The Korean Mind. Boye Lafayette De Mente
called sae bae (sigh bay), before photographs of deceased ancestors and to the older members of their families.
Many Korean families have continued all or part of this old Confucian ritual, and it is especially popular among some older children and teenagers because their grandparents customarily give them money, called sae bae ton, or “sae bae money,” to mark the occasion. However, younger Korean generations are rapidly becoming Westernized in virtually all of their casual behavior when only their peers are involved. In casual leave-takings among this group one is more apt to hear “goodbye” or “bye-bye” than any of the traditional Korean greetings.
Westerners who spend more than a few weeks in Korea generally find themselves becoming acculturated to the bow without realizing or working at it. The best solution for cross-cultural encounters, practiced by more and more internationalized Koreans, is to use both the bow and the handshake, often at the same time.
Chomjangi 촘장이 Choam-jahng-ee
The Fortune-Tellers
Historically Koreans were conditioned to believe that their lives were in the hands of spirits and only direct intervention by the spirits could change their fortunes for the better. This was especially true of common people, whose lives were predetermined primarily by their ancestry, social class, and gender. They were not free to change occupations, to move their place of residence, or to alter the way things were done.
Because of these political restrictions and social conventions, common Koreans generally could not improve their fortunes through their own efforts. Members of the elite class as well, particularly women, were also severely limited in their options. Therefore people on all social levels naturally turned to the supernatural for solace, guidance, and blessings.
Since communicating with the supernatural requires special knowledge and powers, the profession of the chomjangi (choam-jahng-ee), or “fortune-teller,” became an important aspect of Korean society from the earliest times. Virtually everybody, from the king on down, consulted with chomjangi about important decisions and actions.
Fortune-telling is still a thriving industry in Korea. Young men and women consult chomjangi about their marriage prospects. Mothers ask fortune-tellers to evaluate potential sons- and daughters-in-law. Parents of newborn babies get help from fortune-tellers to select the most favorable names for their offspring. More than a few businesspeople regularly consult chomjangi prior to making important decisions. Shamans, who abound in Korea, are also believed to be able to predict the future and are commonly consulted on all kinds of matters by many people.
The Korean belief in the supernatural and its relationship to their fortune hinges on astrological factors surrounding the year, month, day, and hour of their birth—the familiar zodiac, with its twelve animal symbols. When all of the astrological factors are combined, they are known as saju (sah-juu).
Despite the fact that many intellectuals and other Western-oriented sophisticates in Korea tend to look down on chomjangi, it is generally accepted that they provide an important service—on the order of psychiatrists in the West—and there is no stigma attached to patronizing their services.
The most popular forms of divination in Seoul are said to be reading horo-scopes, consulting with spirits, reading faces and figures (physiognomy), casting lots, and numerology. Horoscopic divination is based on the idea that the time of birth fixes one’s personality and fortune. Divination through spirits involves diviners going into trances and consulting with various spirits. Some people in Seoul specialize in reading faces as a means of discerning character, personality, sexuality, and potential for future success. There are also diviners who include face and hand reading in their practice. Casting lots consists of tossing eight sticks of bamboo, metal rods, or three coins a set number of times and “reading the patterns” they form. Numerology is one of the tools used by spiritual diviners.
On New Year’s Day and for the following two weeks many Koreans engage in the popular custom of consulting fortune-tellers to find out what their fortunes are going to be for the next twelve months. The most popular method of fortune-telling during this period is by use of the Tojong-Pigyol (Toh-johng-Pee-gyohl), a book that purports to reveal the secrets of one’s fortune based on the yin-yang principle of negative and positive forces and the five cosmic elements, metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. (The book was written by a man named Ji Ham Lee, an authority on the principle of yin-yang, whose pen name was Tojong.)
Those wanting their fortunes told provide the saju (sah-juu), or year of their birth, according to the lunar calendar, along with the month, date, and hour of their birth. One day is divided into twelve hours instead of twenty-four hours, and each of the twelve segments of time has its own name or label (Ja, Chuk, Im, Myo, Jim, Sa, Oh, Mi, Sim, Yu, Sul, and Hae).
Chon Do Kyo 촌도교 Choan Doh K’yoh
The Heavenly Way Religions
The influence of Chon Do Kyo (Choan Doh K’yoh), or “Heavenly Way Religions,” on Koreans—beginning with shamanism and continuing with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity—has been both profound and contradictory. Shamanism was their original link with their ancestors and all the gods and spirits in the universe. It taught them that all things in nature had spirits that had to be kept benign and friendly by prayer, offerings, and other rituals.
Buddhism, introduced into Korea from China in the fourth century A.D., brought with it virtually all of the arts, crafts, values, and beliefs, including reincarnation, of the already ancient and sophisticated civilization of China. Life in Korea became an amalgam of Korean and Chinese cultures and civilizations—often Chinese on the surface but stubbornly Korean on the inside.
From around A.D. 700 until the last decade of the fourteenth century, Buddhism was generally treated as the official state religion, while shamanism was practiced as more of an unofficial folk belief. But Buddhism was much too tolerant, too un-focused, and too susceptible to manipulation and corruption to provide either the ideology or the political structure necessary for the survival of a society. Ultimately neither shamanism nor Buddhism could compete with the aggressive and politically potent Confucianism, which was first introduced into Korea as a political and social ideology soon after China invaded the country in 109 B.C. and turned the existing kingdoms into vassal states.
By the thirteenth century, reform-minded Chinese scholars were advocating a much more focused form of Confucianism that was based on absolute filial piety and ancestor worship, which would give the government much more control over society. It was this form of Confucianism that was made the state religion by Korea’s Choson dynasty in 1392.
During the 518-year reign of the Choson dynasty, Koreans were so thoroughly programmed in the concepts of Neo-Confucianism from infancy on that both Buddhism and shamanism became little more than private folk beliefs involved with the spiritual welfare of the people, while Confucianism controlled their practical everyday values, attitudes, and interpersonal relationships.
Christianity, introduced to the common people of Korea in the late 1800s, near the end of the Choson era, was to have a dramatic effect on the thinking and behavior of Koreans within a very short period of time. The Christian ideas of universal brotherhood and social equality were new and exciting concepts to Koreans and caused a great deal of ferment among the small literate class, completely overshadowing Buddhism and causing the validity of Confucianism to be questioned.
In fact, some Korean scholars like Tong Shik Yu say that Buddhism had virtually nothing to do with forming the modern-day Korean mind, despite its long history in the country. Yu says that traditional Korean mentality is a mixture of Confucianism, shamanism, and Christianity. Yu adds that shamanism satisfies the Koreans’ need for spiritual solace, Confucianism provides answers for social and political challenges, and the concepts of universal equality and brotherhood taught by Christianity appeal to their intellect.
Yu’s description of the Confucian contribution to Korean culture is essentially negative. He lists these negatives (paraphrased) as dependency on others because of a lack of a strong sense of self, conservatism and fear of change that grows out of lack of personal control over their lives, pragmatism that is self-centered because of the first two elements, a powerful tendency to form factions that are