This study focused on how various traditional cultures of Korea immanent in 『Honbul』reveal ecological thought and examined the ecological imagination appearing in Myeong-hee Choi’s 『Honbul』 centering on the ecological thought of the East.
The folklore faith presented in 『Honbul』often involves the worship and respect of the nature. ‘Worship’ originated from the ecological world view that respects all things and pursues the life balanced with them. Also, 『Honbul』involves the hylozoistic world view, the spiritualism which considers that the nature including sky, earth, sea, and mountain and objects and structures have a spirit. The characters of 『Honbul』not only think that everything in the universe has a spirit but also take them as the subject of faith. Particularly the women in 『Honbul』worship the family deity with all their hearts. They worship various gods such as jowangsin (god of kitchen), judangsin (god of toilet), cheolryungsin (god of land), and samsin (three gods governing childbirth and mother). Polytheism has the view that everything has horizontal relationship and people are only a part of the nature at the end.
Characters in 『Honbul』consider that not only the living space of the living but also the tomb of the dead are influenced by the energy of the earth. 『Honbul』has the story of Hong-sul who secures a grave site for him in someone else’s grave with the belief that he can turn the luck his way by securing a propitious grave site and stories of people who die after getting an inauspicious grave site. Geomancy presupposes that the energy flows through the earth near the surface, and this energy is the source that gives births to and maintains all lives. The ecological nature awareness, the belief that the earth has life, can be found in the geomantic tales alongside the public consciousness that sees death as the extension of life.
In 『Honbul』, gut, the exorcism, goes beyond the conditional faith wishing for the blessing and sees people as a part of the universe. The exorcism in 『Honbul』is presented through the ghost wedding of Gang-soo. The ghost wedding in 『Honbul』is the ritual of wedding prepared to console the spirit of Gang-soo who died for wrong reason by pairing his spirit off with another spirit. The male and female puppets are prepared and dressed as though they are living people and the traditional wedding is held for the spirits. Myeonghon gut, the exorcism for wedding, performed by the shaman is a ghost wedding ritual held to console the spirits of man and woman who died single and pray for their reincarnation in the paradise. Myeonghon gut is a paragon of Korean folklore culture and harbors the idea of ‘Whole Life’ which sees all lives and the universe as one.