Taemong Technology : Symbolic Frequencies in Contemporary Korean Birth Dreams

Abstract

In his 1989 study Oriental Birth Dreams, Fred Jeremy Seligson presented statistical figures on the frequencies of primary dream symbols in conception dreams (taemong) indicating the genders, personality characteristics and future careers of the children they represent. One of the most rapidly shifting and developing socio-economic landscapes in the world, South Korea has gone from one of its poorest countries in 1953 (post-Korean War) to the tenth largest economy in the world today. While the operative dream symbols in the birth dreams collected by Seligson thirty-three years ago reflect a society still highly attuned to the natural world, the author asks: what might occur if the symbolic frequencies of the dream images shift in accordance with Korea’s socio-cultural, technological, and environmental changes? As South Koreans continue their exodus from the countryside to the urban center of the Seoul metro area the IT capital of the world and now the site of residence of approximately half the country’s population (26 million people) the nature-based conception images (such as animals, fruits and flowers) of their ancestors may be increasingly supplanted by the unnatural objects of their immediate surroundings (such as smart phones, computers and characters from video games). With attention to the spiritual, psychological and biological aspects of birth dreams, their medical applications, epistolary, and poetic forms, this paper examines their nature as personal mythologies. It then concludes with a close reading of a recently discovered digital birth dream in order to understand how it might affect the oral tradition of taemong, the lives of those who dream them and those who are dreamt.