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STORY: Lee Kyoung-hyun is performing a ritual dating back centuries in South Korea.

The 29-year-old is a practicing shaman with a modern twist.

She's better known as Aegi Seonnyeo - or 'Baby Fairy' - her social media handle with a large online following.

It's how she's educating a new generation of Koreans about the ancient traditions.

“I’ve been a shaman for six, seven years and there's been a shift. Shamans are more out in the open now."

South Korea is one of the world's most high-tech economies.

Polls show more than half of its population of 51 million are not religiously affiliated.

Yet Google Trends shows that searches on YouTube for "shaman" and "fortune-telling" in Korean have nearly doubled over the past five years.

“Shamanism is deeply rooted for Koreans. It was believed to be an invisible, mysterious and spiritual world. But now, with all of these YouTube videos, people are finding it more approachable."

:: February 19, 2008

Korean shamans typically answer queries after conducting rituals that span from ringing bells and tossing grains of rice to dancing on the edge of a knife to call on divine intervention.

But consultations can be pricey. They typically charge around $70.

32-year-old Park Chea-Bin says she came to Lee for peace of mind:

"I'm here to get counseling from someone who understands me a little more and sees me through. With that - I think I felt a sense of peace during situations of insecurity like an unemployment crisis."

Lee says many of her other millennial and Gen Z clients ask about affordable housing and the cost of raising children.

In Seoul, where Lee is based, the price of a home was more than 15 times the median salary in 2022.

The country has also suffered from high inflation and interest rates.

That may be driving the trend, according to Han Seung-hoon, an assistant professor at the Academy of Korean Studies:

"With shamans who are from the same generation, share similar cultural experiences, and live in the city, people can have deeper conversations than they might with their close friends. We can see that it is one of the reasons why the shaman as a friend-counsellor has emerged."

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It's even seeping into pop culture.

One of South Korea’s biggest movie hits of 2024 is the supernatural film ‘Exhuma,’ in which shamans are tasked with lifting a curse on a family.

A culture ministry agency estimated in 2022 that there are around 400,000 shamans and fortune-tellers in South Korea.

But there's still a stigma around seeing them.

A 2022 study in the journal BMC Psychiatry noted a "huge" gap between South Koreans needing mental health treatment and getting it, which it partly attributed to stigma, too.

"I believe the current state of South Korean society, which is tough, is a factor that can't be ignored.”