Description "You must not make cursed items for personal use. The rabbit was the only exception." The last resort for the wounded and trampled, cornered with nowhere else to turn "I think of it less as revenge and more as action and reaction. Every action a human being takes will always be accompanied by a reaction of equal magnitude and opposite direction. If that's a principle, then it's a principle." (From an interview with Bora Chung) Last year, novelist Bora Chung's horror/sci-fi/fantasy short story collection Cursed Bunny became the most talked-about work in Korean fiction, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and under translation contract in twenty countries worldwide including China, Taiwan, Japan, France, and Spain. Now, in 2023—the Year of the Rabbit—the influential literary imprint Rabbit Hole presents a fully revised edition. To minimize the time the book would be unavailable, the revised edition was published swiftly, yet the author's advance work along with an intensive process of revision and refinement has polished the collection throughout. Grotesque fantasies intruding on familiar daily life; the strange comfort offered by raw, explosive emotions One day, just as she flushed the toilet and was about to leave the bathroom— "Mother." She turned around. A head had emerged from the toilet bowl, calling out to her. "Mother." She stared at the "head" for a long while. She flushed. With a whooshing sound, the "head" disappeared. She left the bathroom. ("Head," p. 41) Borrowing forms from folktales, legends, fairy tales, and myths, Bora Chung's stories draw readers in with a chilling yet irresistible intensity, much like the scary stories we loved hearing as children. Some have been praised as "frightening enough to cost you sleep" (Lee Jong-san). The author sets up doorways to unfamiliar dimensions within the landscape of everyday life and invites us through. Following a friendly-faced narrator holding a sign that reads "Welcome to Bora Chung's World," we willingly step onto the dark path and fall into its traps. When the hidden twists spring out, we experience a spine-tingling thrill, or come to recognize the wounds carried by the characters and empathize with their profound sorrow. Above all, Bora Chung's fiction is not "pretty." Each of the ten stories included has its own rough, mad, and grotesque character. Though filled with desire and betrayal, foolish choices, and murderous intent toward others, following each story's particular circumstances leads us to an understanding that goes beyond mere fascination. It's often said that "people are scarier than ghosts." Can we really say these stories are more cruel than the world we live in today? For those of us enduring daily shocking news and unresolved tragedies, these twisted tales offer a strange sense of pleasure and comfort. Sapilgwijeong: everything must eventually return to its rightful path—what remains after satisfying revenge What he wanted was not revenge. [...] Even if it was a fitting conclusion, he could do nothing about the surging sense of loss. Mourning the long-ago pain and despair of a childhood stolen by the spells, delusions, and false beliefs of people he didn't even know—a childhood where every day had been a matter of life and death, but which now meant nothing at all—he stopped in the ruined village and wept. ("The Scar," p. 252) The keyword of the collection Cursed Bunny is "revenge." And yet in many cases it's unclear who is actually exacting revenge, and even after revenge is completed, no one becomes happy—another distinctive feature of the collection. The brewery company president who spread vicious rumors to destroy a rival ("Cursed Bunny"), the hypocritical husband who preached an "alternative life" ("The Home of My Happiness"), and the man whose greed brought tragedy upon his family ("The Trap")—all meet extreme ruin. This may seem satisfying at first glance, but ultimately the punishment they receive is merely the result of their own actions, and there is no guarantee of recovery for those who were hurt and damaged. Curses cast for revenge return, and violence opens onto a shared catastrophe where more debts must be paid. As in the quoted interview, if we understand the cycle of revenge as action and reaction, followed by yet another reaction, how can we escape this vicious cycle? The man in "The Scar" tries to solve the problem but ends up losing forever the person he desperately wanted to protect; still, "in order to find the life that awaited him somewhere in the world, he began to walk slowly toward the rising sun" (p. 252). In "Ruler of the Winds and Sands," a princess betrayed by her lover calmly refuses the eternal life proposed by a gentle, all-powerful being, answering: "I will live until death comes" (p. 320). In the author's note, Bora Chung writes: "There is no particular lesson or message I'm trying to convey through the entire book. Cursed Bunny is a collection of fantasy horror stories, fantasy horror is a genre of popular fiction, and popular fiction exists for enjoyment rather than lessons or teachings." And yet, as we open this book, we will find ourselves drawn into the thrill of a strange and eerie world, coming face to face with the desperate urge to bare one's claws against those who have wronged us, and the resolute courage to move forward even after one's world has collapsed.