[KS] Re: custom and new environment:dog-eating

[kushibo]

Hyun-key Kim Hogarth wrote:
> I am surprised that no one has mentioned that dog-eating is strictly taboo to
> Korean shamans.

Maybe because we didn't know.

> The reason they gave me for prohibition of eating dogs is
> that they believe dogs are ancestors of people.

That would explain all those taxis that have "dog-person" (°³ÀÎ) written on
them.

On a less facetious note, how would this jive with Koreans being the strain
of an ancient bear? Am I to believe I have ursine *and* canine genetic code
teeming through my veins? According to the lore did a dog lie with a human
or what? Or was a dog making it with a bear? Is this a commonly held belief
(or at least a commonly known story) that people here have chosen to forget
out of embarrassment (you know, let sleeping dogs lie)?

I may have to renounce this whole side of my ancestry.

> That may be related to the
> Buddhist belief in the transmigration of souls, i.e. reincarnation, although
> it is not clearly explained to me why dogs (and not cows, pigs or chickens)
> are singled out as ancestors . For whatever reasons, dog-eating is
> considered ritually 'polluting', and those who indulge in it are not allowed
> to attend the shamanistic rituals.

Seriously, would this connection explain the adamant belief of supporters
(or explainers) of dog-eating, that dog meat is especially good for humans
because of an alleged similarity between dog flesh and human flesh? I'm
*not* the only one who has heard that explanation, right?

> At the mortuary ritual held for a
> youngish man who had suddenly died in his sleep, the cause of his death was
> given by a shaman as the regular dog eating that his family indulged in!

Hmm... a shaman in every coroner's office in Korea. Think what problems that
would solve.

When two people at our mom-and-pop network died in two separate car
accidents (over about two or three months) back in 1994, a shaman determined
that there was some bad ki or something there (apparently it was *not*, as
the police thought, the slippery road conditions in one case and the drunk
driver of another vehicle that hit the victim in the second case). We ended
up having a kkut in our basketball court, strictly for educational/research
papers (it was televised).

> It was apparently the gods' punishment to the family for induging in
> such a filthy habit.

Geez, you'd think the gods would give a warning first.

Now, to segue into something more discussion-worthy, this brings up the
whole issue of questionable deaths. "Fan death" is still, apparently,
considered a valid cause of death for people who meet a premature expiration
date. But I know of, not quite first-hand, of at least two cases where some
young people died of alcohol poisoning and/or choking on their own vomit
while passed out drunk. There are a lot of bad habits in Korea that can
easily lead to fatal results, and I don't see a lot of blame going to these
detrimental behaviors.

In the case above, what did the *doctors* say was the cause of the
canivorous guy's death?

K U S H I B O


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