Seong Nae Kim | Sogang University (original) (raw)

Papers by Seong Nae Kim

Extreme Orient Extreme Occident, 2024

Notices bio-bibliographiques Bio-bibliographical Notes Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, 47-2024 ... more Notices bio-bibliographiques Bio-bibliographical Notes Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, 47-2024 Les véhicules des morts ou comment présentifier les défunts dans les pratiques rituelles en Asie Florence Galmiche « Chugŏ poaya chŏsŭng'ŭl anda [alchi] ; On ne connaît l'autre monde que quand on meurt. » Ce dicton coréen illustre l'importance de l'incertitude qui entoure le destin des morts en Corée et plus généralement en Asie de l'Est 1. Le respect, le soin et la crainte à leur égard informent les nombreux rites qui prennent la suite des funérailles, tant du côté des « rites confucéens d'offrandes aux ancêtres » (chesa) que des cérémonies chamaniques (kut), ou des diverses commémorations bouddhiques ou chrétiennes pour l'apaisement des défunts. Basés sur des principes hétérogènes et des traditions rituelles ou religieuses différentes, ces pratiques ont en commun de mettre en oeuvre, de manière explicite, la continuité d'un lien entre les vivants et les morts. La forme privilégiée que prend ce lien est l'offrande, en particulier de nourriture 2. Ces rites peuvent être codifiés avec précision et donner lieu à une vaste exégèse orale ou écrite, mais les personnes qui y participent manifestent généralement une forme de réserve lorsqu'il s'agit de caractériser la présence des morts au moment des offrandes. Dans les milieux bouddhiques en Corée, il 1. Ce projet s'inscrit dans le cadre du programme ANR Cortem « Les corps témoins. Pour une sociologie politique du traitement des restes humains » (ANR-18-CE41-0002). Je tiens à remercier également, en plus du comité de rédaction d'Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, les personnes intervenues à différents stades de l'élaboration de ce numéro :

Violence: An International Journal, 2023

Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages... more Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages of construction. Those with inherited memories of their ancestors from mass atrocities share the ability to exert their post-memories that mediates the past memory in its affective force to restore their sociability with their relatives, neighbors, community, and nation. A central medium of post-memory typically comes in the form of commemorative ritual practices that contain a mixture of mourning and re-creation of family and community. Ritual engages informal socio-cultural processes outside the purview of the state. Commemoration rituals reflect ordinary people’s attempts to seek moral renewal and social repair to promote social reconstruction and recovery of humanity. This essay considers feminist interventions of intimate memorial scales, enabling us to envision potential alternative historical trajectories in post-massacre commemorations, memorials, reburials, and as mnemonic locations for agonistic testimonies to emerge around a mid-century massacre in South Korea called the “Cheju April 3 Incident.” We take into consideration how the post-memory of the Cheju April 3 Incident is inter-generationally transmitted and ritually re-enacted through family ancestor worship, and the reburial of remains after the exhumation of mass graves. The lessons of post-memory practices are crucial to the foundation of humanity after atrocity.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, 2013

This chapter focuses on the particular case of the Cheju Massacre of 1948 in Korea.This event pre... more This chapter focuses on the particular case of the Cheju Massacre of 1948 in Korea.This event prefigured the Korean War in 1950 and the Cold War.The events began on April 3, 1948 as a communist guerrilla rebellion and popular protest against the American military occupation (1945-1948), but developed into a civilian massacre of 30,000 after establishment of anti-communist state in South Korea.This chapter explores the way in which the imagery of violent deaths and their memories are culturally mediated in ritual practices of shamanic spirit possession and ancestral worship, and how they make a strong case for contestations in the work of national memory.

Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts, 2021

This is a book chapter in Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts , edited by Jelke Boeste... more This is a book chapter in Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts , edited by Jelke Boesten and Helen Scanlon

Violence: An International Journal, 2023

Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages... more Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages of construction. Those with inherited memories of their ancestors from mass atrocities share the ability to exert their postmemories that mediates the past memory in its affective force to restore their sociability with their relatives, neighbors, community, and nation. A central medium of postmemory typically comes in the form of commemorative ritual practices that contain a mixture of mourning and recreation of family and community. Ritual engages informal sociocultural processes outside the purview of the state. Commemoration rituals reflect ordinary people's attempts to seek moral renewal and social repair to promote social reconstruction and recovery of humanity. This essay considers feminist interventions of intimate memorial scales, enabling us to envision potential alternative historical trajectories in post-massacre commemorations, memorials, reburials, and as mnemonic locations for agonistic testimonies to emerge around a mid-century massacre in South Korea called the "Cheju April 3 Incident." We take into consideration how the postmemory of the Cheju April 3 Incident is intergenerationally transmitted and ritually re-enacted through family ancestor worship, and the reburial of remains after the exhumation of mass graves. The lessons of postmemory practices are crucial to the foundation of humanity after atrocity.

흔적 2, 2001

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Cambridge Heritage Research Center Bulletin, 2022

Commemorating South Korea's Cheju April 3rd Incident: Cultural Trauma and the Politics of Postmemory

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2000

Introduction: the Cheju April Third Incident This paper concerns the politics of representation i... more Introduction: the Cheju April Third Incident This paper concerns the politics of representation involving political violence and the memory of a violent event in modern Korean history. In particular, I focus on the legacy of the 1948 Cheju April Third Incident, which took place on Cheju Island located off the southwestern coast of the Korean peninsula. This incident is known in Korea as sasam sakon or the 4.3 Incident (often called simply as`4.3,' after the date of its occurrence). The 4.3 Incident started when a few hundred communist guerrillas attacked police and`rightists' all around the Cheju Island on 3 April 1948. 1 When counter-insurgency operations were launched to suppress the insurgency, the situation turned into a bloody mass massacre of civilians, who formed the majority of victims. The 4.3 Incident and its violent conclusion in mass massacre pre® gured the Korean War in 1950, the better known ideological battle that ended in stalemate and the loss of millions of lives. Although the suppression resulted in a massive death toll of 80,000, or nearly one third of the entire island population, the event has been largely overlooked in historical texts and virtually forgotten in everyday life. 2 As far anti-Communist ideology continues to dominate state politics in South Korea, and the legacy of the 4.3 Incident remains of® cially as a communist insurgency, much of the memory of the civilian massacres has been effectively silenced. This paper attempts to offer a timely examination of a little known tragic event in Korean modern history. 3 Like words`Auschwitz' and`Hiroshima/Nagasaki', the word`Cheju April Third Incident' was a taboo on the public discourse on Korean modernity due to its apocalyptic irrationality (cf. Haver 1996). More than a mere violent event, the Cheju April Third Incident poses an essential threat to the conceptualization of Korean modern history and modernity altogether. This paper argues the essential limit and insuf® ciency of historical consciousness and representations of this most violent yet little known event. However, as testimonies of the 4.3 Incident began to be published and memorial activities organized starting in the late 1980s, there has been a new examination of the historical meaning of the 4.3 Incident. Was it, in fact, a communist insurgency as the state has de® ned it or a popular uprising against a foreign occupation? Or was it a nationalist movement for complete independence and national uni® cation as local dissident intellectuals contend? Or was it mainly a civilian massacre? Such a debate about the historical character of the 4.3 Incident relocates the local event of 50 years ago on the plane of contemporary national politics. The peripheral memories of

Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pat... more Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pattern of oral epics serves not merely as "a mnemonic device" that aids in recalling signi³cant historical events but makes meaningful connections to the cultural experience of identity politics. On Cheju Island, a volcanic island located some ³fty miles below the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula, the indigenous sense of identity and history is expressed and accentuated in the fate of the shrine deities who are portrayed as exiles in shamanic epics such as ponhyang ponp'uri. The tragic heroism in the cliché of exile and return of the shrine deities recapitulates the historical identity of Cheju people as "exiles at the frontier." After Cheju Island lost political autonomy as an independent kingdom, Tam-ra, in the early twelfth century, the Cheju people's cultural memory of isolation and redemptive desire for liberation from the mainland state's domination becomes intelligible and justi³able textually through the heroic acts of exiled deities.

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2000

This paper concerns the politics of representation involving political violence and the memory of... more This paper concerns the politics of representation involving political violence and the memory of a violent event in modern Korean history. In particular, I focus on the legacy of the 1948 Cheju April Third Incident, which took place on Cheju Island located off the southwestern coast of the Korean peninsula. This incident is known in Korea as sasam sakon or the 4.3 Incident (often called simply as `4.3,’ after the date of its occurrence). The 4.3 Incident started when a few hundred communist guerrillas attacked police and r̀ightists’ all around the Cheju Island on 3 April 1948. When counter-insurgency operations were launched to suppress the insurgency, the situation turned into a bloody mass massacre of civilians, who formed the majority of victims. The 4.3 Incident and its violent conclusion in mass massacre pre® gured the Korean War in 1950, the better known ideological battle that ended in stalemate and the loss of millions of lives. Although the suppression resulted in a massive death toll of 80,000, or nearly one third of the entire island population, the event has been largely overlooked in historical texts and virtually forgotten in everyday life. As far anti-Communist ideology continues to dominate state politics in South Korea, and the legacy of the 4.3 Incident remains of® cially as a communist insurgency, much of the memory of the civilian massacres has been effectively silenced. This paper attempts to offer a timely examination of a little known tragic event in Korean modern history. Like words `Auschwitz’ and `Hiroshima/Nagasaki’ , the word `Cheju April Third Incident’ was a taboo on the public discourse on Korean modernity due to its apocalyptic irrationality (cf. Haver 1996). More than a mere violent event, the Cheju April Third Incident poses an essential threat to the conceptualization of Korean modern history and modernity altogether. This paper argues the essential limit and insuf® ciency of historical consciousness and representations of this most violent yet little known event. However, as testimonies of the 4.3 Incident began to be published and memorial activities organized starting in the late 1980s, there has been a new examination of the historical meaning of the 4.3 Incident. Was it, in fact, a communist insurgency as the state has de® ned it or a popular uprising against a foreign occupation? Or was it a nationalist movement for complete independence and national uni® cation as local dissident intellectuals contend? Or was it mainly a civilian massacre? Such a debate about the historical character of the 4.3 Incident relocates the local event of 50 years ago on the plane of contemporary national politics. The peripheral memories of

The Journal of Religion, 2019

This article explores the ways in which the contemporary legacies of the Cheju Massacre are inter... more This article explores the ways in which the contemporary legacies of the Cheju Massacre are intergenerationally transmitted and ritually reenacted in postmemory practices involving spirit possession and the reburial of dead bodies after exhumation. It inquires into questions of violence, memory, silence, and memorialization with resspect to a formative historical event, the Cheju Massacre, or the Cheju April 3 Event in 1948, which is regarded by scholars as the direct precursor of the Korean War, one of the first outbreaks of violent ideological conflict in the early Cold War. More specifically it examines contestations over the meaning of mass death and social suffering in the divergent works of personal, family, and official memories of the violent events and their aftermath.

Journal of Korean Religions, 2012

Jongsung Yang (yangshaman@hanmail.net) is a curator of the National Folk Museum of Korea (NFMK), ... more Jongsung Yang (yangshaman@hanmail.net) is a curator of the National Folk Museum of Korea (NFMK), where he focuses on its international exchange program, performance arts, and journal publication. He has worked at the NFMK as a curator since 1993 and also as a member of the editorial staff of the International Journal of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which was launched by the NFMK in 2008. He earned a PhD in Folklore and Cultural Anthropology (Indiana University, 1993) and is the author of Cultural Protection Policy in Korea: Intangible Cultural Properties and Living National Treasures (Jimoondang International, 2003). He has conducted anthropological research on the shamanism of various ethnic groups and countries, such as Nepal, Mongolia, and Korea. As a curator of the NFMK, he has organized several special exhibitions, including ‘‘Wood and Paper’’ (2008) and ‘‘The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac’’ (2010), as well as performance events of shamanic arts. He has been a member of the Korean Committee for Cultural Assets since 1998.

Book chapter "Memory politics and the emergence of women's sphere to counter historical violence ... more Book chapter "Memory politics and the emergence of women's sphere to counter historical violence in Korea" in the book "Gender, Transitional Justice, and Memorial Arts" edited by Jelke Boesten and Helen Scanlon (Routledge, 2021).
The chapter examines how the political performativity of women's public rituals of mourning is used to work through the memory of violent events in Korea's journey to modernity and democracy. For this purpose, I analyze two cases of women's public rites of mourning: 1) shamanic commemorative rituals, Haewon Chinhon Kut 해원진혼굿 for the dead souls of Japanese military 'comfort women' that were held by feminists and civil groups and conducted by female shamans occasionally in various locations from 1990 to 2013; 2) Cheju women's collective rituals of mutual aid (su-nu-rum) and shamanic public rituals for the dead souls of family victims during the Cheju April 3 Incident (sasam). Women's deaths of 21% of total victims were targeted in a genocidal purpose (proxy killing) of 'red hunt' during the 4.3. Women widow survivors rebuilt the family and village community through traditional mutual aid practice, su-nu-rum, and shamanic public village shrine ritual that constitute the women's public sphere.

Diogenes No.158, 1992

This paper will describe the rite for the exorcism of toch’aebi and examine its symbolic signific... more This paper will describe the rite for the exorcism of toch’aebi and
examine its symbolic significance in the wider social reality of Cheju
shamanism. Toch’aebi is a stranger deity who visits Che~ randomly
and tries to get on good terms with the people. However, this deity
afflicts people, particularly women, wearing down their vitality and
causing a kind of madness (turada). The exorcism ritual of toch’aebi
requires a sacrificial feast of roast pig and several days of dancing by
the possessed. For this reason, the exorcism ritual is called a dancing
rite, or ch’unun kut. It is supposedly toch’aebi himself who has the
desire to dance. Shaman’s songs (seouje sori) are used to induce the
toch’aebi, who is hiding in the patient’s body, to dance and reveal his
identity. The trance dance and singing are directed toward a dialogical construction of the demonic reality, which entails a romantic
entanglement of toch’aebi and the possessed. By translating a history
of personal suffering into the idiom of love, the shaman’s songs
develop a particular cultural logic of cure. Through an analysis of
curing song texts, along with various modes of performance such as
dance and comic play, this paper explores the transformative
process in which a particular cultural logic of illness and cure are
produced and enacted to reintegrate the patient into the social
world.

Gender and Family in East Asia, 2014

chapter 11.women, mourning, and the ritual for the death of family. It deals with the social and ... more chapter 11.women, mourning, and the ritual for the death of family.
It deals with the social and cultural power of supernatural beliefs in South Korea. Through shaman rituals women mourned their patrilineal family members who were abused and killed in the Cheju island Massacre of 1948. It offers the women's perspective in revealing the brutality of the anti-communist state power almost seven decades ago.

Asia Folklore Studies Journal, 2004

Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pat... more Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pattern of oral epics serves not merely as "a mnemonic device" that aids in recalling significant historical events but makes meaningful connections to the cultural experience of identity politics. On Cheju Island, a volcanic island located some fifty miles below the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula, the indigenous sense of identity and history is expressed and accentuated in the fate of the shrine deities who are portrayed as exiles in shamanic epics such as ponhyang ponp'uri. The tragic heroism in the cliche of exile and return of the shrine deities recapitulates the historical identity of Cheju people as "exiles at the frontier." After Cheju Island lost political autonomy as an independent kingdom, Tam-ra, in the early twelfth century, the Cheju people's cultural memory of isolation and redemptive desire for liberation from the mainland state's domination becomes intelligible and justifiable textually through the heroic acts of exiled deities.

Inter-religio journal, 2005

CYBORG MUDANG "CYSHA" ABORTED In September 1998, the appearance of cyborg mudang 'Cysha', a chara... more CYBORG MUDANG "CYSHA" ABORTED In September 1998, the appearance of cyborg mudang 'Cysha', a character invented by a Korean internet service company, drew wide attention from the mass media. 2 One of the major internet service providers in Korea, LG Internet, announced that cyborg mudang Cysha would descend from a mountain after an apprenticeship and become active on its internet service, Channel i, by the end of the month. The name Cysha was arrived at by combining the first syllables of the words "cyber" and "Shaman". Cysha takes the form of a ten-year-old cyborg named Child Spirit (Agi Tongja) of indistinct gender. The rationale for the virtual creation of this cyborg shaman lay in the 'redemptive' role of Cysha as a helper of suffering Web users or netizens, eradicating computer viruses and noxious pornographic sites. 3 Cysha would also instruct them on the use of shamanic talismans (bujok) and provide fortunetelling. In its service "Do you believe in talismans?", anyone could download talismans for personal use and also use talismans as screen savers. The birth of cyborg mudang Cysha forecast the virtualization of shamanic practices. 1 This paper, presented at the Inter-Religio Conference: Religion and Popular Culture in East Asia Today 2-5 March 2003, Pattaya, Thailand is newly revised version of the paper presented at the International Symposium, "Discovery of Shamanic Heritage," which was held from April 1st to 4 th , 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. 2 Here 'mudang' is a Korean translation of the term, 'shaman.' 'Cyborg' indicates a cybernetical invention, a machine with a human character. Supposedly it has an artificial intelligence and a virtual body. Thus a cyborg represents embodied virtuality (Hayles 1999:xii). 3 In Korea, Web users are often referred to 'netizens,' literally meaning 'citizens of the internet world.' This popular usage implies the principally democratic environment in cyberspace.

Extreme Orient Extreme Occident, 2024

Violence: An International Journal, 2023

A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, 2013

Gender, Transitional Justice and Memorial Arts, 2021

Violence: An International Journal, 2023

Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages... more Post-atrocity survivors construct spaces of being through various levels of visibility and stages of construction. Those with inherited memories of their ancestors from mass atrocities share the ability to exert their postmemories that mediates the past memory in its affective force to restore their sociability with their relatives, neighbors, community, and nation. A central medium of postmemory typically comes in the form of commemorative ritual practices that contain a mixture of mourning and recreation of family and community. Ritual engages informal sociocultural processes outside the purview of the state. Commemoration rituals reflect ordinary people's attempts to seek moral renewal and social repair to promote social reconstruction and recovery of humanity. This essay considers feminist interventions of intimate memorial scales, enabling us to envision potential alternative historical trajectories in post-massacre commemorations, memorials, reburials, and as mnemonic locations for agonistic testimonies to emerge around a mid-century massacre in South Korea called the "Cheju April 3 Incident." We take into consideration how the postmemory of the Cheju April 3 Incident is intergenerationally transmitted and ritually re-enacted through family ancestor worship, and the reburial of remains after the exhumation of mass graves. The lessons of postmemory practices are crucial to the foundation of humanity after atrocity.

흔적 2, 2001

Cambridge Heritage Research Center Bulletin, 2022

Commemorating South Korea's Cheju April 3rd Incident: Cultural Trauma and the Politics of Postmemory

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2000

The Journal of Religion, 2019

Journal of Korean Religions, 2012

Diogenes No.158, 1992

Gender and Family in East Asia, 2014

Asia Folklore Studies Journal, 2004

Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pat... more Oral traditions can contain elements of historical evidence and convey meaning. The narrative pattern of oral epics serves not merely as "a mnemonic device" that aids in recalling significant historical events but makes meaningful connections to the cultural experience of identity politics. On Cheju Island, a volcanic island located some fifty miles below the southernmost tip of the Korean peninsula, the indigenous sense of identity and history is expressed and accentuated in the fate of the shrine deities who are portrayed as exiles in shamanic epics such as ponhyang ponp'uri. The tragic heroism in the cliche of exile and return of the shrine deities recapitulates the historical identity of Cheju people as "exiles at the frontier." After Cheju Island lost political autonomy as an independent kingdom, Tam-ra, in the early twelfth century, the Cheju people's cultural memory of isolation and redemptive desire for liberation from the mainland state's domination becomes intelligible and justifiable textually through the heroic acts of exiled deities.

Inter-religio journal, 2005

Politiques de mémoire des fosses communes et commémorations des « événements » du 3 avril à Cheju... more Politiques de mémoire des fosses communes et commémorations des « événements » du 3 avril à Cheju en Corée Kim Seong Nae Notice bio-biblio manquante en français et en anglais This article enquires into questions of state violence, cultural trauma, commemoration, and memory politics with respect to the Cheju April 3rd Incident or "the 4.3" (1947-1954), which is regarded as the precursor of the Korean War. After the Special Law for Investigation of the Truth about the Cheju April 3 Incident was established in 2000 by the government, "the 4.3" was officially recognized as a case of state violence and civilian massacres. Due to long-term enforced silence and suppression of "the 4.3 memory," however, the divergence between state memory and local individuated memory has created conflict over the identity of the victims of mass killing, the commemoration of the event, and the complex politics of postmemory. Drawing on Hirsch's concept of "postmemory" (the type of inter-generational memory that mediates the past memory in its affective force), this paper explores the way in which this divergence is mediated in commemoration rituals of ancestor worship and reburial of dead bodies exhumed from mass graves. As material evidence of mass killing and its affective presence, the remains "animate" political action for moral judgement about responsibility for massacres. Placing the dead in a proper family tomb or public enshrinement hall shared with other mass dead in the 4.3 Peace Park becomes the most significant concerns of the bereaved families. It shows how state involvement in the management of remains and ancestral veneration custom continues to exert an influence on the surviving families of the dead as well as the victims of the 4.3. In opposition to the structural state intervention, there persisted a community action that continually repaired the loss of social relations and restored communal history through creating the children's collective grave and family cemetery and inventing island-wide shamanic rituals in the public sphere. In this article, we witness the community of death and loss, which is newly formed through cultural trauma and restorative justice in the postatrocity era. Cet article aborde les questions de la violence d'État, du traumatisme culturel, de la commémoration et de la politique de mémoire relatifs aux « événements » du 3 avril à Cheju ou « 4.3 » (1947-1954), considérés comme précurseurs de la guerre de Corée. Après l'adoption par le gouvernement, en 2000, de la Loi spéciale relative à la recherche de la vérité sur les événements