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Lucia Ruiz Amador

Professor Hall

Korean 360 A, AU 23’

10 November 2023

Sweet Home; a critique on society and its desires

In Sweet Home, we are presented with a world in which desires and ambitions manifest

through the process of “monsterization,” as a concept becomes physical. In this post-apocalyptic

world, characters are forced to acknowledge their desires and ambitions, survive a collapsed

society, and avoid becoming monsters. In Kim Carnby’s Sweet Home, Kim’s uses a

zombie-esque world and purposeful making of individuals’s desires and ambitions manifest in

physical changes as a vehicle for social critique on how society’s unspoken pressures can affect

the way desires and ambition are viewed thus reducing individual’s desires and ambitions to

seem shallow or harmful.

Desires and ambitions is a recurring topic within Sweet Home, being mentioned both

explicitly and implicitly. The first implicit mention of a desire is the lady living next to Hyun,

who is overhead having a conversation with her mom about an audition. It can be confirmed that

becoming an actress is her desire by her mention of how hungry she is and that “[she’s] starving

here…this damn diet” (EP 2). Already, one can see the extreme lengths someone is willing to go

to fit into the mold that is an actress. However, there is an additional layer to this desire, as in

Korean society, lookism is heavily embedded within its culture. Lookism is heavily prominent in

Korean society due to Korea’s “relatively compressed industrialization and urbanization during
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the past decades” (Lee, Hyemin, et al, Background) which inflates factors related to an

individual's looks, gender, and age. In turn, it is not odd for the lady to starve herself if she is

fitting Korea’s lookism, but it does reduce her desire to something superficial, the desire to fit

society’s expectation of a “real” actress.

Within the context of the zombie-esque world, Kim forces the readers to focus on the

character's desires and ambitions. He does so by making characters go through physical

transformation. This is later seen in episodes 3 and 4 when that lady’s monster form is seen

briefly, her limbs are elongated and thin, matching society’s expectation. But the only words

spoken from her are “something to eat?” (EP4), reflecting what she’s had to give up in order to

achieve “her” desire. Perhaps this was not her true desire, perhaps the performance, the process

of acting, or being able to work with other passionate actors was her true desire, but instead she’s

reduced to the consequences of the shallow desire. It is intentional. Kim made it this way to force

readers into questioning why eating is her desire. This zombie-eque world reduces monsters to

be “without soul and consciousness, they devour anything living” (Shin, 111) as they are shown

to be consumed by their “true” desires and ambitions and reduced to a superficial level of desire.

This confusion of desire can be seen when Duskin becomes a monster, he questions “is

that all I wanted?” (EP 119) in reference to his leg regrowing back. However, it is revealed in

Duskin backstory how he lost his leg, saving a random child, but the consequences of it was

losing his ability to work and losing his family. He had considered the action of saving the child

foolish but was later relieved to know he wasn’t the only one being foolish when Hyun wanted to

save the children (EP 118). This reinforces the characteristic in Duskin as a protector, but due to

the fact that this characteristic also led him to become part of a minority group, as he is now
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disabled, society did not treat him well nor accommodate him. However, due to society’s

treatment of him, he begins to question his own actions. Society reduces him to think of himself

as foolish, making him believe that the regrowth of his leg is his “true” desire and not an aid to

his desire. But only because of how inaccessible life as an amputee is. Once again, a character -

although conscious of the “desire” - is reduced to a superficial desire. However, due to the fact

that he was made to believe that all he wanted was his leg, it makes him and the readers believe

that a selfless desire, the desire to be able to protect, a harmless desire, is not possible.

This idea is further reinforced when Hyun’s inner voice talks to him about how “most

desires destroy not only people but everything else too… human desires are like poison” (EP

123). It aids the idea that desires and ambitions are inherently negative, superficial, selfish, and

can easily consume an individual. Up until the introduction of half-monsters, that was the only

idea. Apart from Hyun, who didn’t really have a control over it, Ihyun is the first character to be

seen to be able to control his “desire.”

Half-monsters can represent an individual's strong control over desires, specifically the

superficial desire given to them by society. Hyun’s inner voice acts as a vehicle for society’s

unspoken pressures in the form of intrusive thoughts. Telling Hyun to “go to your sweet home”

(EP 123) when they were “talking” in the liminal space of Hyun’s mind. The inner voice tells

Hyun to be consumed, to let himself fall victim to society's pressures. That he can and will

eventually be molded into what society dictates as “his” desire. Perhaps that is why he is

constantly weighed down by his backpack and weapon, that it represents his humanity and

self-control to not be consumed by his “true” desire. It is only after he drops it in episode 137, in

the last fight against Joon Shin, does he let go. He lets himself be consumed in his desire, it’s
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even reflected in what his monster looks like. His desire was reduced to a character from the

show that he wanted to watch before offing himself, but that was only the surface level desire,

the real one stemmed from the reason why he wanted to watch the movie.

Hyuk breaks the mold of “shallow” or superficial desires, by being able to “choose” his

desire or ambition. He can represent what Jayhun told Jisu early on, that “the lord sometimes

gives us something very hard to overcome but a person shouldn’t be criticized… or be an object

of fear for not being able to overcome such difficulties” (EP 6). The ‘lord’ being society and the

‘us’ being the individuals that make society. Hyuk is what everyone should be able to be and do.

Be able to choose what his desire is, without the dictation and pressures from society, the

ultimate desire, to help others. While Hyuk did say “what I want is to stop you here” (EP 139), in

essence his true desire was to protect everyone, including Hyun. That is why when they “fight,”

Hyuk’s final form does not hurt everyone, not even Hyun.

Kim’s social critique on how society’s unspoken pressures can affect the way “true”

ambitions and desires are viewed in society, that this reduction of true desires to shallow or

“true” desires is reflected through the story. Making it explicitly clear in some cases and not in

others to reflect that sometimes desires, the ones that are not affected by societal pressures, are

not always known to an individual but a feeling or an action an individual takes.

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Works Cited

Fabrizi, Mark A, and Kyoung Wan Cathy Shin. “8. Transcending Boundaries with a

Zombie Webtoon.” Horror Literature and Dark Fantasy: Challenging Genres, vol. 10,

Brill, Boston, 2018, pp. 111–126.

Kim, Carnby. “Sweet Home.” Webtoon, 28 Jan. 2018,

https://www.webtoons.com/en/thriller/sweethome/list?title_no=1285. Accessed 10 Nov.

2023.

Lee, Hyemin, et al. “Lookism Hurts: Appearance discrimination and self-rated health in

South Korea.” International Journal for Equity in Health, vol. 16, no. 1, 2017,

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0678-8.