GiCheon

Abstract:

Industrial growth and the development of the new middle class in South Korea of the 1980s went together with increased consumption and leisure culture, causing growing concerns with health and personal self-cultivation. Accordingly, sŏngin undong (sports for adults), mountain hiking and ki suryŏn were on the rise.

People of older generations have lived through Korea’s dramatic transformation from a mostly rural society to an industrial one. Their yearning for the past, in which the “past” is idealized and imagined anew, is directly connected to old Korean mountain culture of immortality, a touchstone of cultural authenticity.

Together with an image of rural “old Korea” in the minds of contemporary people, it becomes a source of inspiration in re-inventing tradition in the spirit of nationalism. This tendency is expressed in new religious and spiritual movements that matured toward the 1980s. Ki suryŏn is an important part of these spiritual-social phenomena. The author Victoria Ten (Jeon Yeon Hwa) is a teacher of GiCheon, one of these ki suryŏn disciplines, which she researches at academia, combining this with the profession of a lawyer.

Abstract:

Mountain worship has always been one of the central features of Korean cultural landscape.
While specific traditions of mountain culture have been utilized by North Korea’s leadership
for the purpose of promotion of the state ideology, in South Korea mountain culture has
acquired different forms. We argue that contemporary South Korean ki suryŏn (氣 修練)
practices for perfection of mind and body constitute such manifestation of mountain-related
culture. The ancient tradition of mountain gods (山神, sanshin) is a source from which the
legendary figures of New Goddesses on Mt. Paektu emerge. We study origination and
development of Paektu-related myths of South and North Korea, focusing on two divinities.
The first goddess is Ch’ŏnsŏnnyŏ (天仙女, the Woman of Heaven) from the contemporary
legend of GiCheon (氣天, Kich’ŏn), one of the ki suryŏn training methods. Our second goddess
is Kim Chŏng-suk, the first wife of Kim Il-sŏng, founder of North Korea. In order to study
simultaneous processes of origination and development of Mt. Paektu-related myths of South
and North Korea, we consider sources from different fields of knowledge, such as folklore, art,
philosophy and religion, politics, literary criticism, political science and environmental science.
We apply an interdisciplinary approach to two seemingly incompatible processes of
mythmaking of contemporary South and North Korea. The two countries, divided
geographically, politically, economically, have for many centuries been one nation and one
people, one language and one culture. This commonality has not disappeared into the depth of
history, but comes to the cultural surface even in this most difficult contemporary time.