The Dark Side of Seoul Podcast

Send us a textOur 300th episode!Pojangmacha didn’t disappear by accident.In Part 2 of Where Have All the Soju Tents Gone, Joe and Shawn trace how Seoul’s soju tents went from survival spaces to cultural nuisances, then to nostalgic props. From Olympic-era crackdowns and hired enforcers to violent evictions, gentrification, and sanitized “sensibility pocha streets,” this episode looks at how modernization erased a vital part of everyday life.This isn’t a story about food. It’s about power, class, gender, and who gets to stay visible in a global city. Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.comSupport the showJoin 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 Pitch your idea here. https://www.darksideofseoul.com/expats-of-the-wild-east/ Credits Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey Music by Soraksan Top tier Patrons Angel EarlJoel BonominiDevon HiphnerGabi PalominoSteve MarshEva SikoraRon ChangMackenzie MooreHunter WinterCecilia Löfgren DumasJosephine RydbergDevin BuchananAshley WrightGeorge Irion Facebook Page | Instagram

Send us a textThere is no Waffle House in Korea.For decades, the pojangmacha was the last line of defense against going home hungry, broke, or blackout drunk. It was cheap, social, messy, and human. And then it slowly disappeared.In Part 1 of Where Have All the Soju Tents Gone, we trace the origins of the pojangmacha from Japanese yatai and Joseon-era taverns to its explosion after the Korean War. We talk about why these tents mattered, who ran them, what people ate there, and why they became one of the most important informal social spaces in modern Korean history.This is not just a story about street food dying. It is a story about how Seoul systematically removed the spaces that ordinary people built for themselves. Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.comSupport the showJoin 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 Pitch your idea here. https://www.darksideofseoul.com/expats-of-the-wild-east/ Credits Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey Music by Soraksan Top tier Patrons Angel EarlJoel BonominiDevon HiphnerGabi PalominoSteve MarshEva SikoraRon ChangMackenzie MooreHunter WinterCecilia Löfgren DumasJosephine RydbergDevin BuchananAshley WrightGeorge Irion Facebook Page | Instagram

Send us a textChristmas is often framed as a moment of peace, forgiveness, and reflection. But in Korean history, Christmas Eve has repeatedly been chosen for violence, punishment, and erasure.In Part 2 of Christmas Nightmares, we examine three chilling cases tied to the holiday. We begin with the Seokdal-ri Massacre of 1949, when South Korean soldiers burned a mountain village and executed dozens of civilians on Christmas Eve — a crime buried by the state for decades. We then move to the execution of Park Heung-suk, remembered as “Mudeungsan Tarzan,” hanged on Christmas Eve in 1980 after a violent confrontation born from forced eviction and extreme poverty. Finally, we revisit the Daejeon bank robbery and murder of 2001, a Christmas-season killing that remained unsolved for over twenty years.These stories expose how Christmas, rather than symbolizing mercy, was repeatedly used as a moment of finality — when the state acted, and history tried to move on. Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.comSupport the showJoin 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 Pitch your idea here. https://www.darksideofseoul.com/expats-of-the-wild-east/ Credits Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey Music by Soraksan Top tier Patrons Angel EarlJoel BonominiDevon HiphnerGabi PalominoSteve MarshEva SikoraRon ChangMackenzie MooreHunter WinterCecilia Löfgren DumasJosephine RydbergDevin BuchananAshley WrightGeorge Irion Facebook Page | Instagram

Send us a textChristmas is supposed to be a time of warmth, safety, and reunion. But history doesn’t always cooperate.In Part 1 of our two-part Christmas Nightmares series, we explore some of Korea’s darkest stories tied to the holiday season. We begin with the Heungnam Evacuation of 1950, remembered as the Miracle of Christmas, when nearly 100,000 refugees escaped North Korea by sea. But behind the miracle were impossible choices, brutal exclusions, and families torn apart in the freezing cold.From there, we move to modern tragedies. A massive Christmas Eve pile-up on the Cheonan–Nonsan Expressway that turned fog and black ice into chaos. A chilling Christmas Day murder rooted in online obsession and jealousy. And a violent armed robbery that shattered the illusion of holiday safety.These are stories where celebration collided with fear, and survival mattered more than tradition. Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.comSupport the showJoin 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 Pitch your idea here. https://www.darksideofseoul.com/expats-of-the-wild-east/ Credits Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey Music by Soraksan Top tier Patrons Angel EarlJoel BonominiDevon HiphnerGabi PalominoSteve MarshEva SikoraRon ChangMackenzie MooreHunter WinterCecilia Löfgren DumasJosephine RydbergDevin BuchananAshley WrightGeorge Irion Facebook Page | Instagram

Send us a textShawn and Joe dig into Korea’s crumbling cybersecurity myth and the Coupang leak that exposed almost every user in the country. Korea sells itself as an IT powerhouse, but behind the fiber optics sit outdated servers, neglected government systems, weak regulations and a corporate culture that treats security like a box to check.From the SK Telecom and Lotte Card breaches to the government’s own embarrassing hacks, the episode breaks down why Korea keeps getting hit, why companies keep failing upward and how a single leak at Coupang nearly shut down parts of the small business economy. Plus, a side tour through xenophobic blame games, delivery driver exploitation and the weird reality that the country with the fastest internet once clung to ActiveX like a family heirloom. Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.comSupport the showJoin 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 Pitch your idea here. https://www.darksideofseoul.com/expats-of-the-wild-east/ Credits Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey Music by Soraksan Top tier Patrons Angel EarlJoel BonominiDevon HiphnerGabi PalominoSteve MarshEva SikoraRon ChangMackenzie MooreHunter WinterCecilia Löfgren DumasJosephine RydbergDevin BuchananAshley WrightGeorge Irion Facebook Page | Instagram