Growing up in South Korea, I vividly remember my family setting up a temporary shrine in the master bedroom once a year for the Lunar New Year. Especially vivid are my memories of my grandmother screaming at everyone—all the living people, that is—to get out of that room. The Lunar New Year is one of South Korea’s many ancestor-worshipping holidays. On the morning of the ritual my grandmother always ran around like an angry bird, screaming and looking very stressed. Just before the ritual began, she would urge my three aunts to run outside and leave the main entrance and the outside steel gate wide open for our dead ancestors to enter.

My grandmother has always been known for her sharp tongue and quick temper, so everyone, including my stubborn aunt, just got out of the way and obeyed her instructions when she got like this. Sometimes I was secretly worried about flies coming through the door, but I kept my mouth shut.

My grandmother’s mood would be worse than usual some years. On these occasions she would later offer us some sort of cryptic explanation, like, “your father appeared in my dream last night and was angry that I did not prepare his favorite soup for the ritual.” To my grandmother and late great grandmother, dead family members were as real as next-door neighbors. The dead, according to them, often communicated with them in their dreams, and their demands were often clear and reasonable.

This is an example of an ideal feast put together for dead ancestors. There are specific rules to follow when it comes to placing different food items on the table. A traditional way of arranging food for these feasts is very jenga-like—with items stacked neatly on top of each other (as shown here).

On the morning of the Lunar New Year, the master bedroom got converted into a makeshift, temporary family shrine. A long, foldable, wooden table would be already full of traditional ancestor worship foods, such as, beef-daikon soup, rice cakes, grilled fish, and beef-Jeon. Terrified by nightmares involving dead family members, my grandmother would spend all her time in the kitchen the day before. Feeling grouchy at times while prepping, she would say “Korean food always involves so much jung-sung 정성 (which translates to labor of love),” with a sigh under her breath. She was basically saying that many Korean dishes require so much work, thus making them labors of love. And she was right. Beef Jeon requires you to individually coat thinly sliced beef in flour + salt + pepper before dredging them in an egg mixture and individually cooking them in a pan; and homemade rice cakes all of which take a great deal of prep work and time. Behind the table was a tall wood screen with the dead ancestors’ name cards written in ancient Chinese characters—so that my grandfather, great grandfather, and great-great-grandfather would know where they would be sitting.

The reason why the main entrance and the steel gate outdoors had to stay open during the ceremony had to do with the belief that these open doors are important signals letting our ghost ancestors know when the ritual has begun. Just after the dead were officially welcome into the house of the living, it was then time for all the living people to GTFO (aka: Get the fu*k out) and STFU (aka: Shut the fu*k up). We had to close the door to the master bedroom gently and sit somewhere else for at least 5-10 minutes. The idea was simple—the living can stay away while the dead enjoy the food in peace.

Rules of thumb for feeding your dead ancestors

Food ingredients used for the ancestral worship ceremony must follow the general guidelines, so you do not anger the ancestors. As a rule, no ‘ancestral worship food’ can contain garlic, red peppers, red beans, or peaches. The color red in Korea is strongly associated with the color of the traditional Korean protective amulet created by shamans to help repel ghosts and evil spirits, so many people believe using red peppers or red beans will prevent ancestors from enjoying their meal.

Avoiding using garlic for the worship dinner might come across as a surprise: most Korean food contains a ton of garlic! Similar to the western belief that garlic repels vampires, garlic is also seen in traditional Korean culture as a magical ingredient known for repelling ghosts and granting supernatural wishes to animals. There is even a famous folktale in Korea about a bear who only ate garlic and wormwood for 100 days in a dark cave with the goal of becoming a human female. (Spoiler alert: yes, the bear does become a woman…and later seduces a local lord and marries him).

Peaches are believed to have the power to prevent ghosts from entering your home. They were introduced to Korea from China, where they were believe to give protective mountain spirits eternal life. In Korea peaches were banned from Jea-sa ancestor worship tables because your dead ancestors, technically ghosts, would be warded off. Korean people in the past made sure that no peach trees were planted in the vicinity of their home, fearing that ancestors would not enter their property.

Why so superstitious?

While about the half of South Korea’s population identify as either Christians or Buddhist, the other half (52% according to 2023 research) say they don’t identify with any religion. So naturally, South Korean culture is still heavily influenced by old, shamanism-driven beliefs that deal with various ‘superstitious’ ideas going back centuries, ancient Chinese influenced feng shui-esque concepts, and ghosts. Very often, you will meet people who go to church every Sunday but also pay a visit to a famed shaman. When confronted about what might look like contradictory behavior, he or she might tell you something rather “rational” sounding, like “isn’t siding with two powerful entities better than one?”

When walking in downtown Seoul, it is not at all uncommon to find Buddhist temples just next to big corporate buildings. Real monks recite prayers inside at random hours (usually super early hours!) In areas like this, you will often see Buddhist monks drinking tea at places like Starbucks and shopping at grocery stores.

My own mother, who is a devout bible study group member at a local Catholic church, changed my legal name registered with the government after having an appointment with a famed jak-myung-sa (literally translates to “someone who gives names”) in the neighborhood who was known for being able to see and predict a child’s future just by looking at their name. “Did he sound like a con man?” I asked my mother finally last year out of curiosity. “No. He sounded like a philosopher. Maybe close to an academic,” my mother answered.

While this idea may sound absolutely bonkers to a lot of Westerners, this belief that a “good” name can bring good fortune and luck into child’s life, or in some cases can prevent disasters or even an otherwise predestined death, is quite widely accepted in South Korea. My mother was probably right when she said this jak-myung-sa sounded like a mixture between a philosopher and an academic. Heavily influenced by ancient Chinese astrologists and the belief systems, such as, Zi Wei Dou Shu, some Koreans truly believe you can make broad predictions about an individual’s life just by looking at the time of their birth time and year.

Just one of many examples demonstrating widely spread shamanism/deity-worshipping culture in South Korea-- This sculpture known as Dol-ha-ru-bang (means “Rock Grandpa”) made out of porous volcanic rocks mostly found in Jeju Island are seen frequently in South Korea. Sometimes, you might witness random women praying while rubbing the nose of these sculpture, hoping for a baby. There is a saying that if you pray for a baby to this “Rock Grandpa,” he will listen and grant you a baby.

In fact, some may even enroll in “schools” where you can learn this ancient knowledge and memorize ancient charts written by ancient Chinese “scholars” and astrologists. To really understand those ancient charts, it was absolutely crucial that he or she has fluency in regard to ancient Chinese language. After all, what was someone to do if their whole existence was potentially threatened by the universe due to an unfortunate birth date and time? According to the jak-myung-sa my mother consulted, changing to a name that included certain words and ancient Chinese characters could help you have a better, more stable life. Does your birthdate and time indicate too much fire in your destiny? Change to a “good” name that has many characters that include ancient Chinese word for water, su 水. Easy peasy!

So pretty quickly, when I turned eight, my name went from Suh-young to Hyun Young. Naturally, nobody asked me at the time if I liked my new name. Then again, nobody asked me if I liked my original name either. Back in the 90s in South Korea, most Korean children were told that they do not get to choose important matters, such as their names. So that was that.

Shamanism and superstitions among the younger generations

While it’s generally true that the younger generation tend to care less about old superstitions than the older generation, South Korea even now is still very much of a place where the old, superstitious beliefs co-exist with the new, science-based-thinking people. When watching K-dramas (that’s soap operas and television shows made in South Korea), coming across characters who either go visit shamans to get what they want, or who have some connection to shamanism, is not at all a rare occurrence. Netflix’s hit K-drama, “The Glory,” included a powerful, evil mother character, who did not shy away from actively hiding bodies her daughter is responsible for killing. This character regularly visited a shaman. In another show, called “Café Minamdong,” the main character pretends to be a shaman and makes a living that way after hiring his sister and friend to do investigative work on the client. We should not jump to the conclusions that most Koreans see these K-drama plots as signs that they themselves could also go visit shamans for their problems. Still, such constant exposure to stories (fictional or otherwise) of individuals seeking spiritual advice from shamans surely normalizes these types of behavior. And perhaps even more so when such behavior is exhibited by an actual person.

This photo taken from a National Museum of South Korea demonstrates what a typical shaman and her “office” may look like in appearance. For some reason, most Korean people tend to visualize a female wearing a colorful traditional Korean outfit from a Chosun Dynasty when hearing a word, “shaman.” Although, I couldn’t find any statistical data on gender breakdown on this profession, it seems to be generally true that shamans are women—based on my crude analysis based on YouTubers who claim that they are shamans.

In June of 2024, HYBE, a Korean K-pop entertainment company that became famous thanks to the famous boy band BTS, saw their stock price drop sharply when their branding executive, Min Hee-jin, publicly denounced HYBE’s top management at a press conference. It was revealed at this time that HYBE had decided to take legal actions against Min Hee-Jin in response not only to her attempt at staging a “coup,” but to what they saw as her unhealthily reliance on her shaman friend’s advice when making important management decisions for the company. When news of her relying on a shaman came out, people began to comment about it. Unfortunately, for Koreans it’s far from the first time we have heard about people high up in the chain of commands unhealthily relying on “supernatural” advice coming from their shaman friends. In 2016, Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s first female president, was impeached and convicted on charges of corruption. At the center of the allegations was her suspiciously close relationship with Choi Soon-sil, a daughter of a known cult leader of The Church of Eternal Life, Choi Tae-min, who combined various elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and traditional Korean shamanism.

Being Korean means being inadvertently exposed to remnants of shamanism practiced by many Korean people of the past. Language, due to its slowly changing nature throughout history, tends to reveal a lot about country’s cultural progressions as well as about commonly accepted beliefs of the past. There are many superstitions expressed in proverbs, sayings, and warnings that deal with ghosts, shamanism and the supernatural. For example, the saying, ‘Ghosts might weep in this situation’ is used to describe a strange, mysterious, or confusing occurrences, whereas, ‘Drown ghost strategy,’ refers to revealing others questionable actions when you are in trouble for a crime or misdeed (based on the belief that people who drown are killed by ghosts who drowned before in the same water).

Horror story disguised as a lesson? Or a good, old family bonding time?

Try imagining yourself a child once again. It’s maybe around Halloween and, you are dressing up in costumes, secretly wishing you were a witch or a wizard like Harry Potter. I hope your parents told you once you got older that magic does not really exist, and that science is the ultimate truth. If you had been a child in South Korea, you might well have had an older family member who shared paranormal stories or personal spooky stories with you. As for myself, my grandmother used to tell me to stop singing at night, claiming that night singing would call on snakes and ghosts to come out. Another popular story I heard from her, repeatedly, was about resting a spoon by sticking it to a rice bowl while eating. She claimed that leaving a spoon like that would invite random ghosts roaming near to come and take a bite of the food. She even claimed this would make the ghosts stronger, and they would come haunt me.

Now, thinking back to these memories as a grown-up, I cannot help but think my grandmother must have been using my fear of ghosts to force me into having good manners. After all, a singing child at night can lead to complaints from neighbors, and a spoon stabbed to a rice bowl isn’t exactly classy.

But some stories shared with me as a child by adults served no purpose at all. My great grandmother, who passed away when I was around nine (she lived to the age of 109 years), used to tell me a strange story. She almost passed away from childbirth when she was in her late twenties, but she miraculously survived when she woke from a dream that was so vivid that it gave her chills just thinking about it. In her dream, she was casually walking along the side of the road full of beautiful flowers when she came across a busy bridge full of people crossing. She was happily entering the bridge when she suddenly ran into her dead aunt who stopped her and urged her go back to the other side. “I still think I could have died that day if I didn’t go back,” she said to me. As a child, I honestly had no idea what to say to this. In fact, I probably still wouldn’t know what to say.

In Korea, there is a common Korean expression referring to the act of experiencing sleep paralysis; 가위 눌렸어, which translates to “was pressed on by a ghost while sleeping.” Although, many Koreans probably are aware of the scientific reason behind sleep paralysis, many of them might still assume that you had had some sort of paranormal or spiritual encounter if you experienced such a thing. One of my aunts told me when I was a child that she saw a female ghost when she experienced sleep paralysis one time. Once again, I had no idea what to say. Did she want me to comfort her? If she did, I failed.

Was there a point to sharing these encounters with a small child? As someone who believes in science, I still tend to dismiss the vivid sleep paralysis experience as well as near-death experiences as nothing more than our irrational human brains playing tricks on us. Spooky stories are indeed entertaining sometimes, maybe in the way that so many podcasts and shows about serial killers are entertaining to so many people.

It is not exactly rocket science to know that some charismatic individuals throughout history gained influence and power by claiming to be able to “see” what others could not and thereby offer guidance to the powerful (e.g. Rasputin).

Though I am quite certain that my grandmother and aunt weren’t sharing spooky stories with me to gain power or influence, however, I recall classmates using their supernatural anecdotes to gain popularity and influence with others. In my elementary school, a classmate of mine spent a great deal of her free time telling other students that she could see ghosts. Months after proclaiming that she was spiritually sensitive, she started having “invite-only” makeshift Ouija board sessions in school bathrooms. Since she was only inviting popular girls to these “VIP” events, my name was never on the list. Although she claimed her guests were selected purely by spiritual aptitude, her selections coincided with the list of popular girls in class.

In Korea, it is commonly believed that many ghosts/lost spirits roam in the streets where the living walk. My mother’s church friend said she had “spiritual” powers that allowed her to see the dead sometimes. She advised that many ghosts spend time occupying empty public restaurant seats, park benches, and even empty hotel rooms (side note: she also told my mother that she often has to yell when she sees a ghost sitting on public toilet seat that she is about to use…so the ghost moves away). Assuming they are everywhere, it follows that these random “bystander” ghosts might find out what you are up to---especially, if you are telling lies about your spiritual abilities when you don’t them.

Now before you start looking for some holy rosary beads to clutch tightly out of paranoia, I want you to know that it’s been said that not everyone is vulnerable to a spiritual attack-- but you better watch your back if you are a writer known for your horror novels or ghost stories.

In the beginning of these occurrences, Nakayama says “as a horror manga artist, part of me was thankful for the material.” As more unexplainable misfortunes and illnesses started occurring to his friends and team members, he had no choice but to believe maybe there is something more going on than just random series of incidents.
The number of individuals who experienced unexplainable events, misfortunes, and sudden illnesses include the story advisor and a friend (Urawa Nishi), the producer of a famous anime (A-san), an old-time fan of his who Nakayama first told about these mysterious incidents, and his assistant among many others. The photo illustrates how Nakayama started suffering from a mysterious illness that exhibited the same physical symptoms as the characters from his manga.

Famously, Misaaki Nakayama, the creator of PTSD Radio manga series, made a sudden decision to stop writing and publishing in 2018 after dealing with many paranormal, unexplainable misfortunes and incidents affecting him and his team. When he made this public announcement, many people in the manga industry were in shock—Nakayama was finally getting more respect and attention for his horror manga work, so there was no logical reason for him to stop altogether. In his attempt to explain himself, Nakayama shares some of the supernatural experiences he endured in his manga book “PTSD Radio.”

So, call me superstitious or kooky, but I will not be writing any more of these type of essays for a little while. Some things are better left to shamans.

Feeding my dead ancestors

Roadrunner in Repose

Flaco in the Sky with Diamonds