Korean Horror

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing. In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat. In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world.

In South Korea, a 105-year-old woman receives a letter. Ten days later, she has been thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come. Hak Jeonga has always shouldered the burden of upholding the family name. When she sent her daughter-in-law to America to cover up an illegitimate birth, she was simply doing what was needed to preserve the reputations of her loved ones. How could she have known that decades later, this decision would return to haunt her?

His tour is over, but the war rages on for Dickie, one of the forever-haunted veterans who gave up his soul during the Forgotten War. Here is a glimpse of his story, of the battleground he can never leave. Only death can conclude his final objective: closure, and peace. Join him on his road, the Korean Road, as he battles horrors he carries and those that he meets along the way.

『불타는 소녀들』은 비밀이 많은 작은 시골 마을에서 벌어지는 일을 그린 스릴러로 C. J. 튜더는 인터뷰를 통해 실제 자신이 이사한 마을에서 이 소설의 영감을 받았다고 밝혔다. 마을로 이사한 첫날, 차를 몰고 가다 우연히 낡은 예배당을 보았는데 이상하고 소름 끼치는 느낌을 받았다는 것이다. 그녀는 어떤 직감 같은 것을 따라 마을의 역사를 조사하게 되었고, 마을에 충격적인 과거가 있음을 알게 되었다. 500년 전, 메리 여왕 시절에 신교도 열일곱 명이 화형에 처했다는 것. 그리고 화형당한 사람들을 추모하기 위해 매년 인형을 만들어 태운다는 것. 이 끔찍한 피의 역사로부터 『불타는 소녀들』은 시작되었다.

곽재식은 누구보다도 재미난 이야기 소재들을 사랑하는 작가입니다. 비단 SF뿐만 아니라 동서양의 판타지와 전설 등, 현실 밖의 꿈과 상상과 환상 속에 담긴 이야기들을 찾고 수집하죠.