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The Transforming Sacredness of Mt. Chirisan from an Utopian Shelter into a Modern National Park: Focused on the Escapist Lives of 'Mountain Men'  

Jin Jongheon (Institute for Korean Regional Studies, Seoul National University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korean Geographical Society / v.40, no.2, 2005 , pp. 172-186 More about this Journal
Abstract
I examine in this paper how the contemporary sacredness of Mt. Chirisan has been modified through the reworking of the embodied experiences of the mountain. 1 examine the theme of escapism through the cases of mountain men and Chonghakdong. The two mountain men, Huh Man-Soo and Ham Tae-Sik, tacitly suggested a modem aesthetic and environmentalist view of nature by articulating a typical form of appreciating nature in a transition period from pre-modern to modern society. Mountain men mediated their own personal dreams of revitalizing the Taoist utopian place with their social practices of modernizing and democratizing the appreciation of nature. Ultimately, the appearances and practices of mountain men symbolize the end of the pre-modern geographical imagination of the mountain as distinctive plate outside society (real world). Therefore, the vision of modem civic-national landscape, national park, was made concrete at the very site where the people's dreams of utopia, the inherited sacredness of the mountain and people's religious beliefs in its protective power were terminated.
Keywords
sacredness of Mt. Chirisan; mountain man; escapism; utopian place; civic-national landscape; national park;
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