Pudakgeori was not a grand gut but a small-scale ritual: you tossed a few simple offerings to the evil spirits and "loosened" the impurity and the sal (煞, malign forces) they carried. Where rites like salpuri or hongsumagi were preventive, warding off misfortune before it struck, pudakgeori was a healing gut meant to cure an affliction that had already taken hold. People of old saw inexplicable illness as a reproach from the spirits — gwichaek (鬼責) — and believed the sickness would only lift if the housewife or the mudang set out food, coaxed and soothed the spirits, and sent them on their way. The key idea here is "to loosen" (pulda). Loosening the impurity that has knotted up, releasing the possessing spirit and letting it go — that was the very essence of the rite. As this urgent healing ritual passed into everyday life, "to do a pudakgeori" came to mean blowing off stale feelings or conflict in one loud, cathartic burst. The ceremony that once released spirits survives as a metaphor for releasing the knots in the heart.