This paper examines Seol, Gongchan-i, which was translated into Korean in the mid-17th century from Seol, Gongchan-jeon written in Chinese by Chae, Soo in the beginning of the 16th century. Seol, Gongchan-i is significant in that it is the first excavated document which is directly related to Seol, Gongchan-jeon that incurred the biggest slip of the pen in the Joseon Dynasty. It has been spread to the public and enjoyed in Korean, having travelled through the temporal gap of 160 years, although it was declared as a forbidden book. Seol, Gongchan-i, is also significant in itself as a literary work in that it depicts the contemporary people's fear and curiosity for death and love for life, by dint of a bizarre phenomenon of 'possession,' in a simple manner.
The attitude towards life and death was read from Seol, Gongchan-i, in terms of horror for death, interests in death, and an outlook on afterlife. The story describes the rendezvous between humans and lemures, in which the appearance of lemures is not given in detail. However, the description of a spirit in Seol, Gongchan-i is different from that of a spirit ideologized in the framework of Confucianism in that the spirit causes a sensation of fear by harming and deforming the person who is possessed and other people, to resolve his sorrow. This feature of spirits, not affected by Confucianism and attempting to resolve regret by intentionally instigating terror, is originated from a realistic view on death, which is based on the longstanding shamanistic religion.
In Seol, Gongchan-i people regard a spirit as an object of fear and try to exorcise it; on the other hand, they ask the spirit about posthumous life and gratify their curiosity. Their questions for Gongchan and Gongchan's portrayal of the other world is fairly realistic and ordinary. Only 40-li away from humans' abode does this other world exist, in which everything, including familial relationship, social positions, and tax, is the same as this life. This must be from the contemporary people's imagination that was trying to narrow a psychological distance between death and life, by decreasing the physical distance.
In this idea there appears to be a wish that the next life will be an ideal time and space in which this life's hardship or absurdity can be settled. This wish does not come from thoughts that affirm and desire the next life; rather, it is a kind of strength that affirms this life, which is full of suffering, and it is a vicarious experience through an imaginal space while praying for individual luck.
Seol, Gongchan-i talks about fear for death, curiosity about afterlife, and overcoming this life's difficulty in the next life; however, it actually centers around a 'perspective on life and death based on reality' since it consists of fear and curiosity that stem from attachment to this life. The tendency of pursuing the reality-oriented view of life and death, which admits a ghost resembling a human, is discovered in shamanism, folk songs, and tales. It must be derived from a very realistic and simple understanding of life and death, as opposed to the philosophical standpoint.