Retro Korean Horror Movie Posters


Even though Korean cinema has only enjoyed international recognition since recently, the history of the peninsula's cinematographic industry goes back to the early twentieth century. Horror films started to emerge as a genre in the sixties and remained popular until today. As you'll see from the movie posters below, the stories almost invariably centered around a revengeful female ghost who came back among the living to wreck havoc.

The feminity of the ghost characters is not something new and can already be observed in traditional folk stories such as the Janghwa Hongryeon jeon (장화홍련전), a Joseon era story about the gorey vengeance brought upon a village by the ghosts of two sisters. The tale was adapted to the big screen several times, first in 1924 and more recently with the highly popular 2003 movie Tale of Two Sisters.

The traditional explanations are that women are naturally more resentful and that women who died before enjoying the pleasure of marriage would inevitably come back to haunt the living (hence the large number of "Maiden Revenge" themed movies). The "chastity" of the ghost is hinted at by the white gown most of them wear (just as in Japanese horror films such as Ring) while the abundance of their hair symbolizes the large grudge (한) they hold against society. Under the influence of Western hits such as Dracula, the ghost of Korean horror cinema started to gain vampiric characteristics in the 1980's.


처녀귀신 - The Maiden's Ghost - 1967

마녀성 - The Witch Castle - 1968

오공녀의 한 - The revenge of the centipede woman -  1969

사녀의 한 - The revenge of a dead woman - 1970

누나의 한 - Sister's revenge - 1971

옥녀의 한 - The chaste woman's revenge - 1972

정형미인 - 1975
I'm not too sure about the chinese characters on this one as the first two seem to mean orthopedics..
Which would translate as The Orthopedic Beauty?

월녀의 한 - The revenge of the moon girl - 1980