The Children Who Never Saw the Light
The foothills of Taebaeksan Mountain, Gangwon-do.
Taebaeksan, long rumored to be steeped in mystical energy, had become a base for countless shamans. By night, it was usually so silent that even the chirping of insects felt like a disturbance.
At least, until the early hours of this morning.
Kim Hyungseok parked his car and stepped out of the driver’s seat with a look of grim determination.
“We’ve arrived.”
Clad head-to-toe in millions of won worth of mountaineering gear, he flared his nostrils to inhale the frigid Taebaeksan air.
“Haa! Can you smell it? This spiritual air! It’s a dimension of yin energy completely different from the fine dust of Seoul!”
“...You absolute lunatic.”
Lee Jina stepped out of the passenger seat, pulling her coat collar tight and shivering. It wasn’t just the cold. The air clinging to her skin felt unpleasantly sticky and damp.
“Honey, can’t we just leave? The vibe here is terrible.”
Overcome by an eerie premonition, Jina tugged at her husband’s sleeve. But Kim Hyungseok’s gaze was already fixed on the lights flickering in the distance.
“What are you talking about? Look over there. Our comrades have already gathered.”
Dozens of lights twinkled in the darkness. The bizarre procession, created by smartphone flashes and flashlights, was clogging the mountain entrance like a swarm of moths.
The source of the lights were the "Ghost Hunters" who had flocked here from all over the country.
“Did you come here after watching the stream, too?”
“Obviously. I came the moment the Admin (Juttak) sent the gas money.”
“But is this really the house of the old lady with the brass bowls? The atmosphere is insane, right?”
Despite being strangers, the Ghost Hunters were bonded by a strange sense of camaraderie. To Jina’s eyes, however, they were nothing short of grotesque.
“No ‘black cows’ (suckers) eating popcorn in their rooms, right?”
Someone was muttering to themselves while spitting into their phone camera, likely streaming, while another swung a butterfly net through the air, claiming they were going to catch a ghost.
“Hoo, hoo!”
There was even someone playing EDM on a small Bluetooth speaker, shaking their body violently.
‘They’ve lost their minds. Everyone is crazy.’
Jina felt dizzy at the sight of them, acting as if they were at a festival instead of visiting a shaman’s den in the mountains at this ungodly hour. To make matters worse, her husband had already merged into the crowd and started climbing the mountain path.
“Let’s go, too! If we’re late, we won’t see the Gallery Master!”
Jina had no choice but to follow, gritting her teeth.
“Hey! Kim Hyungseok! Wait for me!”
Crunch, crunch.
Dozens of footsteps trampled the fallen leaves, echoing through the mountain.
The path to the shrine was treacherous. Not long after they started, the paved road ended, replaced by a narrow dirt trail barely wide enough for one person.
It was about ten minutes into the forest path when it happened.
Thud.
“Oh my god...!”
Jina’s hiking boot caught on something hard. She looked down, startled, and held her breath.
It wasn’t a rock. It was a small, dirt-caked jar, half-buried in the ground. It was about the size of two adult fists, covered in layers of talismans. It was definitely not a jar for soy sauce or bean paste.
“What is this?”
Kim Hyungseok shone his flashlight on it out of curiosity. The moment the light hit, Jina froze. It wasn’t just one jar. Dozens of small jars were buried in the ground in a cluster.
And then—
Scritch, scritch...
From beneath their feet, from inside those very jars, came the sound of something clawing at the lids.
“...Honey, did you hear that just now?”
“Hm? What sound?”
Kim Hyungseok dismissed her question. In a forest, the sounds of wind and insects were common enough. But at that moment—
Waaaaah! Waaaaaah!
Giggle, giggle...
Mommy, mommy...
Between the jars, the cries and laughter of newborn babies leaked out, tangled together.
“Eek!”
Jina screamed and stumbled backward.
“Ho, honey! What is this! There’s sound! There’s sound coming from the ground!”
Her face turned as white as a sheet at the sound of babies crying from under the earth. The possibility of a baby being in these deep mountains? Zero. That meant there was only one explanation for that sound.
“Le, let’s go back. Honey, please. This isn’t right.”
Jina grabbed her husband’s arm desperately, paralyzed by terror. The sound of babies crying from the earth was so wretched and horrific that it triggered a primal revulsion.
But the reaction of her husband and the Ghost Hunters was completely different from what she expected.
“...Wow, this is insane. It’s real.”
“Hey, shine the light here. Can you hear this? Put the microphone closer.”
Far from running away, they swarmed around the field of jars. But the light, giggling atmosphere from before was gone.
“So she was really doing business by trapping the souls of children. Wow, is the old lady’s character for real?”
As one Ghost Hunter muttered with a hardened face, another replied.
“We shouldn’t touch these, right?”
“Don’t touch them. If we mess with them and something goes wrong, the kids might suffer even more.”
They looked like madmen, but these Ghost Hunters had their own rules and etiquette. Even if they were perverts who wanted to see ghosts, they weren’t trash who would mock the suffering of children.
“I can’t forgive a child abuser, even if they’re a ghost.”
“Record all of this.”
“I am, but will it show up on video? Even when we watch the Gallery Master’s videos on replay, nothing shows up.”
“Just record it anyway.”
As the crying grew louder, the eyes of the Ghost Hunters burned with intensity. Kim Hyungseok was no different.
“Ho, honey...?”
When Jina called out, Kim Hyungseok turned his head. His lips were pressed tight as he stared at the jars.
“Jina.”
“Ye, yeah?”
“I can’t stand this. My lifelong wish was to see a ghost, but not like this. Messing with kids is crossing the line.”
“No, honey! Wait!”
“Let’s go. I’m going to slap that brass-bowl-old-lady or whatever she is across the face with money.”
Kim Hyungseok took Jina’s hand and began to stride forward. The other Ghost Hunters followed suit.
“I’m going to tear the pillars out of that shrine today.”
“Child abuse? I can’t let that slide.”
And so, dozens of people surged toward the shrine.
After about twenty minutes of climbing, a massive tile-roofed house appeared through the mist. The signboard hung crookedly, and under the eaves, colorful cloth strips hung like dangling corpses.
The moment they entered the courtyard, a suffocating pressure hit them. The ground was covered in white salt, and red beans were scattered everywhere. In the center of the yard, a sharp, blue-tinted blade of a ritual chopper stood with its mouth agape.
“Wow... the atmosphere is brutal.”
Even the Ghost Hunters, who had climbed up huffing and puffing, hesitated in the face of the shrine’s overwhelming presence. It wasn’t the anger they felt at the foot of the mountain; it was a bone-chilling terror that pressed down on them.
That was when—
Creeeeeak—!
The shrine door opened slowly, and someone walked out from the darkness. A crone with disheveled white hair, a bloodless face, holding a brass bowl in one hand and a blood-stained red fan in the other. It was Park Chunja.
“Heh heh...”
Park Chunja stood at the edge of the wooden porch. Her eyes swept over the people filling the yard. They weren’t the eyes of an old woman. They were the eyes of a beast scouting for prey. No, it was a gaze that defied description.
Goosebumps rose on the Ghost Hunters’ spines.
“...What kind of bastards are you?”
Whoosh—!
As Park Chunja unfurled her fan, the temperature around the shrine plummeted. Despite the lack of wind, the cloth strips under the eaves began to flap frantically like mad things.
“How dare you set foot in this place without permission. Are you so eager to die?”
Just one sentence. At those words, the Ghost Hunters’ momentum cooled as if doused in ice water. The people who had been shouting about tearing down pillars moments ago fell silent. The hands holding cameras began to tremble. Something cold and damp was physically clinging to their skin.
“Eek...”
The man in the front row stepped back involuntarily. No matter how many of them there were, it was impossible for ordinary people to withstand the aura of a Manshin (Great Shaman) who had spent her life commanding ghosts.
Jina couldn’t even breathe. She knew nothing of the occult, but the massive black shadow flickering behind Park Chunja was not something a human could dare to oppose.
“You all found your own way to the underworld.”
Park Chunja struck the brass bowl.
Clang—!
“Today is a bountiful harvest of offerings for the spirits!”
With her shout, a killing intent that pierced the skin surged like a storm.
“Ugh...!”
Jina tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her mouth wouldn’t open. It felt as if someone was gagging her from behind and binding her entire body with ropes.
‘I, I can’t move!’
It wasn’t just her. Kim Hyungseok, who had been so full of bravado, and the Ghost Hunters who had been playing with their cameras—everyone was nailed to the spot, unable to move a muscle.
Park Chunja gave a sinister smile and unfurled her fan.
“You fearless little things. Today, I’ll strip the flesh from your bones...”
That was when—
“Cut the crap.”
A single, indifferent voice shattered the suffocating silence. Jina forced her eyes to roll toward the sound.
‘Who, who is that?’
While everyone else was frozen, a man stood there as if he had been there all along. A man with his hands in his hoodie pockets, looking at Park Chunja. It was Kang Jinwoo.
“So another one who wants to die has found his own way here.”
Park Chunja shrieked, scraping her brass bowl violently.
“My babies will love this! Bite him! Tear him apart without leaving a single scrap of bone!”
Whoosh—!
With Park Chunja’s command, the heavy energy that had been crushing the Ghost Hunters poured toward Kang Jinwoo all at once. Jina’s body suddenly felt light. The suffocating pressure vanished in an instant. No, it hadn’t vanished. It had all shifted toward that man.
Jina screamed internally.
‘Get out of the way! Run!’
But Kang Jinwoo didn’t dodge. He didn’t deflect. He simply took the horrific energy with his entire body.
Wooooong—!
Kang Jinwoo’s body swayed. As if dozens of people were hanging off him, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. It was a pressure that would have shattered the bones of an ordinary person and killed them instantly. But Kang Jinwoo struggled to lift his head and smiled.
“Did you miss your mom that much?”
Park Chunja’s brow furrowed at the out-of-place remark.
“What are you babbling about? That is Sha (killing energy)! These are evil spirits driven mad by resentment!”
“No.”
Kang Jinwoo shook his head.
“There is only one reason why the souls of children are the purest.”
He gently wrapped his hands around the invisible hands that were strangling his neck.
“Because children instinctively crave love from their parents. Even these children, who died before they were even born, are doing this because they miss their mother’s embrace.”
Kang Jinwoo slowly turned to look at the Ghost Hunters and Jina.
“Scared because you can’t see them? Afraid because you don’t know what they are? I’ll show you. What you were so afraid of. O, Primordial Embrace, open the eyes of these pitiful creatures.”
Whoosh—!
A golden wave erupted from Kang Jinwoo’s body, sweeping through the courtyard and forcing Jina’s eyelids open.
“Aargh!”
With a pain that felt like her eyes were burning, the world flipped upside down. And when she opened them again—
“...Ah.”
Jina covered her mouth. She could see them. On her own legs, on her husband’s shoulders, and covering the entire floor of the shrine courtyard. Newborn babies, charred black, with umbilical cords wrapped around their necks, were clinging to them. Dozens, no, hundreds of them. They were all crying.
Mommy, mommy...
Waaaaah! Waaaaaah!
The horrific-looking babies were desperately clinging to them, searching for someone’s body heat.
“Eek... wh, what is that!”
“Babies...? Are they all babies?”
The Ghost Hunters whose spiritual eyes had been opened groaned in shock. Kang Jinwoo shook his head and spoke.
“Do not be afraid. They are just pitiful children.”
At those words, the horrific, terrifying black shapes began to look like crying infants wrapped in umbilical cords.
“...My god.”
Tears fell from Jina’s eyes. She could feel how desperately those tiny hands and feet were searching for warmth.
“Wh, what kind of sorcery is this...!”
Meanwhile, Park Chunja dropped her brass bowl in disbelief at the impossible sight. The Taejagwi (child spirits) that were supposed to be spewing killing intent according to her command were stopping their cries in Kang Jinwoo’s embrace, seeking peace.
“You bastard, what the hell are you! You don’t even serve a god, so how can you do something like this!”
Even to a shaman’s eyes, there was no trace of possession on Kang Jinwoo. He was just an ordinary human shell. Yet how could he perform a miracle that defied even the spirits?
Kang Jinwoo turned his head toward Park Chunja. Drip. He smiled, shedding tears of blood.
“Did you really think a wretch like you could look upon a Great Being who oversees the entire universe?”
Kang Jinwoo took a step forward. With every step he took, the black, hideous child spirits clinging to him turned into light.
“I’ll show you what it means to ‘oversee.’”
The gaze of an Absolute Being looking down at a lowly creature from high above.
“Eyes down.”
Thwack—!
“Gyaaaaaaah!”
Park Chunja screamed, clutching her eyes with both hands. Bright red blood erupted like a fountain between her fingers. The price for staring directly at the agent of a god was this horrific.