual complex of gut ceremonies in which deities and ancestors are hosted, fed, entertained and petitioned. It has an unusually well-documented modern history of stigma, criminalisation, heritage designation and urban revival.
Ritual specialists
- kangsinmu: called by spirit-descent illness (sinbyŏng)
- sesŭmmu: hereditary ritualists, historically strong in the southwest
Cosmology
- A crowded pantheon of generals, mountain spirits, household gods and ancestors
- Ancestral grievance (han) as a cause of misfortune
Ritual practice
- Multi-hour gut with musicians, costume changes and food offerings
- Divination consultations in small urban shrines
- Blade-standing and other feats treated as evidence of divine presence
History and pressure
- Confucian-state marginalisation in the Chosŏn period
- Colonial and modernisation-era campaigns against 'superstition'
- Intangible cultural heritage designation of specific gut traditions
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