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www.groovekorea.com / April 2014 50 Joe McPherson, the founder of ZenKimchi Korean Food Journal, runs Seoul’s only ghost tour. On the Dark Side of Seoul Tour, partici- pants are taken on a three-hour walk through Seoul’s darkest alleyways and historical sites. Instead of the more sanitized version of his- tory found in tourist brochures, McPherson’s tour offers an in-depth look at the massacres, executions and murders that have occurred in Seoul’s past. Participants also visit supposed- ly haunted places around Seoul and learn the history that gave rise to these ghost stories. A self-confessed fan of dark-themed tours and a good ghost story, McPherson notes, “A lot of people come to Korea with little knowl- edge or appreciation of Korea’s history. ... The major historical sites don’t help at all, prefer- ring to give nerdy statistics on the square me- terage of a building rather than the stories that actually make it interesting.” For him, the sto- ries of Seoul’s bloody past and its supernatu- ral inhabitants are what give the city character, and learning about this history adds “another layer of depth in understanding and appreciat- ing where this city has come from and what it has gone through.” Glen Hempstock, a Canadian tourist visiting Seoul for a week, attended one of the tours on a cloudless, chilly November night. He, like McPherson, also believes that learning about a city’s history — both the good and the bad — is necessary for a better understanding of the place in which you are traveling or living. “For expats,” he says, “I think it could help (them) to learn about and adapt to local su- perstitions and lore. … For expats and locals alike, I think it offers context to what is now a very modern, bustling city; seeing where the city … came from can really make them ap- preciate its modern form.” In addition to enhancing one’s historical knowledge, the ghost stories of a particular country can give outsiders some cultural in- sight. In most Western cultures, for example, ghosts have tended to be male — deceased knights, spirits of male ancestors — whereas in Korea, the most powerful ghosts are fe- male. This can be seen most clearly in Kore- an cinema, as almost all Korean horror films dealing with the supernatural feature female monsters, ghost women or the spirits of dead schoolgirls. One reason for this is that women are supposedly the strongest holders of “han,” a Korean concept roughly translating to anger, disillusionment or a feeling of resentment over past injustices. A popular Korean ghost exhib- iting han is the “cheonyeo gwishin,” or virgin girl ghost, who is often depicted wearing a “sobok” (white traditional mourning clothes). Because she has died young and without hav- ing experienced the pleasures of marriage or having children, it is impossible for her to leave the earthly world. So, her spirit remains, forev- er haunting the living. One of the first Westerners to recount an experience with the supernatural was George Heber Jones, an American missionary who ar- rived on the peninsula in 1887. He believed that Korea was the most haunted place in the world, with spirits “haunt(ing) every umbra- geous tree, shady ravine, spring and mountain crest.” While this belief in ghosts has certain- ly waned since the Joseon Dynasty, it does still exist, and reports of hauntings and ghost sightings continue to this day. Indeed, McPherson states that his tour has attracted several ghost enthusiasts, as well as people claiming to be sensitive to paranor- mal energies. Two different attendees — who went on separa te tours and didn’t know each other — claimed that the ghost of a little girl was following them for the first half of the tour. Within the last few years, ghost stories have even made their way into the Korean news. In 2005, a deeply troubled woman committed suicide in an airplane bathroom. After a series of frightening and inexplicable events that oc- curred on the plane over the next few months, and after several unsuccessful attempts to ap- pease the spirit of the ghost, the crew mem- bers claimed that the plane was haunted and refused to fly on it again. In another incident, a politician claimed in 2008 that he was being violated by female ghosts near the National Assembly building. It was discovered that this building was located atop an old burial ground for palace women, and in order to protect the male National As- sembly members from these vengeful spirits, an unseemly 65-ton phallic stone sculpture was constructed near the building. (It was re- moved the following year due to complaints by residents of the area.) Robert Neff, a Seoul-based historian and author of “Letters from Joseon” (2013), has written extensively about ghosts in Korea. Through his interviews with people of vary- DEsTInATIOns edited by Josh Foreman (joshforeman@groovekorea.com) Two different attendees — who went on separate tours and didn’t know each other — claimed that the ghost of a little girl was following them for the first half of the tour.