Unquiet
Things

I have a Google alert set up for “occult fashion” because, naturally, that’s what constitutes essential intelligence gathering in 2025. Today it delivered an article titled “K-Occult Goes Global: Korean Folklore and Mysticism Captivate a Worldwide Audience,” which sounded promising enough. Korean occult mysticism taking the global stage? Traditional shamanism and grim reapers as cultural exports? I was intrigued.

Buried in this piece was a mention of something called “BUMSUP” and their performance, “Monggyeong – At the Boundary of Dreams” on the World of Street Woman Fighter. I stared at those words for a moment. World of Street Woman Fighter sounded straightforward enough—until I discovered it had nothing to do with combat sports or video games. The article described it as a street dance blended with traditional Korean elements, such as sangmo hat-spinning and fan dance, reimagining the passage to the afterlife as guided by shamanic reapers.

Curiosity won, I went down the rabbit hole and watched the video. I still don’t fully understand what I witnessed, but it was extraordinary.

If I understand correctly (and maybe I don’t, who knows!) World of Street Woman Fighter is a South Korean dance competition that functions as the Olympics of street dance. Teams from different countries compete in elaborate challenges, and the “Mega Crew Mission” is their grand finale, where they create cinematic dance performances that are short films with choreography.

The BUMSUP video that led me here features dancers portraying Korean mythical figures, grim reapers acting as gatekeepers between life and death, directed by someone known as Honey J, with actress Roh Yoon-seo at the center as a dreaming girl.

I know essentially nothing about dance, but this thing has accumulated over 14 million views, and Korea’s Heritage Service left a comment on YouTube saying they came to witness this “heritage-level performance.” When government cultural institutions start sliding into your comments section, something transcendent is happening.

The performance weaves traditional Korean elements with contemporary street dance, mystical yet grounded, steeped in folklore yet immediate. The dancers become otherworldly beings moving through a fever dream where Korean mythology collides with modern choreography.

This wasn’t the occult fashion content I was looking for, but the algorithm has spoken, and I am listening. And watching. And swooning!

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