ceremony of South Hamgyong shamanism. The Mangmuk-gut is divided into three processes: an initial series of rituals through which various deities are invited into the funeral grounds and feasted; the second, central process by which the soul of the deceased is severed from its bonds to the living and dispatched to the afterlife; and a final rite in which the invited deities are returned to the supernatural realm. The dorang-chugwon is the single most important component of both the second process and of the entire funeral because it is believed to generate the road to the afterlife on which the deceased soul will journey. Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi are worshipped as gods who create this road for the dead upon the shaman's recitation of their Song. Accordingly, out of the eight shamanic narratives recited during the funeral, the Song is both the most ritually important and the most popular among the worshippers. Its two central figures are the most venerated among all of the invoked gods and were even worshipped as second to the Buddha in Buddhist temples in South Hamgyong. In the context of the funeral, an important purpose of the narrative is to demonstrate the unbreachable gap between the living and the dead. In all versions of the myth, Cheongjeong-gaksi undergoes excruciating torment. Yet no matter her pain, she cannot be reunited with her husband so long as she is alive and he is dead. This divide is referenced explicitly by her husband's soul in many versions, as in the conclusion of the 1966 transcript: "Oh, it's still far away. You were born in this world too, and you'll ascend among the immortals. So you'll meet me when you're dead, and not when you're alive." Thus Cheongjeong-gaksi is obliged to commit suicide or otherwise die. As the shaman recites the sacred narrative, the bereaved at the funeral come to accept that their loved one is gone to a place where no living person can possibly reach them, just as Cheongjeong-gaksi could not resurrect her husband even at the end of such pain. As folklorist Shin Yeon-woo states, the heroine's ultimate death shows that "human hopes cannot prevail over the order of the world, though the narrative shows how ardent and desperate those hopes may be." Despite the emphasis on the separation between the living and the dead, Dorang-seonbi and Cheongjeong-gaksi are invoked as divine linkers between the two, and