Andong Mask Festival

Last month Erik, my co-teacher Jenny, and I went to Andong to check out the mask festival. We didn't end up seeing any traditional masks, but there were some other interesting things. One of the first things we saw was an old folk exorsisim.  

Here the ladies are helping the "priest" put on his gear. 

Then they drug out this fermented pig. I guess it is some kind of sacrifice...I really didn't know what was going on. There was a lot of music and he cut it open with his big knife.   

Then he was doing some ritual stuff with the knife. You can see another pig in the foreground and a bottle of soju.

And he continued to do more strange things to the pig...

He started to pull out all the guts and took a bite out of the kidney....it was not very appetizing. We decided we didn't want to see the end and what he would do with the rest of the pig insides....so we moved on. 

It was pretty crowed that day because of the three day weekend. We didn't really visit any of the booths, but mostly just walked around. 

It was really sunny! 

We didn't get to see many performances because the last bus left early and we had to get back to Gumi. The one we did see was really awesome though. It was about an old fisherman.