Jeom-a Jeom-a Kongjeom-a

The pain of division and Gwangju, told through gut ritual and play

The title comes from a folk song said to have begun circulating when so many were killed during the Gwangju Uprising: “Jeom-a, jeom-a, kongjeom-a, come out and I’ll buy you a drink… my grandfather, struck down by a sword in the Donghak Revolution, come out.”

As the lyrics suggest, the play summons and consoles the nameless souls of history. A grandmother seeks to comfort the spirits of those killed in the May 1980 Gwangju Uprising by arranging a spirit wedding with a maiden who died in the North, but the curse of division stands in the way. The shamans call down guardian deities to break the curse, but at the first cock-crow the gods scatter. Realising that human problems cannot be solved by ghosts, the characters — joined by the audience in a jisinbalpgi earth-treading ritual — drive out the curse of division and hold the wedding. The cry of a “reunification baby” rings out, and the stage returns to Mangwol-dong cemetery, where a phoenix dance of the fallen gives way to powerful drumming and a celebration pledging reunification.

The work became one of Arirang’s best known because it stood at the centre of the “gut debate”: since it took a spirit-wedding ritual as its main form, critics argued over whether it was theatre or ritual. Some praised how it moved between the real and spirit worlds with ease; others dismissed it as a young generation waving the flag of ritual. Arirang, however, saw in gut not just ceremony but a people’s theatre and a national spirit to inherit — using ritual to soothe historical pain and hold hope for a new history, in a theatre form of our own.

After its run at Arts Theatre Hanmadang, extended into July, it toured campuses and theatres nationwide until June 1991. It remains a landmark of artists who searched for a theatricality rooted in Korean tradition while confronting the question of reunification.