Dark Korea — Korean True Crime & Mysteries

Dark Korea

The crimes and mysteries Korea won't talk about — deeply researched and respectfully told. Each episode reconstructs a Korean true-crime case, unsolved disappearance, cult, or disaster: what happened, how, and why.

  1. 21h ago

    Episode 113: Chungju Lake Cruise Ship Fire (충주호 유람선 화재)

    It was a sunny autumn afternoon, and the hills around the lake had turned red and gold. More than a hundred and thirty people had boarded a small tour boat to see the leaves. About fifteen minutes out, smoke came up from the engine room. Survivors say the crew told them it was nothing and sent them inside, into a cabin that soon filled with smoke. Within an hour the boat had burned to the waterline, and twenty-nine people were dead. It happened three days after a bridge fell into the Han River in Seoul. Chungju Lake Cruise Ship Fire (충주호 유람선 화재) · 1994-10-24 · Chungju Lake near Aegok-ri, Jeokseong-myeon, Danyang County, North Chungcheong Province, South Korea

  2. 1d ago

    Dark Files: Disasters in the Air — Four Flights and the Warnings Around Them

    Welcome to Dark Files. This time, we're looking up. Every time we board a plane, we trust a long chain of people and systems we'll never see. In this compilation, we follow four flights where that chain gave way, over about thirty years. July 1993. Asiana Flight 733 makes a third try at landing at Mokpo in heavy rain, and hits a mountain hidden in the cloud. Korean reports at the time counted 66 dead; other records say 68. Helicopters search the sea, until an injured survivor comes down to a farming village. August 1997. Korean Air Flight 801 flies a working 747 into a hillside on Guam, and 228 people die by the American investigators' count. A radar warning on the ground had been deliberately switched off. Twelve seconds would likely have saved them. December 1999. Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 leaves Stansted with a fault another crew had beaten that same day with one switch. Fifty-five seconds later, four men are dead, and the last word on the tape is "bank." December 2024. Jeju Air Flight 2216 belly-lands at Muan, the airport that replaced Mokpo, and hits a concrete mound past the runway. 179 of the 181 aboard die. When we covered it, there was still no final report. Warnings that went unanswered. Safeguards that weren't there. Let's begin. In this compilation: • Episode 109: Asiana Airlines Flight 733 Crash (아시아나항공 733편 추락 사고) • Episode 38: Korean Air Flight 801 Guam Crash • Episode 111: Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 Crash (대한항공 8509편 추락 사고) • Episode 94: Jeju Air Flight 2216 Crash (제주항공 2216편 참사)

  3. 1d ago

    Episode 112: Sungnyemun Arson (숭례문 방화 사건)

    For about six hundred years, the great south gate of Seoul stood through invasions, a colonial occupation and a war. It took one man with a folding ladder about ten minutes to set it alight. He was 69 years old, he was angry about a land deal, and he was still under a suspended sentence for doing almost the same thing to a royal palace two years before. A whole country watched National Treasure No. 1 burn on live television. And when it was over, the question wasn't only why he did it. It was why it had been so easy. Sungnyemun Arson (숭례문 방화 사건) · 2008-02-10 · Sungnyemun (Namdaemun) gate, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea

  4. 2d ago

    Episode 111: Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 Crash (대한항공 8509편 추락 사고)

    The last word spoken in the cockpit of Korean Air Flight 8509 was "bank." The flight engineer had been saying it for about twenty seconds. In all that time, neither pilot said a thing about it. Earlier that same day, on the same airplane, another crew met the same fault in daylight and beat it with one switch. That night, in the dark over Essex, the captain's instrument told him his wings were level, and they were almost straight up and down. Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 Crash (대한항공 8509편 추락 사고) · 1999-12-22 · Near Great Hallingbury and Hatfield Forest, by London Stansted Airport, Essex, England

  5. 2d ago

    Episode 110: Goyang Bus Terminal Fire (고양종합터미널 화재)

    A teacher is riding an escalator down into a bus terminal with one of his students when he sees smoke along the ceiling. He takes her hand, turns around, and starts to climb. Five or six steps later, there's an explosion, the air turns black, and her hand is gone. The way out was about thirty paces away. That building had sprinklers, fire shutters, and alarms, and by that morning, the people running it had taken them out of action. Goyang Bus Terminal Fire (고양종합터미널 화재) · 2014-05-26 · Goyang Bus Terminal, Baekseok-dong, Ilsandong-gu, Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea

  6. 4d ago

    Episode 109: Asiana Airlines Flight 733 Crash (아시아나항공 733편 추락 사고)

    A passenger jet vanishes from radar in a summer storm, only minutes from the runway. Helicopters take off and start searching the sea. They're looking in the wrong place. The plane is on a mountain, broken into pieces, and the people hunting for it have no idea. Then an injured 21-year-old passenger walks out of the hills, finds a farming village, and tells them what's up there. Asiana Airlines Flight 733 Crash (아시아나항공 733편 추락 사고) · 1993-07-26 · Mount Ungeo, Masan-ri, Hwawon-myeon, Haenam County, South Jeolla Province, South Korea

  7. 5d ago

    Episode 108: Cheonan Sinking (천안함 피격 사건)

    It's a Friday night in March, in the cold Yellow Sea, close to the border with North Korea. A South Korean navy warship is on a routine patrol with 104 people on board. At 9:22 p.m., something tears the ship in half. Within minutes, both pieces are sinking into the dark. Forty-six sailors never come home. And to this day, a large part of South Korea still argues about what happened. Cheonan Sinking (천안함 피격 사건) · 2010-03-26 · Yellow Sea, about 1 nautical mile off the southwest coast of Baengnyeong Island, Ongjin County, Incheon, South Korea

  8. 6d ago

    Episode 107: Assassination of Kim Jong-nam (김정남 암살 사건)

    A middle-aged man is standing by a self check-in kiosk at a busy airport in Malaysia. He's waiting for a morning flight to Macau. Two young women walk up to him. One of them reaches around from behind and wipes something across his face. Then they walk away. Within about half an hour, the man is dead. And he isn't just anyone. He's the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, and the half-brother of North Korea's ruler. Assassination of Kim Jong-nam (김정남 암살 사건) · 2017-02-13 · Departure hall, klia2 terminal, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Sepang, Malaysia

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The crimes and mysteries Korea won't talk about — deeply researched and respectfully told. Each episode reconstructs a Korean true-crime case, unsolved disappearance, cult, or disaster: what happened, how, and why.

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