While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she'd rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother's care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.

Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government's lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young's niece is dead, and all that's left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?

A Plagued Sea has a story by Kim Bo-young. English translation is done by Sophie Bowman. Published by Honford Star (August 11, 2026).

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

"This," I thought to myself, "is very Lovecraftian. In fact, it reminds me of The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Imagine my surprise when I finished the book and discovered that it was, in fact, written as part of a Korean publisher's Lovecraft reimagining project, with various authors writing their own interpretations of or riffs on Lovecraft's works, and Kim's was inspired by Innsmouth with a bit of Call of Cthulhu for good measure. And do they ever do an excellent job - this is very much Kim's own work, steeped in the small-town creepiness of Korean literature, and very good.

The story takes place in what appears to be the Korean equivalent of Lovecraft's fictional Innsmouth – a remote village built on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea. There's a thriving tourist industry, a working harbor, and a lighthouse, and protagonist Muyoung is actually heading there with her young niece Hyun for a vacation. But while they're waiting for their train, a news alert warns of an earthquake and tsunami in the region; distracted by a young woman with an abusive husband (Muyoung works as a bodyguard and offers her protection), she fails to think things through and still boards the train with Hyun. Three years later, Hyun is dead, and Muyoung is trapped in Haewon Village, which suffered in the forecast quake and tsunami, but not the way you'd expect: a strange islet arose in the harbor, and people began falling ill with “Eastern Sea Disease,” causing the village to be cut off from the rest of Korea. Although Muyoung hasn't contracted it, she cannot leave.

The novella relies on an impressive sense of creeping terror. Muyoung, tormented by Hyun's death, isn't really thinking about the disease, and this makes her blind to some of the stranger things about it. When an outsider enters the village in the name of research, she's forced to look at everything in a different way – particularly the fact that he managed to get in, in the first place. Once things fall into place, the story abruptly picks up speed, careening towards a conclusion as alarming as it is inevitable. This isn't horror with jump scares and gore; this is the literary form of the genre in the pulpy vein of the adventure fiction magazines of Lovecraft's day. Kim does a wonderful job reimagining Lovecraft's genre, and translator Sophie Bowman's work is impeccable. This is both book club material and a scary summer beach read. (Okay, maybe don't read it on the beach. The smell of bait will scare me for the foreseeable future.) You'll probably get more out of it if you're familiar with Lovecraft in general and Innsmouth in particular, but if you're looking for a salt-tainted horror novella, this is easy to recommend.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

The original H.P. Lovecraft novels are well-known for expressing fear rooted in racism and prejudice. It is often the case that “Lovecraftian” novels recreate that fear using biases along similar lines of othering the exotic; Kim's novel, A Plagued Sea, relies instead on fear of transformation of the known into the unknown. It is a powerful theme that resonates even more strongly as we have emerged from a global pandemic less than we were, and with our fears and hatred ennobled and encouraged by leadership that leads with fear and hatred as both the stick and the carrot.

The horror here is superbly managed. First, we are taught to be wary of disease, of filth, of corruption and rot, then, as that becomes more commonplace, we are trained to be fearful of mental and physical unwellness, then spiritual and moral corruption, as both the venal drives of humans and the moral impertinence that allows us to create “us” and “them” are called to the front. Then, at last, we can see the true horror that drives us all into the arms of madness, as we find that there is no we. Only it.

Honestly, it's all brilliant, if quite disgusting, and a very bad book to try and read while eating.

I particularly enjoyed how the book resolves, not into disease or corruption, but into madness born of our own understanding. This is a perfect homage to Lovecraft and one that any Cthulhu mythos fan ought to read.