Melanie Hyo-In Han’s illustrated talk explores K-Pop Demon Hunters as a gateway to Korea’s spiritual landscape.
The film’s vision of song as sorcery and female warriors battling unseen forces draws directly from musok, Korea’s indigenous shamanic tradition. For centuries, mudang—predominantly women—have worked with spirits through ritual music, dance, and performance to heal, protect, and negotiate with the unseen world. In K-Pop Demon Hunters, these practices are reimagined as pop spectacle, where music becomes a weapon and performance becomes ritual.
In this lecture, Melanie Hyo-In Han explores how musok and mudang traditions—often misunderstood or marginalised—inform the film’s imagery, narrative, and worldview. Moving beyond the screen, the talk situates these practices within a living tradition shaped by women’s spiritual authority, the disruptions of Japanese colonisation, and the pressures of modernisation.
Blending historical insight, cultural critique, and rich visual material, K-Pop Demon Hunters: Women, Spirits, and Korea’s Occult Traditions offers audiences a deeper understanding of Korean spirits, ritual song, and female power—revealing how ancient occult lineages continue to resurface in contemporary global culture.
Melanie Hyo-In Han
Born in Korea and raised in East Africa, Melanie Hyo-In Han recently moved from the U.S. to the U.K. She is the author of Passing Notes in Secret (boats against the current), Abecedarian: Banff, Canada (kith books), My Dear Yeast (Milk & Cake Press), and Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips (Finishing Line Press). Currently, she is finishing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Surrey, where she teaches undergraduate seminars in the School of Literature and Languages. She also serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Flora Fiction and the Two Languages Prize Editor at Gasher Press. Learn more at melaniehan.com.
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