Eastern Folklore

Jeoseung-saja

저승사자

Also: Korean grim reaper

The jeoseung-saja is the death-envoy of Korean folk belief, taking the souls of the dead from this world to the next according to a fixed register. In folktales he can be bribed, or take the wrong person — a low-ranking clerk of a bureaucratic underworld.

This distinctly East Asian image of death run by vast ledgers and registers touches directly on our serial’s world, where numbers and records decide human fates.

Korean folk religion

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