Shamans and nativism: postcolonial trauma in Spirits’ Homecoming (2016) and Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2013)

This article examines the figure of the shaman in contemporary South Korean cinema. By taking a close look at Cho Jung-rae (Jo Jeong-rae)’s feature Spirits’ Homecoming (Gwihyang, 2016) and Park Chan-kyong (Park Chan-gyeong)’s documentary Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (Mansin, 2013), the article argues that the figure of the shaman is deployed in such a way as to articulate South Korean postcolonial anxiety in two diverging ways. Whilst the former film draws on shamanism and nostalgizes the Korean past in relation to the issue of the ‘comfort women’ (military sex slaves) in contemporary South Korean politics, the latter eschews a coherent historical national narrative in favour of a more fragmented and interrogative account of not only South Korean shamanism but the country’s troubled relationship with the Korean War and the post-war modernization project. The article argues that where Cho Jung-rae’s film employs ethnocentrism as the primary lens for a nostalgic memory, Park Chan-kyong’s documentary disarticulates the historical trajectory of nationalist invocations of a shamanist past, as it aligns the nativist tradition with the wider pro-democracy minjung movement.