Why do Koreans search for shamans? Confrontation with jarring reality, magnified in the context of immigration, pulls them to look for cultural roots in moral solidarity with their ancestors. Ancestral spirits travel by carrying culturally engrained remedial power to the “othered” life of the Korean immigrant community in the country of Protestantism. Korean shamans mediate the present with the past, life with death, the living with the ancestral spirits, and Confucian moral virtue with Protestant belief, and fill the geographical and collective mental gap in a life of transition. This book introduces Korean shamanism within the Protestant context of immigration in the United States, including an ethnography of Korean shamans in order to observe this landscape of not only conflictive but also ambivalent episodes through rituals and narratives of participants. "An amazing account of intensive and innovative fieldwork with several immigrant Korean shamans. Dr. Hong provides a captivating description and analysis of this popular divination process, featuring the diviners and the wide-ranging petitioners seeking 'good luck' and guidance." --Herbert B. Huffmon, Drew University, emeritus "Very few scholars have researched the topic of Korean shamanism in a global context. This study offers a new perspective on Korean shamanism in a comparative, global, and diasporic context practiced in the Korean immigrant community. . . . I would highly recommend this book for those interested in Korean shamanism, the Korean immigrant community, and Korean immigrant Christianity." --Young Chan Ro, George Mason University "The retentions and modifications of immigrant religions, especially involving women, are too little studied. After years of intensive fieldwork with Korean shamans and clients in the northeastern US, Dr. Hong has produced a valuable account which enlightens outsiders about these critical life-affirming rituals and their practitioners. She reveals, with much sensitivity, the complexities faced by those who are, in effect, caught between cultures. A very important work for comparative research as well as for Koreans themselves." --Dr. Philip M. Peek, Drew University, emeritus Helen Hong is currently an independent researcher and acupuncturist, having previously taught in community colleges as an adjunct professor in New Jersey.