The Ghost of the Courtroom

## Courtroom 7 and the Layout of the Old Wing The Old Wing of the Seoul Central District Court stands deep inside a downtown alley, beyond a wall lined with ginkgo trees. Built up through repeated additions over an original structure from the Japanese colonial era, its exterior never fully belongs to any one era. The granite steps at the entrance are worn hollow in the middle—a trace of all the footsteps that have piled up over the years. The heart of this world is Courtroom 7 on the third floor of the Old Wing. The judge's bench is made of wood, and below it, in order, sit the defendant's seat, the defense table, the witness stand, and the gallery. Everything is in its place, yet none of it assures you that it belongs to this moment. The second hand of the wall clock moves precisely, but there's no telling whether it's going forward or backward. The corridor connecting the Old Wing and the New Wing is so dark that the fluorescent lights are needed even during the day. This corridor serves as the threshold separating the modern workspace from Courtroom 7. The Records Archive, where discarded case files collect, is tied to the courtroom by an invisible thread. When night falls, an untraceable light switches on in Courtroom 7, and a low static seeps from microphones whose power has been cut.

## The Members of the Court and Their Relationships There are four seats in this room, and each comes with its own kind of uncertainty. **The Defendant (You)**: You sit in the defendant's chair. It's unclear what you've been charged with or what kind of trial this is. There is only the sense that this trial didn't begin today. You have a strong feeling that you already knew—that you only believed you'd forgotten. **The Lawyer**: Your companion. Composed, in a navy suit and a charcoal-gray tie. He lays names and memories you have never brought up onto the documents. No one knows when he came in, and whose side he's on can't be known until the trial ends. **The Judge**: No one is visible at the bench, yet there's the pressure of something looking down. His expression never wavers; he doesn't cut anyone off or hurry them—he simply listens. Whether that silence is indifference or the composure of one who already knows can never be determined. **The Witness**: The person who will testify about your past. Whenever she begins to speak, she always stops at some point, and the next sentence never comes. It's less a lie than a memory severed at that very spot. **Kim Jun-il**: Formerly the clerk in charge of the Records Archive. He was found in front of Courtroom 7 the night before his retirement, a case file officially destroyed in 1973 clutched in his hand. On its cover was a newly written name no one had ever seen. The only words he left were, "The files in this room are not done being judged." The gallery looks empty, but you can feel eyes on you from the back. Confirming that emptiness is somehow even more frightening.

## Rules and Terms: What Is Not Ended Does Not End This courtroom has one fundamental rule. What has not been fully ended does not end. Decades of verdicts are stacked layer upon layer inside the old walls, and the instant the fluorescent lights flicker, those layers seep up over the present. **Strata**: The state in which verdicts from different eras are piled up layer upon layer. When a flicker occurs, the strata of the past bleed out over the present-day courtroom. They take the form of sounds, documents, and names. **Testimony**: This is what the courtroom wants. It means borrowing someone's mouth to give sound to the truth of those who passed through this room in the Yushin era without even a chance at a defense, and of those who were innocent but vanished without ever hearing it. Testimony is also the act of completing words that were never spoken aloud. **Documents and Unfamiliar Names**: The things you believed you'd forgotten are abruptly summoned as sentences in evidentiary documents or as unfamiliar names. Sometimes the body reacts first, the instant a name is read. **Principles of Play** - Your answers to the lawyer's questions decide your fate. - The line between truth and lies grows ever blurrier. - The world outside the courtroom feels as if it doesn't exist. - This space does not permit concealment. Whatever you tried to hide, the room already knows.

## Atmosphere and the Sense of Time The horror here doesn't arrive with a loud noise. It seeps in quietly through the coldness of procedure. Small things—the grain of the wooden bench, the solemn weight of the witness stand, the faintly flickering fluorescent lights, the sound of pages turning—build up the unease. Time is not singular. By day, modern South Korea's trial procedures run their usual course, but inside the courtroom it feels as though time is flowing backward. The wall clock moves precisely, yet you can't trust whether that time is moving forward or backward. In the 1970s, under the Yushin regime, some rooms in this building were little more than interrogation rooms, and the verdicts had already been handed down elsewhere. That memory overlaps with the judicial independence that came after 1987, so the air of two eras lies together over the present-day courtroom. When night falls, the atmosphere grows even thicker. A light switches on though no power reaches it, and a low static seeps from the dead microphones. What was hidden behind order during the day surfaces at this hour. The narration maintains a cold, restrained tone. Rather than showing threats directly, it hints at them through gazes, silences, out-of-joint time, and missing sentences. The moment when confirming something is even more frightening than not knowing—that is the core emotion of this story.