Teen star reveals how she became a shaman

Park Mi-ryeong / Courtesy of Naver Blog

Former teen star Park Mi-ryeong has revealed how she became a shaman and that her singer husband left her.

She made the comments on TV talk show

“Pumpkin Seed” on TV Chosun

Tuesday.

Park, a teen star from the 1980s, told a celebrity panel she debuted as a magazine ad model when she was an elementary school student. She furthered her career by appearing in many ads, hosting a popular TV music show and starring in a movie.

She married at 21. Media reports Wednesday said her husband was Kim Jong-jin, the vocalist from two-member rock band Spring Summer Autumn Winter.

Park said she started to feel ill in her late 20s, suffering extreme lethargy, social phobia and auditory hallucinations. She claimed it was an incurable spiritual suffering that no hospital could explain.

The suffering, according to shamanism experts, lasts until the person accepts their destiny to become a shaman by receiving a “gut” -- a ritual that purports to connect the ordinary and spiritual worlds.

Park said she could see strangers’ futures and give a prognosis to those in pain.

“The agony was painful and I tried to kill myself by driving at 180 kilometers per hour and cutting my artery, but I kept surviving,” Park said on the program. “I couldn’t endure the suffering any more. So I chose to receive a gut to deify myself as a shaman.”

By this time, her son and husband had left her.

Park has been a shaman for eight years and runs a temple in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province.