Park Seo Hwi Left Broadcasting for Shamanism — Here's Why

Park Seo Hwi — a former K-pop idol, Korea University graduate, and 14-year sports announcer — broke down in tears on national television as she revealed she had quietly left the broadcasting world to become a shaman. The announcement, made on MBN's variety program Exclusive World (특종세상) on April 2, 2026, confirmed what followers had long suspected: the woman once known for her crisp anchor delivery had undergone a shamanic initiation ritual just weeks earlier, in March 2026.

For many viewers, the news was not just surprising — it was disorienting. Park Seo Hwi had spent years building one of the most unconventional resumes in Korean entertainment: a member of girl group LPG, then a university ulzzang at one of Korea's most prestigious schools, then a high-profile sports broadcaster for channels including SPOTV, Arirang TV, and OGN. How someone with that trajectory ends up receiving a shamanic calling was a question her tearful confessional largely answered.

A Body That Was Sending a Message

The path to shamanism, Park Seo Hwi explained, began not with a spiritual choice but with a physical collapse. Over an extended period, she lost more than 10 kilograms of body weight despite no change in diet or exercise. She experienced full-body pain she described as "feeling like I had been beaten up," along with chronic insomnia and unexplained red hives across her skin. Multiple medical consultations turned up nothing. When doctors could find no cause, she began exploring spiritual explanations.

The recurring dreams were what finally pushed her to act. "I kept having nightmares where family members were dying," she told the program. "They came back over and over. The anxiety built up until I could not ignore it anymore." A visit to a fortune teller yielded an immediate and direct assessment: the shaman told her she was filled with spirits and had come carrying them. A shaman told her that undergoing formal initiation was the only way to stop the suffering — and to prevent the nightmares from becoming real.

She attempted to find another path, undergoing rituals specifically designed to help people avoid becoming shamans. None of them worked. "I tried everything to get out of it," she said. "There was just no escaping it." In March 2026, she traveled to the foot of Bukhansan Mountain in Seoul and underwent her Naerimgut (내림굿), the formal shamanic initiation ceremony that marks the beginning of a shaman's active spiritual practice. She is now establishing her own shrine, referred to in Korean as a Sindo (신당).

The Weight of an Unexpected Identity

For Park Seo Hwi, the hardest part was not the physical ordeal — it was facing her family. Her father accompanied her to mountain prayer sessions, and his reaction was captured on camera for the MBN broadcast. "Becoming a shaman is a very difficult road," he said, visibly struggling to hold back tears. "She graduated from a good university. We raised her wanting for nothing. And now it is heartbreaking." Her mother was equally shaken, as Park Seo Hwi explained that her parents were most afraid of what others would say — that their daughter had become a shaman's child.

Park Seo Hwi herself was not immune to that grief. "I wanted my life to end as announcer Park Seo Hwi," she said through tears. "If I do not do this, my parents would still have their dignified daughter working in broadcasting. But now their daughter becomes a shaman's child. It is the last thing I wanted to do to them." She reportedly cried throughout much of the taping, and her father's visible anguish made for some of the episode's most emotionally charged moments.

Yet she was clear that accepting the calling was ultimately an act of love — not abandonment. "My family means everything to me," she said. "I have always lived for my family. So in the end, I had no choice." The nightmares about her family dying were what made the decision final. If shamanism was what stood between her family and the fate she kept dreaming about, she would take that road — no matter the personal cost.

From LPG to OGN to the Mountain

To understand how striking Park Seo Hwi's story is, it helps to trace the arc that preceded it. She joined girl group LPG (Lovely Pretty Girls) in 2013 under the stage name Ayul, becoming part of the group's ninth-generation lineup. LPG, which debuted in 2005 with a style blending pop and semi-trot influences, was already a long-running act by the time she joined. She departed in 2014, roughly a year after joining, and pivoted sharply toward academia and broadcasting.

A graduate of Korea University's Division of International Studies — one of the most selective departments in South Korea — Park Seo Hwi is fluent in five languages: Korean, English, French, Japanese, and Chinese. This linguistic range helped open doors at international sports media, where she became a recognizable face covering baseball and soccer at SPOTV, weather segments at Arirang TV, and e-sports broadcasts at OGN and SPOTV GAMES, announcing titles including StarCraft, Hearthstone, and PUBG. She also holds a fourth-degree black belt in taekwondo and has earned 12 professional culinary certifications. She was doing early-morning live broadcasts at 4 AM before her departure from the industry.

She gained a new wave of fans in 2024 through SBS's popular sports entertainment show She's Got Game (골 때리는 그녀들), where she joined FC Anaconda as a player and later earned both soccer and futsal referee licenses. Audiences who recognized her from broadcasting were surprised to find her competing athletically on prime-time television. She also founded a sportswear brand, Whisfit, during her announcing years. In March 2026, she quietly stepped back from all broadcasting work — a decision that became publicly understood only when the MBN episode aired days later.

What Comes Next: A K-Shamanism Ambassador

In a moment that briefly turned the somber interview forward-looking, Park Seo Hwi described what she hopes to do with her new path. Given her fluency in five languages, she said she wants to introduce Korean shamanism to international audiences. The tradition — known as Musok (무속) — is one of the world's oldest surviving shamanistic practices, with roots stretching back thousands of years on the Korean Peninsula. Its practitioners, called mudang or manshin, occupy a complex space in Korean culture: respected in certain contexts, misunderstood in others, and often socially stigmatized in ways that have made younger generations reluctant to acknowledge the tradition publicly.

Park Seo Hwi's background makes her an unusual candidate to serve as a cultural bridge for this tradition. Educated at an elite university, trained in broadcasting, multilingual, and with a built-in public following, she has the skills to reach audiences that traditional practitioners typically cannot. Whether her plans for educational content and international outreach will materialize remains to be seen, but the ambition reflects the same determination that carried her through idol life, elite academia, and a 14-year broadcasting career.

Her announcement drew a wide mix of reactions across Korean social media — sympathy, genuine curiosity, and quiet encouragement. Fans of her announcing work expressed sadness at her departure from the screen, while many others wrote that they found her story deeply moving. "She did not want this," one widely shared comment read. "She did it for her family. That is the kind of person she is." Others were simply fascinated: here was a woman with every conventional marker of success, voluntarily stepping off that path because something else called her.

Park Seo Hwi's appearance on MBN's Exclusive World aired April 2, 2026. She has confirmed she is now actively practicing as a shaman and has established her own shrine in Seoul.