A Korean "Shaman" AI Is Selling BaZi Readings in Taiwan

A Korean AI fortune app is climbing Taiwan's App Store. Called 緊緊八字 there (Tight Saju in Korea), it reached Taiwan on Sept. 11. It was outside the top 100 of the Lifestyle top-grossing chart on Oct. 10 and 11, appeared at No. 58 on Oct. 12, and was No. 29 two days later, without a single Taiwanese rating. On the same chart, another Korean app, MYPIE, sat at No. 26.

BaZi, or Four Pillars, is a Chinese birth-chart system, and Taiwan has no shortage of local apps that calculate it. Judging by their store pages and reviews, the Korean apps are not selling better charts. They are selling packaging: one wraps BaZi in K-drama-style shaman characters and long AI reports, the other in an AI adviser that talks you through your personality.

Tight Saju has been in Korea's Lifestyle top-grossing top 25 every day from Oct. 10 to 14. In August, Korea's Electronic Times reported that the company calls it "the Netflix of saju," with 5 million cumulative users and 1 million monthly actives, and serves readings as webtoon-style and short-video content with themes such as shaman saju and nine-tailed-fox saju.

In Taiwan the packaging switched to Traditional Chinese. The store screenshots sell a "Korean shaman love BaZi" and a "Korean mansin" reading, with a red-haired shaman holding a finger to her lips, and promise a 20,000-character, 20-page report on your fated match. One screenshot appears only in the Taiwanese listing: a "Taiwan temple" simulation where you toss moon blocks to ask the gods a yes-or-no question. The app says a birth date unlocks more than 30 AI reports on love, compatibility, money and career, and that you can ask questions such as whether this is a good year to change jobs.

MYPIE, from a company on Korea's Jeju Island, skips the shamans. It talks about solar-term rhythms and "temperament DNA," and pairs them with Pie, an AI adviser that starts from your chart and talks about your personality and work. It has 82 ratings in Taiwan, averaging 4.5, against 37 in Korea, averaging 3.7, and it has ranked between No. 20 and No. 30 on Taiwan's chart since Oct. 10, higher than it ranks at home.

Taiwanese reviews split cleanly. The praise is almost all for the AI conversation: one reviewer says its replies encouraged and guided them, felt like it understood them better than they did, and left them calmer than a visit to a fortune-teller. The complaints are about the chart and the translation: pillars that don't match a standard almanac, error messages that pop up in Korean, and answers that go in circles, prompting one reviewer to suggest asking Gemini or ChatGPT about your chart instead.

In other words, Taiwanese users like MYPIE's AI and find fault with its BaZi. Tight Saju has no reviews in Taiwan yet, so nobody can say how good its charts are.

BaZi traveled from the Chinese-speaking world to Korea, picked up shamans, webtoons and AI there, and is now coming back to Taiwan in Traditional Chinese. What Taiwanese users are paying for may not be a more accurate chart, but something that listens.