Sweet Home (webtoon)

Sweet Home () is a South Korean webtoon written by Kim Carnby and illustrated by Hwang Young-chan. First published in Naver Webtoon, the webtoon ran for a total of 140 chapters plus 1 prologue from October 12, 2017 to July 2, 2020. It centers on a suicidal high school boy who, along with a group of fellow apartment residents, tries to survive a "monsterization" apocalypse ("goemulhwa") where people turn into monsters that reflect their innermost, most desperate desires.
The webtoon is the second collaborative work by Kim and Hwang, the first being "Bastard" (2014-16). As of January 2021, its official English version garnered 2.4 million subscribers and 15.2 million likes. A print version of "Sweet Home" was released since February 28, 2020 by Wisdom House. It has also been adapted into a Netflix series of the same name released on December 18, 2020. A prequel titled "Shotgun Boy", written by Kim and illustrated by Hongpil with Hwang providing editorial supervision, was released in Naver Webtoon starting February 22, 2021.
Plot.
Prologue, Chapters 1-38.
After his family died in a vehicular accident, suicidal high-school boy Cha Hyun-soo moves into Room 1410 of an apartment complex called Green Home. Strange things soon begin happening to him and to the people around him. He starts hearing a voice talking to him despite being alone in his room. A week into his loner life, he learns of people having nosebleeds, such as the security guard and his girl neighbor from Room 1411, and people hearing voices, such as an anonymous person in a game chatroom claiming the "voice" is goading him to murder his own parents. One night, he witnesses through his video door-phone the girl from Room 1411 transform into a human-eating monster.
Two days later, Hyun-soo realizes the world around him has fell into chaos as people turn into monsters in what the Internet calls a "monsterization" apocalypse ("goemulhwa"). Downstairs, the residents, led by Lee Eun-hyuk, fend off the first monster from outside to attack the apartment, a blood-sucking monster with a long proboscis-like tongue, but not before it claims its first victim. Despite hearing voices inside his head once again, Hyun-soo fights against an eyeball monster after it caused a man rappelling down the building from Room 1210 to fall to his death. Room 1408's Han Du-shik manages to subdue the monster with his makeshift gun, and he pushes Hyun-soo into rescuing the Room 1210 man's children, 9-year-old Kim Soo-young and 6-year-old Kim Young-soo. Du-shik tells Hyun-soo to come to his room and to use his phone as a monster tracker: if he makes a phone call and hears a beeping noise, it is a sign of a nearby monster.
After escaping from a blind half-headed monster, Hyun-soo heads out to Room 1408 along with his weapon, a makeshift spear with a knife as a spearhead. Du-shik modifies the spear so that an electric charge passes through the knife and Hyun-soo can both stab and shock a monster. Hyun-soo encounters the half-headed monster, a huge muscular monster and an liquid monster before he manages to reach Room 1210 and extract Soo-young and Young-soo. While heading back to Room 1408, Hyun-soo manages to resist an attempt by his inner monster to monsterize him but their trip is interrupted by the muscular monster. The battle against the monster separates Hyun-soo from the kids and ends as Room 1510's Yoon Ji-soo (armed with a baseball bat) and Room 1506's Jung Jae-heon (brandishing a long sword) intervene and rescue him.
Ji-soo becomes wary when she learns that Hyun-soo is already suffering from the monsterization process but she dispels of her distrust upon Jae-heon's encouragement. Soo-young and Young-soo become trapped in the midst of a fight between the muscular monster and the half-headed monster. When the muscular monster wins the melee, it turns against the children. Just in time, half-monsterized woman Im Myung-sook defends the children against the monster. Hyun-soo, Ji-soo and Jae-heon comes to her aid and manages to send the monster away.
After staying for a day at Room 1408, Hyun-soo, Ji-soo and Jae-heon decide to join the survivors in the ground floor; the trio entrusts Myung-sook, Soo-young and Young-soo to Du-shik. In a battle against a tentacled monster, Hyun-soo is struck by a tentacle and is knocked out. While unconscious, his inner monster gives him a taste of a parallel world where Hyun-soo's desire—watching his best-loved film "Maria From the Sky"—is fully met. Sensing that he is just inside a hallucination, Hyun-soo rejects his inner monster's temptations and finally wakes up. By his side are Eun-hyuk and his younger sister Lee Eun-yoo: he has survived the battle against the tentacle monster and reached the ground floor.
Chapters 39-85.
A meeting is convened in order to discuss whether or not they must expel Hyun-soo for being in the process of monsterization. Eun-hyuk suggests resolving the issue through voting, telling the group that indiscriminately expelling Hyun-soo would be tantamount to murdering him. The voting results in a tie; when an imperious elderly man Kim Seok-hyun expresses objection, his nose bleeds, a sign of the monsterization process.
Later, Eun-hyuk asks Hyun-soo and a gangster-like man Pyeon Sang-wook to extract the survivors in Room 1408 so that they can take advantage of Du-shik's technical skills, especially for converting a car into an armored vehicle that the survivors can use in gathering supplies from outside the apartment. Hyun-soo becomes angered at Eun-hyuk who secretly tells him to leave the children behind when the situation worsens. While Hyun-soo and Sang-wook leave the ground floor for the mission, Eun-hyuk tells the indignant Ji-soo that Hyun-soo's half-monsterization can be the survivors' weapon against the monsters. In Room 1408, Myung-sook finally succumbs to her inner monster, but her strong desire to be reunited with her lost baby turns Myung-sook into a harmless, giant fetus monster inside the bathroom.
Hyun-soo and Sang-wook encounters a long-armed monster which grabs Hyun-soo, breaking his wrist. To Sang-wook's surprise, Hyun-soo electrocutes the monster despite also getting the shock himself and his wrist heals within minutes. The duo run into the tentacle monster and inadvertently cause it to evolve into a stronger spider monster. An elderly man Ahn Gil-seop (armed with Molotov cocktails) and his caretaker Park Yoo-ri (armed with a crossbow) come to their rescue and fend the monster off. A speedy track-and-field monster interrupts their journey to Room 1408 and knocks Yoo-ri and Sang-wook out; Hyun-soo faces the monster alone while Gil-seop proceeds to Room 1408. Hyun-soo sets a trap and successfully burns the monster alive while his half-monsterization causes his injuries to heal by themselves within minutes.
Hyun-soo and Sang-wook return to the ground floor with Du-shik while Gil-seop, Yoo-ri and the children remain in Room 1408. Du-shik fixes one of the apartment's elevators which will be used instead of the stairs in going through different levels of the building. But restoring the elevator inadvertently leads to the monsterized security guard, which gets stronger after every murder, reaching the ground floor and killing a few survivors, including Jae-heon. The shock of seeing Jae-heon's dead body makes Hyun-soo's inner monster to temporarily manifest. Upon regaining control, Hyun-soo stabs the blood-sucking monster's tongue, which breached the barriers, at the security guard monster which loses all of its fluids and dies. Gil-seop, Yoo-ri, Soo-young and Young-soo use the elevator and reunite with Hyun-soo and the survivors in the ground floor.
A team consisting of Hyun-soo, Sang-wook, Ji-soo, Gil-seop and Yoo-ri successfully reclaims the underground parking lot from the monsters. While Du-shik finishes creating the armored car, another team consisting of Hyun-soo, Sang-wook, Gil-seop and another survivor Byung-il is commissioned to gather food from a nearby convenience store and medical supplies, particularly inhalers for the asthmatic Yoo-ri, from a nearby hospital. The party's mission fails as the muscular monster, which has evolved into a stronger form, attacks the armored car and kills Gil-seop; Byung-il escapes from the scene. Eun-hyuk and the other survivors prepare to step out of the apartment to help Hyun-soo and Sang-wook when a prison bus suddenly arrives and drives into the muscle monster, killing it. Byung-il emerges from the bus accompanied by a group of outsiders, the first four recognized by Sang-wook to be criminals—group leader Shin Joong-seop, con-man Im Hyun-shik, rapist Seo Kap-soo, gangster Baek Ho-yeon, and a young man Jo Yi-hyun.
Chapters 86-111.
The Green Home survivors are forced to take in the outsiders; tensions rise as the outsiders implement their secret plan to take over the apartment. As Hyun-shik attempts at spreading fear and discord among the Green Home survivors, Joong-seop tries to invite Hyun-soo to join their group and reveals Yi-hyun to be a strong half-monster capable of arm extension. Joong-seop also shows to the survivors his hostility against monsters and monsterizing humans by killing Seok-hyun's battered wife Ahn Seon-young and commanding his group to burn the harmless liquid monster. Yi-hyun defeats the spider monster, while Hyun-soo is forced to kill the aspiring celebrity Ryu Jae-hwan who turned into an attention-seeking monster.
As the criminals assumed superiority, Green Home survivors Son Hye-in, Sang-soo and Ji-eun joins their side. The pain of killing Jae-hwan drives Hyun-soo to join the criminal's side much to Ji-soo's frustration. After not sharing any plans to the criminals, Eun-hyuk is locked up with Sang-wook, with Sang-soo guarding at the door. Eun-hyuk reveals to Sang-wook that he actually has a plan that only he and Du-shik knows; his nose starts to bleed and he faints. Du-shik is forced to reveal to Joong-seop a large box containing what appears to be a rope made of a chain of clothes; when Joong-seop dismisses it, Du-shik is relieved. He reveals to Byung-il that the rope is over 100 meters long and has a grappling hook attached in the end.
On Joong-seop's orders, Hyun-soo and Yi-hyun search the upper levels of Green Home for other monsters. By letting his inner monster communicate with Hyun-soo's, Yi-hyun discovers the giant fetus monster in the Room 1408 bathroom and, controlled by his inner monster, intends to kill it. Hyun-soo battles against Yi-hyun to defend the fetus monster and manages to knock Yi-hyun back to his normal self. Hyun-soo and Yi-hyun goes to Room 1408 to check on the monster and, to Hyun-soo's shock, discovers in its place a human-sized cocoon-like structure. Hyun-soo deduces that the thing is alive when he hears its heartbeat. Fearing it could be a threat, Yi-hyun tries to destroy the cocoon but his lengthened arm strangely fights back by punching him hard, knocking him out.
Ji-soo goes to Room 1408 and finds Hyun-soo who is hesitant to destroy the monster-turned-cocoon. Though she also perceives it as a possible threat, Ji-soo is just as hesitant to destroy the cocoon, and reveals to Hyun-soo about Eun-hyuk and Sang-wook being locked up. Yi-hyun wakes up in his inner monster's personality and tosses a lighter to the cocoon, setting it on fire. All monsters in the vicinity sense the destruction of the cocoon and angrily swarm to the apartment. Yi-hyun leaves the room first to fight against the monsters, while Hyun-soo electrocutes a bat-like flying monster which broke through the window and attempted to snatch Ji-soo.
Yi-hyun goes to the rooftop where he apparently sees a naked woman standing on the parapet and battles against the flying monster. Sang-wook escapes from imprisonment, carrying Eun-hyuk with him. Eun-hyuk wakes up and suggests going to the outsiders' prison bus, where they find coolers containing chopped up human cadaver. Sang-wook tries to lure the monsters away from the apartment using the human cadaver as bait and ends up in a grove where four cocoons stand. While in hiding, he witnesses to his shock a naked human being emerge from one of the cocoons.
Chapters 112-139.
As the monsters start to breach the front door barricade, Eun-hyuk returns from the prison bus and calls on the Green Home survivors to evacuate to the second floor. Eun-hyuk goes to the underground parking lot and confirms to Du-shik and Byung-il that they have to implement Plan B: the survivors shall escape from the apartment by launching the grappling hook from the rooftop and using the rope to zipline to a hill 80 meters behind the apartment. Hyun-soo, Ji-soo and Eun-yoo extracts the children, with Eun-yoo using Ji-soo's phone as a distraction for the monsters. Joong-seop and Hyun-sik escape to the prison bus; Sang-wook returns and steals the keys so that he can use the bus to block the front door. He throws Joong-seop to the monsters, one of them disfiguring his face with corrosive fluid and another dragging him into the adjacent woods.
Du-shik decides to stay behind due to his impending monsterization and starts a fire, burning the monsters that breached the underground parking lot. Eun-hyuk and Byung-il carry the escape equipment and reunite with the other survivors. Hyun-soo insists on rescuing Du-shik; as Eun-hyuk and the other survivors climb the stairs to the rooftop with the escape equipment, Hyun-soo goes to the underground parking lot, only to find Du-shik dying. A naked man, one of the emergent humans, appears to Hyun-soo, declares "[their] time has finally come," and puts his hands on Hyun-soo's shoulders, instantly triggering another hallucination with Hyun-soo's inner monster.
The inner monster reveals the nature of the monsterization phenomena, which he calls a "revolution" and a "new beginning." An inner monster—revealed to be a malevolent form of the host's soul—takes advantage of its host's innermost, most desperate desires. When the host succumbs to the inner monster's calling, the inner monster transforms the host into a monster reflecting that desire while the host's subconscious is held in a parallel world where those desires are fully met ("a paradise of desires"). After the host exhausts his or her desires, they transform into a new human being (i.e. the emergent humans) void of desires and emotions and thriving on a "sense of futility."
Hyun-soo firmly decides to stay as himself and continue the fight against the monsters. Du-shik's dead body is resurrected into its fully monsterized form; Sang-wook arrive from the bus with Hyun-sik and kills the monsterized Du-shik. As Hyun-soo, Sang-wook and Hyun-sik rush to reunite with the other survivors, Eun-hyuk's party reaches the rooftop. Ji-soo leaves the group, goes to Room 1510 and uses her bass guitar and amplifier to lure the monsters away from the rooftop, leaving a manageable number that Yi-hyun and the survivors can fight against. Hearing the bass guitar, Hyun-soo lets his inner monster control him and goes to Room 1510 near-monsterized to rescue Ji-soo.
After Eun-hyuk and Byung-il successfully install the escape equipment, Eun-hyuk decides to stay in the building due to his ongoing monsterization. The women and children zipline to the hill first using all available pulleys; Hye-in is unfortunately killed by the flying monster. As Byung-il traverses the rope without a pulley, Eun-hyuk, Sang-wook and Yi-hyun join Hyun-soo and Ji-soo's battle against the monsters in the building. They all go to the roof afterwards but their escape from the building is thwarted by the fully monsterized Joong-seop which, in its pre-monsterized state, ironically asked an emergent human to let him be transformed into a monster. The overwhelmingly powerful monster, which kills Hyun-sik and Yi-hyun, reflects Joong-seop's desire to be feared and to take revenge against Sang-wook.
Left with no other choice, Hyun-soo makes the ultimate sacrifice by fully succumbing to his monsterization, which turns him into a powerful monster in the form of his favorite character from "Maria From the Sky". The monsterized Hyun-soo defeats the monsterized Joong-seop with one blow. Ji-soo tries to communicate with it, but the true Hyun-soo inside the "paradise of desires" responds only faintly to her voice and the physical monster reacts to her with utmost hostility. Eun-hyuk decides also to let himself be fully monsterized in order to subdue the monsterized Hyun-soo. As the remaining survivors brokenheartedly escape the building, Eun-hyuk's monsterization turns him into a large tangled mass that completely covers the monsterized Hyun-soo, killing them both.
Soon after, rain falls over the dead remains of the monsterized Hyun-soo and Eun-hyuk. Most of the tangled mass disintegrates and two cocoons materialize; one of them hatches and a new Hyun-soo emerges from the cocoon. He descends the building and, upon reaching the ground floor, he notices Ji-soo's phone which Eun-yoo had used earlier to distract the monsters and is already opened to display a music player app. He picks up the phone and plays an audio file: it is the musical piece that Ji-soo composed and was supposed to have lyrics written by the old Hyun-soo. Strangely, the new Hyun-soo listens to the music and sheds tears.
Chapter 140 (Epilogue).
Winter, in the post-apocalyptic world—the Green Home survivors live in a military camp. Byung-il, who guards the perimeter, suddenly sees something. Ji-soo is fetched from one of the tents; she rushes to the perimeter and sees the new Hyun-soo clad in thin clothing and walking towards the camp, barefooted on the snow. Upon seeing Ji-soo, the new Hyun-soo smiles teary-eyed. Ji-soo steps out of the camp in tears and hugs Hyun-soo tightly as the other Green House survivors rush out to meet him.
Style.
Art.
The artistic style of "Sweet Home" is characterized by maintaining a "claustrophobic and grotesque atmosphere." There is additional emphasis on the characters' appearance: the human characters' facial expressions, and the monsters' physical forms which take on a "familiar yet horrific twist". The webtoon also exhibits multiple changes in font style which help set the atmosphere of various scenes, through "color changes, opacity changes, capitalization, size changes, and font changes."
Just like many modern, third-generation webtoons, "Sweet Home" uses built-in background music, particularly in its 140th chapter (epilogue) which contains a track titled "MZ - Sweet Home (incomplete ver.)."
Narrative and characterization.
Among thriller-horror stories that deal with gruesome characters such as zombies and monsters, "Sweet Home" is notable for treating a relatively similar set of characters in a different light. This is evident by its introduction of the idea of human beings turning into monsters not through external factors (e.g. virus, curse) but through the expression of their desires.
The webtoon is also said to go beyond simple horror storytelling and focuses on character development, especially on its protagonist Cha Hyun-soo. In the webtoon, Hyun-soo is portrayed as a reclusive boy who, at first, lives only for himself and is ready to die. But as soon as the monsterization apocalypse begins, he makes a big change by wanting to step out of his room, connecting with other people and staying alive.
Background and publication history.
Naver webtoon.
"Sweet Home" marks the second collaborative work between webtoon writer Kim Carnby and webtoon artist Hwang Young-chan. The first work by Kim and Hwang is "Bastard" (2014-16), a thriller story about son who lives with his father, a serial killer.
First published in Naver Webtoon, "Sweet Home" ran on a weekly basis on Thursdays. Its prologue was uploaded in October 12, 2017, followed by the first chapter on October 19; the webtoon ended with the uploading of its epilogue and 140th chapter in July 2, 2020. The official English version of the webtoon (Prologue up to Chapter 139) was uploaded on Mondays in WEBTOON starting January 15, 2018, while Chapter 140 (Epilogue) was uploaded in September 29, 2020. It is also available in Chinese, Japanese, French, Indonesian, Spanish and Thai.
After the success of "Sweet Home", Kim collaborated with webtoon illustrator Hongpil for its prequel titled "Shotgun Boy" which was released in Naver Webtoon starting February 22, 2021 with Hwang providing editorial supervision. The webtoon tells the story of the titular "shotgun [high school] boy" Han Kyu-hwan and the events prior to "Sweet Home".
Print version.
A print version of "Sweet Home" from the prologue up to Chapter 105 was released on February 28, 2020 (volumes 1-3), October 15, 2020 (volumes 4-6) and April 29, 2021 (volumes 7-9) by Wisdom House.
Reception.
As of January 2021, the official English version of "Sweet Home" garnered 2.4 million subscribers and 15.2 million likes. The print version of the webtoon was also recognized by the Korea Manhwa Contents Agency (KOMACON) as one of the "50 Best Comic Books of 2020."
Adaptations.
"Sweet Home" has been adapted into a Netflix series of the same name starring Song Kang, Lee Jin-wook and Lee Si-young who play Hyun-soo, Sang-wook and a new character Seo Yi-kyeong, respectively. Netflix officially announced the series' cast on December 18, 2019. Helmed by director Lee Eung-bok, the series was released on December 18, 2020 to mixed reviews.