South Hamgyong shamans who fled the division of Korea did not pass down their rituals. The narrative may therefore no longer be in oral transmission. A 2010 listing of academic work on life replacement narratives did not include any study specifically about the Hamgyong narrative. Religious significance The life-exchanging myths are important in that they "clearly demonstrate the nature of the deities and the value systems of [Korean] shamanic belief," with even the gods being depicted as being greatly swayed by injeong: a term referring simultaneously to offerings and to the emotion of jeong, or feelings of compassion and empathy, that both gods and humans are thought to share. Yun Kyoim notes that the Menggam bon-puri establishes principles crucial to Jeju ritual: "the themes of reciprocity... the rules of gift exchange—to give, receive, and return." The reciprocity between the human and divine begins with Saman's encounter with the skull. Once the skull successfully creates a social bond with Saman by discussing how he had once hunted with the very same gun, the human and the deity establish a reciprocal relationship from which both sides prosper. The importance of reciprocity continues in Saman's dealings with the chasa. Once the chasa realize they have unwittingly accepted Saman's sacrifice, they "cannot ignore his plea." The ensuing favor from the chasa is not a quid pro quo, but a gift of divine generosity provoked by the injeong that Saman has for the gods. The narrative thus demonstrates that proper worship of the gods can overcome human destiny. Shamans themselves say that the purpose of reciting the narrative during the aek-magi ritual is to remind the chasa of the favor they once showed Saman, and to invite them to show similar generosity to the worshippers involved in the current ritual. Indeed, the shaman strangles a red rooster during the aek-magi. In cases of rites held for severe illness, the shaman mounts a straw model of the patient on a horse and chases the animal away; it must not return to the house. The lives of the rooster and the horse are offered to the chasa as replacements for human death, just as Saman's death was replaced by the death of others in the myth. The narrative is ultimately followed by the shaman's delivery of the chasas message as divined through the mengdu. In one 2002 aek-magi, the chasa announced that the worshipping family would be