SEOUL — Yang Soon Im says she has been communicating with the spirits of mountains and ancient warriors since she was seven. But it was only 25 years ago, she said, when her son miraculously survived a knife wound, that she felt she had no choice but to become the spirits' full-time channel with the living - a mudang, or shaman.

"I found her sitting on the roof chanting at 4 a.m.," her husband, Choi Jong Sam, 62, said. "She was puffing away at four packs of cigarettes. She said her mountain gods had saved our son in a sort of bargain. I slapped her face to help her get her wits back.

"Then her eyes blazed like those of a wild dog about to bite a man."

The deal Yang struck with her spirits eventually paid off in other ways. Now 60, she is one of the most sought-after shamans in Seoul - a leading member of a profession that has survived centuries of ridicule and persecution and is now enjoying a seemingly incongruous revival in one of the world's most technologically advanced countries.

Seoul is among the most relentlessly modern cities of Asia, with high-speed Internet and plasma TV sets. But an estimated 300 shamanistic temples nestle in hills less than an hour from the city center, and the clamorous ceremony known as gut (pronounced "goot") is a daily routine. The shamans offer a pig to placate the gods. They dance with toy guns to comfort the spirit of a dead child. They intimidate evil spirits by walking barefoot on knife blades.