The Dark Side of Seoul Podcast

Korean Ghost Stories 2026, The Dark Side of Seoul’s annual ghost-story episode, returns with four stories spanning five centuries. Shawn tells a tale from the 1525 Yongjae Chonghwa about a fortune-telling ghost living in a noble household’s crossbeams and explains why its real target was the Joseon aristocracy. Joe reads two modern stories from Korean horror message boards, o...

Can a place remember? In this episode, Shawn answers a listener question from his Seoul ghost walk and explains stone tape theory, the idea that ghosts may be imprinted memories rather than the souls of the dead. He applies it to two encounters on the grounds of Gyeonghuigung Palace: a boy in white hanbok who plays around a nearly 400-year-old zelkova tree, and a sudden, unex...

King Jeongjo is barely in the ground and his entire reform project is already under threat. This episode covers 1801–1803: the regency of Queen Dowager Jeongsun, two significant but fatally incomplete reform measures, and the beginning of the Andong Kim clan’s century-long stranglehold on the Joseon court.

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Joe and Shawn are joined by Justin Kyle, co-host of the weekly horror film podcast Straight Chilling, for a decade-by-decade guide to Korean horror cinema. Starting from a lost 1924 silent film made under Japanese occupation and running through Na Hong-jin's divisive 2024 creature feature, Justin leads a structured tour of the films, directors, themes, and historical forces t...