Dowsing In South Korea

Divining Intentions
These are excerpts from an article
that appeared on the front page of the
Wall Street Journal
November 29, 2002
by John Larkin

SUWON, South Korea
Some 60 miles north looms the armed border that divides South Korea from the Communist North. Choi Min Young paced around a hole he had bored deep into the earth. He was holding a pair of short steel rods.

Suddenly, the rods twitched in his grip. “Right now there are 30 North Koreans right beneath us,” Mr. Choi said in a hushed voice. Northern “solders are patrolling over to the right.”

Mr. Choi uses a scientifically unproven technique called dowsing, or divining, to seek underground objects. The usual dowser searches for water.

In South Korea, Mr. Choi is part of a small band that chases spies. The six-man group calls itself the Invasion-Tunnel Hunters. They have been digging for 10 yeas in search of passageways they believe North Korea has burrowed into the South, as invasion routes or to infiltrate spies.

Dowsers try to act as a human conductor of energy that substances purportedly throw off.

Mr. Choi says he channels vibrations from underground objects through two thin steel rods, bent 90 degrees at their ends to form little handles. He holds the rods out in front of him, one in each hand, parallel to the ground. Mr. Choi insists he can determine the nature, size and location of objects even if they’re 100 yards below ground.

Dowsing is also sometimes used in Korea to find auspiciously located burial grounds that are free from groundwater. “It’s popular among ordinary Koreans, but it’s not scientifically proven at all,” says Lim Mu Taek, a geophysicist at the Korea Institute of Geosciences and Mineral Resources in Daejon south of Seoul.