The Ghost Station ~ Covering Up a Crime Does Not Erase It

“The Ghost Station” is a 2022 (2023?) Korean drama movie, based on a short webcomic and categorized as Horror, Thriller, Suspense, Crime and Mystery, and Supernatural. An alternate title is “Oksu Station Ghost”.

♦ What Do The Scratches Mean?

Seoul, South Korea has a marvelous underground transit system with hundreds of stations. But one of those stations, Oksu Station, was built on an area where there was once an orphanage. It was a cruel place where children were so mistreated that they were not even called by a name. They were simply a number. The orphanage was demolished, a station was built in its place, and nobody even asked what became of the children. Perhaps some people knew but didn’t want to tell their story.

In “The Ghost Station”, Na-young is a young reporter who makes a mistake. She works for a tabloid newspaper that makes articles with clickbait titles so they can earn from advertising revenues. One night she gets a tip that there is a woman at a train station acting weird. She goes there and sure enough … the lady was acting weird. She asked for permission before taking photographs or interviewing the person. She published her story and was sued. Turns out the lady was a man and did not appreciate being “outed”.

Na-young’s boss tells her that she better go out and get a story that will make the company money or she’s going to end up settling the lawsuit by paying the money from her own pocket. Her boss’s threat motivated her to go dig up the story. But this time she was going to make sure she had proper permission. Once again, an incident occurred at a train station. Someone told her a man was behaving weirdly, calling out numbers. Na-young caught up to the man and asked permission to interview him. He agreed and told her his story.

Based on the interview, Na-young published a sensational article and it got lots of views and made lots of money. Then her boss screams at her again. WHY? Because Na-young claimed to have interviewed the man at a certain time and that had to be a lie because … the man had already committed suicide. Na-young couldn’t understand that. But when she looked at the recorded interview, it showed her sitting alone. There was no man in the video. WHAT IS GOING ON?

The man who committed suicide had a sister and the sister contacted the tabloid newspaper, asking to speak to Na-young. Na-young visited the woman in her home and the woman was terrified but also seemed to be mentally unstable. Na-young wanted to believe what the woman was telling her and tried to follow up by further investigating. The woman said an orphanage once existed where the Oksu Station now stands. Na-young’s boss told her the woman was not credible because she had been in and out of mental institutions.

But Na-young had a friend who worked for the transit authority and he told her about strange occurrences. He said he saw a child and when he asked the child what her name was the child gave him a number. He said the undertaker also saw the child. That means two witnesses can affirm they saw a child at Oksu Stations. This made Na-young want to investigate more. The more she found, the more she reported. However, tragic deaths began happening more frequently. The police officer accused her of writing false ghost stories that caused people to react and the consequences were deadly. He said she was morally responsible for the deaths.

Na-young was certain that it was not her imagination and there was a hidden truth behind these deaths that needed to be revealed. She and her friend kept digging and found a striking similarity among all of the victims. They all had scratches. The same scratches on the same parts of the body.

The undertaker who handled the bodies told them that the scratches were made by ghosts who had a grudge. Something horrible had happened to them and they are so angry they are lashing out. It was a cry for justice. People were dying because the truth about what happened to the ghosts haunting Oksu Station is being covered up.

Na-young decided that she would uncover the truth about the orphans and reveal their story.

Main Characters:

• Na-young (played by Kim Bo-ra, “My Only Love Song”)

Where to Watch

Viewership and Rating:

• IMDb: 4.7 out of 10 stars
• My Drama List: 6.9 out of 10 stars
• Letterboxd: 2.5 out of 5 stars
• Amazon customers rated this film 4.1 out of 5 stars

My personal rating is the same as My Drama List.

“The Ghost Station” is supposed to be a horror/supernatural. But it wasn’t scary. It wasn’t creepy. It didn’t keep you on the edge of your seat. But because the storyline involved a mystery surrounding missing children, a crime against innocent children, you watched it because you wanted to know what was going to happen.

LINKS OF INTEREST:

N.Flying’s Kim Jae Hyun Shows Excitement For Participating In Upcoming Movie Adaptation Of Webtoon “Oksu Station Ghost” | TRENDS | KPopMap

Film Review: Creepy but Formulaic “The Ghost Station” | from Planet Dave

The Ghost Station Is Definitely Trying To Be A Scary Movie | hallyureviews

Curses and Epitaphs: The Ghost Station (2023) Review | Blood Brothers Films

The Ghost Station (2023) | The Movie Database (TMDB)

The Horror-Mystery Based On The Korean Urban Legend, “The Ghost Station,” Debuts On Blu-ray™, DVD, & Digital December 19 – Irish Film Critic

TRAILERS/TEASERS:

Trailer, Rapid. “THE GHOST STATION Official Trailer (2023) Horror Movie HD.” YouTube Video. YouTube, December 9, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=degScfxtSqA.‌