Dark Side of Seoul exists because the official version of the city is incomplete.
Seoul is often presented as bright, efficient, polite, and relentlessly modern. All of that is true. But it is also a city shaped by fear, superstition, violence, desire, repression, resistance, and unresolved history. Those stories didn’t disappear. They were simply built over.
Dark Side of Seoul is a walking tour series dedicated to the parts of Korean history and culture that don’t appear in tourism brochures. We explore places tied to massacres, political scandals, forbidden districts, folk beliefs, and the ghosts that linger when history is never fully settled.
This isn’t a haunted house and it isn’t a jump-scare experience. It’s history, folklore, and urban legend told in the streets where it actually happened.
The project was created by two long-time residents of Korea who approach the city from different but complementary angles.
Joe McPherson is the founder of ZenKimchi Experiences and the creator of the original Dark Side of Seoul tour. He has lived in Korea for over two decades and is widely known as a food writer and cultural commentator, but his deeper obsession has always been the hidden stories of places. Joe’s tours focus on the political scandals, social taboos, suppressed histories, and strange contradictions that shaped modern Seoul. His approach blends documented history, firsthand observation, and a dry sense of humor that keeps the subject matter engaging without trivializing it.
Shawn Morrissey is a folklorist, researcher, and writer whose work centers on Korean ghost lore, folk beliefs, and urban legends. He has spent years studying how spirits, bad energy, protective rituals, and supernatural explanations have functioned within Korean society, both historically and in everyday life. Shawn’s version of the tour leans into the unseen side of the city: haunted houses, palace ghosts, cursed walls, well spirits, demons, and the beliefs that once governed where people walked, slept, and even fell in love.
Together, the tours ask a simple question: what happens when a city modernizes faster than its stories can disappear?
Our routes pass through royal residences with violent pasts, former red-light districts, alleys that sheltered dissidents during the democracy movement, parks charged with strange symbolism, and places locals walk past every day without knowing what once happened there. Along the way, we explore why certain locations attract ghost stories, how folk beliefs shaped urban behavior, and why some events are remembered quietly while others are forgotten entirely.
Some guests come for the history. Some come for the folklore. Some come because they’re curious about the idea that a city can remember things people try to forget. Most leave surprised by how much of it still feels relevant.
We don’t invent stories to scare people, and we don’t sensationalize tragedy. Everything you hear is rooted in documented history, recorded folklore, or widely known urban legend. When interpretation is involved, we’re upfront about it.
Occasionally, guests report experiences we didn’t plan. We don’t advertise that and we don’t promise anything supernatural. We simply acknowledge that when you talk about ghosts in places where people once suffered, the atmosphere can feel different.
Tours are intentionally kept small. This allows for conversation, questions, and moments where the city feels close rather than staged. It also lets us move respectfully through residential neighborhoods and historic areas without turning them into spectacles.
Dark Side of Seoul is part of ZenKimchi Experiences, a Seoul-based company focused on cultural tours that go beyond surface-level sightseeing. The goal isn’t to shock or to sell fear. It’s to provide context, provoke curiosity, and leave you seeing the city differently once the tour is over.
If you’re looking for a checklist of landmarks, this probably isn’t for you.
If you’re interested in the stories that linger after the lights are turned off, you’re in the right place.
Just remember to bring comfortable shoes, an open mind, and, as we like to say, a change of underwear.
About ZenKimchi Experiences
The Dark Side of Seoul Ghost Walk is run by ZenKimchi Experiences.
ZenKimchi started in 2004 as one of Korea’s first food blogs.
In 2011, the plans were made to put the expertise learned from years of writing about Korean food towards food tours, opening for business in early 2012.
Since 2008, Team ZenKimchi has also acted as location fixers, consultants, and talent scouts for shows such as “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern”, “Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain”, “Food Paradise International”, “Chef on the Road with Ryan Clift”, “Gizzi Erskine’s Discovering Korean Food”, “Kimchi Chronicles,” and more.
Our guides are not hired hands. They are passionate about showing their slices of Korea and why they love it here.