As Kyoim Yun relates in her new monograph, the indigenous shamans of Cheju Island, known as simbang, have long intrigued scholars of Korean folklore with their artful performance of mythic narratives (ponp'uri). However, despite a significant literature in Korean and some works in Japanese, very little is available in English on the Cheju shaman tradition. Seongnae Kim and Yun herself have made significant contributions, but this is the first English-language monograph on Cheju simbang.
Given the preponderance of literature on mainland shamans, most particularly the mansin of North Korea and the Seoul area, Yun's discussion sometimes wobbles between Cheju specificities and a generic “Korean shamanism,” but Yun is generally careful in delineating her referential frames. She argues that economic transactions are and have been an abiding concern in Korean shaman ritual. Internal to the ritual itself, cash and goods become a material distillation of sincerity (...
