SPIRITUAL TERRORISM??

This time, things get strange and weird.

Background: I have just finished a few weeks of teaching Shamanism and popular Daoism. Long discussion made short, many in Korean history have felt (and still feel) that the geography of Korea is alive ... alive with power, or spirits, and it is the human duty to harness and cooperate with these energies in order to build the most successful city, nation, and society.

I repeat: cooperate with these energies (or Ki in Korean, Chinese: 氣 Ch'i or Qi), and life will be successful. Interrupt these powers and disasters follow. Stay attuned to these Ki and supernatural powers, and the nation will survive.

Just like there are "maps" of the body's pressure points for accupressure, so too this map of the the Korean peninsula shows key "pressure points" where the earth's energies are especially potent. (They are along the mountain ranges.) Keep the energy moving, and society thrives.



Now, imagine you are the Japanese Empire in the previous century (Japan was the colonial power here from 1910 to 1945), and you wanted every possible advantage over the Korean peninsula which you now controlled. You will leave no stone unturned in your attempts to control Korea. Someone from the shamanist and popular Daoist traditions comes to you with an idea:

The energy in the land of Korea is strong. If we could interrupt
and destroy that energy, then our conquest of Korea would be so much easier. Let us therefore drive evil sticks (말뚝) into the power-places in Korea's geography and stop-up Korea's strong earth-power. Let us begin spiritual terrorism in Korea!

Spiritual Terrorism?

Koreans have recently discovered in their sacred mountain spaces many iron rods sunk deep into the earth. They believe these were placed by the Japanese to interrupt and stop Korea's ki. "They [Japanese] struck a spell to break the vein of this place. People could not find it because they put it secretly."*

This is akin to a sort of "evil acupuncture" to block energy flow. The Korean language suggests the iron rods impede the "blood" of the mountain. These rods were thought to clot that blood, to provoke a "spiritual collapse" of the country and its people.

Here are some pictures to illustrate; they come from other sources than my camera. [It gets weirder still; get past these pictures, and you'll see.]


















Another set of pictures of a rod-extraction a rod is here.

Yesterday, I visited the House of Sharing for the third time. This is a place where some surviving "grandmothers" of Japaneses sexual slavery during WWII live. (See my blog on this last year.) A Japanese man recently planted a propaganda pole beside the emblematic statue where, each Wednesday, people demonstrate against Japan's refusal to apologize for these crimes outside the Japanese Embassy here in Seoul. The words on his "evil stick" read "Dokdo is Japanese territory." (Dokdo is a contested island close to Korea, but situated between the two countries.)



The actual video of him placing this and explaining why (in Japanese) is here. 

* * *

 All religions say the earth, especially its mountains, is in some way sacred. This blog is one report on how that is understood here.

Thanks to fellow Ewha University colleagues, IM, Eun-mi and Michael Pettid for their conversations with me about this.

* http://www.jsghnews.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=tb41&wr_id=595