Tag: Korean folklore

Slaves, Bastards, and Bureaucrats | The Fall of Joseon, Part 19 (1801-1803)

King Jeongjo is dead, his reforms are on life support, and the woman holding the throne is making moves that will shape Korean politics for the next century. This episode covers the regency of Queen Dowager Jeongsun, the brief window of slave emancipation and anti-discrimination reform, and the rise of the Andong Kim clan — the family that turned “marrying into the monarchy” into a full-contact governing strategy.

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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 Year Joseon Almost Reformed Itself
King Jeongjo died in the summer of 1800, and within about six months, his successor had burned most of what he’d built.
That’s not entirely accurate, but it’s how it felt to anyone who’d been paying attention. Jeongjo had spent twenty-four years threading an impossible needle — using the Gyujanggak Royal Library as a brain trust, cultivating a practical-learning movement called silhak, playing the Byeokpa and Sipha court factions against each other with enough skill to keep either from getting too comfortable. He’d modernized the military, protected the persecuted, and at least partially shielded Korea’s growing Catholic community from the worst impulses of the Confucian orthodoxy. When he died, he was fifty-two years old, and the throne passed to his eight-year-old son.
The boy who became King Sunjo had no real power, which meant someone else had to hold things together. That someone was Queen Dowager Jeongsun — the widow of King Yeongjo, Jeongjo’s grandfather, which made her Sunjo’s great-grandmother by marriage and placed her at the top of the court hierarchy. She was also a member of the Gyeongju Kim clan, politically positioned well to the right of anything Jeongjo had stood for, and she had been waiting a very long time.
She moved fast. The Catholic persecution that had been building since 1791 became a full crackdown in 1801. Hundreds of Korean Catholics and foreign missionaries were executed. Jeongjo’s careful management of that particular crisis — keeping the violence contained, maintaining plausible deniability, protecting at least some of his reformist allies — was over. The Sipha faction that had supported him was out. The Byeokpa conservatives were in.
And then, almost immediately, Jeongsun did something that surprised everyone.
The Slaves-and-Bastards Reform
In January 1801, the regency government issued an edict freeing 66,067 government-owned slaves. This was not a small number. Joseon’s slave system had existed in various forms since the early dynasty, and the nobi — the enslaved class — had at various points accounted for somewhere between a third and nearly half the total population. The scale had shrunk considerably by 1801, but freeing tens of thousands of people in a single decree was still a significant act.
The limitations were equally significant. “Government-owned slaves” meant exactly that. Private slavery — slaves owned by yangban aristocratic families, by temples, by institutions — was untouched. The reform freed the people the state had directly owned; it did not touch the people that powerful families had owned for generations. Whether this was a principled half-measure or a pragmatic concession to the elite families whose cooperation Jeongsun needed is probably not a distinction that mattered much to the people it didn’t apply to.
The second reform was more conceptually ambitious and practically even more constrained. Also in 1801, the regency changed the law governing who could sit the gwageo — the civil service examination that was, in theory, the primary path to official government positions and, by extension, to everything that went with them: income, status, protection, the ability to participate in the apparatus of the state. Previously, men born out of wedlock were excluded entirely. The 1801 law opened the examination to them.
The gwageo had been the formal gatekeeping mechanism of Joseon’s ruling class since the dynasty’s founding, and in practice it went back further than that — the exam system itself was inherited from the Goryeo dynasty, where it had already developed the same pathologies it carried into Joseon. Legacy mattered. Connections mattered. The best teachers, the best study materials, the informal networks of preparation and mentorship — all of these clustered around established yangban families in the capital and in a handful of historically powerful regional centers. A rural candidate sitting the exam against someone whose family had been running the bureaucracy for five generations was not competing on equal terms, regardless of what the rules said.
Opening the examination to those born out of wedlock was, in principle, a meaningful change. In practice, the establishment simply refused to recognize the results. The resistance was sufficient that the 1801 reform essentially sat on paper for more than two decades. It took a formal petition from literati in 1823 — twenty-two years later — to produce anything resembling actual implementation. Which raises the question of what “reform” means when the institutions being reformed have enough structural power to ignore what they don’t like.
The Examination Nobody Could Actually Pass
The gwageo’s corruption wasn’t a secret. It was practically a feature. Elite families in Seoul and in places like Andong had been gaming the examination system for so long that the gaming had become the system. There were informal quotas that benefited established clans. There were networks of recommendation that functioned like legacy admissions at universities — the official rules said one thing; the unofficial practice said another. The gap between what a well-connected candidate in the capital could access and what a talented but unconnected candidate in the provinces could access had been widening for generations.
This had consequences that compound over time. The bureaucracy produced by this system was, by definition, a bureaucracy staffed primarily by people whose families already ran the bureaucracy. Fresh thinking was not particularly welcome. Practical expertise — the kind that the silhak scholars were trying to cultivate — was actively devalued. A government that selects for itself, from among itself, across enough generations will eventually stop being able to do anything except govern itself, which is a different activity than governing a country.
The 1801 reforms gestured at this problem without doing anything serious about the structural conditions that created it. You could now, technically, take the exam regardless of your birth circumstances. What you could not do was change the fact that everyone who graded the exam and controlled advancement through the bureaucracy came from the families that had always controlled those things.
The Andong Kims Arrive
The family that would come to define the next century of Joseon politics had been powerful for a long time before they became dominant. The Andong Kims traced their lineage back to the Goryeo dynasty, and in the city of Andong — a historic center in North Gyeongsang Province, about three hours southeast of Seoul — three major clan shrines still stand today, monuments to families who have been important in Korean government and business for somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand years. They are not subtle about it.
Queen Dowager Jeongsun needed allies, and the Andong Kims were available. She appointed Kim Gwang-ju of the Gyeongju Kims to multiple ministerial positions, but the more consequential alliance was with the Andong branch. When King Sunjo reached the appropriate age for marriage, he was matched with the daughter of Kim Jo-sun, a powerful Andong Kim patriarch. This made Kim Jo-sun the king’s father-in-law, which in the logic of Joseon court politics made him one of the most powerful men in the country, and made his extended family a quasi-governmental institution.
The practice has a name: sedo jeongchi. Literally something like “in-law governance” or “powerful family politics,” it describes the system by which the family of the queen — and specifically the queen’s father’s family — effectively ran the government while the king occupied the throne in a more ceremonial capacity. The king was still the king. He could still be appealed to, still issued edicts, still performed the rituals. But the real decisions — appointments, dismissals, policy, the daily exercise of administrative power — flowed through the in-law family and their networks.
Jeongsun’s regency formally ended in December 1803. By that point, Kim Jo-sun had so thoroughly seeded the government with Andong Kim allies, relatives, clients, and dependents that the transition from regency to nominal royal rule barely changed anything. Sunjo was in charge. The Andong Kims were running things. This arrangement would persist, with brief interruptions and changes of dominant family, for most of the rest of the dynasty.
What Gets Built on a Rotten Foundation
The sequence of events from 1800 to 1803 is, in retrospect, clarifying. Jeongjo’s reform program was not killed by a single act of counter-revolution. It was dismantled piece by piece while the official record showed it being replaced, in some cases, by reforms that looked more radical than anything Jeongjo had attempted. Freeing tens of thousands of slaves sounds, on paper, more dramatic than anything on Jeongjo’s agenda. Opening the civil service examination to a previously excluded class sounds progressive. What it was, structurally, was a set of concessions that didn’t threaten anyone who actually mattered — while the networks, appointments, and institutional arrangements that made genuine change possible were quietly disassembled.
The gwageo was left intact. Private slavery was left intact. The Gyujanggak’s influence was curtailed. The silhak scholars who had provided the intellectual infrastructure for reform were sidelined. The factions that had competed to keep the court from being captured by any single clan were replaced by a system explicitly designed for capture. All of this happened in about thirty-six months.
The frustration that built up over the following decades — among people locked out of the exam system, among communities exhausted by elite extraction, among religious communities that found official Confucianism increasingly hollow — eventually found expression in the Donghak movement, the grassroots religious and political uprising that would become one of the defining crises of the late Joseon period. The line from 1801 to Donghak is not a straight one, but it runs through the same terrain: a ruling system that had perfected the mechanics of its own reproduction while losing the capacity to do anything else.
The Andong Kims are still in Andong. The shrines are still there. The families are still, in various ways, prominent. History, in Korea as elsewhere, has a long memory for these things.

October 11, 2026
The Problems with Korean Ghosts
Why do ghosts conveniently conform to the culture of the people seeing them? Korean folklore gives us the cheonyeo gwishin, Western traditions have their own recognizable specters, and decades of movies have taught us that ghosts should be translucent, vaporous, and obviously dead.
Joe and Shawn question whether any of those images are useful when examining claims of actual ghost encounters. If ghosts represent a genuine phenomenon, Shawn argues, their basic characteristics should remain consistent across cultures. The conversation moves from Korean folklore and Shakespeare to filmmaking, Newfoundland ghost traditions, the concept of han, trauma as an explanation for hauntings, and the surprisingly mundane descriptions that appear in some of the more convincing alleged encounters.
More in Shawn’s newsletter article The Most Haunted Place on Earth!
Topics Discussed
- The problem with culturally specific ghosts
- Folklore versus alleged paranormal phenomena
- Korea’s cheonyeo gwishin
- Women in white and long-haired ghosts
- Similar ghost imagery outside Asia
- Why folklore shouldn’t be treated as scientific explanation
- Shakespeare and ghosts on stage
- How theater and cinema shaped the translucent ghost
- Alleged ghosts that look completely human
- The possibility of encountering a ghost without realizing it
- Newfoundland ghost traditions
- The Irish and Newfoundland “fetch”
- What makes somewhere “the most haunted place on Earth”
- Trauma as an explanation for hauntings
- Han and Korean ghost folklore
- Why claims that han is uniquely Korean create a logical problem
- Skepticism and paranormal research
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
06:00 Defining the problem with ghosts
10:00 Folklore as explanation
11:36 What if ghosts are real?
13:00 Korean ghost imagery
15:00 Fictional ghosts versus alleged encounters
17:30 Ghost imagery across cultures
20:00 The mundane ghost
22:00 Theater, film, and translucent spirits
25:00 Ghosts we may not recognize
27:00 Newfoundland’s “fetch” tradition
29:00 The most haunted place on Earth
31:00 Trauma and restless spirits
33:00 Han and Korean ghosts
34:50 Final discussion
36:30 Listener shout-out
Mentioned During the Episode
- Cheonyeo gwishin
- Hamlet
- Watership Down
- Newfoundland ghost folklore
- St. John’s Haunted Hike
- The Irish/Newfoundland “fetch”
- Han (한)
- The Korean Ghost and Mr. Skeptic
- Shawn Morrissey’s newsletter, Welcome to Savage Haller
- The Most Haunted Place on Earth (Depending on Who You Ask)
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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 Problem with Korean Ghosts
Korea has a ghost problem. Not that there are too many of them. The problem is that Korean ghosts are suspiciously Korean.
You know the image. A young woman dressed in white, long black hair hanging over her face, usually carrying some terrible grievance from life. The cheonyeo gwishin, the ghost of an unmarried woman, has become one of the most recognizable figures in Korean horror. Variations turn up throughout folklore, television, movies, webtoons, and the stories people tell each other.
Move to another country and the ghosts change.
Britain gives you spectral figures wandering castles, sometimes carrying their own heads. Japan has its own traditions. European folklore has revenants, white ladies, and phantom armies. Newfoundland has the “fetch,” an old Irish term that survived across the Atlantic and can refer to the apparition of someone who has died, or sometimes someone about to die.
This is all wonderful material for folklore. It becomes considerably more troublesome when people start treating folklore as evidence for what ghosts actually are.
Folklore Explains the People, Not the Ghost
Human beings have always created stories to explain things they didn’t understand. Eclipses are an easy example. Cultures around the world developed elaborate explanations for why the sun suddenly disappeared. Korea had stories involving the Bulgae, supernatural fire dogs associated with eclipses.
We now know what an eclipse is. The old explanation wasn’t stupid. It was an attempt to understand an observed phenomenon using the knowledge available at the time. The story remains valuable because it tells us something about the people who created it. It doesn’t tell us anything useful about orbital mechanics.
Ghost folklore presents a similar problem.
If ghosts are entirely products of culture, there’s no contradiction. Of course Korean ghosts would be Korean. They’re Korean stories.
But assume for a moment that at least some alleged ghost encounters involve a real phenomenon that we don’t yet understand. Now things get difficult.
A natural phenomenon shouldn’t change its fundamental properties according to nationality. Gravity doesn’t behave differently in Busan because the local folklore says it should. An eclipse doesn’t become a different astronomical event when viewed from Seoul instead of Newfoundland.
Why should a ghost?
The Woman in White
The woman in white with long hair is so thoroughly associated with East Asian horror that it’s easy to assume the image belongs here. It doesn’t, at least not exclusively.
Long-haired female ghosts and women in white appear in traditions well beyond Korea and East Asia. Similar imagery appears in European folklore and even older Italian horror cinema. The details change, but the broader image travels surprisingly well.
That should already make us cautious about treating the familiar Korean ghost as some kind of ethnographic description of the supernatural.
More importantly, the classic cheonyeo gwishin doesn’t line up particularly well with many accounts from people who claim to have encountered ghosts in Korea.
The most interesting alleged encounters tend to be much less theatrical.
People describe someone who looks like a person.
That’s about it.
No floating. No special costume. No carefully positioned hair. Sometimes the figure reportedly appears completely solid. The witness only begins questioning what happened because the person behaves strangely, appears somewhere impossible, or vanishes when they shouldn’t have been able to.
That is much more interesting than the standard horror image because the witness doesn’t immediately know what they’re looking at.
If ghosts exist and look like ordinary people, there is another possibility. Someone could encounter one and never realize it.
Hollywood Has Some Explaining to Do
The translucent ghost feels almost universal now. You can see the wall through it. Its edges fade into mist. Eventually the whole thing dissolves into nothing.
That image owes quite a bit to storytelling technology.
A ghost on an Elizabethan stage had to be played by an actor standing there in front of you. Hamlet’s father couldn’t conveniently become 40 percent transparent. The medium placed limits on what a ghost could do.
Literature removed some of those restrictions because the reader could imagine whatever the writer described. Theater technology later developed tricks with lighting and scrims. Film blew the doors off completely. Double exposures, optical effects, and eventually digital effects could make spirits fade, glow, float, materialize, and disappear.
Those images became part of our visual vocabulary for ghosts.
That doesn’t make them observations.
It makes them very effective special effects.
The Trouble With Trauma
Another common explanation is that ghosts result from trauma. Someone suffers terribly, dies violently, and remains behind.
Korean ghost stories are full of this. So are ghost traditions elsewhere.
There is an obvious emotional logic to it. A peaceful death provides closure. Murder, betrayal, injustice, or overwhelming grief leaves unfinished business. It’s a fantastic engine for storytelling.
As an explanation for an actual paranormal phenomenon, however, it just creates another question.
Why would trauma produce a ghost?
Saying that someone returned because they suffered doesn’t explain the mechanism. It assumes the very thing that needs explaining. We don’t have an agreed scientific definition of a soul, much less an explanation for why psychological trauma would cause one to remain in a physical location after death.
Again, this doesn’t make the folklore worthless. Quite the opposite. Stories about restless dead people tell us a great deal about how living people think about justice, grief, memory, and proper death.
They just don’t establish why a haunting occurs.
And Then There’s Han
Korean discussions of ghosts eventually run into han.
Han is notoriously difficult to define neatly, partly because it has accumulated so much cultural baggage. Grief, resentment, sorrow, frustration, unresolved injustice, and collective suffering can all become part of the explanation.
It’s also frequently presented as something uniquely Korean.
That creates a peculiar problem when han is used to explain Korean ghosts.
If unresolved grief and suffering cause people to become ghosts, the mechanism can’t depend on an emotion unique to Koreans unless Korea is the only country with ghosts. People everywhere experience grief, injustice, resentment, and loss.
Either the emotional experience isn’t uniquely Korean, or it can’t serve as a universal explanation for hauntings. You can’t comfortably have both.
Han remains useful for understanding how Koreans have interpreted suffering and how Korean stories have framed the restless dead. That’s different from demonstrating that han creates ghosts.
The Ghost Outside the Box
None of this requires dismissing ghost stories. It requires separating two different questions.
Folklorists can ask what people believe about ghosts, why certain stories persist, and what those stories tell us about a culture. Someone investigating alleged paranormal encounters has to ask a different question: what actually happened?
Mixing the two can contaminate the evidence.
A witness who has spent a lifetime watching long-haired women crawl across horror-movie floors already possesses a template for what a ghost is supposed to look like. The same applies to a Westerner expecting translucent Victorian children in an old house.
That doesn’t mean the witness is lying. Memory and perception aren’t recordings. We interpret unusual experiences using concepts already available to us.
The genuinely strange possibility is that, if ghosts exist at all, they may have very little in common with the ghosts we’ve invented.
They might not dress correctly for their culture. They might not glow. They might not be transparent. They might not appear because someone died violently or because a shaman says a place carries spiritual energy.
They might simply look like people.
And if that’s the case, the most interesting ghost encounter might be the one you didn’t realize you’d had.
September 13, 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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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
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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
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
K-Pop Demon Hunters: Folklore & Satire
KPop Demon Hunters is loaded with Korean folklore beneath its neon spectacle. We dig into mudang rituals, dokkaebi, tiger and magpie tricksters, and the Honmoon “soul-gate.” We also talk about how the movie is both a love letter to K-Pop and a biting satire of idol culture.

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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
KPop Demon Hunters: Folklore, Satire, and Soul Gates
Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters looks like another glitter bomb in the K-content machine. Neon, idols, sparkles. At first glance it seems like pure fan service. Scratch under the surface and you find a film loaded with Korean folklore. On top of that, it skewers idol culture while pretending to celebrate it. It works because it is both sincere and sarcastic at the same time.
Shamans in Sequins
Huntr/x, the girl group turned demon hunters, is basically a modern mudang trio. In Korea, mudang are female shamans who perform gut rituals with music, dance, and props to deal with spirits. The film reimagines these rituals as idol concerts with swords and choreography. Same concept, bigger light show.
Their weapons come straight from tradition. Rumi uses the saingeom, a legendary sword tied to exorcism. Mira wields the gokdo, a polearm from the old Gaya confederacy. Zoey throws ritual knives. This is not a coincidence. The film is saying that K-Pop idols are shamans with better marketing.
Monsters in Mascara
The demons behave like dokkaebi. Western critics call them “goblins,” which is lazy. They are uniquely Korean spirits, tied to chaos and discarded objects. The rival boy band, the Saja Boys, takes its name from the jeoseung saja, the reapers who escort souls to the afterlife. They perform sugary pop while literally eating souls. The satire is so blunt it borders on comedy.
Tigers, Magpies, and Tricksters
The tiger and magpie pairing comes from hojakdo folk paintings. Sometimes these paintings mocked authority. Other times they offered good fortune or moral lessons. The film flattens that nuance into slapstick. The tiger is bumbling, the magpie clever. Korean audiences recognize the old motif. International viewers just see goofy animal sidekicks.
Folklore is more complicated than this. Tigers in Korean tradition are often symbols of protection and divine power, not just buffoons. The movie reduces them for a laugh. It works on screen, but it simplifies a rich tradition.
The Soul Gate and Demon Boss
The Honmoon, or soul gate, is the film’s magical barrier. It echoes Korean ideas about thresholds as spiritually risky places. The villain, Gwi-Ma, draws his name from “ma,” the concept of corrupting or demonic energy. These references are not deep cuts. They are basic folklore, dressed up in neon animation.
Culture in the Details
The cultural Easter eggs keep the story grounded. Characters wear gat hats and norigae charms. Props like drums and fans sneak into the fight choreography. Food shows up constantly: kimchi, tteokbokki, hotteok. And of course, the ramen-slurping scene. Eating styles in Korea are cultural rituals in their own right. The gag is funny, but it also anchors the fantasy in something familiar.
Animation as Ritual
The visuals mix anime-style framing with concert cinematography. Fight scenes use smear frames and exaggerated movement that mimic ritual dance. The effect makes the battles feel like concerts and the concerts feel like rituals.
A Love Letter and a Roast
The Love Letter
- Idols are presented as shamans whose work literally saves the world
- Huntr/x fits the classic roles: the leader, the visual, the rapper
- The soundtrack leans into K-Pop’s strength: spectacle, hooks, rhythm
- Performances are framed as sacred, not disposable
The Roast
- The Saja Boys are soulless on purpose. They parody overproduced idol groups, shiny on the outside and hollow inside.
- Zoey’s backstory is a joke. She is the rapper from Burbank. Not exactly a hotbed of hip-hop. Yet her “foreign” identity is marketed as street credibility. This mocks how overseas Koreans are fetishized as exotic and authentic at the same time.
- Image-making is the real villain. Fans and companies will accept any narrative as long as it looks glossy.
- Idol clichés are pushed until they break. Fan service, competitions, branding. The Idol Awards climax turns a pop show into a cosmic apocalypse. It is hilarious and sharp at the same time.–> Check out our interview with Sharon Kong-Perring on the Dark Side of K-Pop Fandom for more in-depth discussion.
- The gags drive the point home. Ramen jokes, gossip, slapstick tigers. They highlight how silly the culture can look when exaggerated.
- Exorcism as concert is the ultimate satire. The film equates sacred ritual with mass-market entertainment. It suggests fans already treat idols like gods.
Satire in the Songs
The soundtrack is where the satire bites hardest.
- Huntr/x songs are earnest and emotional. Rumi’s big song is about self-acceptance. It fits the idol-as-shaman theme.
- Saja Boys songs are vapid by design.
  - Soda Pop is catchy but bland, a parody of fluffy summer singles.
  - Your Idol is openly sinister. The lyrics are about devouring fans’ souls. The crowd screams for more without noticing. That is the joke.
This is not subtle. The Saja Boys are written as satire of the idol system itself. They consume fans while fans cheer them on.
Why It Works
KPop Demon Hunters pulls it off because it commits. Folklore is not a garnish. It shapes the weapons, the monsters, the props, and the humor. Satire is not a cheap parody. It is baked into the songs, the characters, and the narrative.
The result is a film that honors K-Pop’s emotional pull while mocking its absurdity. It works as a love letter and as a roast. And that balance is what makes it memorable.
September 4, 2025
Tragic Ghosts
What makes a ghost so moody, and why are some spirits bound to haunt the living with vengeance and sorrow? We explore the most tragic and unfulfilled spirits in Korean tradition, from wonhon—the ghosts of the forsaken, to yeommae and taejagwi—the spirits of those who died in anguish or sorrow. Join us as we uncover the stories behind these forlorn spirits and the folklore that surrounds them.

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
Tragic Ghosts in Korean Folklore: Unfinished Business and the Spirits Who Haunt
In this episode, we dive deep into the lore surrounding Korea’s most tragic ghosts—those who were wronged, those who died with regrets, and those whose stories have left a lasting imprint on Korean folklore.
What Makes a Ghost Tragic?
In Korean folklore, a ghost’s tragedy is often tied to their unfulfilled desires or injustices that were never addressed. Whether it’s the tragic death of a mother who never had the chance to care for her child or the soul of a person who died without descendants, Korean ghosts are frequently tied to unresolved earthly matters.
In Buddhist belief, ghosts are often seen as beings who remain attached to the living world due to their desires. This attachment keeps them stuck between the realms of the living and the dead, preventing them from passing on to the afterlife. This deep-rooted attachment fuels many of the tragic stories associated with Korean ghosts.
Types of Tragic Ghosts in Korea
- Wonhon: These are the ghosts of individuals who died with deep resentment. They are spirits that have unresolved grievances, often caused by unfair deaths, oppression, or unjust treatment. These ghosts are often the most dangerous as their desires remain unsatisfied.
- Yeommae: An alleged practice described in the Seongho-saseol, ghosts that arise from yeommae are child victims of kidnapping and murder.
- Mujugohon: The ghost of a person who died childless. In Korean tradition, a person without descendants cannot receive proper ancestral rites, and thus, their spirit is left in limbo.
- Hatal: The restless spirit of a mother who died in childbirth, unable to care for her child. Often depicted searching for the child she was never able to nurture, hatal spirits are some of the most sorrowful ghosts in Korean lore.
- Taejagwi: These are the spirits of infants who passed away before being weaned. Their cries are said to be heard in the night, a haunting reminder of the innocent lives that were tragically cut short.
- Saetani: Abandoned child ghosts, often the spirits of children who were left to die or forgotten by their parents. These spirits are said to wander aimlessly, filled with anger and sorrow over their abandonment.
- Agwi: Hungry ghosts rooted in Indian lore, agwi are spirits that crave food or other physical needs. These ghosts can sometimes manifest as figures who are constantly in search of sustenance, forever dissatisfied.
- Yeongsan: Ghosts of people who died tragically, often murdered or wrongfully killed. These spirits are tied to the injustice of their deaths and remain in the world of the living, seeking retribution or peace.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, Korean ghosts provide a fascinating look at views on life, death, and the unresolved emotions that linger in between.
Tune In
Join us as we delve into the stories of these tragic spirits and their lasting impact on Korean culture. And remember, the next time you hear a creak in the floorboards, it could just be the spirit of someone with unfinished business.
May 15, 2025