‘The Black Orb’ Hovers Over North America

Thirteen years after PSY’s Gangnam Style, America is still discovering and devouring Korean culture. Parasite won an Oscar, BTS and Blackpink are selling out at stadiums, and Squid Game dominates Netflix. So it’s no surprise that a publisher would try to  cash in on this Hallyu Wave by publishing the country’s recent best-selling book of the last 20 years.

That’s the context for Ewhan Kim’s recent-ish novel coming out from MIRA Books this February. Apart from some odd internet and cell phone anachronisms, the actual publication date of 2009 matters less when you are talking about science fiction. The title of Kim’s award-winning novel 절망의 구  literally means “The Orb of Despair,” idiomatically means the “pit of despair,” and has just been translated into English by Sean Lin Halbert as “The Black Orb.”

The deceptively simple premise is that a two meter (6 foot) black orb suddenly appears in downtown Seoul and, able to float and go through any walls or obstacles, impervious to any touch or violence, and proceeds to move slowly towards any nearby human and absorb them. After absorption there is no longer any trace of the person.

At the risk of spoilers for a book that is, translation notwithstanding, old enough to drive a car, and, in some states, marry its cousin, the orbs multiply by shimmering and splitting in two which, if it didn’t seem so mechanical, would be akin to the asexual reproduction of amoebas. These restless, insatiable orbs cause havoc to the Korean, and then global population.

The book, mostly, follows the adventures of Jeong-su Kim who may, he thinks, be the first person to have seen the first orb. Indeed this early sighting, along with an older man who he sees at about the same time who may be warning him, and a series of phone messages through which he and his parents fail to connect, haunt the book. A 30-year old sales manager, Jeong-Su is a fascinatingly flawed character whose feelings of guilt and self-preservation are at psychodramatic war throughout the plot.

The book is extremely episodic which is perfect for high school analysis or for a tv series—though I don’t know that they have prompted either. As in the Walking Dead, which Orb’s apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic action evokes, there are distinct phases and dramas while orbs absorb people and people kill each other. At each stage of the disaster, Jeong-Su settles into feelings, relationships, and actions. These are not psychologically realistic so much as psychologically experimental: Kim places him in a religious survival group, in a couple, alone in hiding, at a mass public tribunal.

The tribunal—which feels like Report to an Academy— he obsessive attempts to connect with his family, and the pervasive sense of guilt all give The Black Orb a Kafkaesque mood. But the plot is propulsive in a way quite unlike Kafka and, at moments, the novel features graphic sex and violence that are more suggestive of The Last of Us or Squid Game than the complex ironies of The Castle.

I don’t know enough Korean to know whether the bizarre dubbed English of the Paramount show Bargain reflects anything about how stilted that language’s idioms sound in English, but Sean Lin Halbert’s translation of The Black Orb likewise constantly jolts the reader out of any complacency that the action is happening in an English-speaking environment. It’s odd and unlikeable, but just like the novel featuring the odd, unlikeable Jeong-Su himself, if you can stomach the gruesome parts, it’s impossible to put down.