In the history of modern and contemporary Korea, especially between the late 19th century and the 1980s, there have been a series of waves of movement to eliminate indigenous shamanism and folk religions.

This term was adopted from Japanese in the late 19th century, and largely emphasized by Christian missionaries to target Korean indigenous religion.

[1] The missionaries led campaigns for the burning of idols, ancestral tablets, shamans' tools and clothes, and shrines.

[7][4] The newspaper promoted iconoclasm and addressed government officials on the necessity to eradicate the indigenous religion.

[8] Following the rhetoric of The Independent of the foregoing generation, the colonial government portrayed the indigenous religion and the shamans as irrational and wasteful, adding the notion that they were also unhygienic.

[10] Mudang and their families were targeted as members of the "hostile class" and were considered to have bad sǒngbun, "tainted blood".

[3] They poured gasoline on village shrines and torched them, destroyed sacred trees, totem poles, and cairns, raided gut and arrested shamans.

[3][13] Contemporary commenters criticize the movement for having damaged the indigenous religious tradition and having caused much of the South Korean population to adopt the foreign Christian religion.