The lkl korea Trip 2010

Sunday 2 May: The Rituals

7. Gwanghwamun, early morning

I still haven’t adjusted to the time zone. I finally wake up at 5:30am, and think it unlikely that I will get back to sleep, so I get up. It’s a beautiful clear day, and I decide to catch a view of Seoul’s streets while they are deserted. Although the streets are indeed largely deserted in the Gwanghwamun area, there’s still a strong police guard outside the US embassy. The new plaza in front of the great gate is empty apart from one or two early risers, and the statue of King Sejong, which is new since I last visited Seoul, has few visitors. Both Sejong and, further away, Admiral Yi Sun-shin, are gazing southwards, and both seem to have their own personalised giant TV screens conveniently located on buildings within their field of vision.
When the Japanese occupied Korea in the first half of the 20^th Century, one of the more subtle things they did to break the Korean spirit was to plonk the monolithic Government General building in the middle of the Gyeongbukgung Palace. The flow of Ki energy from Bukhan mountain, through the palace and out of the Gwanghwamun gate into downtown Seoul was thus blocked. In a further subtle twist, the Japanese building was constructed 6 degrees out of orientation with the palace, thus disrupting the powerful pungsu of the place even more. In 1928, the Japanese found the Gate an inconvenience and moved it. It was burned down in the Korean War. Park Chung-hee had it rebuilt in 1965 in front of the Japanese government building, but with the memory of the right geomancy now lost, the gate was positioned to align with the new building. In 1995 the Japanese building was demolished, thus eradicating one of the more obvious colonial legacies which dominated Seoul’s skyline. But that left the problem of the gate now being out of orientation with the palace it serves.
The Gate is currently being reconstructed and realigned, in a two-year project using Korea’s finest craftsmen. The story has caught the imagination of the Prince of Wales, always a keen supporter of world heritage, who has organised funding for a documentary about the project. A lot of effort has been invested in the environment of this part of Seoul, and it seems to have paid off. Next time I come, the Gwanghwamun will be fully restored.

8. The Jongmyo Rituals

I found it really quite hard to find accessible information online in respect of the Jongmyo rituals. Often, on the UNESCO site, there is documentation which sets out why the submitting country thinks that this particular intangible cultural property is worthy of inscription on the international list. But no such information was immediately evident on the UNESCO site for the Great Jongmyo Rituals.
In my Korean book collection I have a two-volume publication by Hollym on Korea’s intangible cultural assets, which to be honest weren’t much use to me; the ever-helpful EJ Shin, librarian at the Korean Cultural Centre in London, had provided me with a much more useful book on Korea’s UNESCO listings. But if you had tested me on my knowledge of the ritual beforehand I would have been able to provide only the following information

• 
  King Sejong had something to do with it (always a good bet with any of Korea’s cultural achievements);
  
• 
  In one dance, all the dancers move to the left, and in the other they all move to the right;
  
• 
  One dance is about the civil achievements of the ancestors, the other is about the military achievements;
  
• 
  The titles of the two dances are unpronounceable;
  
• 
  The instruments used include a rack of tuned slabs of rock, and a tiger with a spiny back which sounds a lot like a washboard;
  
• 
  There’s lots of Chinese influence in the music; and
  
• 
  Most people think it’s very, very boring.
  

Armed with that limited information, I turned up at the entrance to the Jongmyo shrine at 9:30am with my interpreter Morgan and an open mind.

It was a brilliantly sunny day, but with a pleasant crispness to the air. Numerous volunteers at the entrance were handing out informative brochures and plastic sun-visors. I didn’t feel quite ready yet for ajumma status, and it wasn’t that hot, so I declined the visor and just took the brochure.
Once through the gate, the walk through the park was beautiful. The last remaining blossom clung to the shrubs in the middle of the ponds, and people posed for photographs. We followed the crowd in the direction of where the action was.
When the shrine was first built in 1394 there weren’t that many royal ancestors which needed honouring. The Yi / Joseon dynasty was in its early days: more precisely, King Taejo, the founder of the dynasty, was only in the third year of his reign. But with the march of time and as the centuries rolled on, the main shrine got rather crowded, and an overflow shrine was required. And that meant ceremonies needed to be done at both shrines. In a way, it’s a good job the Joseon dynasty finished when it did: we’d soon be needing a third shrine.
The flow of people was headed to the secondary shrine, the Yeongnyeongjeon, and as we got near I could hear some mystical music and chanting. I was a little surprised that the proceedings had started bang on time at 9:30 – not a normal occurrence for a Korean event in London. But then I suppose you can’t keep the ancestors waiting. They are important people, and they’ve been waiting a whole year for this. The ceremony used to be performed several times a year, but now the ancestors have to wait a full twelve months and must get hungry.
The ceremony’s history goes back to Silla times, but received an infusion of Chinese ritual in the 12^th century. The result was a mix of Korean and Chinese music and ceremony. King Sejong (r 1418-1450) tried to redress the balance a little. He instructed one of his scholars, Pak Young, to catalogue all the music that had been used in the ceremony over the years. Sejong then selected the music that would be used in the future. Finally, in the reign of King Seongjong (r 1469-1494) the format of the ceremony was documented in a formal manual, and the rites have remained in more or less the same form ever since.
The shrine is already crowded with sightseers, but Morgan and I spy a less congested spot towards the West of the arena, right next to the 8 by 8 square of dancers. The crowd is three-deep against the restraining rope barrier, but we can just about see around the heads of the people in front.
When court music was introduced from China into Korea in 1116, the gift was accompanied with 36 costumes for the dancers. The memorial rites for the ancestors of the Chinese emperor featured 64 dancers – an 8 by 8 square. But Korea, being the younger brother, was only permitted a 6 by 6 square. That’s how it stayed until the late 19^th Century. As the power of China declined, and an emergent Japan declared itself an empire, Korea followed suit. If the upstart Japan could decide to have an emperor and thus claim equality to China, Korea was not to be outdone, and proclaimed the Great Han Empire. And the number of dancers at the Jongmyo rituals was promptly upgraded to the imperial 64.
The dancers' moves are steady and measured. They perform a dignified semaphore with the implements in their hands: during the first dance which celebrates the civil achievements of the ancestors, they hold a three-holed bamboo flute and a feather-tasselled wooden stick. In the military dance they hold a wooden sword or a small pike. A good sense of balance is required as much of the dance involves standing on one leg.
The music is slow and stately. The solo chanting by the leader of the ceremony is perfectly out of key with the orchestra, presumably intentionally, because it takes some skill to hold one's own against superior forces in such a way. For those used to western music, the soundworld is totally alien, but not unpleasant. It’s not toe-tapping stuff, but it enters into your body and slowly possesses you.
If the sights and sounds start repeating, what about the smells? The aroma of toasted mugwort and oiled millet wafts across the shrine as the offerings to the ancestors are made. Then the music changes, with more drums; the rattling sound of a stick on the tiger's back makes the washboard sound: I’d been waiting for that. Are those suspended slabs of stone really producing music, or is it the bells that are struck almost at the same time? Where is the sound of the shawm coming from? What is producing that sound like a swarm of angry bees? The intervals intoned by the precentor change from an augmented fourth through the quarter tones to a perfect fourth. Suddenly the dozens of butlers are on the move, first in a long queue, then prostrating themselves in unison.
With so many ancestors to honour, the ceremony is a bit of an endurance test. Soon the less dedicated audience members call it quits, giving the opportunity for you to get to the front of the crowd. For the performers too, stamina is required, and two of the 64 high school girls had to be led out of the arena, fainting. Fortunately, substitutes were available.
Some of the sightseers were well-prepared. Some of the amateur photographers had come with stepladders or extension poles so that their cameras had a bird's eye view of the proceedings. And the professional photographers, getting in everyone's way, were trying to find ever more inventive camera angles, grovelling on the ground pointing the lens upward at the performers.
Even if you find the ceremony boring (which I didn't), there was plenty else to keep you interested. Watch the people in the crowd picnicking or playing ring o' roses. What is that idiot with the long lens doing? Those high school girls who've been sent to the ceremony as a photo assignment are grumbling at how dull it all is and have started eying up some boys. That dancer in the third row is really uncomfortable with that hat: she keeps adjusting it. And that girl in the 7^th row shouldn't really be turning round to chat with her friend in the 8^th, should she?
Try moving from your position in the crowd, get a different viewpoint. There's endless entertainment to be had, all for free, and the two hours pass extremely quickly. Periodically I check to see that Morgan isn’t bored out of her mind, but she seems to be quite happy watching me watching the crowds watching the ceremony.
Finally the rituals are over, promptly finishing two hours after they started, and we realise that all the elaborately-dressed ceremonial officials are really just ordinary people after all. They all line up in front of the shrine for a team photo as a memento of the occasion.
As we file out from the shrine, we mingle with the butlers who are off to have a quick breather and cigarette before the next ceremony. Already the queues are forming to get into the main shrine for the headline event at 1pm. No need for us to queue, though: we’re lucky enough to be on the guest list, courtesy of our Ministry of Culture hosts.
We have one and a half hours to kill before the event at the main shrine – the Jeongjeon. We have the choice of following the royal procession though the streets of downtown Seoul, from the Gyeongbokgung palace to the Jongmyo shrine for the main ceremony at 1pm; or sneak off into the Bukchon area for something to eat. We take the latter option.
We return in good time, and I find that I’m accredited as an official journalist, complete with a Press jacket. But without a monstrous camera I don’t really look the part, and I decide to just try to mingle in with the other guests. Now that the sun is stronger, I decide to grab an official Jongmyo sun-visor, helping me to blend into the crowd still further.
The rituals in the Jeongjeon, the majestic shrine with the long, unbroken roofline and huge courtyard, is the showcase event. This is the one to which the foreign guests are invited. There are speeches by VIPs, live screens with subtitles broadcasting the proceedings to people unlucky enough not able to fit into the courtyard itself, and introductory promotional videos with rousing soundtracks proclaiming the significance of what the guests were about to see. For the privileged few, live multilingual running commentaries were available through headsets:
And now the [pause] Ujeongwan and … the Daechukgwan put the … er … mortuary tablets of royal ancestors to their … place in each shrine chamber. The Chanye officially [pause] announces for the Choheongwan that the ceremony has just started.
O
The Jongmyo Rites:
the terminology

Jongmyo Daeje = “Great Rites”, used interchangeably with Jongmyo Jerye = “Rites for the Royal Ancestors”.

Jongmyo Jeryeak = “Music for the Rites for the Royal Ancestors”

Jongmyo: the Royal Shrine itself.
n second thoughts, I think I'll turn that off.
What I hadn’t realised was that the ceremony in the Jeongjeon is an exact repetition of what had happened earlier in the day. If I’d thought about it, it should have been obvious: it’s just a different bunch of ancestors to respect: why would you treat King Injong any different from King Taejong. OK, the latter is sandwiched between the august figure of King Sejong and the founder of the Joseon dynasty, King Taejo, but you shouldn’t show favouritism.
Despite the main shrine holding 3 more ancestors, there being further to walk around to “set the tables”, and there being all the speeches to fit in, somehow the ceremony was exactly the same two-hour duration as the more intimate ritual at the Yeongnyeongjeon earlier in the day. If anything, it felt shorter rather than longer.
Members of the public sat down on the ground in the courtyard; the VIPs sat on reserved seats under awnings around the edges. Press photographers annoyed everyone by roaming seemingly wherever they pleased, while TV cameramen were respectfully dressed as Joseon dynasty palace servants.
Like the earlier ceremony, some members of the public showed more determination than others in staying the course and towards the end there was plenty of empty space in the courtyard.
We eventually filed out with all the other members of the public knowing we had witnessed something special. Students try to get visitors to complete assessment questionnaires. How would we rate the rituals as a tourist experience? Excellent. Would we come if we had to pay to get in? Absolutely.
As we neared the main gate to the shrine complex, we encountered some discrete souvenir stalls (though strangely none of the excellent photographs of the shrine were for sale). Young girls in hanbok were directing the crowds, one of whom had been number 1 dancer in row 8 of the first ceremony that same morning. A long day for the performers as well as the audience. But the ancestors must be properly honoured, and the Korean heritage authorities do it in great style.
Despite all the naysayers proclaiming its dullness, I would heartily recommend the Jongmyo rituals to anyone. It is a great day of sound and spectacle, a unique experience unavailable anywhere else in the world. If you don’t want to attend both, go to the earlier ceremony. It’s more intimate, more informal and less crowded but has exactly the same ingredients as the main one. And then come back to appreciate the architecture of the main shrine another day.