Divination is a ubiquitous feature of everyday life in South Korea. Under the backdrop of economic liberalization, it proliferates as a medium for patrons to explore anxieties and desires, as they attempt to negotiate the unpredictable currents of the market economy. Divination conjures uncanny explanations for things that happen in the past, present, and future; and in this sense, it is explicitly tied to the theorization of knowledge as it reveals itself via character and fate. A person’s character, and in turn their destiny, is interpreted by the diviner using simple tools of conjuration, bringing matter, people, and spirits into convergence on the diviner’s table.

This presentation explores various forms of divination, from shamanism to horoscopic divination and the growing hodge-podge in between, as they are driven by consumer demand. Focusing on patrons and their desires, I examine divination encounters, some strange, some familiar, ranging from short trips to divination cafes to find out about a career path, to ambitious couples that plan their pregnancies around an auspicious birth date via cesarean section. I also explore the lengths patrons will go to test the accuracy of a diviner in some creative ways, including slipping a photograph of the deceased amongst those of the living to test a shamanic face-reader, or bringing in a fake birth date to a horoscopic diviner—all in the name of divine insurance.