For those interested in seeing modern shamanism in practice, check out the Documentary titled Between (사이에서). It shows the journey of a woman as she goes through the rites to become a Shaman along with other regular rituals going on in the town. Some of the more interesting things was one of the shamans danced with and smacked dead animals after which the shaman stabs a dead pig in its belly and proceeds to lick the knife. Oh yeah, and afterwards the same person twists a chicken’s head off. Other than that there are various times when someone would talk for a spirit said to posses them. Shamanism seems to be in a hard place, despised and yet counted on. The wiki page linked below states that the government discouraged superstitions like shamanistic rituals yet cut back on that after recognizing some valuable cultural properties. If that topic interests you at all, check out this documentary to see the real rituals taken place.
Category Archives: Korean Culture - Page 2
Lotus Lantern Festival: Street Festival and Lantern Parade
Lotus Lantern Festival: Festival Eve’s Celebration
Here’s my pics from the incredibly fun Lotus Lantern Festival. The big parade is today, so if you have some open time check out the website for more info. It’s definitely worth the trip!
SNU ComSee 2010 (서울대 컴퓨터공학부 총MT)
There we go, I did my first MT and department MT in the same week! We took buses out to Vivaldi Park in Kangwon which is apparently a famous resort. I was surprised when some people I talked to about it knew what it was. The two main attractions there are the ski slopes and the water park so there’s something to do year round.
We played a game where we ran around the park finding puzzles and solving them along with a few physical games in between. The winners got something like 100,000 Won for their team to use in the mart for booze and food along with 10,000 for each person. We didn’t win but it was fun nevertheless. After that we sat down and had a mini concert by IU, December and 4men:
We left to have dinner and came back for a small presentation from Google and then had a question and answer session with the professors. The questions were very different than what you might expect like asking the professor and his wife to tell the good and bad points about each other. To end the night we went and bought the alcohol and food for the remainder of the night. I started in a room with my group and professor Ian McKay. After a while the room got really hot and there were way too many people so I went to another room with a friend from one of my classes. Lucky for me that room had one of the groups that got the extra money so they had some special items =). By 2 I decided to go to the room I would be sleeping in and hung out with that group until 5. Somehow I woke up at 9 AM, but I ate breakfast and went back to bed. We were one of the last ones out of our rooms and made it to the buses before they left at 11.
All in all it was a very fun experience! I got to meet more people from my classes and department I didn’t know before and get closer with them through all these activities. If you are or will be a student in Korea definitely ask your department when they will do their MT. Here’s my pics:
- Beautiful morning! This is the view from my roof
- Getting on the buses to head out to Vivaldi Park
- Our hotel
- Panorama from our room
- Playing games while waiting
- Starting the agent game!
- Trying to figure out one of the puzzles
- Trying to get as many people on with as few feet on the ground as possible
- Trying to get as many people on with as few feet and hands on the ground as possible
- IU
- December
- Professors answering literally any question, proving to provide some good fun
- 1st group …
- 2nd group …
- 3rd and last group!
SCSC MT (SNU Computer Club Membership Training)
What’s this ‘MT’ thing you might be asking? Why, it’s Membership Training of course! MTs are an opportunity for a group of people to travel a bit and do fun activities as a group. Korean university clubs use MTs to let members get to know each other in a comfortable and fun environment. It usually involves a lot of people in a small place with a lot of alcohol.
To start our MT I went out with out club president, 강혁 (Kang Hyuk), to get food and drinks for the night. We bought some meat, lettuce, rice, drinks, etc. Then we met some of the other guys and headed out to the hotel located in 강남 (Kangnam). Usually groups go at least two hours away from Seoul, but we felt like that wasn’t really necessary so we stayed close to the university.
When we arrived at the hotel, Kang Hyuk went in first to get the keys to the room. Everyone was worried that the hotel would be suspicious if a group of eight people went in together for a two person room so he told us to go in one by one every couple of minutes. I went in first since I was the foreigner in the group. Everyone figured they wouldn’t ask me anything lol. Here’s a pic of us waiting to go on our ‘mission’:
We were all pretty hungry so we immediately started to cook once we all got in. While waiting for the food to be done, we played a card game called ‘one card.’ It’s basically UNO with face cards instead of UNO cards.
To get the ball rolling, we started setting up a a drinking game using a monopoly-style board. In each spot we would write things which denoted who had to drink. For example, a spot would say you have to do rock, paper, scissors with the person to your right and the loser has to drink. I was lucky enough to not have to drink a whole lot. While we were making the board, we watched some TV and just totally randomly saw a closeup of one of our club members on a program talking about SNU lol. I tried to get out my camera and take a picture but I was too slow. Here’s us playing the game:
Kang Hyuk also brought some tarot cards. He could tell our life, love life, and evaluate a choice. It was really fun seeing what the tarot cards said about everyone. Some people got good predictions, some bad. My love life was predicted to have some problems lol. I also did a choice and one side said I would have a good love life so it seems not all is lost ㅋㅋㅋ. Here’s one of the card readings:
Afterward some of us were pretty tired so we started to rest and sleep. The others played worms and a street-fighter like game on the computer (hey, we are the computer club). I think they also did One Card, but I was totally out of it by that point. Early the next morning we cleaned up and left in pairs (again, avoiding suspicion). I had a really good time and highly suggest those wanting to have the full Korean university experience try going on one.
