Even the enforcers are visiting fortune tellers in North Korea, and prices are soaring

Fortune teller fees across North Korea have surged two to four times their previous levels as a flood of new customers — including officials and enforcement agents who are supposed to be cracking down on the practice — drives prices sharply higher and renders state prohibition largely ineffective, multiple Daily NK sources inside the country said Tuesday.

Sources said that in the two months since the new year, fortune tellers have been earning significantly more than in previous years, with demand so strong that even those tasked with suppressing superstitious practices are visiting fortune tellers themselves. Analysts say the boom reflects deepening anxiety under intensifying social controls.

Officials driving up prices

Daily NK has previously reported that security and law enforcement personnel, known colloquially as jongbokjaengi, as well as party and administrative officials and wealthy traders known as donju, have emerged this year as a primary customer base for fortune tellers. With that clientele in place, fortune tellers have been raising their fees and operating more actively than in previous years.

A source in North Hamgyong province said the Lunar New Year period through the first full moon traditionally draws strong demand for fortune readings and ritual cleansing ceremonies, but this year was exceptional.

“Well-known fortune tellers were drawing even larger crowds, and people with money and power started offering to pay more to jump the queue,” the source said. “Prices rose naturally from there.”

Once fortune tellers realized that party officials and enforcement agents were among their customers, they began charging more, the source said.

In Hoeryong, fees that had previously hovered around 500 Chinese yuan (approximately $69) have jumped to a minimum of 1,000 to 1,500 Chinese yuan (approximately $138 to $207), with some charging even more. Demand has not slowed.

“There is a fortune teller in Hoeryong right now with a strong reputation, and the interest is considerable,” the source said. “Having a ritual performed at home costs a great deal, but requests keep coming in, mainly from people with money or influence.”

That same fortune teller gained widespread notoriety after warning a local person last year that a death in the family was possible within two months and that even ritual protection might not prevent it. When a family member subsequently died, word spread quickly. Since then, the source said, the fortune teller’s schedule has been full, with officials and donju requesting ritual protection ceremonies daily.

“Just as traders raise prices when demand is high, fortune tellers do the same,” the source said. “With even the powerful scrambling to visit fortune tellers, they are using that position to charge more for readings and rituals.”

Anxiety fueling the market

A second source in North Hamgyong province said a person in Musan county spent 2,000 Chinese yuan (approximately $276) in mid-February on a reading and ritual cleansing at a well-known fortune teller. The fortune teller advised the person not to conduct business until after the first full moon and to perform a cleansing ritual on that day before resuming work. The person complied, halting business activity for several weeks.

“At the start of the year I get my annual fortune read, and at the start of each month I get a monthly reading. If the fortune teller says a month will be bad, I absolutely will not make any moves,” the person told the source. “The price of a reading has gone up and I paid 2,000 yuan this time including the cleansing, but with crackdowns getting more intense, I feel anxious and I end up going to the fortune teller.”

The trend illustrates a dynamic familiar to analysts of North Korean society: the harder the state clamps down, the more people turn to superstition for reassurance, which in turn expands the underground fortune telling market.

Park Min-ju, a professor at the National Institute for Unification Education, said the phenomenon reflects growing social uncertainty and survival pressure. She said the surge in visits by officials and enforcement personnel is closely tied to the North Korean authorities’ intensified management of cadres and their emphasis on performance metrics.

“The harder life becomes and the more difficult it is to predict the future, the stronger the tendency to seek fortune tellers to know what is coming and prepare for it,” Park said. She added that the state’s heavy repression of fortune telling has, paradoxically, pushed the practice further underground rather than eliminating it, aggravating it as a social problem.

Park warned that crackdowns and exemplary punishments could temporarily suppress demand, but that a well-regarded fortune teller’s reputation and fees would likely rise further as a result.

“The more the North Korean authorities control people’s lives, the more demand for fortune tellers and the higher fees will rise,” she said. “In the long term, creating an environment where people can live more stably is the only thing that will reduce the number of people seeking fortune tellers, shrink the number of fortune tellers, and bring fees back down.”

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