Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital

A closed psychiatric hospital in Gonjiam, Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, which drew ghost hunters after CNN listed it among the world's creepiest places and gave its name to a 2018 horror film. The building was demolished in 2018.

Korean Wikipedia says the Gonjiam Namyang Neuropsychiatric Hospital opened in December 1992 and closed in July 1996. The Korea Times, writing in 2018, placed it in Gonjiam, a country town in Gwangju, in Gyeonggi Province, and called it Namyang Mental Hospital.

The building's reputation grew after CNN named it one of the seven creepiest places in the world. The Korea Times said the hospital was well known among ghost hunters and thrill-seekers, and the JoongAng Ilbo called it a pilgrimage site for people seeking a scare. Korean Wikipedia describes the stories told about the place as goedam, ghost stories, and mysteries.

In 2018 those stories became a film. According to the Korean Film Council, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum follows an internet broadcaster who brings a small group into the hospital to stream a live horror show. English Wikipedia says the building's owner sued to stop the release, arguing the publicity would make the property harder to sell. In March 2018 a Seoul court ruled that the film could be shown.

The building was demolished in 2018. Korean Wikipedia says the land was sold under a contract dated 28 May 2018, after which the building was knocked down. The JoongAng Ilbo visited soon after and found excavators loading rubble into dump trucks, with bent iron bars and bricks lying nearby. The paper wrote that the site now looked like any other demolition site.