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. 1d ago

    Episode 88: Seoul Hiking-Trail Rape-Murder (신림동 등산로 성폭행 살인 사건)

    It was a weekday morning in the middle of summer vacation. An elementary school teacher was walking to work along a wooded trail she knew well, a shortcut through a small hill in southern Seoul. She was on her way to a training session at her school. Somewhere on that trail, a man she had never met was waiting. He had bought the weapon four months earlier, and he had walked that path dozens of times looking for the one spot no camera could see. Seoul Hiking-Trail Rape-Murder (신림동 등산로 성폭행 살인 사건) · 2023-08-17 · Hiking trail on Mokgol Hill, linked to a park in Sillim-dong, Gwanak District, Seoul, South Korea

  2. 2d ago

    Episode 87: Sillim Station Stabbing Rampage (신림역 흉기 난동 사건)

    It was a Friday afternoon in July, just after two o'clock, on one of the busiest streets in southern Seoul. A young man was standing outside a building near a subway exit. He'd come to the neighborhood to look for a cheap place to rent. He'd never met the man who walked up to him, and he had no reason to be afraid of him. In under two minutes, four strangers had been attacked and one of them was dying. Within days, a whole country was asking whether anyone was safe on a city street in broad daylight. Sillim Station Stabbing Rampage (신림역 흉기 난동 사건) · 2023-07-21 · Near Exit 4 of Sillim Station, Sillim-dong, Gwanak District, Seoul, South Korea

  3. 3d ago

    Episode 86: Lee Ki-young Murders (이기영 살인 사건)

    On Christmas morning, 2022, a woman let herself into her boyfriend's apartment in Paju, just north of Seoul. She opened a wardrobe and found a man's body inside. The man was a taxi driver who'd been missing for five days. His family thought he was alive, because his phone kept texting them. And when police started asking questions, the boyfriend told them there was another victim, a woman he'd killed four months earlier, whose body has never been found. Lee Ki-young Murders (이기영 살인 사건) · 2022 · Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea (taxi collision in Goyang)

  4. 4d ago

    Episode 85: Sindang Station Murder (신당역 스토킹 살인 사건)

    It was a Wednesday night in September 2022, in one of Seoul's busiest subway stations. A young station worker was walking her rounds, checking the women's restroom, the way she did on every shift. A man in a cap had been waiting near that restroom for more than an hour. He knew her. He'd stalked her for almost three years. And the next day, a court was supposed to sentence him for it. This is the Sindang Station murder, and it's the story of a woman who did everything the system asked of her, and still wasn't safe. Sindang Station Murder (신당역 스토킹 살인 사건) · 2022-09-14 · Women's restroom, Sindang Station (Line 2), Jung-gu, Seoul

  5. 5d ago

    Dark Files: Fabricated Cases — Three Stories the State Wrote for Itself

    Most of the cases on this show start with a crime and then ask who did it. Tonight's three work the other way round. In each one, the state decided what the story was first, and then built a case to fit it. This is Dark Files. These are fabricated cases. We begin in April 1975, in a Seoul prison before dawn. Eight men were hanged, about eighteen hours after the Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences. They had been convicted of belonging to an underground communist organisation. Thirty-two years later, a court acquitted all eight. The organisation they died for had never actually existed. Then January 1987. A Korean woman named Kim Ok-bun was killed in a flat in Hong Kong by her husband. The intelligence service had reason to doubt his story almost at once. Even so, they presented him as a hero who had escaped North Korean agents, and they presented her as a spy. Her family carried that label for fourteen years. And May 1991. A young activist died at a Seoul university, leaving two handwritten pages. Prosecutors said a friend had written them for him. That friend, Kang Ki-hun, served three years in prison. His acquittal became final in 2015. Three cases. Three families who were told the state's version was the truth. And the long years it took to prove otherwise. In this compilation: • Episode 63: People's Revolutionary Party Rebuilding Committee Case (인민혁명당 재건위원회 사건) • Episode 59: Suzy Kim Spy Fabrication Case (수지 김 간첩 조작 사건) • Episode 61: Kang Ki-hun Suicide Note Forgery Case (강기훈 유서대필 조작 사건)

  6. 5d ago

    Episode 84: Murder of Kim Ha-neul (대전 초등학생 살인 사건)

    It was a Monday afternoon in February 2025. A first-grader walked out of her school's after-school care room, backpack on, ready to head to her next class. A teacher stopped her in the hallway and said she had a book to give her. The girl followed. She was seven years old, and she trusted a teacher, the way every child is taught to. Within the hour, she was dead. This is the murder of Kim Ha-neul, a crime Korea's own courts called "unprecedented," because the danger was standing inside the school the whole time. Murder of Kim Ha-neul (대전 초등학생 살인 사건) · 2025-02-10 · Audiovisual room storeroom, an elementary school in Seo-gu, Daejeon

  7. 6d ago

    Episode 83: Seohyeon Station Stabbing Rampage (서현역 흉기 난동 사건)

    It was a Thursday evening in August 2023, just before six. Commuters were heading home, and shoppers were drifting into a department store connected to a busy subway station south of Seoul. Then a small car jumped the curb and drove straight down the sidewalk. The driver got out, walked into the store, and started attacking strangers with a knife. In less than ten minutes, fourteen people were hurt, and two women would never come home. This is the Seohyeon Station rampage, and the question it left Korea with is still hard to answer: what do you do when the danger was visible, and nobody could make it stop? Seohyeon Station Stabbing Rampage (서현역 흉기 난동 사건) · 2023-08-03 · Sidewalk outside and inside AK Plaza Bundang, by Seohyeon Station, Bundang-gu, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province

  8. Oct 3

    Episode 82: Pyeongtaek Won-young Child Abuse Death (평택 원영이 사건)

    March 2016. A little boy in Pyeongtaek was supposed to start first grade. His name was on the enrollment list, but he never showed up. When officials asked where he was, his father and stepmother said he had run away. In fact, he had been dead for over a month. He died in a cold bathroom where he'd been locked up all winter, and he was buried on a hillside by the people who were supposed to protect him. This is the story of Shin Won-young, and of the many adults who saw the warning signs and still couldn't save him. Pyeongtaek Won-young Child Abuse Death (평택 원영이 사건) · 2016-02-02 · The family's home in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province; body buried in the hills of Cheongbuk-myeon, Pyeongtaek

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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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