S.Korea shaman ritual hit by foot-and-mouth woes
Reuters | 06:14 AM,Mar 18,2011SEOUL (ReutersLife!) - South Korea's months-long battle with foot-and-mouth disease has seen millions of pigs buried across this Asian nation and has hit traditional shamanist ceremonies that use pigs' heads to bring good luck. Jung Joo-hwa is one of the millions of Koreans who use the heads in a ritual called Gosa, based on shamanism but also used by others, to win prosperity and block bad luck when starting a new business or moving to a new house. A steamed pig's head, its mouth stuffed with bills, is mounted on a food-laden table. "We looked around dozens of slaughterhouses, butchers, and sausage shops and eventually found it," said the 38-year-old worker at a construction company who holds the ceremony each year. She was lucky to find that head which cost her four times the normal price as the foot-and-mouth epidemic has seen of more than 3 million South Korean pigs culled, around 30 percent of the total. "Unless you pre-order, you cannot get a pig's head," said Ji Chul-ho, a meat vendor butcher, who said the number of pig heads on sale has fallen by more than half. Meat vendors and analysts believe the country's pig farming industry will take one or two years to recover. With few pigs heads on offer, pork hock or sliced meat has replaced them in a simpler ritual. "I was grieving when the pigs were buried. After we sent them to the heaven it made it harder to get a pig's head," said Jung whose company holds a ritual once a year in hopes of a flourishing business in the year ahead. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by David Chance)
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