• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.36
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• pp.441-471
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• 2018

East Coast Gut, Korean shamanism ritual on its east coastal area, is a Gut held in fishing villages alongside Korean east coastal area from Goseong area in Gangwon-Do to Busan area. East Coast Gut is performed in a series mainly by a successor shaman, Korean shaman, who hasn't received any spiritual power from a God, and the implications of this thesis lie in that we look over the learning aspects of Seokchool Kim shaman group among other East Coast Gut successor shaman groups after dividing it into 2 categories, successor shaman and learner shaman and based upon this, we reveal the meaning of the learning aspects of East Coast Gut. For successor shamans, home means the field of education. Since they are little, they chased Gut events performing dance in a series to accumulate onsite experiences. However, in the families of successor shamans that have passed their shaman work down from generation to generation, their descendents didn't inherit shaman work any longer, which changed the way of succession and learning of shaman work. Since 1980's, Gut has been officially acknowledged as a kind of general art embracing songs, dance and music and designated as a cultural asset of the state and each city and province, and at art universities, it was adopted as a required course for its related major, which caused new learner shamans who majored in shamanism to emerge. These learner shamans are taking systematical succession lessons on the performance skills of East Coast Byeolshin Gut at universities, East Coast Byeolshin Gut preservation community, any places where Guts are held and etc.. As changes along time, the successor shamans accepted the learner shamans to pass shaman work down and changes appeared in the notion of towners who accept the performer groups of Gut and Gut itself. Unlike the past, as Gut has been acknowledged as the origin of Korean traditional arts and as the product of compresensive learning on songs, dance and music and it was designated as a national intangible cultural asset, shaman's social status and personal pride and dignity has become very high. As shaman has become positioned as the traditional artist getting both national and international recognition unlike its past image of getting despised, at the site of Gut event or even in the relation with towners, their status and the treatment they get became far different. Even towners, along with shift in shaman groups' generation, take position to acknowledge and accept the addition of new learning elements unlike the past. Even in every town, rather than just insisting on the type or the event purpose of traditional Gut, they think over on the type of festival and the main direction of a variety of Guts with which all of towners can mingle with each other. They are trying to find new meanings in the trend of changing Gut and the adaptation of new generation to this. In our reality of Gut events getting minimalized along with rapid change of times, East Coast Gut is still very actively performed in a series until now compared to Guts in other regions. This is because following the successor shamans who have struggled to preserve the East Coast Gut, the learner shamans are actively inflowing and the series performance groups preserve the origin of Gut and try hard to use Gut as art contents. Besides, the learner shamans systematically organize what they learned on shamanism from the successor shamans and get prepared and try to hand it down to descendents in the closest possible way to preserve its origin. In the future, East Coast Gut will be succeeded by the learner shamans from the last successor shamans to inherit its tradition and develop it to adapt to the times.