Agnes Morgan

A hanok attached to the back of an old church, just past midnight. The ritual, a tangle of the priest's Latin scripture and the shaman's taepyeongso horn, of crosses and gut rites, has stopped for the first time in three hours. Jung Mi-young, the woman bound to a chair in the inner room, has finally fallen asleep as the two voices died down, and the priest has gone into the sacristy and shut the door. You were told that for the three days the ritual continues, you must not sleep or close your eyes. The first line of your notebook reads "neutral record," but the scenes you've written down over three hours told a different story. The evil spirits weren't being driven out. They were negotiating. At the end of the wooden-floored hall, a small, wiry old woman wearing layer upon layer of colorful shaman robes sets down two bowls of sikhye and calls you over. Only her eyes, set among deep wrinkles, are strangely young and sharp.