{"id":77280,"date":"2026-05-08T14:48:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/08\/jogyesa-temple-south-korea-humanoid-ai-robot-gabi"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:48:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T05:48:58","slug":"i-robe-ot-the-android-monk-working-to-reboot-the-faith-of-south-koreas-buddhists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77280","title":{"rendered":"I, robe-ot: the android monk working to reboot the faith of South Korea\u2019s Buddhists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jogyesa temple in South Korea initiated Gabi, a humanoid robot into its order this week, as it combats falling participation and interest<\/p>\n<p>Amid rows of colourful lanterns strung across the courtyard of Jogyesa temple in Seoul, an unusual ceremony unfolded this week: monks held a Buddhist initiation for a humanoid robot draped in saffron robe.<\/p>\n<p>They placed a string of 108 prayer beads around the robot\u2019s neck and affixed a lantern festival sticker to its mechanical arm in place of the traditional yeonbi ritual, in which burning incense is lightly pressed against the skin.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/may\/08\/jogyesa-temple-south-korea-humanoid-ai-robot-gabi\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jogyesa temple in South Korea initiated Gabi, a humanoid robot into its order this week, as it combats falling participation and interestAmid rows of colourful lanterns strung across the courtyard of Jogyesa temple in Seoul, an unusual ceremony unfolde&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,211,611,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-buddhism","category-robots","category-south-korea"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77281,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77280\/revisions\/77281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}