North Korea is a closed country, so foreign researchers working on anomalous zones have never heard of the Swamp of Fear. Last year, Chinese media reported the area after a visit by Chinese diplomat Yichu Son.
Bylchu is a swampy forest, where reeds and stunted trees grow. In 1949, during the war between the Republic of Korea and the DPRK, about a hundred North Korean soldiers disappeared in Bilchu. At first it was thought that they died from exploding bombs after an air raid. However, local residents found the corpses of soldiers, which, despite the enormous humidity, were perfectly preserved. The soldiers wore khaki military uniforms and carried weapons and ammunition. There were no wounds on the body, the dead were lying on their backs, with their hands folded on their chest.
Since then, local residents have not visited the Bilchu bog. Even before the war they knew that people were dying in this swamp. More precisely, they do not return from there, disappearing without a trace. According to local belief, a huge white worm lives in the swamp, which is called Bilchu. Seeing a person, he crawls out of the water and opens his mouth, from where a terrible stench and poisonous fumes are erupting. From these vapors people are supposedly killed. Those people who are good for food are dragged into the swamp by Bilchu, but if the prey seems tasteless to the worm, he leaves the body to lie in the swamp. Koreans believe that Bilchu ate some of the soldiers, and left the rest to lie where they died from his bad breath.
Ichu Sonya's guide was the local old man Pak, the only villager who agreed to go to the swamp. Park explained his consent: “I am already old, I will die soon anyway. My old woman has died, we have not made children, so if Bilchu takes me away, there will be no one to grieve. Pak's consent to go to the swamp was also fueled by the money that the Chinese gave him.
Yichu Son describes his impression of the anomalous zone as follows: “We walked through a forest where black bamboo grew. The thickets were so thick that they had to cut through with an ax. Already here I smelled a strange smell, reminiscent of the smell of blood. After about three hours we came out to the swamp. We were immediately enveloped in a thick fog. Vague sounds were heard. The smell had changed, now it resembled the smell of rotting meat. The fog soon cleared, and I saw Pak sitting on the ground praying. “I’m not going further, and I don’t advise you,” he muttered, swaying back and forth.
Still, I decided to step into the swamp. He jumped from bump to bump, at times stepping on solid ground. So I moved forward for about fifteen minutes. The swamp "breathed" stench and bubbles. Then something unexpectedly happened in the world around me, the sky from light blue suddenly turned bright pink.
Bright flashes of light began to flicker before my eyes. I had to sit on a bump. There was a strange hissing sound: “Shiu! Shiu! Shiu! The ground shook under my feet, and I immediately remembered the legend of a huge worm. Perhaps it was he who shook the earth? I felt weak and seem to have passed out. When he woke up and looked at his watch, he realized that he had been in oblivion for about an hour.
The sky seemed to turn blue, the earth tremor stopped. However, the foul smell was still in the air, so you had to pinch your nose. I did not tempt fate and returned to the edge of the swamp. For a long time I searched for the way, but still I went out to the old man. Pak asked: “Did you hear Bilchu? It was he hissing. A couple more minutes, and I wouldn't wait for you. You were born in a shirt - you visited Bilchu in the swamp and survived!"
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Back in China, Yichu Son turned to Peking University biologists with a request to explain the strange natural phenomena that he had seen in Korea. In their opinion, in the Swamp of Fear, due to special climatic conditions, plants rot intensively, while poisonous fumes are released. It is likely that these vapors affect the psyche of a person who loses orientation, hallucinations appear, and as a result, the person loses consciousness and dies.
This purely scientific explanation completely satisfied sane people who do not believe in anomalous zones, man-eating worms in the swamp and other devilry. However, it is unlikely that it will satisfy people who have lived for decades near the thickets of black reeds and the Bilchu bog.
This is the story that Yichu Son heard from Old Man Park. His father, Oron Pak, went to the Swamp of Fear in 1952. He had a compass, the needle of which, when approaching the swamp, suddenly began to spin like a madman. Oron decided to go around the swamp along the edge and went to the Segan hill. This place is also known to the locals for its quirks. The fact is that here large boulders spontaneously move along the ground, leaving a trail behind them. Koreans believe that the spirits of ancestors live in the "wandering" stones.
Pak climbed the hill. Two hundred meters remained to the top. The Korean felt tired and decided to take a break. The traveler lay down next to a huge stone and did not notice how he fell asleep. When he woke up a few hours later, he saw a strange picture.
The stone "left" three meters, and not down, which would be understandable, but up! The boulder plowed the rocky soil like a plow, leaving behind him a trench twenty centimeters deep. Auron noticed that the surrounding landscape had changed. A thick fog hung over the top of Segan, white and dense as milk. Oron went there, but suddenly he had a blackout.
Pak woke up when a local shepherd bent over him. The shepherd said: “However, you are a brave man - you were not afraid to climb to the top of Segan. The spirit of the wind lives there. He could have ruined you. " The shepherd gave Pac milk to drink, and he went home, carefully avoiding the Swamp of Fear. Since then, Oron never went to the swamp or to the hill with "wandering" stones.