Korea Asks AI to Read Its Fortune — Then Gets Furious When Shamans Get Too Close to Power
From K-dramas and webtoons to KPop Demon Hunters, shamanism became cool again. Politics is where the fun stops.
Restart KPop Demon Hunters and pay attention to the beginning.
Before the private jet.
Before the arena.
Before the K-pop glamour.
The movie flashes backward through generations of female demon hunters.
And at the oldest end of that lineage, three women appear in traditional Korean clothing.
They are not just generic “women from old Korea.”
Music scholar Donna Lee Kwon has pointed out that the figures are widely understood as representations of mudang — Korean shamans. The filmmakers themselves have described Korean shamanism, especially the tradition of female shamans using song and dance in ritual, as a direct influence on the mythology behind the hunters. (WBUR)
The production art makes the connection even less subtle.
Character designer Marion Bordeyne’s prologue costume concepts literally include designs labeled:
Mudang_01.Mudang_02.Mudang_03. (MARION BORDEYNE)
Then the film jumps forward.
Their modern descendants do not wear the same clothing.
They wear couture.
They have light sticks.
Millions of fans.
Giant LED screens.
What do they do with all of this?
They sing.
They dance.
They use collective energy to keep evil out of the human world.
That is not a literal reconstruction of a Korean gut, the ritual performed by a mudang.
It is something more clever.
The ritual has been given a K-pop interface.
Korea’s tourism authority has also noted that HUNTR/X defeating supernatural forces through music and choreography echoes the role of song and dance in traditional shamanic rites. (VISITKOREA – Imagine Your Korea)
▶ KPop Demon Hunters — Official Trailer | Netflix
There is a rather spectacular historical joke hiding here.
In the 20th century, modernizing South Korea often treated shamanism as superstition that development and science would eventually sweep away.
In 2025, shamanic imagery helped power what became Netflix’s most popular movie ever. (Netflix)
The shaman did not disappear.
She became global IP.
If You Watch Enough K-Dramas, None of This Is New
Korean popular culture is absolutely crawling with the supernatural.
Ghosts.
Possession.
Grim reapers.
Talismans.
Fortune tellers.
Shamans.
Exorcisms.
Ancestors.
Geomancy.
Unquiet dead people with very complicated family problems.
And, because this is Korea, extremely attractive people who are cursed.
In Disney+’s 2023 Revenant, a woman possessed by an evil spirit joins a folklorist who can see spirits to investigate a series of mysterious deaths. (디즈니 플러스)
Netflix’s Café Minamdang takes the idea into crime comedy: a man running a supposedly all-knowing shaman business becomes entangled with a police investigation. (Netflix)
SBS’s 2025 The Haunted Palace places a shaman inside a historical fantasy romantic comedy involving an imugi, possession and a vengeful spirit haunting the royal family. (SBS)
And then there is Head Over Heels.
By day, its heroine is a high-school student.
By night?
Shaman.
She sees that the boy she falls for is destined to die and decides to fight fate itself.
Even better, the drama was adapted from a popular webtoon of the same name. CJ ENM openly marketed the character as a Gen Z shaman. (CJ NEWSROOM)
That tells you how far the image has moved.
The stereotypical mudang of older Korean media was often older, socially marginal, frightening or faintly embarrassing.
The 2025 version can be:
eighteen,
cute,
in love,
going to school,
and sharing a body of pop culture with ghosts after sunset.
Shamanism did not vanish.
It got a character redesign.
Exhuma Made the Shaman Look Like a Profession
Then came Exhuma.
Kim Go-eun’s Hwa-rim performs shamanic ritual.
But she is not presented as a dusty relic from rural Korea.
She is young.
Sharp.
Stylish.
Professional.
Lee Do-hyun’s Bong-gil has tattoos and headphones.
Their clients are not superstitious villagers.
They are a wealthy Korean family based in America.
▶ EXHUMA — Official Trailer
That changes the visual grammar of Korean shamanism.
Hwa-rim behaves less like a woman begging the supernatural for mercy and more like a highly specialized consultant.
She takes a case.
Evaluates it.
Works with other specialists — a geomancer and a mortician.
Charges money.
Solves an extremely unusual problem.
It is almost an occult consulting firm.
That matters because contemporary Korean pop culture has increasingly detached shamanism from the old equation:
shamanism = backward people who failed to modernize.
KPop Demon Hunters Takes the Same Update Global
HUNTR/X does not come out of nowhere.
Within the film’s mythology, they are the newest generation in a long female line of supernatural protectors.
The oldest visual layer is mudang-coded.
The latest layer is K-pop.
The interface changes.
The basic action does not.
Traditional ritual:
music.
dance.
community.
protection from harmful forces.
Modern fantasy:
music.
dance.
fandom.
protection from demons.
You could almost describe KPop Demon Hunters as:
What if a gut had a stadium tour?
That works because music and dance were never random additions to Korean shamanism in the first place. (VISITKOREA – Imagine Your Korea)
Then You Turn Off Netflix and Things Get Much Less Cute
Now leave fiction.
Go to a real Korean presidential election.
A new character enters the story.
His name is Jeon Seong-bae.
Most Koreans know him by another name:
Geonjin Beopsa.
“Beopsa” has the wonderfully cinematic ring of something you expect to hear in a fantasy drama.
Unfortunately, this story took place around actual political power.
During the 2022 presidential campaign, allegations emerged that Geonjin had operated around candidate Yoon Suk Yeol’s campaign organization and exerted influence.
Yoon’s camp denied that he was an official adviser or involved in campaign decisions.
As the controversy grew, the relevant network division was dissolved.
At the time, this could still be read as familiar election-season warfare:
allegation.
denial.
counterattack.
Move on.
Except the courts later documented a much deeper relationship.
The Court Record Takes the Relationship Back to 2013
According to a Seoul court ruling made public in July 2026, Kim Keon Hee first met Jeon in March 2013 through an acquaintance.
And the way he was introduced is extraordinary.
The acquaintance did not merely say:
“He’s good at fortune-telling.”
The court record quotes descriptions portraying him as someone who dealt with “high-level people” and even as being more like a lobbyist than an ordinary shaman.
Kim expressed interest and asked to be introduced. (연합뉴스)
That is already a different product from the fortune shop a college student visits after a bad breakup.
The value is no longer simply:
Can he see the future?
It becomes:
Who does he know?
By 2016, He Was Saying Yoon Would Become President
The same ruling records that around 2016 Jeon began telling Kim that Yoon would eventually become president.
During the explosive 2020 conflict between Prosecutor General Yoon Suk Yeol and Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae, the court record says Jeon also commented on the pair’s hap — roughly their compatibility or interaction. (연합뉴스)
Consider the scene.
The attorney general–level prosecutor and the justice minister are locked in one of the most consequential institutional conflicts in recent Korean politics.
On television:
constitutional law.
prosecutorial independence.
ministerial authority.
political accountability.
Somewhere in the private orbit around power:
their compatibility.
If a screenwriter invented it, you might call the symbolism heavy-handed.
Reality did not ask permission.
Consulting a Fortune Teller Is Not a Crime
This line matters.
A politician can seek advice from a pastor.
A monk.
A philosopher.
A therapist.
A shaman.
A yoga teacher.
A bartender with unusually strong opinions.
A democracy cannot police every private source of comfort.
In fact, Korean shaman organizations argued during the 2022 controversy that treating shamanic advisers as inherently sinister while accepting political advice from pastors or Buddhist monks was discriminatory.
That criticism has a point.
So the important question is not:
Did a politician talk to a shaman?
The important question is:
Did a person with no public office, no democratic mandate and little transparency convert private access into public influence?
That is where the story stops being anthropology.
Chanel and a Graff Diamond Necklace Changed the Genre
In 2022, former Unification Church official Yun Young-ho delivered expensive goods to Geonjin while seeking favors relating to the church.
The goods included Chanel bags and a Graff diamond necklace.
Their combined value was around 80 million won.
In July 2026, South Korea’s Supreme Court finalized a five-year prison sentence for Jeon Seong-bae.
The court upheld his conviction in the case involving gifts and requests linked to former first lady Kim Keon Hee. (연합뉴스)
At that point, describing the case as:
“The first lady knew a shaman.”
becomes almost misleadingly cute.
The central commodity was no longer prophecy.
It was access.
A Person Who Predicts the Future Can Become a Person Who Appears Able to Change It
A normal client asks a fortune teller:
“Will I get the job?”
“Will my business survive?”
“Should I marry this person?”
But imagine that the fortune teller becomes close to someone at the top of political power.
Then another kind of client arrives.
“Can you mention this to her?”
“Can you help our project?”
“Can you introduce this person?”
At that point, the fortune teller is no longer merely predicting futures.
He appears capable of intervening in them.
Prophet becomes broker.
That distinction matters far more than whether you believe spirits exist.
The More Useful Word Here Is Not “Shamanism.” It Is “Shadow Power.”
A special counsel investigating Kim Keon Hee said at the end of its 2025 investigation that the former first lady had intervened in state affairs “behind the curtains.”
That was the special counsel’s prosecutorial conclusion, and it should be identified as such rather than confused with a final judgment on every allegation. (연합뉴스)
Some cases, however, have moved much further through the courts.
Kim was convicted in the case involving luxury gifts from the Unification Church.
An appeals court later raised her sentence to four years, while finding her guilty on additional parts of her corruption case.
As of August 2026, the Supreme Court has referred her case to its full bench, so the final judgment is still pending. (연합뉴스)
Geonjin’s five-year sentence, by contrast, has already been finalized by the Supreme Court. (연합뉴스)
Those distinctions matter.
Criticism becomes stronger when it is precise.
And No, You Should Not Write That Cheongong Chose the Presidential Residence
Another fortune-teller-related controversy surrounded Cheongong.
Critics alleged that he had visited candidate sites and influenced the relocation of the presidential residence.
It became a major political scandal.
Police investigated phone records, CCTV and witness accounts.
Their eventual conclusion in 2023 was that Cheongong had not visited the Army chief’s residence or the Army office at the Defense Ministry as alleged. (연합뉴스)
So:
“Cheongong selected the presidential residence.”
should not be presented as fact.
This is where a serious site should differ from political meme pages.
Do not make weak allegations louder.
Remove them.
Then the facts that survived courts become much harder to dismiss.
Korea Had Already Been Burned by Shadow Power Once
This is also why the public reaction was so intense.
In 2016, President Park Geun-hye was engulfed by the scandal surrounding Choi Soon-sil, a private confidante with no official government position who gained access to presidential materials and exercised influence.
Foreign coverage sometimes emphasized the strange religious background of Choi’s father and used language suggestive of cults or shamanism.
But that framing can obscure the real democratic issue.
The core problem was not occult belief.
It was:
an unelected private person exercising power without accountability.
South Korea had already watched that movie.
It did not enjoy the sequel.
This Is Why “Why Does a High-Tech Country Still Believe in Shamans?” Is a Weak Question
A better question is:
Why do informal trust networks survive next to highly modern formal institutions?
Because humans do not live entirely through institutions.
We trust friends.
Professors.
Pastors.
Monks.
YouTubers.
Doctors.
Older cousins.
Fortune tellers.
A politician privately trusting someone is not automatically a democratic crisis.
The crisis begins when that trust acquires the ability to move public power without public scrutiny.
Democracy cannot ban private belief.
It can demand:
**records.
disclosure.
procedures.
accountability.**
Meanwhile, Young Koreans Are Making Fortune-Telling Less Serious, Not More
This is the other half of the story.
Young Koreans go to tarot cafés.
They compare saju.
They use fortune apps.
They watch shamans on YouTube.
They treat it as a date.
A conversation starter.
A form of counseling.
A joke.
Something halfway between MBTI and therapy, depending on the person.
The attitude can be perfectly captured by one extremely Korean sentence:
“I don’t believe in that stuff, but…”
And then twenty minutes of extremely detailed saju discussion follows.
This is not necessarily a return to religious obedience.
Often it is the opposite.
The supernatural has become casualized.
Now They Ask AI
This may be the most Korean version of the entire phenomenon.
Enter:
birth year.
month.
day.
time.
Then ask a generative AI:
“Please interpret my saju in detail.”
Technology was once supposed to destroy superstition.
Instead, humans asked the technology to automate it.
There is an obvious scientific distinction here.
A computer can calculate the rules of a fortune system correctly.
That does not demonstrate that the system can accurately predict human personality, marriage, wealth or future events.
A perfectly calculated horoscope remains a horoscope.
But as a product?
AI has dramatically improved the UX.
Ancient Fate Systems Are Weirdly Compatible With Software
Think about the structure.
Inputs.
Date.
Time.
Categories.
Rules.
Relationships between categories.
Personalized output.
Long explanatory text.
This looks almost designed for software.
A fortune teller once opened a thick calendar.
Then a desktop program calculated it.
Then an app.
Now a language model can generate the narrative layer too.
The ancient metaphysics did not defeat modernity.
It got an API.
Which Brings Us Back to K-Dramas, Webtoons and KPop Demon Hunters
This is why the current boom in shaman characters is more interesting than a simple “occult trend.”
Korean culture is doing several things to shamanism at once.
Preserving it.
Mocking it.
Romanticizing it.
Modernizing it.
Monetizing it.
Turning it into horror.
Turning it into romance.
Turning it into webtoons.
Turning it into Netflix animation.
Turning it into AI entertainment.
And occasionally discovering that a person carrying the cultural aura of a “beopsa” has become entangled with real power.
Those are not the same phenomena.
But they share the same historical reservoir.
So Yes, Korea’s Shaman Came Back
Except she did not come back wearing only ceremonial robes.
Sometimes she wears sneakers.
Sometimes she is Kim Go-eun.
Sometimes she is a high-school webtoon heroine.
Sometimes she has a YouTube Silver Play Button.
Sometimes her descendants are international K-pop stars protecting the Honmoon.
And sometimes the story becomes much less entertaining, because someone near political power turns private spiritual trust into a channel for access.
That last version is where democracy has to stop enjoying the mythology and start asking for receipts.
Look at the Opening of KPop Demon Hunters Again
Three women.
Traditional clothing.
An old line of female protectors.
Then generations change.
Costumes change.
Technology changes.
Eventually we get HUNTR/X.
The movie turns an old Korean structure into something the world can instantly understand:
a girl group.
A fandom.
A concert.
A superhero franchise.
That is cultural translation at its best.
Meanwhile, real Korea has been conducting a much more uncomfortable translation.
What happens when old informal authority survives inside a hypermodern political system?
Sometimes it becomes a harmless fortune app.
Sometimes a hit drama.
Sometimes an Oscar-winning global pop-culture phenomenon.
And sometimes it becomes a corruption case.
So if you ask a young Korean:
“Do you really believe in saju?”
you may get:
“Not really. It’s fun.”
Ask:
“So would it be fine if an unelected beopsa had access to presidential power?”
The expression changes.
That is not hypocrisy.
It is the distinction modern democracy is supposed to make.
You are free to ask the universe whom you should marry.
You are free to ask AI whether this is your lucky year.
You are free to watch a shaman fight ghosts on television.
But once private belief opens the door to public power,
the question is no longer:
Do the spirits approve?
It is:
Who gave this person access, what did they do with it, and where is the record?
That is a far better test of a modern society than whether its citizens still occasionally believe in ghosts.
