Kim Im-man

Yongwanggung : Memories from Across the Water

Kim Im-man

"Yongwangung was a Gutdang (shaman’s shrine) where first generation Korean women who crossed the seas from Jeju to Japan use to go before the Second World War. In 2009, I heard that the shrine was about to be demolished by the Osaka city government. My childhood memory of my mother praying in the kitchen came back when I was filming elderly women in Jeju and I felt the urge to have a shamanistic ritual for my mother who had been hospitalized."