22 Asia The EconomistFebruary 24th 2018
1D
ESTINY is usually said to lurk in heavy
drapes of purple velvet, in the wicked
glint of a crystal ball, behind a veil of
heady incense or in the tuck of a gold-chif-
fon turban. Your correspondent went in
search of hers among a crush of Korean
schoolgirls at the “Broken Heart Tarot
Club” in booming Hongdae, a university
district in Seoul. The café’s façade is an in-
viting jumble of pink neon signs and glow-
ing graffiti. At the next table, a hip tarot
reader spread a deck face-down for two
girlfriends in oversized denim jackets, who
took turns picking out cards and sipping on
their lattes. He looked as cool as them,
more rapper than rune-reader, in dark
glasseswith a chain around his neck.
Interrogating the decorated cards costs
3,000 won (about $2.75) a question. A tarot
reader assesses the character of her clients
first. Two flicks of her wrist, and a pair of
Queens appears. “You chose the strongest
set in the deck,” she says brightly. “Fame is
within reach.” Will a move to a new coun-
try go smoothly? The Beggar. “The start
will be hard, but you can succeed if you ask
for help.” Will the Koreas go to war? Deathand The Emperor show up, apparently the
tarot incarnations of Kim Jong Un (here a
scythe-wielding woman in blue veils) and
Moon Jae-in, the leaders of North and
South Korea. “Death plays tricks but the
Emperor is wise,” the readerassures.
“Broken Heart” isamongdozens offor-
tune-telling businesses on the street,
packed between cheap clothes and cos-
metics shops. Business is brisk. Other
stores offer the Korean arts of face-reading,
palm-reading—one entices clients with a
detailed mapping of Barack Obama’s
raised hand at his presidential swearing-
in—and saju. An ancient form of divina-
tion, saju analyses the cosmic energy at the
hour, day, month and year of a person’s
birth from Chinese astrological records
and texts. A seer at “Broken Hearts” says
she began to studysaju two decades ago
(she says she found it hard to trust other
fortune-tellers), but took up tarot recently
to keep up with the times. “The young like
it. The cards are pretty, it’s cheap and it’s
quick,” she says.
The otherworldly in South Korea will
soon be a 4trn won ($3.7bn) business, pre-dicts the Korea Economic Daily, a local
newspaper. Paik Woon-san, head of the As-
sociation of Korean Prophets, estimates
that there are over 300,000 fortune-tellers
in the country, and 150,000 shamans,
many of whom provide clairvoyance.
Unusuallyin a country of evangelical
Christians and devout Buddhists, it contin-
ues to thrive as anything from a bit of curi-
ous fun to a dependable guide for making
everyday decisions.
Duo, an online marriage agency, found
that 82% of unmarried women and 57% of
bachelors surveyed in 2017 had visited saju
masters to ask about their love life. The
practice survived government campaigns
in the 1970s that urged citizens to junk juju
and make their own fate; they were, after
all, conjuring their own potent magic by
building South Korea’s economic “miracle
on the Han river”. (The North has other
reasons to dislike diviners, who are
banned yet sought after; reports have trick-
led out of the authorities punishing those
who make political predictions.)
Now fortune-telling apps for smart-
phones are beguiling city kids, taking the
occult into the otherworldliness of cyber-
space. Handasoft, a software developer,
has launched 13 apps in the past five years.
Its most popular, Jeomsin, introduced two
years ago, has been downloaded over 3m
times. Every morning it sends users their
personalised fortune for the day (other
mobile prophecy-providers sell their de-
tailed user data on to marketers, but Jeom-
sin makes money only from ads). ProfferFortune-telling in South KoreaProphets and profits
SEOUL
A $3.7bn business is beginning to contend with automation