Best Horror Manhwa

After China produced legendary movies, and Japanese anime went from niche to mainstream, it’s now South Korea’s time to shine. Their works have been catching on worldwide for a while now, from big K-pop bands like BTS to shows like Squid Game and movies like Parasite. They offer a fresh perspective that many may not have seen before.

This perspective also crops up in their comics, or manhwa, which have also been catching on internationally thanks to websites like Webtoon and Tapas. So, if readers are in the mood for a scary thrill ride, they can dive in and bring up the best horror manhwa people should read.

Updated on October 27, 2024, by David Heath: Halloween is coming up again, so it’s only fair to update this article with a few more highly-rated horror manhwa. Particularly as it’s a fast-growing medium. More manhwa are getting translated into English and published internationally, be it officially through online services, or as fan translations, making it easier to get into these Korean comics.

So, there are a lot of horror manhwa for fans to dig into, whether they’re mysteries, domestic dramas, vampire stories, murderous romances, and more. They’re bound to find something that clicks with them, with these some of the most popular strips.

20 DEEP

Anime-Planet Score: 3.46/5 Stars

• Written by TOWOO, Illustrated by Tae Heon Kim.
• 45 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Some readers might like to check out horror manhwa for something new, especially if they’re burned out on love and isekai. But they might prefer something more mysterious than monsters or zombies, like TOWOO and Tae Heon Kim’s DEEP. It’s more akin to classic horror stories like Pet Semetary and Village of the Damned in that the threat comes from a loved one who isn’t what they seem.

When a giant wave crashes on Gwangan-li Beach, it washes up a mass of human bodies. At first, they’re mistaken for corpses, but they turn out to be people who went missing years ago. They’re still alive and haven’t aged a day. Yet they act strangely, moving awkwardly and being drawn back towards the sea. Whoever or whatever they are, the truth behind them lies somewhere in the ocean’s depths.

19 Hive

Anime-Planet Score: 3.85/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by Kyusam Kim.
• 242 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Kyusam Kim’s Hive is a lengthy one, running 242 episodes split across three parts. That’s not including its (currently) untranslated spin-offs, The Dog Man and The Deadly Queen on Navver. It goes to show how well the story caught on with readers, particularly with its rather old-school premise. When Eun-Sung Lee heads to Seoul for work, he discovers the city is overrun by giant insects.

If the bugs don’t catch people, their mutating infection will. That’s not to mention the criminal gangs that are willing to use the chaos to their advantage. It’s up to Lee to rescue any other survivors, reunite with his family, and get them to safety. With threats at every turn, it’s no wonder his journey is a long and perilous one.

18 Rotten

Anime-Planet Score: 3.99/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by GOOD GUY.
• 49 Chapters.
• Available on Webtoon.

Also known as Foul Smell, GOOD GUY’s Rotten is as much a crime mystery story as a supernatural horror. Officer Han has a strong nose for sniffing out evil, while Jaeshin has the ability to see dead people. Together, they’re good at solving missing person cases, but they’re after one missing person in particular: their lost friend.

Their trail leads them to a stuntwoman, Yuhyeon, who helps with their investigation. Only for all three to discover their friend got tied up in a web of corruption, crimes, and overwhelming evil. If they can’t stand the stench or sights, their friend may be lost forever. It’s a unique story and one that makes good on the title with its gruesome sights.

17 Distant Sky

Anime-Planet Score: 4.03/5 Stars

• Written by Inwan Youn and illustrated by Seon-Hee Kim.
• 117 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Inwan Youn and Seon-Hee Kim’s Distant Sky also see Seoul crumble to ruin, but its destruction is more inexplicable. Hanuel Kang went from dozing off in class to waking up in what’s left of the city. Giant bugs also lurk in the shadows, alongside other monsters under a perpetual night sky.

With just one other person, Shin Heyool, the two have to learn how to survive on their own and discover how Seoul fell, if they can handle the truth. While Hive has its epic length and action, Distant Sky has the edge in character building with its realistic dialogue, and psychological chills that can be felt throughout the pages.

16 How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game

Anime-Planet Score: 4.10/5 Stars

• Written by Seochi, based on the novel by Kim YomYom.
• Illustrated by SINcere.
• 50 Episodes.
• Available on Tapas.

Isekai stories are just as big in manhwa as they are in manga, with plenty of stories about people getting sucked into fantasy worlds, novels, or video games. How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game spells its premise out in the title, as its lead contends with a horror game by A-coms called ‘The Murder of Pflatzgraff Manor’. The graphics are great, but its extreme difficulty puts off most players.

They start the game by playing Adrian, a cursed aristocrat who’s driven to murder as many people as possible to exorcise himself. It sounds straightforward enough, but one player spent so long trying to beat it that they fell asleep partway through. Once they wake up, they find themselves as Hilda, one of Adrian’s maids. Now they have to convince Adrian to spare them if they can’t avoid him altogether, and survive his evil machinations. It results in a dark horror romance that’s as creepy as it is gripping.

15 Never-Ending Darling

Anime-Planet Score: 4.14/5 Stars

• Written and Illustrated by Woollee.
• 87 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

In Never-Ending Darling, human suffering has essentially been eradicated thanks to the new cloning technology developed by Geunhu Ji. By registering one’s DNA into the cloning database, professionals can fix genetic flaws and extend lifespans. But there’s a dark side to it, as Geunhu’s girlfriend, Yoon Ha-Im, suddenly finds a dead body in her house. Her dead body, in fact.

The next day, she wakes up with no memory of the previous day, but finds a note from herself saying “Ha-Im, if you’re reading this, you’re a clone”. Akin to the movie The 6th Day, it takes a horror twist as Geunhu has been using his knowledge of cloning to control Ha-Im, killing her and recreating her when she goes outside his boundaries. The real Ha-Im died long ago, but her clone’s only hope is to break his cycle. It’s an intriguing sci-fi take on domestic horror.

14 Radio Storm

Anime-Planet Score: 4.15/5 Stars

• Written by Seon-Ui Lee.
• Illustrated by Seo Gyeong.
• 82 Episodes.
• Fan Translatons only.

There are all sorts of horror romances, from stories where the love interest turns out to be a monster, like Never-Ending Darling, to ones where the monster is a love interest, like How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game. They’re not always heterosexual pairings too, as there are a ton of yaoi and yuri manhwa out there, with plenty of yaoi horror stories in particular, like Radio Storm.

It follows Sak, a man stuck in a research facility called ‘the School’ that looks into ‘possessors of the Core’- people with special powers. Sak hates it, as his only special power is an extraordinary sense of smell. Things get worse when a deadly plague begins spreading outside the School, turning people into lethal zombies. Sak learns the only way he can survive is by finding a person who can amplify his powers – his ‘Caller’. He escapes with his friend Ginger in search of this Caller, taking his chances with the threats outside.

13 Chasing Tails

Anime-Planet Score: 4.18/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by Bashi.
• 107 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Chasing Tails sounds like a skill issue in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. But it’s actually a murder mystery horror manhwa where detectives Jeongdo Kwon and Yeongchae Shin, alongside neuropsychiatrist Dr Yeongwha Ju, have a particularly difficult case to work with. A building collapse trapped 9 college students under the rubble for 2 weeks, leaving only 6 survivors, and only 4 could still speak.

However, the 3 deceased students didn’t look like they were killed by the wreckage. Their bodies were mangled so viciously that the police believe they were murdered. The detectives have to go through the evidence and witness testimony to figure out what happened. Any one of the survivors could be the killer, and figuring out who is an uphill struggle that’ll reveal more than the detectives bargained for.

12 Parallel City

Anime-Planet Score: 4.21/5 Stars

• Written and Illustrated by Goda.
• 149 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

The clone horror continues in Parallel City, only this time, the clones are acting against their copies. Reports of people finding identical doppelgängers of themselves across the city increase, before being followed by disappearances. For example, Min Choi’s childhood friend Jung Kim disappeared for 11 months, before returning as a seemingly different person.

Things only get stranger when Min Choi finds a more violent, criminal version of himself who knows everything about him, including his parkour skills. Its first season plays out more like a mystery thriller. Butt when Min Choi discovers where these clones have been coming from, it pivots into a deadly survival horror tale where he learns just why the doppelgangers are more twisted than their regular world selves.

11 Delusion

Anime-Planet Score: 4.21/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by Jac-Ga Hong.
• 60 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Jac-Ga Hong’s Delusion moves away from bugs and Deep Ones to another kind of threat. One that may sound familiar as it starts like an art-based version of Dracula. Set in 1935, artist Iho Yun is commissioned by noblewoman Jeonghwa Song to paint a portrait of her. She’s lived alone for decades, isolated from the rest of society. So, Yun was expecting to see an elderly recluse.

Instead, he sees a beautiful young woman, but one who asks Iho to paint her as if she were old. Then, among the paint tubes, he finds a letter warning him not to finish the painting. Whoever stays with Madam Song either goes mad or is never seen again. The manhwa goes into Song’s curious past and Yun’s increasingly strange present with chilling storytelling and stunning artwork.

10 Evolution: Road to Space Monster

Anime-Planet Score: 4.22/5 Stars

• Written and illustrated by Inamu and Horror Turtle.
• 38+ Episodes.
• Available on DayComics.

A lot of isekai stories see their protagonists become big superstars in their new world due to key skills they know, or some tech they have (In Another World With My Smartphone). Some buck the trend by making things harder for their leads or making them villains (or villainesses). But they rarely become some big ugly beast like, say, a space monster.

This is exactly what happens in Evolution: Road to Space Monster when its protagonist gets reborn as an A-Morph, a beast in a sci-fi survival horror game. To survive, they have to use what they know about the game to evolve into its different forms, some more familiar than others. Which involves stalking humans and feeding on them. It’s essentially Alien from the Xenomorph’s POV with a sprinkling of isekai.

9 Night Of Shadows

Anime-Planet Score: 4.22/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by YUNG.
• 51+ Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

At least with monsters, serial killers, ghosts, and other physical threats, people can still run away from them. It doesn’t always work in fiction, but it’s a form of escape. Yet there’s no escape when the horror lurks within a person’s head, like in Night of Shadows. Here, Areum gradually discovers her dreams and premonitions eventually come true, and not always for the best.

She starts keeping notes to keep track of them, only to come across a set of pages she doesn’t remember writing. Right when everything at her school goes down the drain. Her only chance of escape doesn’t come in fleeing, but in piecing together the missing notes, and figuring out when she wrote them. All while avoiding the horrors that lurk in the darkness.

8 Dreadful Night

Anime-Planet Score: 4.23/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by Mo-an.
• 30+ Episodes.
• Available on Lezhin Comics and Bomtoon.

Combining the yaoi of Radio Storm and the video game isekai of How to Survive as a Maid in a Horror Game, Dreadful Night sees its lead, Pi Bada, trapped in a horror RPG. He has to play his way out of the game, but he’s had no luck in his sessions, often dying in one way or another and resetting his progress.

Things take a turn when he notices Nam Doha acting suspiciously. He thought he was just one of the game’s many NPCs, albeit one that took an unusual interest in him, until he saw him kill a villager. Bada doesn’t know whether it was a glitch or self-defense, as Doha is the only person that’s been capable of taking out one of the game’s killers. Could Doha be another player? And if so, can they work together to escape the game, or will he be Doha’s next victim?

7 Jack: The American Ghost

Anime-Planet Score: 4.26/5 Stars

• Written by Ji-Hye Han.
• Illustrated by Jeong-Eun Ahn.
• 64 Episodes.
• Available on Tapas.

Go-Eun Ma’s family has run a haunted house attraction at an amusement park since she was a kid, but after her mother passed away, she struggled to keep the building afloat. If she can’t find a way to renovate the place, it’ll be demolished within the year. However, she does have a plan. She’ll go to America and take on the Ghost Jack’s House challenge where, if she spends 15 days in the place without dying or going mad, she’ll win $1 million.

At first, it seems like an ordinary haunted house, but as its trials go on, she soon learns its ghosts are the real deal. But Go-Eun endures and even endears herself to the titular Jack and his ghostly chums. By its end, it will have taken readers on an emotional ride as it ranges from grim horror to romance with twists and turns in its tale. It’s a fitting read for people who like a little more to go with their shocks and spills.

6 Ghost Teller

Anime-Planet Score: 4.28/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by QTT.
• 92 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

If one scary story isn’t enough, QTT’s Ghost Teller offers six in a row in its first season alone. The premise is simple. Six ghosts tell each other scary stories about humans, which detail how they each met their ends. For example, in “The Story of Her Truth,” Aram relates how a young pop idol loses her career and her life thanks to rumors, conspiracies, and betrayal.

The other stories aren’t any lighter, from the gaslighting in “The Story of a Family,” to the bittersweet sacrifice in “The Story of Brothers.” They all illustrate how humans may be scared of ghosts, but they’re capable of being more horrific, shocking, and scary things than anything the supernatural could conjure up. Its realistic storytelling and strong artwork only make it a more stark and harrowing read.

5 Pigpen

Anime-Planet Score: 4.29/5 Stars

• Written by Kim Carnby and illustrated by Beomsik Cheon.
• 68 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

One of the best and most prolific horror manhwa writers is Kim Carnby. His works like Shotgun Boy really found an audience with their mix of domestic terror and monster threats, surrounding their leads with danger. But Pigpen drops the latter in favor of a mystery that traps its lead as effectively as zombies or giant bugs.

It sees Jin-Hyeok Song washing up on a beach on a beautiful island with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Searching for help, he comes across a family willing to take him in. But as he fruitlessly searches for clues about who he is, the family turns out to have their own secrets. If he can’t escape or figure things out soon, he’ll become another skeleton in their closet.

4 Leviathan

Anime-Planet Score: 4.31/5 Stars

• Written by Gyeong-Tak Lee and illustrated by Mi-Young Noh.
• 214 Episodes.
• Fan Translations only.

Post-apocalyptic settings are nothing new to horror stories, as Hive and Distant Sky show. Leviathan mixes things up by seemingly taking inspiration from the movie Waterworld. The comic’s world ended when a comet struck the earth and made its sea levels swallow up every continent. Whatever’s left of humanity can only survive on ships on a planet that’s now permanently ocean.

It would be fine if there weren’t giant, monstrous sea creatures lurking in the sea’s deepest depths. Two siblings, Bota and Lita, learn this firsthand when one creature emerges and kills their father. All they have left of his are his tales of a set of legendary harpoonists who could hold the most fierce beasts at bay. They hope to follow in their footsteps, only to discover there are more horrors out there than beasts.

3 Surviving Romance

Anime-Planet Score: 4.32/5 Stars

• Written & Illustrated by Lee Yone.
• 102 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Lee Yone is perhaps better known for The Makeup Remover, a story about love and cosmetics. It was quite grounded in the real world, commenting on modern society and its hang-ups on looks. So, it’s surprising to see they also made Surviving Romance, an isekai that turns a romance into a survival horror story. It all starts when a young girl finds herself becoming Chaerin, the lead in her favorite romance novel.

With the chance to live out her dreams, she looks past the shadowy “extras” and focuses on the novel’s happy ending. Except it doesn’t come. The story changes when zombies invade, and she’s stuck in a time loop where each death brings her to the morning of the novel’s first day. Now she has to befriend the “extras” and learn their stories to survive. Then, hopefully, she can break the cycle and have a new happy ending.

2 Sweet Home

Anime-Planet Score: 4.37/5 Stars

• Written by Kim Carnby and illustrated by Youngchan Hwang.
• 141 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

Horror manhwa fans can’t go wrong with Kim Carnby’s work, with Pigpen and Bastard being particular highlights with their mix of unsightly terrors and dark themes. For example, Shotgun Boy saw its titular character, a bullied student called Gyuhwan, pick up a shotgun to get revenge on his bullies, only to end up protecting them against some brain-sucking monsters.

That strip is still running and acts as a prequel to his earlier work, Sweet Home. It sees another bullied student, Hyun-cha, driven to isolate himself in his apartment block because of bullying at his school. He plots to make his next venture outside his last, planning to commit suicide, only to discover the world is overrun by monsters. In seeking to end his life, he now has to work with others to keep humanity alive and fight back against the monsters.

1 Bastard

Anime-Planet Score: 4.38/5 Stars

• Written by Kim Carnby and illustrated by Youngchan Hwan.
• 94 Episodes.
• Available on Webtoon.

While Carnby has drawn his own work before, some of his best work was done in collaboration with other artists, including the one that’s arguably at the top of the tree. Illustrated by Youngchan Hwan, Bastard continues the domestic horror trend by sticking its lead in an inescapable situation. Born sickly, requiring an artificial heart valve and a glass eye, Jin is reliant on his single father Dong-Soo to get by.

Unfortunately, the man is a serial killer who targets young women and often forces Jin to help him dispose of his kills. But when his dad goes after a young girl who saved his life, Jin begins to turn on his father. It makes for a thrilling read, mixing visceral horror with something more psychological, as Jin could find himself as his dad’s next victim at any moment.