If you have lived in Korea for more than a couple of months you have most likely heard a ghost story or two. Most of these ghost stories are comical and even silly, for example, a bathroom ghost that queries its potential victims if they prefer red or blue toilet paper, and depending on the answer, either kills them or lets them go. The more serious stories fall along the lines of urban legends. Usually they start out as having been heard from a friend who had a friend that????..sort of thing. One would assume, however, that in a country with 5,000 years of history filled with wars and natural calamities that there would be ghost everywhere. Yet, for some unknown reason, few Westerners have reported seeing ghosts. The few stories that I have found concern the Westerner walking his dog along the Han River and suddenly encountering a Japanese ghost, dressed in his uniform and emerging from the water. Another story is about a G.I. (I believe at Camp Casey) who was beat severely by a ghost in his barracks room – you tell me. I have also talked to several other people who have claimed to have seen ghost or felt ghost in Korea, and if there is an interest I can post them – if not….
With a few exceptions, most young Korean people do not believe in ghost. However, one young preschool boy insisted that his house was haunted. “There is a ghost in our refrigerator,” he whispered sagely as he
looked back at his smiling mother. “My mother told my brother and me to never open the refrigerator door because the ghost will get us.”
looked back at his smiling mother. “My mother told my brother and me to never open the refrigerator door because the ghost will get us.”
One elderly Korean man that I talked to noted that “a long time ago there were many ghosts but now there are only a few,” which leads to the question: where did the ghosts go?
Indeed at one time there seems to have been a very strong belief in ghosts and other malicious spirits. A general of the Silla army during the Three Kingdom period always went to war accompanied by his Sapsaree, a wooly poodle-like dog to chase away the spirits that might haunt the battlefields and seek revenge on the living. Sapsaree basically means “dog that chases away spirits.” These dogs were kept throughout the country as protection from intruders: mortal and supernatural.
With modernization and the development of science, many of the old mysteries have been explained by science and have ceased to exist, yet, there are some stories that persist ??? usually whispered amongst friends and neighbors about ghosts. Some of these stories are of unscrupulous real-estate developers who violate the resting places of the ancestors by improperly relocating cemeteries and building apartment complexes upon the once hallowed ground. Worse yet are the rumors that circulate about the developers that don’t even move the cemeteries but secretly pave over them and build their complexes. It is these allegations that form the origins of haunted apartments buildings in which the elevators, for no apparent reason, stop on the fourth floor. The number four has the same sound as the Chinese character for death and is widely viewed as evil ??? something similar to the number 13 in the West. It is almost impossible to find someone with first hand experience of this phenomena, or even harder, the location of one of these haunted sites.
Here you will see pictures of an alleged haunted ????????????… the owner ran away several years ago after financial difficulties and then a truck driver stayed the night (of course) in the building and was awakened by a ghost. This organization offered a very large sum of money to anyone that could photograph the woman ghost and it has been on tv a couple of times – groups of people actually go on excursion tours of this building. There are many pictures here and if you look around the site you will find other pictures that people send in – one that I liked was the picture of heads hanging in a tree.
(Originally by ROBERT KOEHLER on DECEMBER 8, 2004)
Korean Ghost Stories at The Korea Society
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