Kingdom Series: Joseon Era Zombie

Since this is spooky month, I am going to talk about something called, K-zombie throughout the month. In case you didn’t know, South Korea has something called K-zombie. It is basically a zombie genre that exist through film and series in South Korea. This term itself can be heard on Racket Boys, where one of the character explained what K-Zombie was. They even watched Train To Busan in one of their scene.

Technically, Train To Busan isn’t the first K-zombie ever made but it was the one that got international recognition and was received well. It appears that the film gave a new life to K-Zombie genre that today, you must have heard of All of us are dead, Kingdom Series, and Happiness. Yet those are tiny examples of K-zombie genre.

What makes K-zombie intriguing and deserve its own name for a genre? usually, in western Zombie, they tend to focus on survival instead of its characters and politics at play but in South Korea, they focus on the character’s background story, the politics, and their relationship during the cataclysmic event fighting the zombie. They have different style of Zombies and also the story that wraps its characters are always something to look forward to. The survival its there and somehow, the people in K-zombie always getting involved with some type of government affairs even during Joseon era such as the kingdom where zombie and politics aren't far from each other.

Today I’ll be reviewing Kingdom Series and Film. They have 2 season and it comes with a standalone film that explores the story before the mass outbreak happened and also the crown prince character.

This series was released back in 2019 with a fictional kingdom setting after Japanese invasion to South Korea back in 16th. There is a political intricate between its character especially when the King falls ill and there was a wind of rumors and the empty throne. However, there’s the Crown Prince, from opposing clan that rivals Chief State Councilor who wanted the power to be at his hands. Under the chief state councilor,there was corruption among its member and where people aren’t actually equal. The nobles were all arrogant and they look down on everyday citizen. They made rules that also heavily taxed everyday citizen while they were starving everywhere. At the same time, Crown Prince, eventually found out about his father condition and was then curious of the nature from it.

In separate village, a group of people were eating flesh from an infected corpse because they were starving. They ended up getting infected and became something in modern time called Zombie. Apparently, turning people dead to alive was also used as some type of Bio-weapons when they were fighting the Japanese during the war. And the Crown prince who was played by Ju Ji Hoon, lead the story to figure out the beginning of the plague and trying to save his dynasty with the help of Seong-Bi,( Bae Doona), a nurse during Joseon era, Yeong-shin (Kim Sung-Kyu) a skilled marksman who survived the first outbreak and who actually feed people with infected corpse.

In the series, Yeong-shin is actually the character with most character development as his morality was quite skewed but overtime, he was on the same side of the crown prince and decided to fight over the outbreak. He is also recurring character on the second season and most likely included in the main ones.

Since the ending was quite a cliffhanger, it is somehow expected that the 3rd season would air but nothing has been set in stone. Kingdom isn’t too long as it only has 6 episodes/season that tries to wrap everything together. Interestingly they have a few years apart between season 1 and two which I am sure for those who watch them back in 2019 was quite impatient about the second season.

In my personal opinion, Joseon era was the worst of time for outbreak to happen. The palace has a lot of conflicts, they only care about the well-being of the noble, and has little weapon to fight it off. But in the series stated that there’s a way to fight it off especially when the source was a plant. In which during those time, South Korean medicine relied on plantation knowledge to cure their disease. So this is why, despite that it’s categorically zombie, it has many layers to it.

I think this is a good start if you’re binge watching K-zombie as it provides interesting insight, a subject to compare to contrast with modern time zombie such as All Of US Are Dead or monstrous zombie like Sweet Home series. However, it looks like end of 2023 and early 2024 will be filled with K-zombie again. I am definitely thrilled to watch the continuation of all these zombie series.