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Tales of the Unusual

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Tales of the Unusual (Korean: 기기괴괴, Hanja: 奇奇怪怪; RR: gi-gi-goe-goe) is a South Korean webtoon written and illustrated by Seong-dae Oh. It was first published on May 8th, 2013 as a weekly Naver WEBTOON web-comic. Officially, it is classified as a horror internationally and an omnibus-styled thriller domestically. As a part of the omnibus genre, it is a collection of short stories that can be read on its own: however, there are recurring characters, themes, and settings that readers can identify as Easter eggs as well as parodic episodes called “Unusual Genre Destruction” (jangreu-pa-goe-goe; Korean: 장르파괴괴) that comically alter the previous episodes. Seong-dae Oh was well known for his past works such as Bon Bon Au Chocolat, Novelist J, and Cliff Ghost (Korean: 절벽귀), as well as the Starcraft parody webtoon “Star Panic” that started his fame as a webtoon artist. Tales of the Unusual is his most renowned work today and has won the 2020 Our Manhwa Today Award (Korean: 오늘의 우리만화상) hosted by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism. It is officially translated and published in multiple languages by Naver WEBTOON, including English, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, and Indonesian.

Characteristics

The webtoon usually takes modern-day life events and twists them into uncanny horror. This is achieved by its characteristic art style, which uses an industrial colour palette of mostly grey and brown to capture the bleak and somber tones of the story, as well as simplistic character designs that do not vary in overall style.

As it is not officially sorted into horror on the Korean platform, it does not limit itself in terms of its genre. Many episodes can be seen taking advantage of elements from genres such as fantasy, science-fiction, as well as the occasional romance and drama in stories like “My Wife’s Memories.” This limitless use of the various literary genres allows the webtoon to venture into multiple themes as well.

Themes

Korean Horror as a Genre

Korean horror takes on a mix of East Asian mythology and modern trends. The basis of the Korean horror genre is rooted in folklore, such as the Korean nine-tailed fox (gumiho). However, in contemporary Korean horror, there are influences from American slasher film and Japanese horror as well.[1] As a result of these influences, it is difficult to define the Korean horror genre under a single canon or type.[1] Rather, the genre has many influences and multiple planes. The classic Korean horror displays much of the folklore and ghosts in a primarily supernatural manner, incorporating the Korean han, a representation of grief. Some newer editions of Korean horror are invoked in daily life, such as events happening during a normal day that triggers the plot. On the other hand, many of the Western horror scenes are often a result of a large, specific event that occurred to advance the plot.

Accordingly, Tales of the Unusual has an undefinably large spectrum when it comes to narratives. As scholar Robert L. Cagle notes about South Korean horror films, Korean horror “reflects its own nation’s self-image” as American horror does, but instead of stories of success in the face of adversity, they “generally revisit instances of historical, political, and cultural trauma, examining these events from more contemporary perspectives and rarely providing any sort of resolution, but more often than not, offering important insights on these events and their significance to modern-day Korea."[2] As a modern webtoon, Tales of the Unusual follows the general modern Korean horror influence of events triggered in regular life, while utilizing problems identifiable in modern Korean society such as peer pressure/bullying, unattainable beauty standards, unending competition, and so on. However, it too does not necessarily provide specific morals or resolutions at the end of the episodes.

Bullying

Oh's work touches on many societal issues present in Korea with bullying being one of them. Bullying is an ever-present issue in society with no exceptions to Korea. According to a poll that surveyed 5.5 million Korean students ranging from elementary, middle, and high school, approximately 10% of respondents said they have experienced physical abuse or bullying at least once in 2012.[3] Popular forms of bullying include indirect aggression where the victim is alienated and is treated as an outcast, wangtta in Korean, and is left out of activities or deliberately ignored. Verbal aggression, such as name-calling or starting rumours, is also a common form of bullying and despite displaying less violence, is still a serious issue. While physical aggression is less popular it is still “one of the considerably more frequent forms of bullying in Korean schools” with physical assault, treating, and taking or damaging belongings being the main forms in which this aggression is displayed.[4]

This issue can be highlighted by looking at Korea’s youth suicide rate which “jumped nearly 50% from 6.4 to 9.4 per every 100,000 people in the past 10 years."[3] Approximately 23.4% of Korean youths have thought of committing suicide in 2012 as shown through a survey conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute. Victims in such cases often tend to be silent without telling others, including their parents, because they believe “adult intervention is ineffective”[4] as stated by 46% of victims. This thought process is enforced as many adults tell the children to “toughen up” and state that “children have their own social system”[4] resulting in children not being able to get the help they need.  

Tales of the Unusual does not shy away from this topic. A series of episodes that depict such brutal abuse is "Jayce’s Pen" (Episodes 99 to 102) which shows a young student being viciously bullied through physical and verbal abuse. The story involves the protagonist discovering a pen that has the power to copy and bring entities to life, which he eventually uses on his abusers. At the beginning of the story we see the thought process of the protagonist as his inner monologue states that “if only [he] was stronger, [he] would kill them all” ("Jayce’s Pen", Episode 99), showing his frustration and contempt towards his situation and abusers. The story also shows the main character’s descent towards violence himself as once he is given the pen he tests it out on an innocent stray cat. This story highlights the severity of school bullying in Korea and how it can perpetuate this situation.

Beauty Standards

"Beauty Water" (Episodes 69 to 79) criticizes the strict beauty standards that are prevalent in Korean society and illustrates the horror from the realism of social norms. The Korean beauty standards are often inspired by Western features, as having features like pale skin, double eyelids, and a high nose bridge are preferred.[5] This is depicted when examining the most common plastic surgery procedure in Korea: as the survey among the women who have undergone cosmetic surgery indicates, 80.4% of them had double eyelid surgery, whereas 7.8% of them had rhinoplasty.[6] The rigid beauty standards that have been concentrated on the Western features are also portrayed within Tales of the Unusual in the advertisement of the "Beauty Water", which stated phrases like “I’m pushing up her flat nose” ("Beauty Water", Episode 69). Additionally, Yaeji, the protagonist of this story, becomes obsessed with the beauty water to sculpt her face and body, so that she fits into the ideal beauty standards.

South Korea is one of the countries that perform the most cosmetic surgery and a survey shows that the average age for a Korean girl to undergo plastic surgery is 19.[6][7] While society’s issues of hyper fixation on appearances and cosmetic surgery remained to be solved, its blatant discrimination based on appearance, also known as oemojisangjuui in Korean, is well demonstrated throughout the episodes in "Beauty Water".  For instance, as Yaeji turns ideally beautiful, men start to treat her nicely and praise her beauty. Prior to her using the beauty water, it seems like Yaeji was almost invisible, as she mainly stayed at home and only had a few friends ("Beauty Water", Episode 70). Additionally, studies have shown that Korean women who have had an unpleasant experience due to their appearance have a higher desire and an increased chance of cosmetic surgery.[6] This signifies how plastic surgery can be seen as a tool to escape from discrimination among the Korean people and explains why Korea is one of the top countries that perform cosmetic surgery. Nevertheless, considering the life-threatening consequences of cosmetic surgeries, it is evident that this is an issue that should not be overlooked. This is also portrayed with Yaeji's dependency and obsession with the beauty water. Although it melts her skin and eventually makes her commit murder, Yaeji could not stop using the beauty water ("Beauty Water", Episodes 71 and 74). This thus emphasizes the numerous cases of side effects in cosmetic surgery even today as well as one’s endless desire for beauty that brings her own downfall. Hence, "Beauty Water" highlights the unrealistic beauty standards in Korean society that create discrimination and appearance-oriented individuals.

Inferiority in Korean Society

Inferiority in society is innate during social interaction. Social comparison, followed by inferiority is especially relevant in a collectivistic society like Korea, where Korean students are exposed to a culture that fosters competition and social comparison which makes them vulnerable to negative emotions such as unhappiness, anxiety, and depression.[8] Therefore, the perception of oneself as inferior in comparison to someone else would maximize this psychological distress.

Inferiority and its related psychological distresses are displayed throughout the webtoon, particularly in "An African Incident" from episodes 11-16. The first example of inferiority appears when the tour guide reveals he has the incurable Fero's disease, where the travelers react in fear and disgust. This leaves the tour guide feeling disrespected and inferior to the men which leads to his act of deceit towards the travelers, transmitting the disease onto them in revenge, and punishing them even after they deliver an apology (An African Incident, Episodes 14-15). This feeling of inferiority, desire for power, and need for revenge show the guide’s weakness and can contrast social interactions between a victim and aggressor within Korean society. Inferiority then can be seen at the end of this story as the two travelers end up stuck in the lonely rooms of a hospital with an incurable disease while watching others on the television with better lives, along with one of the men having their fiancé leave them ("An African Incident", Episode 16).

Narcissism plays a role in this story as the tour guide's desire for revenge and refusal to forgive the travelers after a delivered apology shows signs of narcissistic behaviour. Where research shows that narcissism at the individual level is linked with self-enhancement in Korean culture, even though self-diminishment is valued, Korean self-assessment tendencies demonstrate narcissism as a construct in Korean society. [9]

Reception

The webtoon’s success and popularity, especially regarding certain episodes, resulted in adaptations that were extremely well received. One specific story, Beauty Water (2020), was adapted into animation, scoring 6.2/10 on IMDb. It has also gained popularity globally as it received 25 invitations to international film festivals from countries such as Germany, France, Hong Kong, and Japan and received favourable reviews.[10] Moreover, it won the 'Best Animated Feature Award' at the Boston SciFi Film Festival and won the President's Award at the 2021 Korea Contents Awards.[10] This highlights that the Korean animation, hanguk aeni, also contributes to the rise of the Korean Wave.

In 2017, the webtoon was ranked first amongst the webtoons uploaded every Thursday, and as of March 2022, it is still consistently ranked in top ten with a rating of 9.9 stars. On NamuWiki, a popular Korean wiki, users commented that the topics were new and unique, comparing the work to those of Junji Ito.

On the other hand, the endings were rather abrupt, leading to criticism that the works were overly dependent on Oh’s creativity but lacked a satisfying end. Overall, the biggest criticism directed at Oh was about the lack of consistency, owing to the omnibus style of the webtoon. Despite his 8-month hiatus, readers criticized the lack of quality after his return in season 2 of the webtoon, stating that Oh’s major flaw in ending his stories was still apparent. Even after many successful stories were run, the lack of consistency between individual episodes led to criticism that the story was too dependent on the author’s day-to-day condition.

Adaptations

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Peirse, Alison; Martin, Daniel (2013). Korean Horror Cinema. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 1–20.
  2. ↑ Cagle, Robert L. (2009). "The Good, the Bad, and the South Korean: Violence, Morality, and the South Korean Extreme Film". Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema: 123–143 – via Project MUSE.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 [www.asiaone.com/health/s-korea-struggles-save-students-bullying "S. Korea struggles to save students from bullying"] Check |url= value (help). Asia One.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Lee, Kwan-Chun (2003). "School Bullying in Korea and Christian Educational Approach" (PDF). Asia Pacific Education Review. 4 (1): 75–83.
  5. ↑ Lee, Hae-Kyung (2011). "Factors influencing need for cosmetic surgery among high school girls". Yŏsŏng Kŏn'Gang Kanho Hakhoe Chi. 17 (2): 126–136 – via KJWHN.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lim, In-Sook (2004). "The Experience and Intention of Cosmetic Surgery in the Looks-Discriminatory Society". Journal of Korean Women's Studies. 20 (1): 95–122.
  7. ↑ Kim, J.; Chung, M. (2016). "The effects of social appearance anxiety, negative body image and appearance importance on appearance management behavior and cosmetic surgery intention". Fashion & Textile Research Journal. 15 (5): 625–636.
  8. ↑ Choi, Young-Min; Lee, Dong-Gwi; Lee, Hee-Kyung (2014). "The Effect of Self-compassion on Emotions when Experiencing a Sense of Inferiority Across Comparison Situations". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 114: 949–953 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
  9. ↑ Park, S.W.; Tignor, S.M.; Joo, M.J (2016). "Accuracy and bias in self-perception of performance: Narcissism matters in Korea as well". Korean Soc Sci J. 43: 29–43.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Lee, Mi-Young (December 27, 2021). [from https://www.joynews24.com/view/1436568 "기기괴괴 성형수', 일본 이어 독일 극장 상영...K 애니 인기"] Check |url= value (help). 조이뉴스24. Retrieved March 20, 2022.

External links

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