“Please help me get out of this losing position”: 108 prostrations before a Samsung Electronics chart as online “Gazua Buddhist Shrine” catches on amid market rout

[Financial News] With the KOSPI plunging more than 8% intraday, an online Buddhist shrine where stock price charts hang in place of Buddha statues and people pray for share prices to rise is gaining traction among retail investors.
On the 6th, the “Gazua Buddhist Shrine” website is gaining popularity, particularly on online communities and social networking services (SNS).
The site is a web service released by developer Eom Jin-seop on the 30th of last month. It combines the investor expression “Gazua” with a Buddhist shrine and is reportedly inspired by a virtual temple service that had previously drawn attention.
After accessing the site, users wander around the virtual shrine as a young novice monk character. It has prayer rooms for individual assets such as Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Bitcoin, with a stock price chart hanging where a Buddha statue would normally be.
When users click “Bow for a Price Rise,” the character bows in red Buddhist robes; if they pray for prices to fall, it wears blue robes and bows. There is also a “Perform a Shamanic Ritual” button and wish lanterns where users can write their investment hopes.
The site also features spaces that reflect investor sentiment. In the “Stop-Loss Guillotine,” users enter the name of a stock they want to sell and watch a guillotine chop it.
In the “Repentance Room,” users can post their loss experiences, and others can join their hands in prayer or leave words of comfort. In the “HODL Cave,” a character’s practice time accumulates by the minute when users leave it sitting there.
Other features include an “Incense-Burning Hall,” where users post their gains and losses on memorial portraits, and an “Averaging-Down Well,” a metaphor for buying more.
The stock market plunged at the opening on the day the site spread online. According to the Korea Exchange (KRX), the KOSPI fell below the 5,000 mark just over three minutes after the market opened, triggering a Level 1 circuit breaker. At the time, the index stood at 4,924.61, down 8.52% from the previous trading day.
[email protected] Seong Min-seo Reporter