Reading the Dead: What Korean Graves Tell Us

Winter is cemetery season in Korea.

With the grass dead, snakes gone, and sightlines open, this is when Korea’s hillside cemeteries quietly reveal their stories. In this episode, Joe and Shawn talk about what they see every year while wandering through Korean burial grounds: traditional mounds and stone guardians, Christian symbols mixed with Confucian motifs, rare Western-style graves, pet burials, collective graves, and the occasional unsettling sign of vandalism.

This isn’t a guide to death rituals. It’s an exploration of how memory, belief, class, and modern pressure quietly reshape how Koreans remember the dead.

Korea's #1 ghost and dark history walking tour. Book at DarkSideOfSeoul.com

Get your comic at DarkSideOfSeoul.com