Invoking the Spirit of Peace

Before Kim Kumhwa was born in 1931 in Hwanghae-do, a province now in North Korea, her maternal grandmother had a dream in which she saw a dragon rising toward the sky--a sign, the family believed, that the coming baby would rise to greatness. Such a premonition led everyone to believe that the coming baby would be a boy. Kim’s gender was a surprise, but the premonition played out.

Kim is now one of South Korea’s most famous shamans--celebrating rituals that are part of the country’s folk religion and central to its music and dance traditions. She travels the world with a group of performers to re-create selected rituals known as kut (pronounced coot). Indeed, Kim was granted Living National Treasure status in South Korea in 1984. Next Sunday, she and 11 other shamans and performers will arrive at L.A.’s Lafayette Park for a ceremony meant to promote community harmony and reconciliation in observance of the 10th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots.

The kut will include colorful costumes, flags, offerings, elaborate ritualized movement and improvisation. It is meant to provide repose for the souls trapped in the chaos of the riots as well as good fortune for those who survived.

Kim’s last appearance in the United States was in 1982, to observe the 100th anniversary of South Korean-American relations. Speaking by phone via translator from her home in Seoul, the 71-year-old notes that she has performed rituals for everything from assuring successful fishing to the exorcising of evil spirits, but that the Los Angeles kut is a first.

The riots, she says “were reported in a large way here. One of the things we pursue is reconciliation and bringing people together in village harmony. It will be a first time I’m [doing] a kut for that purpose in the United States. All kuts, especially village-scale kind of kuts, are the things we pursue.

“Once a year,” she continues, “we go to the DMZ to placate the bereaved souls who died in the Korean War, and also to pray for unification with the North. Praying for this kind of thing requires that people set their hearts straight and also their han--a grudge or frustration that builds up because of conflict of one’s own unreasonable ambitions. It causes problems and harms yourself.”

Kim was initiated at the age of 17 into her role as a mudang, or shaman, by her grandmother, also a mudang. Her path to shamanism began, she says, when she was 11 and came down with a serious illness that she says “turned out to be a form of possession.”

“I went to the hospital. My body only started to improve when I began to recognize that maybe I was being called to be a shaman,” she says. “At first I cried a lot, being scared and unaccepting of what was happening to me, but when I resigned myself to my fate, and my grandmother initiated me, it was like becoming a new person.”

This new Kim found immediate success as a beacon of spirituality, performing the trance-induced kuts, which date back several thousand years. After war broke out in 1950, Kim fled south, eventually moving to Seoul in 1965. In 1972, she won the National Folk Art Competition, vaulting her to prominence as a major shaman.

Kim, who has a son and two grandchildren, has also initiated nearly 50 shamans in a country where she says there are about 20,000 ritual healers. Besides performing thousands of small, private rituals over the years, Kim also appears in shows for the general public in South Korea 10 to 12 times annually. Other recent stops include Germany, Australia and China.

Kim is renowned for one rite, the chaktu, or knife dance. Barefoot, she balances on the sharp side of 2-foot long-blades and turns 360 degrees. Her trance state is supposed to protect her. But, having performed the ritual for 55 years, she admits she has been hurt three times.

“When I get ready to go on the knives, I invite the spirit. As I’m on the knives, there’s a sense that some other power has come in me and is holding me on them--holding me up from them. When that is severe, I sort of run upon them and am elevated up there that much faster. Sometimes, when I don’t get the sense that I’m being pulled along, I actually do feel a sense of fear. But when I do get up on the knives, I’m OK and give special thanks afterward.”

Tim Tangherlini, an associate professor of Korean folklore at UCLA, has seen Kim perform numerous times, both in South Korea and in the States.

“Korean shamanism is both visually exciting and engaging,” he said. “There are startling juxtapositions, enthusiastic dancing with soulful, mournful singing. It’s obvious why Kim is a national treasure when you see her perform. She invokes the spirits with remarkable skill. I think it’s great she’s coming to L.A. If you wanted to do an event that will help promote the healing between communities, she would be right there at the top of my list.”

Korean arts devotee and former director of development at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and at KCRW radio, Lauren Deutsch is responsible, along with Anaheim-based South Baylo University, a school of acupuncture, for bringing Kim and company to Los Angeles. Deutsch, who met Kim in 1991 and has made many sojourns to South Korea to see her perform, believes in the importance of ritual.

“In the old times, when there was discord in the community, people would go to the village shaman and say, ‘We’re having village disharmony.’ This is the foundation of most cultures, when medicine, spirituality and art were inseparable--when art was potent, and we respected the art of healers.

“I was looking for a way to observe the anniversary of the L.A. riots and understand more about tolerance,” Deutsch continues. “I thought it would be terrific to bring Kim and her group here. I hope that L.A. gets a good party.”

As for Kim, who is in robust health and jogs every morning, she feels that the spirits she invokes--in earth, in heaven and particularly in nature--are all little gods. When asked if she has plans to retire, she says matter-of-factly, “I can’t answer that question. I’ve got to keep at it and go until I don’t have to anymore. But it’s really not up to me.”

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KIM KUMHWA AND COMPANY, Lafayette Park, 627 Lafayette Park Place, Los Angeles. Date: Next Sunday, 2-5 p.m. Price: Free.

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Victoria Looseleaf is a regular contributor to Calendar.