Fortune-telling and Korea's presidential election

The People Power Party's presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, left, and his wife Kim Kun-hee at Cheong Wa Dae in July 2019. Joint Press Corps.

Fortune-tellers swirl around presidential candidates

By Ko Dong-hwan

On Jan. 19, prosecutors launched an investigation of the main opposition People Power Party's (PPP) presidential candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol, for violating the country's election laws, leaking confidential government information, and abusing his authority to undermine law enforcement.

The allegations, brought by the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's (DPK) election camp, relate to how Yoon, then-prosecutor general, in February 2020 ordered police not to search the headquarters of Shincheonji, a fringe church blamed for a major cluster infection resulting in over 5,200 COVID-19 cases in Daegu early that year, by breaking national pandemic prevention regulations. The DPK camp, basing the charges on a report from local daily Segye Ilbo, said Yoon had deliberately not made the order because an alleged fortune-teller named Geonjin advised him not to "get your hands dirty with unnecessary blood."

The PPP denied the accusation, saying that Yoon hadn't authorized the warrant after listening to the country's central pandemic control tower, which strongly objected to the order because it would cause the church members to go into hiding, complicating efforts to track them to help locate potential infection routes.

Mounting reports suggested that Geonjin's relationship with Yoon and his wife Kim Kun-hee went deeper than the couple reluctantly admitted. A newly discovered business card issued by Kim's exhibition planning firm, Covana Contents, in 2014 showed Geonjin's name on it as the firm's "adviser." He has also been confirmed to have attended an event hosted by Kim as a VIP in 2015. The controversial seven-hour phone conversation records between Kim and an online news reporter, leaked by the latter early this month, revealed that Kim and Yoon have been close to the fortune-teller for a long time. But Yoon kept distancing himself from these allegations, saying, "I've never heard of him being the adviser," and, "I don't know how he attended that event."

DPK lawmakers condemned Yoon for repeatedly providing false explanations despite undeniable proof to the contrary and demanded that he clarify who his "secret advisers" are (the DPK argued there is more than one shaman working behind-the-scenes in Yoon's election camp).

"Yoon and his election camp must think people are so gullible," Rep. Woo Sang-ho of the DPK said on a TBS radio show on Jan. 24. "It's clear that Geonjin has a close friendship with both Yoon and Kim. If Yoon gets elected, the shaman will start intervening in government affairs. That's how a secret influencer manipulates politics from behind a curtain."

A shamanism scandal also affected DPK presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung's election camp, when the conservative daily, Chosun Ilbo, reported that the camp on Jan. 4 had launched a new committee comprising 17 religious leaders to appeal to the public better. The report said that one of the leaders was a well-known "prophet" who heads the country's official association of prophets and correctly prophesied all the presidents of Korea from the 13th (late Roh Tae-woo, elected in 1988) to the 18th (Park Geun-hye, elected in 2013).

The DPK camp admitted to inviting the leader in question to the camp, saying, "The teacher has been publicly active among the past presidents and political inner circles for decades. The shamans in Yoon's camp, on the other hand, just came out of nowhere."

According to a 2019 tally from Statistics Korea, there are 10,745 registered prophets and shamans in the country. But it is believed that there are substantially more because many in the profession operate without business licenses. A prophet cited by daily newspaper The JoongAng said, "In past presidential elections, prophets and shamans quietly supported candidates. This year is different in that some shamans buzzing around certain candidates, flaunting themselves and their presence, have been made known to the public." He added that 90 percent of the prophets and shamans who appear during presidential elections are frauds.

Shamanism in Korean politics dates back to the country's first president, Rhee Syngman (1952-1960), who changed his name following a shaman's advice to "become a president at a late age," and became president at age 73. A prophet foretold former President Park Chung-hee's death 20 years before he was shot and killed by one of his closest aides in 1979, and Chun Doo-hwan's mother had three of her teeth pulled out after a monk told her, "Your three front teeth will block your son's future career."

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