How shamanism and fortune-telling persist in the two Koreas
Traditional Korean shaman (Image: Johnathan21/Courtesy of Shutterstock, Inc.)
The occult movie Exhuma recently surpassed box-office sales of 10 million in South Korea and is currently showing in 133 countries, but audiences in North Korea, where all South Korean content is illegal, are unable to see it.
This is unfortunate for its shamanism theme is one that draws on ancient Korean beliefs and would resonate with northerners.
The movie was released in 2023 under the Korean title Pamyo, a word which specifically refers to the exhumation of remains for reburial or cremation, a familiar tradition related to improving fortunes of the living, in Korea and other Asian countries.
The story revolves around strange phenomena when a feng shui expert and a mortician excavate a tomb at the request of a wealthy Korean family in the United States.
After its release in Vietnam on March 15, Exhuma recorded sales of over 2.2 million in 17 days, a record for a Korean film in the country.
After seeing it, I became curious as to how North Koreans would respond. The Koreans may have been divided for eight decades, but our ancestors lived together for thousands of years. We still share common roots with regard to belief in spirits and shamanist practice, even if much is officially outlawed in the atheist North.
I had my palm read and my fortune told many times when I was an adult and worked as a university professor in North Korea. Before I got married, my mother-in-law encouraged me to go to a fortune-teller’s house in Yonggwang County, about an hour’s drive from Hamhung, where I lived, for a reading.
The fortune-teller was an elderly woman. She asked my age and looked at my palm and said, “You should write to make money.”
I guess she was kind of right, because in South Korea I am still lecturing and writing this column.
Coming to the South, I noticed how deeply fortune-telling, shamanism, and palmistry are intertwined with daily life. It seems there are more fortune-telling places marked with the 卍 symbol than churches.
According to one report in 2022, there are a million fortune tellers and the industry is worth 10 trillion won. It doesn’t seem too exaggerated to call the country the Republic of Fortune-telling. It is especially rooted among teenagers and young adults through smartphones.
In North Korea, such practices are officially deemed superstitions and prohibited. However, fortune-telling and palmistry clandestinely persist. Before the New Year, with memorial ceremonies for ancestors, and when there are possible promotions or punishments, people somehow manage to secretly visit fortune-tellers.
It’s not easy to find them because they can’t hang signs outside their places. People rely on word of mouth.
Before significant events, officials seek out fortune-tellers, but they do it very discreetly.
A friend who worked as a police investigator consulted a fortune teller in the hope of getting direction or even just hints to help him solve a murder case he had been assigned to. He couldn’t do this openly because he risked severe penalties.
There is a reported increase in fortune-telling since the pandemic, as life has become increasingly difficult. The authorities are trying to crack down and have organized a lecture series under the theme of “Let’s intensify the struggle to eradicate superstitious activities throughout society.”
Shamanism is indeed resilient. Its influence keeps appearing in the soil of society like weeds that social leaders thought they had cleared. For centuries it endured the arrival of major religions, acting as a receptive base for them and infiltrating their substructures.
Both Koreas share deeply rooted beliefs in Yin and Yang and the Five Elements.
Fortune-telling is ultimately tied to money. Life is not easy, and the future is uncertain, so people seek reassurance and the fortune-tellers make money. The appeal of folk beliefs is clearly linked to material gain. If you offer more, you receive more. Therefore, people willingly pay money for religious rituals.
The main difference between North and South lies in the scale, rituals, methods, tools, and offerings of shamanism. In South Korea, visiting a shaman’s house to have one’s fortune told is common practice. In addition, there is a thriving business in tarot cafes and fortune-telling cafes, in popular areas such as the Hongdae and Sinchon districts near major universities in Seoul.
Also, people use fortune-telling apps categorized by daily, yearly, or lifelong fortunes are actively utilized.
So far, though, no-ne seems to be able to confidently predict the day of reconciliation when people from the two sides will be able to freely meet and have their fortunes told.
Heung-kwang is the representative of NK Intellectual Solidarity, an NGO based in Seoul, South Korea. Previously, he served as the chairman of the quarterly magazine North Korean Village, chairman of the board of directors of Samheung North Korean Defector Children’s School, and a policy advisory member of the Ministry of National Defense in South Korea. Before defecting to South Korea in 2004, he was a professor at the Hamheung Communist College in North Korea. He graduated from North Korea’s Kim Chaek University of Technology and received his doctorate from South Korea’s Hansae University Graduate School.
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