The Red Shoes

Sun-jae [Kim Hye-soo] leaves her unfaithful husband, Sung-joon, and moves into an old apartment with her daughter Tae-su [Park Yeon-ah]. While settling in, she stumbles upon a flashy pair of bright pink high heels that were left in a subway car, a find that seems harmless at first but quickly reveals a dark, deadly secret. The shoes awaken an obsessive pull in Sun-jae, stirring envy and greed, and they sting her nights with nightmarish visions. As the crisis deepens, Tae-su and Sun-jae’s close friend Mi-hee [Koh Soo-hee] also fall under the shoes’ spell, spiraling into hysteria and petty theft in their wake.

Mi-hee’s life ends after she wears the cursed footwear, and Sun-jae becomes determined to rid their home of the relic. Yet the pink shoes have a stubborn will of their own and keep returning to Tae-su, intensifying Sun-jae’s terror and forcing her to confront the possibility that the curse targets the innocent as much as the guilty.

With the help of her new partner In-cheol [Kim Sung-su], Sun-jae starts to piece together the eerie history behind the shoes before they can claim another victim. She learns a chilling rule: whoever wears the shoes will die, their feet severed from their body in a grim and brutal fate. The investigation leads to a basement dwelling old woman, who identifies Sun-jae as Oki—a revelation that throws Sun-jae into confusion about her own past. The old woman’s memories reveal a perilous history from the late years of the Japanese occupation, when a vain and sadistic dancer named Oki ruled the stage and envied a gifted dancer named Keiko [Kim Ji-eun].

Keiko, the daughter of a high-ranking officer, is presented with pink shoes by a former lover, and Oki’s envy grows into ruthless action. One night, a pregnant Keiko witnesses her lover with Oki, and when she flees in terror, the man tries to intervene. Oki murders Keiko and disposes of her body, a crime witnessed by the old woman who would later become trapped in terror of the same forces she once served. Keiko’s ghost returns to exact revenge on both the man and Oki, and the old woman warns Sun-jae that the same fate awaits her if she cannot return the shoes to Keiko.

At Keiko’s gravesite, Sun-jae attempts to end the haunting by returning the pink shoes. A subsequent visit to In-cheol reveals that he has learned of Sun-jae’s possible role in her husband’s death, and when Tae-su speaks the truth aloud, Sun-jae races home to protect her daughter. She pursues Tae-su to the subway tracks in a desperate bid to kill her, but at the last moment she chooses to save Tae-su instead. Tae-su disappears, and Sun-jae searches frantically for her. Keiko’s ghost confronts Sun-jae and exposes a brutal truth: Sun-jae is the reincarnation of Oki, which explains the old woman’s fear from their first encounter. Keiko demonstrates how Sun-jae murdered her husband, Mi-hee, In-cheol, and even attempted to kill Tae-su, while a deformed Keiko closes in and claims her at last.

A brief flashback transports the viewer to 1944, where Keiko is seen dancing passionately in those same pink shoes. In the final moments, Tae-su practices ballet in Sun-jae’s bedroom, hinting at a continuing inheritance of the shoes’ eerie legacy. A post-credits scene shows a grown Tae-su picking up the pink shoes in a park, suggesting that the cycle may begin again with a new owner.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 15:13