The Black Orb by Ewhan Kim
Publication Date: Feb. 4, 2025 | MIRA
Ewhan Kim’s South Korean horror, The Black Orb, starts off in grand fashion, hitting the ground running with the feel of a classic monster movie with a nifty sci-fi twist. Jeong-su is taking a smoke break in the alley outside his home when he first notices the titular black orb approaching, watching in horror as it violently absorbs the people it comes into contact with. As Jeong-su flees, his attempts at warning others falling on deaf ears because people think he’s crazy, much to their detriment. Kim channels a slasher horror vibe almost immediately, with Jeong-su being stalked through the streets of his Seol neighborhood, as if he’s being pursued by Jason by way of a kaiju. It’s a brilliant, engaging, and intense opening.
And then it’s all pretty much downhill from there.
As the orb consumes more and more Koreans, it eventually begins to undergo mitosis, multiplying to such a rapid degree that there is no hope for humanity the world over. Kim’s monster mash quickly dovetails into the post-apocalyptic, with Jeong-su among the small handful of survivors. There’s plenty of interesting scenarios to contend with, as he tries to adapt to life on the run from the orbs, gets taken in by one group only to be exiled again, and running into gangs pillaging whatever has been left by those who were absorbed.
The longer it goes on, though, the less engaging it becomes. The orbs grow into such a monumental existential threat that we eventually become inured to their danger, and one can’t help but wonder what metaphor Kim is striving towards here. The black orbs eventually are labeled The Orbs of Despair, giving us at least one on the nose interpretation, in which society is threatened by a general malaise. The Black Orb could certainly, and perhaps most easily, be viewed as a work written in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, or even the rise of far-right politics that threaten to destroy us all the world over, especially in the book’s latter chapters which see the survivors seeking revenge and trying to place blame on somebody, anybody, for the horrors that befell them. One might even view it as a response to our lack of proper actions being taken globally against the climate crisis. Even now, with the Palisades wildfires rampaging across California, one can’t help but think of MAGA’s attempt to blame wokeness, diversity initiatives, and women as the primarily culprit behind this climate disaster rather than face scientific facts. The Black Orb is rife with this kind of broadly sweeping, one size fits all social commentary.
However, readers looking for singular answers will likely find plenty to be disappointed in. Kim offers nothing in the way of explanation regarding the orbs appearance, where they came from, or why they do what they do, letting them operate purely as a metaphor du jour. There’s a sense of timelessness to be found in this approach, of course; read The Black Orb in another twenty years and you’ll likely find plenty of socio-political concerns to relate it to as you can today, presuming we’re still around, of course.
I wasn’t particularly bothered by the lack of answers regarding the orbs, and found myself largely pleased by Kim’s commentary on society in general. But as the book went on, I couldn’t help but wonder how Kim was going to resolve the multifaceted issues raised throughout The Black Orb. Jeong-su is a selfish and self-serving protagonist that progressively grows harder to root for the more we learn about him, eventually twisting toward the downright vile as his homophobia toward another survivor he becomes mutually dependent upon grows violent and abusive. What fate would be in store for a man such as him, in a post-apocalyptic Seol ruled by violence and its demands for bloodlust to be satiated?
The simple answer is, there is no answer. Kim simply ends the novel. There’s no definitive statement, no judgements, no emotional or moral resolution. It’s the kind of weak, open-ended anticlimax that made me wish I hadn’t slogged through so much tepid, shallow character work, repetitious ideas, and vulgar sexual abuses. After getting my hopes up with such a strong opening, Kim’s lack of definitive closure, particularly as it relates to Jeong-su, feels cowardly and trite.
A part of me can’t help but wonder if something got lost in translation, or if perhaps my total lack of cultural awareness of Korean society disserved me here. It’s certainly possible I’m too much the “ugly American” to fully appreciate Kim’s commentary, and that whatever he was striving for has fallen on the deaf and ignorant in this US reader. It’s also possible that this is exactly what Kim was striving for, if we’re to view The Black Orb on a metatextual level, with his final chapters attempting to capture those feeling of despair with its oblique finale and to leave readers in a fit of discomfort. In that case, it only half-worked. I wasn’t left feeling despair, only disappointment.
