Jaegaseung
Jaegaseung (, , meaning "monks who live in houses") were descendants of Jurchen people who lived in North-Eastern Korea. They formed villages of married lay monks and produced oatmeal paper which was used to paid their taxes. In 1960s, they were forcibly assimilated into the Korean People by the orders of Kim Il-Sung. The monastic identity of the lay monks was seen as antisocialist, and the villages have ceased to exist. Buddhist communities have been repressed by communist governments in Asian countries. The local communities had survived through colonial period without serious pressure from outside. Origins and history. The  mountains of northern Hamgyŏng Province were traditionally inhabited by the Jurchens, a semi-nomadic Tungusic people. In the mid-fifteenth century, King Sejong conquered the region as far north as the Tumen River, which even today marks Korea's northern border, and established Korean colonies in the area. Many Jurchens accepted Korean hegemony and played crucial roles in frontier defense against other Jurchen tribes more hostile to Korean presence. By the sixteenth century, the Jurchens living under Korean rule were often married to ethnic Koreans and had become increasingly agricultural. They were also economically and militarily linked to the central  Korean state. At the same time, they retained close contacts with independent Jurchens across the Tumen. By the late sixteenth century, however, conflicts over land between indigenous Jurchens and Korean settlers were increasingly frequent. The Jurchen chieftain Nitanggae rebelled in 1583, severely undermining the Korean state's control of the area. The crisis was exacerbated by the large-scale Japanese invasion in 1592 during which Katō Kiyomasa conquered large parts of Hamgyŏng, leading to a breakdown of the Korean administration and major conflicts between Jurchens and Koreans. Beginning in around 1590, independent Jurchen chieftains such as Nurhaci and Bujantai were  competing for hegemony over their cousins in Korean territory. Having routed Bujantai in 1607, Nurhaci successfully removed most Jurchens in northern Hamgyŏng into his newfound kingdom north of the Tumen between 1607 and 1609. Nurhaci's Jurchens would eventually adopt a new Manchu identity in 1635 and go on to conquer China, founding China's final imperial dynasty. Nurhaci and his successors continued to demand the forcible "repatriation" of Jurchens in Korea until 1644, although some Jurchens successfully evaded deportation and remained in Korea with the support of sympathetic Korean authorities. It is generally agreed that the Jaegaseung were descendants  of these Jurchen communities who avoided capture, assimilated into Korean society. Culture. Ultimately, although many cultural practices of the Jaegaseung were identical or similar to the folk traditions of Northern Hamgyong province, the community still maintained several distinctive and divergent customs. The community, unlike their neighbours, wore red clothes during Jesa rites, cremated their dead, allowed women to wear trousers, and were largely vegetarian with the exception of important days. If a Jaegaseung female marries a man outside of the community, then the man was to move into the Jaegaseung community and shave his head. When a member of the  community was sick, a ceremony called 'Daesangwi' (대산귀) was to be held by the Tumen river in order to ensure the wellbeing of the person and village. The rites involved offerings of rice cakes and a pig in front of a wooden pole, and were reported to last for an entire night. The ceremony was unique to the Jaegaseung communities, and was not practiced by other residents of Northern Hamgyong. Jaegaseung girls and women were notorious in mainstream Korean society for always exposing their breasts even in public, which was considered scandalous by other Koreans. Some Jaegaseung refugees who fled  to South Korea during the Korean War were known to have preserved some cultural aspects of their communities, and one work song regarding the community's traditional method of smelting iron was broadcast on South Korean radio.