4-Year-Old Boy Dies During Exorcism A 4-year-old boy sickened with pneumonia died in the Primorye region after an exorcism by a Korean shaman, news reports said Wednesday. Investigators didn’t immediately know what killed the child, with police saying pneumonia may have been to blame.

Yes, it’s 2010, and parents are still hiring shamans, to heal disease (via Geologic Podcast).

The family intended to request help for the grandmother, who has diabetes, but So Dyavor told them that the entire family was jinxed and the boy had put a curse on them, the report said.

Nobody was present in the room when the shaman performed the exorcism on the boy, it said, without commenting on the role of So Dyavor’s husband in the incident.

Primorye is the eastern-most Russian province due east of the Korean peninsula where ethnic Korean families both fled at various times in the past centuries, or were invited by the Russian government, to workk mines, farms, and timber concessions.

And, how is it that the Moscow Times is more convenient for posting on WordPress than any American newspaper?

Filed under: East Asia, Podcasts, Religion, Russia