RELAY TO SEOUL IS ON : Olympic Flame Touches Down on South Korean Soil 21 Days Before Games

The Olympic flame arrived on South Korean soil Saturday, 21 days before the opening of the Games of the XXIV Olympiad in Seoul, and was greeted by a thunderstorm, children in bright costumes performing traditional folk dances of Cheju Island--and shamans.

The shamans, who worship animist spirits, were unable to chase away the rain showers, but that wasn’t high on their list of priorities. Their role was to exorcise the demons that threaten the Seoul Olympics.

In a country where Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity are recognized as the major religions, sociologists believe that more people consult shamans than will admit to it. That is particularly true in less sophisticated areas such as Cheju, which is Korea’s largest island (700 square miles) and lies 60 miles off the peninsula’s southwest point.

The shamans’ involvement in the program Saturday was somewhat of an embarrassment to officials of the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee (SLOOC), who are trying to present South Korea to the rest of the world as a dynamic, modern nation. But at the same time, they appreciated that the island’s elders displayed their sincere concern for the welfare of the Games by enlisting the shamans in the effort.

The selection by SLOOC of Cheju as the point of entry for the flame on its 22-day, 2,500-mile journey through South Korea to Seoul has been perceived as a political statement. While the island has been discovered in the last decade by Japanese tourists, Cheju remains one of the country’s least-advanced provinces.

By beginning the South Korean phase of the torch run on the island, the organizers are keeping their promise to include all of the people, not just the privileged, in the Games. Political scientists in South Korea wonder if the gesture would have been possible before the government’s shift toward democracy last year.

Cheju’s elders were so honored that they rescheduled the most important shamanastic ritual of the year for last Thursday and moved it from Mt. Halla, the country’s highest peak, to a Confucian temple in Cheju City, where about 200,000 of the island’s half-million inhabitants live.

That was significant because shamanists consider Mt. Halla sacred as the home of the mountain god. Shamanists do not worship the mountain itself but the spirit of the mountain. They also hold the spirits of trees, rivers and celestial bodies in reverence.

In the spirit of the Olympics, the shamans were agreeable to the move. But they almost regretted it when a non-believer, a Christian, interrupted the ritual at the temple, accusing them of heresy and devil worship. He charged toward the sacred tablets but was tackled before he could reach them.

Unfazed, the shamans were at the ceremony Saturday to perform a koot , a solemn ritual that combines drama, dance and music to invite friendly spirits and ward off evil.

After the ceremony, which also featured the famous women divers who bolster the island’s economy by combing the bottom of the Pacific Ocean for shell fish and kelp, the torch was carried around the island by 38 runners before it finally came to a rest at Cheju’s most sacred place, Shinsan Park.

According to legend, that is where the island’s three founders, Ko, Yang and Bu, were born, emerging from holes in the ground.

Cheju, once a base for Mongols Genghis and Kublai Khan in their 13th-Century invasions of Japan, wasn’t known in the West until Dutch sailors were shipwrecked on the island in 1653. Korea, known at the time as the Hermit Kingdom, held the sailors captive in Seoul. But one of them, Henrik Hamel, escaped, returned home and wrote a book about his adventure.

“Since . . . Henrik Hamel, who drifted away in a wrecked ship to our homeland more than 300 years ago, we have not had such an honor as today,” Cheju’s governor, Lee Kun-po, said upon the arrival of the flame.

Banners throughout Cheju City reminded people that they would lose face if the island wasn’t prepared for the flame.

One group pleased to see the flame receive such a respectful welcome was the Hellenic Olympic Committee of Greece. Its members are caretakers of Olympic traditions, and they guard none more jealously than the flame.

In a ceremony last Tuesday in Olympia, Greece, a senior priestess, who actually is New York stage actress Katarina Didaskalou, and 18 assistant priestesses ignited the flame at the Temple of Hera with a specially-designed mirror that reflected the sun’s rays.

The flame was transferred in a fire pot to the site of the ancient Olympic Games, about 300 meters from the Temple of Hera, where it was placed on a stone altar. With an olive branch in one hand, the senior priestess lit the torch from the fire pot.

For the next three days and two nights, Greek runners carried the torch from Olympia to the Panathenian Stadium in Athens. HOC members were in their glory, having had to cancel that part of the ceremony in 1984 because of security concerns.

Four years ago, many Greeks, fueled by anti-American sentiment, didn’t want the flame handed over because of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee’s decision to sell the torch run for $3,000 a kilometer. It didn’t matter that the money went to charity. Greeks considered it crass commercialism and an affront to their tradition. As a result, the LAOOC transported the flame from Olympia to Athens by helicopter.

HOC officials Saturday made it plain that all is neither forgotten nor forgiven.

But the Greeks believe that they have discovered kindred spirits in the South Koreans, whose culture is as steeped in ceremony as theirs. South Koreans appear to be more fascinated by the rituals surrounding the Games than by the Games themselves. One of the two major networks in the country, KBS, televised almost eight hours live from the ceremony in Greece, including the rehearsal.

Both networks were on live from here Saturday and will be on again today, when the flame is carried by a Mongolian horse brigade from its Shinsan Park resting place to a ferryboat, “The Olympia,” for a 10-hour trip to South Korea’s busiest port city, Pusan.