The Dark Side of Seoul Ghost Walk

Category: Podcast

The Ulsan Family Tragedy
A father and his four children were found dead in their home in Ulsan after months of severe financial hardship. While the case was ruled a murder-suicide, the discussion quickly expands beyond the crime itself into the failures of Korea’s welfare system, the stigma surrounding mental health, and the bureaucratic obstacles that can leave vulnerable families without meaningful support.
Joe and Shawn examine how the family had already been identified as a high-risk household and had been visited by schools, welfare officials, police, and child protection workers. Despite multiple warning signs, no agency ever developed a complete picture of the family’s crisis. The episode explores whether this tragedy represents an isolated incident or a broader failure of institutions designed to protect children and families.

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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
The Ulsan Family Tragedy
On March 18, 2026, police entered a villa in Onsan-eup, Ulsan, after a seven-year-old boy had been absent from school for three days. Inside the master bedroom, they found the bodies of the child, his father, and three younger siblings.
The father was 34. The children were seven, five, around two or three, and five months old.
All five died from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by charcoal briquettes burned inside the sealed room. There were no signs of physical injury or drugs. Hamburger wrappers lay nearby, apparently from the family’s final meal. The father left a note describing severe financial hardship and the burden of raising four children alone after his wife was sent to prison.
Police classified the deaths as a murder-suicide. Since the father was also dead, the case would be closed with no grounds for prosecution.
But the story did not begin in that bedroom. The family had already been identified as being in crisis. Welfare officials knew. The school knew. Police had been contacted. Child-protection workers had visited.
The warning signs were not invisible. The system saw them and still failed to prevent five deaths.
A Family Already in Crisis
The children’s mother had been the family’s primary source of income, working at a restaurant. After she was incarcerated for fraud, the father was left alone with four children, including a five-month-old infant.
He had previously taken day-labor jobs, but caring for the baby made regular work nearly impossible. He was also dealing with health problems and medical expenses. According to the discussion in the episode, the household was surviving on roughly 1.4 million won per month, less than US$1,000, for one adult and four children.
The numbers do not require much interpretation. Formula, diapers, food, rent, utilities, health insurance, and medical costs would overwhelm that income almost immediately.
Neighbors saw the decline. The father reportedly ran up tabs at convenience stores and had trouble paying basic bills. Poverty was not a hidden problem discovered after the deaths. It was visible in daily life.
Help That Could Not Stabilize the Family
The family had already been designated a crisis household. They received food assistance, housing support, and emergency living expenses. A local community center had reportedly provided around eight million won and a rice cooker the previous year.
That sounds substantial until it is placed beside the family’s circumstances.
A one-time payment can clear urgent bills or delay eviction. It cannot replace a dependable monthly income. It cannot provide ongoing childcare. It cannot allow a sick parent to remain home with an infant while continuing to feed three other children.
The episode describes poverty as an exponential condition. Once a household falls behind, every new problem makes the others worse. Debt creates stress. Stress damages health. Poor health limits work. Lost work produces more debt.
The family received enough assistance to survive temporarily. It did not receive enough support to become stable.
When Assistance Requires the Person in Crisis to Function Normally
Officials reportedly directed the father toward the Basic Livelihood Security Program, but he refused or failed to complete the required process. Missing consent forms and unfinished paperwork prevented officials from moving forward with some benefits.
That creates an uncomfortable question.
How much administrative competence should a person need before the state will help him survive a mental, financial, and caregiving crisis?
Welfare systems need rules. Public money requires oversight. But a system designed around applications, consent forms, appointments, and deadlines assumes the applicant can still organize his life well enough to complete them.
The people in the deepest crisis are often the least capable of doing that.
They may be exhausted, depressed, ashamed, physically ill, or unable to understand the process. The bureaucracy then interprets their failure to complete paperwork as a refusal of help.
The procedure remains intact. The family does not.
The Blind Spot Around Single Fathers
Single-parent support is often discussed through the experiences of mothers. That focus makes sense because women remain more likely to carry the burden of single parenthood.
It can also leave single fathers in an institutional blind spot.
The father in this case had lost his ability to provide through paid work. His wife had previously earned the family’s income. Once she was imprisoned, he was left dependent on welfare while caring for four children.
That situation collided with powerful expectations about masculinity and fatherhood.
Men are still expected to provide, endure, and solve problems privately. Accepting assistance may feel like admitting failure. Asking repeatedly for help can become humiliating, particularly when every encounter requires explaining how badly the household is collapsing.
None of that excuses the killing of four children. They were victims, not extensions of their father’s despair.
It does help explain why simply offering a program may not be enough. A welfare policy that ignores shame, pride, and mental illness is incomplete, even when the benefit technically exists.
Child Protection Looked for Bruises
The oldest child had attended school only a few times after the Korean school year began in March. School staff reportedly made several home visits and contacted police more than once.
Authorities looked for signs of physical abuse. They did not find injuries, violence, or obvious evidence that the children were unloved. The matter was treated as a welfare problem, and the child-abuse investigation was closed.
That approach reveals a narrow understanding of risk.
Children can be in immediate danger without bruises. A caregiver can love them and still be psychologically collapsing. Severe poverty, social isolation, caregiver burnout, untreated depression, and suicidal thinking can create an emergency before physical violence has occurred.
The family needed more than an abuse inspection. It needed a full crisis assessment.
Instead, each agency examined the portion that belonged to it.
The school tracked attendance. Police checked for abuse. Welfare officials offered benefits. Child-protection workers looked at the children’s immediate condition.
Everyone touched one part of the case. Nobody appears to have been responsible for the whole family.
Bureaucratic Fiefdoms
The lack of coordination resembles failures discussed in previous Dark Side of Seoul episodes.
During the Yoo Young-chul investigation, separate police jurisdictions held pieces of information that were not effectively combined. Different departments protected their own areas and failed to recognize the larger pattern.
The Ulsan case involves different institutions, but the structural problem is familiar. Schools, police, welfare offices, and child-protection services can each perform their assigned task while the overall system fails.
Modern databases make information sharing technically possible. The harder problem is authority.
Who is responsible for deciding that a household has moved from hardship into imminent danger? Who can order an integrated mental-health assessment, emergency childcare, sustained cash support, or temporary placement for the children?
When responsibility is distributed among several agencies, it can disappear entirely.
The Language of an “Extreme Choice”
Korean police and media often describe suicide as 극단적 선택, or “extreme choice.”
The expression was created partly to avoid language that may encourage imitation. In cases like this, it can also shift attention toward an individual decision and away from the conditions surrounding it.
This was not only a suicide. Four children were killed.
Calling it an extreme choice risks softening both the father’s responsibility and the institutional failures that preceded the deaths. It places the final act at the center while poverty, mental illness, weak coordination, and administrative rigidity fade into the background.
The father made the decision. The children did not.
Any serious discussion must hold both truths at once. He was under extraordinary pressure, and he murdered four children.
Reform After the Funeral
Authorities promised stronger management of at-risk students and better prevention procedures. Similar promises follow many disasters in Korea.
Sometimes the response is excessive but poorly targeted. A fatal school-bus accident leads to cancelled field trips rather than stronger safety procedures. A misconduct scandal leads to removing potential victims from an environment rather than controlling the people who created the danger.
Other times, officials promise review, education, and closer monitoring. The public hears the announcement, attention fades, and the same structural weakness appears in another case.
The reforms proposed after Ulsan are sensible:
- simpler access to emergency cash
- less paperwork
- stronger coordination between agencies
- integrated case management
- mental-health support for high-risk caregivers
- earlier intervention when children may be endangered
The difficult question is whether anyone will be given the authority, budget, and responsibility to make them work.
Monitored but Not Saved
This family was not completely abandoned by the state.
They were identified, visited, monitored, and assisted.
That may be the most disturbing part of the case.
The safety net existed. It simply had holes large enough for an entire family to fall through.
Korea continues to struggle with a high suicide rate, elderly poverty, precarious employment, mental-health stigma, and the rising cost of raising children. These problems do not remain separate. They accumulate inside households until a manageable crisis becomes impossible.
The Ulsan family tragedy was not inevitable. The father had responsibility for what he did, but responsibility does not stop there.
A system that can identify a family in danger must also be capable of acting before the only remaining task is recovering the bodies.
July 10, 2026
The Weird Science Behind Korean Food Nationalism

A 2023 paper published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods argues that Korean cuisine developed in isolation, authentic Korean food isn’t spicy, and even that royal court cuisine isn’t truly Korean. In this episode, we examine the paper’s historical, linguistic, archaeological, and scientific claims to see where the evidence supports the authors and where nationalism appears to outweigh scholarship.

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Book a tour of The Dark Side of Seoul Ghost Walk at https://darksideofseoul.com
Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
The Weird Science Behind Korean Food Nationalism
Academic papers carry a certain weight. Most of us assume that if something has been peer reviewed and published in a scholarly journal, it has survived careful scrutiny. That doesn’t mean every conclusion is correct, but it does mean the evidence should be solid.
That’s what makes a paper published in the Journal of Ethnic Foods so fascinating.
The paper, Science and Philosophy of Korea Traditional Foods (K-food), sets out to explain what makes Korean cuisine unique. That’s a perfectly worthwhile subject. Korean food has developed into one of the world’s most distinctive culinary traditions, and its growing global popularity deserves serious scholarship.
The problem isn’t that the authors celebrate Korean food.
The problem is that they often abandon careful scholarship in favor of sweeping conclusions that the evidence simply doesn’t support. It’s perpetuating more of the weird myths we’ve talked about in a previous episode.
It Starts With the Conclusion
One of the first things the paper does is argue that previous historians have misunderstood Korean food because they relied too heavily on Chinese historical sources. The authors state that their goal is to correct these “distortions” and present the “scientific truths” about Korean cuisine.
That’s an unusually bold claim.
Good research normally begins with a question. It follows the evidence wherever it leads. This paper often feels as though it already knows the answer and spends the rest of its pages trying to prove it.
That pattern appears again and again.
The Myth of an Isolated Cuisine
A central argument of the paper is that Korean food developed in relative isolation because the peninsula is surrounded by mountains and seas. It even invokes the old nickname “The Hermit Kingdom” to reinforce the idea that Korea evolved largely apart from its neighbors.
History tells a much more complicated story.
For thousands of years, Korea maintained relationships with China, Japan, the peoples of Manchuria, and later the Mongols. Ideas crossed borders constantly. Buddhism entered Korea from China. Confucian philosophy reshaped Joseon society. Trade moved ingredients and cooking techniques throughout Northeast Asia. Wars, migration, diplomacy, and commerce all influenced what people ate.
None of that makes Korean food less Korean.
If anything, it makes its evolution even more impressive. Great cuisines don’t emerge in sealed laboratories. They develop through adaptation.
Distinctive Doesn’t Mean Unique
The paper also argues that Korea’s banchan culture exists nowhere else in the world.
Anyone who has enjoyed a Korean meal understands why banchan feels special. A table filled with small dishes creates an experience unlike most Western dining.
But that doesn’t mean Korea invented the concept of serving a staple food alongside multiple shared dishes.
Across East and Southeast Asia, meals commonly revolve around rice accompanied by various communal dishes. Korea developed its own version, complete with its own etiquette, flavors, fermentation techniques, and seasonal traditions.
That’s already a remarkable achievement.
Claiming that nobody else does anything remotely similar simply isn’t necessary.
The Strange Claims About Sugar and Oil
One section of the paper argues that Korean cuisine developed without sugar or oil as elements that make food delicious.
That immediately raises questions.
Traditional Korean cooking has long relied on sesame oil and perilla oil. Honey and grain syrups have been used as sweeteners for centuries. Traditional desserts like yakgwa would be difficult to explain if Korean cuisine truly developed without either oil or sweetness.
The authors seem to be trying to distinguish Korean food from neighboring cuisines so aggressively that they end up making statements that don’t match Korean culinary history itself.
Can Genetics Explain Recipes?
Perhaps the biggest leap in the paper comes when it moves into population genetics.
The authors discuss ancient invasions, changes in male genetic diversity, and the role of women in preserving language and culture. From there, they conclude that Korean food could not have come from China or Japan.
That’s an extraordinary conclusion.
Women absolutely played an essential role in preserving food traditions throughout Korean history. Recipes, techniques, and family customs often passed through generations of women.
But ancient DNA cannot tell us where recipes originated.
Population genetics and culinary history are two very different fields. Connecting them requires evidence that simply isn’t presented.
Is Korean Food Really Not Spicy?
Another surprising claim is that authentic Korean food isn’t actually spicy because traditional Korean chili peppers are relatively mild.
There is a kernel of truth here.
Korean gochugaru is generally milder than many peppers used in Thailand, India, or parts of China. Korean cuisine often emphasizes balance rather than overwhelming heat.
But saying authentic Korean food is never spicy swings too far in the opposite direction.
Anyone who has eaten dishes prepared with generous amounts of gochugaru or Cheongyang peppers knows that Korean food is perfectly capable of delivering serious heat.
Replacing one exaggeration with another doesn’t improve the scholarship.
Royal Cuisine Isn’t Korean?
Perhaps the most astonishing statement in the paper is the claim that Joseon royal court cuisine isn’t really Korean because it was influenced by Chinese cooking.
That misunderstands how culture works.
Joseon court cuisine developed inside Korean palaces. It reflected Korean politics, Korean ingredients, Korean tastes, and centuries of refinement by Korean royal kitchens.
Every major cuisine absorbs outside influences.
French cooking borrowed from Italy. Japanese cuisine adapted ideas from China. Korean cuisine transformed ingredients and techniques from many different sources into something unmistakably its own.
Influence does not erase identity.
National Pride and Good Scholarship
None of this means Korean food isn’t extraordinary.
It is.
Korean fermentation techniques remain among the most sophisticated in the world. Kimchi alone represents centuries of experimentation and regional variation. The balance of vegetables, soups, grains, fermented sauces, and side dishes created a culinary tradition unlike any other.
That’s exactly why this paper feels so unnecessary.
Korean cuisine doesn’t become more impressive by claiming it developed in complete isolation. It doesn’t gain prestige by denying centuries of cultural exchange or by stretching evidence beyond what it can support.
The real history is already compelling.
Korean food grew through local innovation, foreign influence, adaptation, hardship, trade, war, and creativity. Like every great cuisine, it reflects both the uniqueness of its people and the world around them.
That’s a far richer story than any myth of culinary purity could ever be.

July 4, 2026
The Korean Ghost and Mr. Skeptic
After the release of Supernatural Encounters in South Korea, one of the comments Shawn received surprised him.
Several readers expected a book about ghosts to be written by a true believer. Instead, they found a surprisingly skeptical approach to paranormal claims. One reviewer described the book as “a rather clever turn,” while another called Shawn “a more discerning Peter Underwood.”
In this episode, Joe and Shawn discuss why skepticism is essential when researching ghost encounters, supernatural folklore, shamanism, and alleged hauntings. They explore pareidolia, memorates, social media ghost hunters, fraudulent psychics, and why cultural traditions should never be treated as automatic evidence for the supernatural.
The conversation also examines famous haunted locations, including why Yongma Land is probably Seoul’s most successful ghost story despite not being haunted at all.
Book recommendations
- Into the Occult, Peter Underwood
  - So many books; others to consider:
    A Ghost Hunters Handbook
    Dictionary of the Supernatural
- The Supernatural, Douglas Hill and Pat Williams
- Shawn’s book! (Not too many books about true alleged encounters in Korea)
Join our Patreon to get more stuff
https://patreon.com/darksideofseoul
Book a tour of The Dark Side of Seoul Ghost Walk at https://darksideofseoul.com
Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
Why a Ghostlore Researcher Should Be Skeptical
One of the more surprising reactions Shawn received after publishing Supernatural Encounters in South Korea came from a reader who thought he believed too little.
The reader had apparently expected a book full of unquestioning belief in ghosts, shamans, and supernatural encounters. Instead, they found discussions of skepticism, psychology, folklore, and the possibility that many alleged hauntings aren’t hauntings at all.
They weren’t the only one to notice. One reviewer commented that reading ghost claims researched by a skeptic was refreshing. Another described Shawn as “a more discerning Peter Underwood.”
That reaction says a lot about how people think paranormal research works.
For some reason, people assume that if you spend years researching ghosts, you must believe every story you’re told. The opposite is usually true.
The longer you spend around ghost stories, haunted locations, psychics, shamans, and paranormal investigators, the more skeptical you become.
Not because mystery disappears.
Because bullshit doesn’t.
Loving the Weird
One of the first things Shawn discusses in the book is his lifelong fascination with the supernatural. It shaped the movies he watches, the music he listens to, the art he enjoys, and the books that fill his shelves. Gothic horror films. Doom metal. Horror comics. Folklore collections. Ghost stories. The weird has always been there.
When he uses the word “weird,” though, he doesn’t mean unusual. Everybody calls themselves weird these days. If you have to tell people you’re weird, you’re probably not.
He’s using the older sense of the word. The unexplained. The uncanny. The things that seem to sit just outside our understanding of reality.
That’s what attracts him.
It’s also why skepticism matters.
The Problem with Charlatans
The supernatural attracts charlatans the way streetlights attract moths.
Religion is full of them. Folk traditions are full of them. Social media may have produced more than all previous generations combined. Spend enough time researching ghosts and eventually you’ll meet people whose stories don’t quite line up. Dates change. Timelines shift. Historical details are wrong. The supernatural claim gets bigger every time they tell it.
The problem is that many people assume cultural tradition itself is evidence.
It isn’t.
Culture deserves respect. Folklore deserves preservation. Traditions deserve study. None of those things automatically prove that a ghost, spirit, ancestor, demon, or deity was actually present.
This is one reason Shawn’s comments about Korean shamans occasionally surprise people. He doesn’t believe shamans automatically deserve to be believed simply because they’re shamans. The same standard should apply to everyone. Claims require evidence.
Ghosts Have Gone Electric
That includes ghost hunters.
One section of the book, “Ghosts Have Gone Electric,” takes aim at the modern paranormal industry that has grown up around social media. Every week seems to produce another YouTube investigator waving blinking gadgets around an allegedly haunted building while dramatic music plays in the background.
Many of these places aren’t haunted.
Some aren’t even abandoned.
Yongma Land is probably the best example. It’s routinely described online as one of Seoul’s most haunted locations. The problem is that visitors pay admission to enter. It functions as a photography and filming location. The ghost stories generate attention. The attention generates visitors. The visitors generate money.
That’s not a haunting.
That’s marketing.
The Stories Behind the Stories
None of this means ghost encounters don’t happen.
Shawn makes it very clear throughout the book that he believes genuinely unexplained experiences occur. They’re simply much rarer than most people think.
The biggest lesson he learned while researching the supernatural isn’t that ghosts are everywhere.
It’s that most people who report ghost encounters aren’t trying to tell ghost stories.
They’re trying to explain something they genuinely experienced.
Whether their explanation is correct is another question entirely.
That’s where skepticism becomes valuable.
Not because it kills the mystery.
Because it helps us get closer to whatever truth might be hiding underneath it.
June 18, 2026
Paper Problems: South Korea’s Election Fiasco Explained

South Korea just held its 9th nationwide local elections on June 3, 2026, and what should have been a routine referendum on President Lee Jae-myung’s first year turned into a genuine mess. Polling stations in Seoul started running out of ballot paper mid-day. Voters waited hours. Some gave up and left. In Songpa and Gangnam, people were still voting at 10 p.m. And then the protesters showed up to block the ballot boxes.
Joe and Shawn break down what actually happened, why the National Election Commission’s explanation is both accurate and embarrassing, and why “we ran out of paper” is such a uniquely devastating failure for an institution that was already under scrutiny. They also take a longer look at Korea’s post-1987 democratic history, a list of election fiascos that includes vote-buying rice bags, NIS agents running smear campaigns online, COVID ballot chaos, and a 2022 election where the main controversy was that ballots were being transported in plastic baskets you’d buy at Daiso.
Korea’s democracy is real. It’s also messy, loudly contested, and occasionally embarrassing. This episode is about both of those things being true at the same time.

Join our Patreon to get more stuff
https://patreon.com/darksideofseoul
Book a tour of The Dark Side of Seoul Ghost Walk at https://darksideofseoul.com
Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
Korea Ran Out of Ballots. Now Everyone Is Fighting About It.
South Korea held its 9th nationwide local elections on June 3, 2026. It was supposed to be a fairly significant vote: the first major nationwide election under President Lee Jae-myung, widely read as a referendum on his first year in office, and the first real test of whether the conservative PPP could pull itself together after Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived, historically embarrassing martial law attempt in 2024.
What it became was a story about paper.
Polling stations in Seoul started running out of ballot papers mid-day. Not in some remote mountain precinct. In Songpa-gu. In Gangnam-gu. In Gwangjin-gu. The richest, most densely populated, most aggressively conservative districts in the country. Voters showed up to find staff apologizing, lines stretching outside, and no clear answer on when more ballots were coming. Some waited hours. Some left. In parts of southern Seoul, people were still voting at 10 p.m., four hours after the official close. The formal certification of the Seoul mayoral race was delayed while the National Election Commission figured out what to say.
What they said was: we miscalculated turnout. That’s it. That’s the explanation.
The Paper Trail That Wasn’t There
The NEC’s official position is that this was a “temporary supply issue.” Higher-than-expected turnout at certain stations overwhelmed the ballot supply they’d pre-positioned. They mobilized emergency resupply. They extended voting past 6 p.m. for anyone already in line. And since everyone who stayed ultimately got to vote, they see no grounds for re-running the election.
This explanation is probably true. It is also, as Joe pointed out on the episode, the kind of explanation that would get you fired at most jobs. Korea is a country that can organize a stadium concert for 50,000 people with military precision, then turn around and fail to print enough ballots for a known district of registered voters in a cycle where turnout wasn’t even at a historic high. The 2018 local elections hit 60.2% turnout. This one didn’t. And the system still ran dry.
There’s a pattern here that Joe and Shawn have talked about before: Korea excels at tactical execution and falls apart at strategic planning. The trucks show up. The sound equipment works. The paper packets get delivered to every household in the country. And somehow no one did the math on how many ballots to print per polling station.
Why These Districts, Though
The geographic concentration of the shortages is the detail that makes this politically combustible. Fourteen polling stations in Seoul, concentrated in Songpa-gu, Gangnam-gu, Gwangjin-gu, and Dongjak-gu. If you know Seoul’s political geography, you already see the problem. These are conservative-leaning districts. The voters most likely to have been inconvenienced, delayed, or deterred were disproportionately PPP voters.
That doesn’t mean it was intentional. The NEC is a nominally independent body, and there’s no evidence yet of deliberate manipulation of the ballot supply. But “no evidence of intent” is a very different sentence from “this looks fine.” Seoul’s mayoral race was won by the conservative candidate, Oh Se-Hoon, who was re-elected despite significant personal unpopularity, running against a ruling party candidate in what should have been favorable conditions for the opposition. The margin was narrow. In that context, protesters physically blocking ballot boxes from leaving a Jamsil polling station starts to feel less like paranoia and more like people doing math out loud.
The PPP and allied parties are demanding a parliamentary investigation, a special prosecutor, and in some corners, a partial revote in affected districts. Joe’s read on this: the shortage was almost certainly incompetence, the demands are partly justified on procedural grounds, and the PPP’s credibility on electoral fairness is substantially degraded by the fact that this is their third consecutive national-level defeat and they’ve spent the intervening years contesting the results of the last one rather than asking why they keep losing.
Korea’s Long History of Electoral Embarrassments
Here’s the thing about the 2026 ballot shortage. It’s genuinely alarming. It’s also, in historical context, not even Korea’s messiest election moment.
The 1987 presidential election, the first competitive one after decades of dictatorship and mass street protests, was technically free but ran on the bones of an authoritarian machine: state media bias, administrative pressure on public servants, regional political bossing. Roh Tae-woo won because the opposition split its vote between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam, two candidates who both knew they were handing the election to a former general and ran anyway. The result was accepted. It was also widely understood to be only a partial democratic transition.
The 1990s brought a different flavor: vote buying. Cash envelopes. Bags of rice. Particularly in rural districts and local races, the machine politics of the post-authoritarian era ran on literal goods exchanged for votes. Many of those cases ended in by-elections, criminal convictions, and disqualifications. None of them threatened the national result. They just became part of the furniture.
The 2012 presidential election is the one that should have been a bigger deal than it was. The National Intelligence Service organized large-scale online comment campaigns against liberal party candidates in the run-up to the election. The military’s Cyber Command ran parallel psychological operations on domestic social media. These weren’t fringe operations. They were institutional. Park Geun-hye won. Key NIS and military officials were later convicted. The election result was not overturned. The incident became a textbook case of dirty tricks adjacent to, but not technically inside, the ballot box.
2020 and the Conspiracy That Won’t Die
The 2020 legislative elections were, by most accounts, well-administered. They were also the moment when Korean election conspiracy theories went from a cottage industry to something larger and more durable.
The specific grievance was early voting. The expansion of optical scanning and ballot-sorting machines, combined with QR-coded ballots and early vote ratios that critics called “statistically impossible,” fed a narrative that has not fully dissipated six years later. Lawsuits went to the Supreme Court. The Court rejected them. The NEC published fact-check pages. None of it fully closed the wound, partly because some of the underlying concerns about IT security at the commission were, by independent audit, not entirely unfounded. The NIS and KISA gave the NEC’s digital systems a worryingly low security score. That audit didn’t prove rigging. It proved that the commission was behind on digital hygiene, which in the current information environment is almost as damaging.
The COVID elections compounded things. Quarantined voters got special time slots and separate lines that turned some polling stations into logistical disasters. Ballots were handled in ways that looked improvised because they were improvised. Nothing was proved fraudulent. A lot of it looked bad on camera, which in 2020 was functionally the same as being fraudulent for a significant portion of the population.
By 2022, the optics of ballot transport had become a political flashpoint. People were photographing ballots being moved in plastic baskets. The kind you buy at a hardware store. For a country that was held up as a model of democratic administration in Asia, the gap between the reputation and the reality was starting to show.
The Trucks, the Packets, and the Noise
None of this is to say Korea’s democracy is broken. It isn’t. Turnout is reasonable. Results are accepted and transitions of power happen. Courts function. The press is free, loudly and sometimes obnoxiously so.
But Joe and Shawn spend part of the episode on something that functions as a tell for the broader dysfunction: the election trucks. The campaign vehicles that drive through neighborhoods with loudspeakers blasting jingles at hours that would get you arrested in most democracies. The paper packets mailed to every registered household containing candidate information that most people recycle without reading. The whole apparatus of Korean electioneering that was designed for a population with high illiteracy rates in the 1960s and has never been updated because updating it would require someone to admit it’s wasteful, infantile, and that a country with near-universal smartphone penetration doesn’t need a paper flyer to learn who’s running for district council.
YouTubers Simon and Martina were doxed for making parody videos about the trucks. That’s how sensitive this particular piece of political theater is.
The reforms being discussed in the aftermath of the 2026 ballot shortage are sensible: mandate printing ballots for 100% of registered voters per precinct regardless of turnout forecasts, overhaul the NEC’s crisis planning, add real-time monitoring of ballot levels on election day. None of that is radical. All of it should have been obvious.
What This Means Going Forward
The NEC has apologized. An investigation is underway. The conservative opposition is making demands that range from reasonable to transparently opportunistic, often in the same press conference. President Lee expressed regret and called for accountability while stopping well short of endorsing any revote.
The Seoul mayoral race was certified. Osei Hoon keeps his job. The Democratic Party won most of the key local races nationally. Life continues.
What doesn’t go away is the trust deficit. Korea’s election commission was already under scrutiny before June 3. The ballot shortage didn’t create a crisis of confidence in the NEC. It confirmed one that was already forming. And in a country where the last president declared martial law, lost, got impeached, and where his supporters still dispute the legitimacy of the process, “we just ran out of paper, don’t worry about it” is a harder sell than the NEC seems to appreciate.
Democracy is a system that runs on legitimacy as much as procedure. The procedure, in the end, worked. Everyone who stayed in line got to vote. The ballots were counted. The results were certified. But legitimacy is not just about what happened. It’s about what people believe happened, and what they have reason to believe could happen next time.
Korea has a lot of work to do on that second part.

June 10, 2026
Burned Twice

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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
The Car Explosion That Turned Into an Insurance Nightmare
Sometimes Korea feels incredibly safe and orderly right up until something goes catastrophically wrong.
Then you suddenly discover how many systems are held together with duct tape, legal loopholes, and bureaucratic shrugging.
This week’s Fun Sized episode started with what sounded like a freak accident. A smoking vehicle in Shawn’s neighborhood suddenly exploded near a GS25 convenience store. The fire spread quickly, engulfing nearby vehicles and damaging surrounding buildings.
One van was completely destroyed.
And then the owner found out insurance would not cover it.
The Explosion
According to Shawn, the incident happened when a woman driving a car noticed smoke coming from the engine. She pulled over near the convenience store, but before the situation could be contained, the vehicle exploded into flames.
The fire spread fast.
Nearby vehicles caught fire, including a van that was essentially reduced to scrap metal. Other property around the area also suffered damage.
It already sounded like a complete nightmare.
Then came the insurance issue.
The Parking Problem
The owner of the destroyed van assumed insurance would cover the loss. After all, his vehicle had been destroyed by an exploding car. Pretty straightforward logic.
Apparently not.
The insurance company reportedly refused to pay because the van had been parked improperly.
That technicality completely changed the outcome.
Instead of receiving compensation, the owner had to absorb the cost himself. Shawn estimated the replacement cost at around 20 million won, roughly fifteen thousand US dollars.
For a small business owner, that is devastating enough on its own. But the bigger issue is that losing the van also disrupted the person’s ability to work.
This was not just a transportation problem. It became an economic disaster.
Korea’s Obsession With Technical Violations
This story taps into something many long-term residents in Korea eventually encounter.
Minor infractions often become incredibly important once money or liability enters the picture.
Parked slightly wrong. Missing one document. Tiny registration issue. Technical permit violation. Suddenly an entire system pivots around that detail.
The frustrating part is that many things are loosely tolerated until the moment something goes wrong. Then every tiny rule suddenly becomes critically important.
People who have lived here long enough know exactly this feeling.
Everything is fine until it absolutely is not.
The Real Fear
The most unsettling part of this story is how random it feels.
You could simply be parked in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly find yourself financially destroyed because someone else’s vehicle exploded nearby.
Most people assume insurance exists precisely for these bizarre worst-case scenarios. Discovering there are loopholes large enough to erase coverage entirely is deeply unsettling.
And honestly, this is why stories like this spread so quickly in Korea. People immediately imagine themselves in the same situation.
Because they probably could be.

June 4, 2026
The Dark Side of Finger Hearts

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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
AI Can Steal Your Fingerprints Now
Korea has spent years battling phishing scams, identity theft, voice scams, account hacks, and every other flavor of cybercrime imaginable. Now experts are warning about something that sounds like it came from a mediocre Netflix thriller.
Your selfie might be enough to steal your fingerprints.
That is not science fiction anymore.
In this Fun Sized episode of The Dark Side of Seoul, we looked at the growing concern over biometric crime and why Korean experts are sounding alarms about ordinary social media photos.
What Is Biometric Crime?
Biometric crime involves stealing and using a person’s unique physical characteristics. Fingerprints. Facial scans. Voice patterns. Retina data. Anything tied directly to your body rather than a password.
The problem is that AI tools have become frighteningly good at reconstructing this information from publicly available images and recordings.
According to European and Korean security experts, fingerprints can potentially be extracted from high-resolution photographs taken from several meters away. Europol has already warned about the growing criminal use of AI-assisted biometric theft tools.
And if you live in Korea, there is a very specific problem.
Koreans absolutely love hand gestures in photos.
The Peace Sign Problem
The classic peace sign.
The finger heart.
Thumbs up.
Cute poses with hands framing the face.
These are everywhere in Korean social media culture. Celebrity selfies. Couple photos. Idol promotions. Group shots. Café pictures. Literally everywhere.
The issue is that these gestures often expose fingertips directly toward the camera. Modern smartphone cameras are now detailed enough that fingerprints may be partially reconstructed from those images.
That means the exact pose used to look cute in a photo could potentially expose biometric information tied to banking systems, government IDs, or secure authentication systems.
Very cyberpunk. Very annoying.
Why Korea Is Especially Vulnerable
Korea already has a massive cybercrime problem.
Voice phishing scams regularly target elderly people. Fake banking messages are common. Account theft and personal information leaks happen constantly. Digital infrastructure is deeply integrated into daily life here, which means identity theft can become incredibly disruptive very quickly.
At the same time, Korea relies heavily on biometric systems.
Fingerprint scanning is common in phones, offices, immigration systems, banking authentication, and digital verification systems. Once criminals begin targeting biometric data seriously, the potential damage becomes much harder to reverse than simply changing a password.
You can reset a password.
You cannot reset your thumb.
This Isn’t Entirely New
Warnings about fingerprint theft from photos have existed for years, but AI has accelerated the problem dramatically.
Older methods required extremely clear photographs and complicated reconstruction work. AI tools now automate large portions of that process.
That means ordinary public photos become useful raw material for criminals.
And unlike hacking a database, people willingly upload this information themselves every day.
So What Are Experts Saying?
The current advice from security experts is surprisingly simple.
Stop showing your fingertips in photos.
That sounds ridiculous at first, but it is increasingly becoming legitimate cybersecurity advice. Similar warnings already exist for voice cloning, where scammers use short audio clips from social media videos to imitate someone’s voice.
We are entering a period where ordinary online behavior suddenly carries security implications nobody worried about ten years ago.
The casual selfie is slowly becoming sensitive data.
The Bigger Problem
The uncomfortable reality is that technology is moving faster than public awareness.
Most people still think of identity theft as stolen passwords or hacked accounts. Biometric crime changes the equation completely because your physical characteristics become the target.
And unlike old-school hacking, this kind of theft often happens invisibly. Nobody knows their fingerprints were copied from vacation photos until something goes very wrong.
Honestly, the weirdest part may be how ordinary all of this sounds now.
A few years ago, “don’t post your fingerprints online” would have sounded absurd.
Now it sounds like practical life advice.

May 28, 2026
Korean Myths that Won’t Die, and Some New Myths We Created | FUN SIZE!

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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
This episode inspired by this satiric flyer from Michael Hurt of Seoul Street Studios
Korea’s Weirdest Nationalist Myths
Every country has myths about itself. Americans talk about freedom like it was personally handcrafted by bald eagles. The British still somehow think baked beans count as cuisine. France believes it invented civilization itself.
Korea, however, has elevated this into an art form.
There is even a word for it: 국뽕, or gukbbong. It basically means nationalism as a drug. The idea that Korea is uniquely exceptional in ways that often make absolutely no sense if you stop and think about them for more than five seconds.
And the funny thing is that many of these myths are not pushed by random internet trolls. You hear them from TV personalities, language instructors, influencers, tourism content, and occasionally professors who absolutely should know better.
“Korean Has More Levels, So Relationships Are Deeper”
This one refuses to die.
The argument goes something like this: because Korean has multiple speech levels and honorifics, Korean relationships must naturally be more emotionally nuanced, hierarchical, or spiritually deep compared to English-speaking societies.
That sounds profound until you remember that language reflects social systems. It does not magically create emotional wisdom.
Japanese has elaborate honorifics too. So does Javanese. Classical European societies had extremely rigid formal speech conventions as well. Meanwhile, plenty of Koreans still ghost each other on KakaoTalk like everyone else on Earth.
The myth survives because people confuse complexity with depth (which may explain why Korean websites are so obtuse).
“Korean Grammar Makes Koreans Better Listeners”
Another favorite.
Because Korean sentences often place the verb at the end, the claim is that Koreans must patiently listen to the entire sentence before understanding meaning. Therefore, Koreans supposedly become naturally superior listeners.
That sounds lovely in theory.
In reality, Koreans interrupt each other constantly. So do Germans, Japanese, and speakers of other verb-final languages. Human conversation does not suddenly become Zen meditation because the grammar works differently.
Honestly, if verb-final grammar automatically created patience, Seoul traffic would look very different.
“Did You Eat? 밥 먹었어?” Secretly Means “I Love You”
This one tends to circulate heavily in romanticized Korea content online.
The claim is that asking “Did you eat?” is secretly a profound declaration of emotional intimacy that cold Western textbooks simply cannot comprehend.
Now, obviously, asking if someone has eaten can express care. That is true in many cultures. Italians obsess over whether you ate enough. Southern Americans will emotionally blackmail you into taking leftovers home. Jewish grandmothers practically weaponize food.
But internet Korea discourse often presents this as uniquely Korean emotional sophistication.
It is not. It is just humans caring about food and wellbeing.
Metal Chopsticks and Korean Superpowers
Then we get into the pseudo-science section.
“Koreans are better surgeons because they grew up using metal chopsticks.”
“Koreans dominate archery because chopsticks trained fine motor skills.”
“Korean women are naturally better at golf because they spent generations making kimchi.”
At some point, chopsticks apparently became the source of all Korean excellence.
This is where gukbbong starts resembling astrology for nationalism. You begin with a vaguely cultural observation, then stretch it until it explains Olympic medals, medical skill, and apparently bladder control.
Which brings us to the new myths we invented during the episode.
The New Myths We Created
Because Koreans ride subways every day, they are naturally better at standing than other peoples.
Because Koreans can sit in cafés for six hours nursing one latte, they possess the strongest bladder discipline on Earth.
Because Koreans avoid direct confrontation and “read the air,” passive-aggressive communication in Korea has evolved into the most advanced form in Asia.
The joke works because these fake myths sound weirdly believable beside the real ones.
Why These Myths Exist
A lot of this comes from Korea’s modern history.
Korea went from colonization and war to becoming a major global economy in an incredibly short period of time. That kind of transformation creates understandable national pride. The problem starts when pride mutates into exceptionalism.
Especially online.
Social media rewards oversimplified cultural explanations because they sound insightful and travel well internationally. Saying “Korean grammar reflects social hierarchy” is reasonable. Saying “Korean grammar makes Koreans emotionally superior” gets clicks.
And once enough people repeat these ideas, they start feeling true.
The Real Korea Is More Interesting Anyway
The irony is that Korea does not need these myths.
The real story of Korea is already fascinating enough. The rapid industrialization. The contradictions between collectivism and hyper-competition. The way old Confucian structures collided with capitalism and internet culture.
That stuff is genuinely interesting.
You do not need to invent magical chopstick powers to make Korea compelling.
And honestly, if metal chopsticks created elite surgeons, half the ajosshis at barbecue restaurants should be capable of open-heart surgery by now.

May 21, 2026
Korea’s Flashing Problem

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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
Korea’s Strange and Growing Flashing Problem
South Korea has had problems with flashing and public indecency for decades. The academic research on the issue goes back at least to the late 2000s, and honestly, probably much earlier than that. Yet despite years of concern, the incidents continue to happen with uncomfortable regularity.
In Korean media, flashers are often called “Burberry Men,” a nickname referencing the stereotypical image of a man in a trench coat exposing himself in public. It is one of those weird euphemisms that sounds almost comedic until you stop and think about what the crimes actually involve.
Because most victims are women and children.
And the recent cases are not exactly reassuring.
The Cases Keep Happening
One of the stranger serial cases happened in Asan between late 2022 and spring 2025. A man in his twenties committed nearly twenty offenses over that period. In one incident at a university, he set up a mobile phone near the entrance to a male washroom, then stepped into the hallway and exposed himself when women walked past. The phone captured both his body and the reactions of the victims.
That level of planning makes the whole thing feel even creepier.
In Seoul’s Jungnang-gu district throughout 2025, another offender repeatedly targeted elementary school girls. Similar incidents happened in Ulsan near apartment complexes. In many of these cases, the locations are depressingly predictable: around schools, parks, bus stops, train stations, elevators, and quiet residential areas.
Basically places where people should feel safe.
Then there are the public masturbation cases, which somehow make things even worse. Earlier this year in Cheongju, an elderly man approached women in a park and masturbated in front of them. A similar incident happened in Jeonju not long after.
If you talk to women who have lived in Seoul or Gyeonggi for a long time, you will hear stories about this sort of thing happening on buses and trains as well. It is one of those topics that men often underestimate simply because they rarely experience it themselves.
The Infamous Prosecutor Case
One of the most infamous public indecency scandals in Korea happened in 2014.
Kim Soo-chang, the chief prosecutor of Jeju, was caught publicly masturbating near a restaurant. The investigation later revealed he had done it multiple times. The scandal exploded because this was not some random drunk guy. This was one of the country’s top legal officials.
You would think the punishment would be severe.
Instead, the indictment was eventually dropped after he was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment.
That outcome still frustrates many people today because it reinforced the perception that powerful people in Korea often escape serious consequences.
Why Does This Happen?
Psychologists generally classify flashing under exhibitionism or other paraphilic disorders. Research often links compulsive sexual exposure behavior to childhood trauma, abuse, or early sexualization.
That does not excuse the behavior, obviously. But it helps explain why some offenders repeat these crimes over and over despite the social and legal risks.
One disturbing detail is that many incidents involve children as targets. That raises the stakes enormously because the psychological effects on victims can last for years.
And Korea has already been dealing with broader concerns about crimes involving minors. Previous episodes of this podcast have touched on rising fears surrounding child safety and attempted kidnappings.
The Punishments Feel Weak
Under Korean law, flashing usually falls under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes. If children are involved, additional charges can apply.
Still, the punishments often feel surprisingly light.
Convictions commonly result in around a year in prison or fines of roughly five million won. Many people feel that is nowhere near enough, especially for repeat offenders.
There have also been growing discussions about mandatory psychological treatment and restrictions on where convicted offenders can go.
Because right now, the system often feels reactive rather than preventative.
Even North Korea Has Cases
Oddly enough, even North Korea is not immune from this problem.
In 2023, reports emerged that two elementary school girls were flashed while walking early in the morning to clean statues of the Kim family. The details are limited, but the story stood out because even in one of the most tightly controlled societies on Earth, this sort of behavior still exists.
Human behavior, unfortunately, does not disappear just because a government tries to control everything else.
A Problem Korea Still Hasn’t Solved
Back in 2014, one Korean report warned that public indecency incidents would likely increase in the future.
And here we are.
Korea has excellent CCTV coverage, harsh public shame culture, and increasingly sophisticated policing technology. Yet these incidents continue happening. That suggests the issue runs deeper than simply catching offenders after the fact.
It is a social problem, a psychological problem, and in some cases a legal problem.
And like a lot of uncomfortable social issues in Korea, people often seem more comfortable joking about it than confronting it directly.

May 11, 2026
The Composer Korea Tried to Execute
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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
The 20th Century Political Composer
Isang Yun is arguably one of the most important figures in Korean classical music. He bridged cultures by blending traditional Korean elements with modern European composition. Yet his life was shaped just as much by political violence as it was by music. In 1967, he was kidnapped by his own government, tortured, and sentenced to death.
A Life Forged in Brutality
Isang Yun was born in 1917. That puts his birth right in the thick of the Japanese colonial period. It was a miserable, dangerous time to be a Korean artist or intellectual. From a young age, Yun was drawn to music. His family resisted the idea, which is a classic parental move that still happens today. He pushed forward anyway.
His early years were marked by both artistic development and serious political involvement. He participated in the Korean independence movement. That kind of activism did not go unnoticed by the colonial authorities. It led directly to his arrest and brutal torture under Japanese rule.
After liberation in 1945, Yun turned his focus to rebuilding Korean culture. He taught music and supported war orphans. When the Korean War broke out, he made a hard choice. He refused to take part in the fighting. He firmly believed it was a tragic conflict between his own people, and he would not kill his brothers. That takes serious guts.
Breaking Through in Europe
In the mid-1950s, Yun decided to move to Europe to continue his studies. He eventually settled in West Berlin. This is where he developed his signature style.
He started combining Western techniques, like twelve-tone composition, with Korean musical traditions. One of his key contributions to the musical world was the concept of the main tone. In Western music, a note is usually just a static pitch. Yun treated a single note as a living, evolving sound.
If you have ever listened to traditional Korean pansori or court music, you know exactly what this sounds like. The notes bend, breathe, and vibrate. It is the musical equivalent of fermentation. He took raw ingredients and gave them deep complexity. This approach allowed him to merge Eastern philosophy with Western composition seamlessly.
The 1967 Kidnapping
Then came 1967. Everything changed.
South Korea in the 1960s was a ruthless military dictatorship. The intelligence agencies did whatever they wanted. South Korean secret agents abducted Yun and his wife right out of West Berlin. They dragged him back to Seoul, accused him of espionage, and subjected him to intense interrogation and torture.
Their justification for this nightmare? He had made a visit to North Korea in 1963. He went there for artistic research to study ancient tomb murals. To the paranoid military regime in the South, that was treason. Under intense pressure and physical abuse, Yun confessed to the charges.
The government sentenced him to death.
International Pressure and Release
Yun’s case sparked massive international outrage. The global artistic community did not just sit by and watch. Prominent composers and musicians around the world, including Igor Stravinsky, signed petitions demanding his immediate release. The West German government also stepped in and put the screws to Seoul.
Facing a mountain of international pressure, South Korea backed down and released Yun in 1969. He returned to West Berlin. After what his homeland put him through, you cannot blame him for choosing to remain in exile for the rest of his life.
Music as Resistance
Even while he was sitting in a South Korean prison, Yun continued to compose. His works frequently reflected themes of suffering, division, and resilience. He wrote pieces like Exemplum in Memoriam Kwangju, which directly addressed the horrific political violence of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. Other pieces explored the emotional reality of a divided Korean peninsula.
His music became a form of quiet, brilliant resistance against the dictatorships that tried to break him.
A Complicated Legacy
Isang Yun never returned to South Korea. For years, he was viewed with deep suspicion by conservative elements due to his past connections with North Korea and his vocal advocacy for reunification.
It took decades for the South Korean government to begin reassessing his case. In the 2000s, official investigations finally acknowledged what everyone already knew. The charges against him had been wildly exaggerated and manufactured by the secret police.
Today, Yun is recognized globally as a major cultural figure, though his political history still sparks debates in certain circles. His story is not just about music. It is a testament to how a single life can be shaped, broken, and rebuilt by the dark tensions of a divided country.
Isang Yun Listening Guide
To help you navigate the complex and haunting soundscapes of Isang Yun, here is a guide to the essential works and techniques that define the “Wounded Dragon’s” legacy.
How to Listen
Yun’s music can be dissonant and challenging at first. Don’t try to find a catchy melody to hum. Instead, listen to it as a stream of sound. Imagine you are watching a master calligrapher: the music is the brush moving across the paper—sometimes thick and heavy, sometimes thin and fleeting, but always one continuous, flowing line.
Understanding the “Main Tone” (Hauptton)
Before diving into specific pieces, listen for Yun’s signature technique. In Western music, a note is often a static point on a scale. In Yun’s music, a single note is a living thing.
- The Inception: Listen for how a note starts—often with a tiny flicker or a “grace note” that leads into the main sound.
- The Vitality: Once the note is held, notice how it moves. It isn’t flat; it vibrates (vibrato), slides up or down (glissando), or changes in volume. This mimics the “Nong-hyun” technique of the Korean gayageum or geomungo.
- The Transformation: Watch for how that single, vibrant note eventually decays or “blooms” into the next one.
Loyang (1962)
- The Vibe: This is the best entry point for his “East-meets-West” period.
- What to listen for: It captures the atmosphere of ancient Chinese court music but uses a Western chamber ensemble. Listen for the way the woodwinds mimic the reedy, nasal qualities of traditional Asian instruments.
Réak (1966)
- The Vibe: Massive, ritualistic, and overwhelming.
- What to listen for: This piece is inspired by Chongmyo Jeryeak (Korean Royal Ancestral Ritual Music). The heavy use of percussion and the “walls of sound” from the orchestra are meant to evoke the spiritual weight of a palace ceremony.
Double Concerto for Harp and Oboe (1977)
- The Vibe: A tragic romance and a political metaphor.
- What to listen for: This piece is based on the folklore of the Cowherd and the Weaver (Gyeon-woo and Jik-nyeo), two lovers separated by the Milky Way. Listen to how the harp and oboe reach for each other but are constantly pulled apart—a direct musical metaphor for the division of North and South Korea.
Exemplum in Memoriam Kwangju (1981)

his symphonic poem serves as a powerful monument of mourning and a direct musical response to the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, where South Korean citizens and students were violently suppressed by the military. Yun uses the orchestra as a “narrative force,” assigning specific emotional and political roles to different instrumental groups.
The Sonic Cast: Orchestral Narrative Roles
To follow the story Yun is telling, listen for how he “casts” the different sections of the orchestra:
- The Protesters (The Woodwinds): Yun utilizes the woodwind section to represent the voices of the young people and students in Gwangju. Listen specifically for the tone “G,” which he chose as a symbol of youthful vigor and resistance.
- The Repression (The Brass and Percussion): The military presence is characterized by the brass section and harsh percussion.
- The Mourners (The Strings): In the middle of the piece, the strings take over to represent the collective grief and paralyzing horror of the survivors.
Detailed Structural Guide
The piece follows a clear dramatic arc divided into three primary emotional phases:
The Conflict and the Massacre
- Listen for the brass section delivering “gun-shot-like” double-triplets that cut through the texture.
- A key moment to identify is the use of the pak (a traditional Korean wooden clapper), which creates sharp, percussive “shell-bursts” to mimic the sounds of combat and military force.
- The woodwinds (the protesters) clash with these brass “attacks,” creating a chaotic, dissonant soundscape that reflects the violence of the suppression.
The Lamentation (The Middle Section)
- The tempo slows significantly as the violence of the first section fades into a “lyrical sound of strings”.
- This section is designed to reflect the “paralyzing horror” and mourning of a people who have just witnessed a massacre.
- Listen for Yun’s Hauptton technique here: even in mourning, the individual notes are vitalized with vibrato and ornaments, making the “crying” of the strings feel human and organic.
The Resurrection and Hope
- The final part of the work shifts from mourning to a defiant sense of hope.
- Listen for the trumpet calls that open this final movement.
- These calls are intended to symbolize “resurrection” and the ongoing, unyielding struggle for democracy in South Korea.
Key Technical Elements to Notice
- Musical Archetypes: Yun uses Western symphonic forms but fills them with “Korean colors” and idioms to address human suffering and injustice.
- Narrative Percussion: Beyond the pak, listen to how the percussion is used not just for rhythm, but as a narrative tool to represent the “archaic violence” of the state.
- The “G” Focal Point: Throughout the struggle, try to hear the persistence of the pitch G; its survival through the dissonant brass attacks represents the survival of the spirit of the Gwangju protesters.
April 30, 2026
Why Teachers in Korea Can’t Take Sick Days
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https://patreon.com/darksideofseoul
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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
Why Taking a Sick Day in Korea Isn’t That Simple
On paper, sick leave in Korea is straightforward. Employees are legally entitled to take time off when they’re unwell.
In practice, it’s much more complicated.
Sick Leave Exists… But It’s Not Used
Many workers, especially in education, feel pressure not to take sick days.
The reasons are both cultural and structural. Even though the law allows it, the workplace environment often discourages it. Teachers, in particular, are expected to keep working unless absolutely necessary.
That creates a gap between what the law says and what actually happens.
The Substitute Teacher Problem
In many private kindergartens, the system for substitute teachers barely functions.
If a teacher needs time off:
- They may have to find their own replacement
- They may have to pay for that replacement themselves
- In some cases, there is no replacement available
In those situations, teachers often choose to work while sick rather than deal with the disruption.
Even when support systems exist, they are inconsistent. Out of 17 regional education offices, only a handful provide meaningful financial support for substitute teachers.
Cultural Pressure to Keep Working
There is also a strong social expectation to keep going, even when unwell.
Some teachers feel the need to apologize for taking time off by buying drinks or gifts for coworkers. Others worry about how they will be perceived by employers or parents.
The result is a system where people feel obligated to work through illness.
When the System Fails
A recent case brought national attention to this issue.
A kindergarten teacher in Bucheon was diagnosed with the flu and advised to rest. Instead, she continued working under pressure for several days.
Her condition worsened. She was eventually admitted to intensive care and passed away two weeks later.
Cases like this highlight how the gap between policy and reality can have serious consequences.
Calls for Change
There are now growing calls to reform the system.
One proposal is to require teachers to take sick leave when diagnosed with infectious illnesses, both for their own health and to protect students.
The Ministry of Education has begun reviewing the issue, and unions are pushing for stronger protections.
A System That Needs Fixing
Sick leave in Korea is not just a legal issue. It’s a cultural and structural one.
Until the systems around it improve, many workers will continue to face the same dilemma: take a day off and deal with the consequences, or keep working and risk their health.
April 23, 2026

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