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A Study on the Structure and Ritual Significance of “Mungut” in Hamgyeong-do Province

  • Journal of Korean Literature
  • 2025, (52), pp.5~30
  • Publisher : The Society Of Korean Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature
  • Received : September 30, 2025
  • Accepted : November 10, 2025
  • Published : November 30, 2025

shin, horim 1

1국립경국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to analysis the narrative shamanic song “Mungut” from the Mangmuk-gut ritual of Hamgyeong-do Province, with the aim of elucidating its narrative structure and, through this, clarifying its ritual significance. The narrative of “Mungut” is segmented into three episodes: the study episode, the marriage episode, and the grave episode. Each episode symbolically corresponds to gwan(coming-of-age), hon(marriage), and sang(funerary rites). Within the sequential progression of the narrative from gwan to hon to sang, the figures of Yang San-baek and Chu Yang-dae generate a structural opposition of “together/apart” or “apart/together,” ultimately realizing the state of “together” through death. What is of particular interest is that Yang San-baek and Chu Yang-dae, at each segmental unit of the narrative, bring forth anomalous categories. In the study episode, Chu Yang-dae occupies a state of being neither female nor male; in the marriage episode, Yang San-baek remains in a state of being a non-husband; and in the grave episode, both Yang San-baek and Chu Yang-dae persist as non-death and non-life, respectively. In so doing, the narrative progressively deconstruct the binary opposition of life and death. These anomalous categories render the sequence of ‘gwan–hon–sang’ incomplete, and such incompleteness attains its resolution only through the stage of je(ritual). The ritual stage is realized after the grave episode, when Yang San-baek and Chu Yang-dae ascend to heaven and thereby assume their perfected form. Through the mediation of the grave episode, both the corporeal and spiritual dimensions of their existence are simultaneously resolved. The corporeal dimension is addressed in their being buried together within the grave, while the spiritual dimension is embodied through the images of butterflies and paired rainbows. This leads to the logic that “Mungut” exerts a ritual efficacy whereby incomplete death is resolved, the body is properly enshrined in the earth, and the soul passes safely to the otherworld through the ‘gate.’ The processes of ‘resolution of grievances’ and ‘guidance of the soul’ to the otherworld are only possible when numerous deities are summoned to clear the path to the afterlife. Positioned as the final narrative shamanic song that completes such processes of ‘resolution of grievances’ and ‘guidance of the soul’, “Mungut” thus functions to synthesize and resolve the diverse concerns regarding death that were raised in the narrative songs preceding it.

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