Killing/Stalking Review (Spoilers)

I haven’t written about BL in quite some time, but this story has been etched in my mind since I finished it two days ago. Killing/Stalking is a manhwa written by Koogi. It’s unusual for me because all the Boy’s Love I read is about, well, love. Even if it’s problematic (ahem Dakaichi) or unconventional (like MADK). Killing/Stalking is about infatuation at its worst: violent obsession, co-dependency, imposed isolation and unchecked trauma, all fusing together in a literal hostage situation-slash-Stockholm-syndrome cesspit.

Yoon Bum is an isolated and disturbed orphan. He lives with his extremely abusive uncle. During his compulsory military service, he is sexually assaulted by his fellow cadets until another young soldier sees the attack and gets help. This mysterious saviour, Oh Sangwoo, is handsome, popular, and a fellow orphan. His parents are murdered five years before the story starts.

Yoon Bum. Not exactly a cinnamon roll but he has a few cute moments.

Bum becomes obsessed with Sangwoo, and begins stalking him after their military service is over. They attend many of the same college classes. Bum stares on forlornly whilst Sangwoo is surrounded by a cluster of friends, from girls who are attracted to him, to boys who admire him. Bum’s stalking eventually leads him to Sangwoo’s house, which he successfully breaks into after a tense encounter with the local police. He wanders around the empty corridors, touching the walls and chanting Sangwoo’s name, inhaling his saviour’s scent from folded clothes, almost masturbating to them.

A strange noise leads Bum to the basement. There on the floor is a naked and beaten local socialite, hogtied and in a state of disarray. Before Bum can properly process what he’s witnessing, Sangwoo returns to the house, brutally knocks him out, kills the unknown woman, and holds Bum hostage. Sangwoo tortures Bum in the same way as the socialite: beating him up and breaking his ankles so he can’t move. For various reasons, Sangwoo decides to keep Bum alive. The most notable of these is Bum’s resemblance to Sangwoo’s dead mother.

Now if you just saw this picture and didn’t know the story you would think it’s a typical man helping his boyfriend after an injury, but no, Bum’s on crutches because Sangwoo just BROKE HIS ANKLES.

Oh Sangwoo’s charming appearance is a façade for a very disturbed interior. He too suffered violence from his parents. His mother tried to smother him when he was an infant, and years later, after an adolescent Sangwoo uncovers her extramarital affair, she tells him to come to the ground floor bedroom at midnight, where he can secretly watch her having sex with his dad as proof of how much she loves her husband.

The family situation worsens when Sangwoo walks in on his father beating his mother. He tries to intervene, but his dad knocks his head on the kitchen table and dies. Sangwoo’s mum repeatedly tells him “it’s not your fault”, impressing on his mind that he’s the one who killed his dad, and that if not for her, he would be in serious trouble. They go on a journey to bury him in the forest, and after his death a very uncomfortable, slightly incestuous relationship develops in the home, where Sangwoo is constantly on edge and in fear of his life, especially when he discovers that his mother has been slowly lacing his food with rat poison. During their final altercation, she forces Sangwoo to press a knife into her throat. Her final words are a declaration that Sangwoo will die a most painful death.

Her parting words affect Sangwoo deeply, and whilst he has an easy-go-lucky air among his friends, he is painfully paranoid and fearful of betrayal, which is why he oscillates between hatred and desperation towards Bum.

Bum provides Sangwoo with the perfect remedy to his problems: he is physically weak, a social pariah, lonely and friendless. His obsession with Sangwoo makes Sangwoo feel wanted and necessary, which is why he grows violent, fearful, and obsessive whenever Bum shows the slightest bit of independence. For Bum, Sangwoo is the man he has secretly admired for so long, and so to finally be in his home, playing housewife, sharing his most intimate and dangerous secrets, and being the object of his attention—no matter how violent and aggressive—is a dream come true.

Whenever Bum shows fear, Sangwoo gets angry and accuses him of not wanting him anymore, of “lying” like his mother and everyone else. Bum shows his loyalty to Sangwoo by offering his body, by pleading and relinquishing himself of all self-respect.

During one argument, a distressed Bum cuts his own wrist. As he bleeds out and loses consciousness, Sangwoo genuinely panics, begging Bum to survive and apologising for upsetting him. This scene serves to show that despite his impressive physique and constant cold behaviour, Sangwoo is just as weak as Bum, just as needy, just as mentally unwell.

Throughout their relationship, Sangwoo conducts several abductions and he murders his victims in the basement. At times, Bum is coerced to participate, which traps him as an accomplice and removes any hope or comfort he would feel towards the police. Bum develops a deep mistrust of law enforcement not only because of his own participation in the murders, but because, were they to ever discover the crimes, Sangwoo would be arrested and their relationship would end.

Sangwoo during one of his more depressive stages leading up to his final demise.

What’s depressing about Killing/Stalking is the lack of virtue in the extended cast. The first murder victim, the daughter of a pharmaceutical CEO, threatens Sangwoo with the full force of her social privileges during her dying moments. Sangwoo’s second victim, a man he picked up at a gay bar, is a serial cheater living a double life. The third murder victim is an equally popular girl at the university, but she is cruel to Bum simply because of his weak appearance and his proximity to Sangwoo. And when she officially becomes a missing person, her mother flaunts her designer bag as proof of her daughter’s exemplary upbringing. The fourth victim is Bum’s own uncle, murdered during an act of retributive rape in Sangwoo’s kitchen.

The last person to die is the police chief who, whilst an upstanding example to others in the force, was equally negligent and indirectly allowed Sangwoo to commit his crimes because his appearance played into the chief’s personal prejudices: handsome, good middle-class family, charismatic. He also projected the loss of his own son onto other young men, often clouding his better judgement.

Then you have Jihae, Bum’s old classmate who humiliated and abandoned him when they were in school. They reconnect during one of Bum’s rare solo ventures outside Sangwoo’s house, and as Bum notices the signs of domestic violence on her arm, she offloads on him in the same way she did when they were children, back when she was being abused by her father and Bum was a listening ear and a venting well. Jihae is so quick to track him down at Sangwoo’s house that it’s hard not to be concerned about her intentions and whether she’s simply using Bum as a reprieve from her current issues. After the whole ordeal with Sangwoo is over and Bum is recovering in hospital, she is by his side almost as his spokesperson, courting media interviews.

Mention must be given to officer Seungbae, the main foil to Sangwoo and Bum’s relationship, and the only person to suspect that Sangwoo isn’t the person he purports to be. Although his dedication is admirable, Seungbae is equally self-serving. Previously, he had a fall from grace and was demoted after abusing his powers to assault a mistaken suspect. He becomes obsessed with Sangwoo in his own way, determined to restore his reputation by getting him behind bars. Seungbae is anal and finicky, and his sense of justice is based solely on the end result and not the means.

It’s clear Seungbae has no care for the victims of Sangwoo’s crimes. After “freeing” Bum, he immediately reprimands him for still wanting to see Sangwoo in hospital after the latter’s explosive final confrontation with the officer. If he had any kind of tact, Seungbae would understand that Bum was a victim of a complex and sensitive relationship: it’s not unusual for hostages to feel compassion and love for their captor, and as Bum was in a sexual relationship with Sangwoo, going on dates and being looked after for the first time in his life, it’s no surprise that he would be worried about Sangwoo’s injuries.

Instead of compassion and understanding, Seungbae is perturbed, annoyed, suspicious, and even makes it clear to Bum that his behaviour is being scrutinised by the public for signs of guilt. Seungbae is not a good officer, but he believes he is, and his sense of pride and vindication are on display as he visits Bum in hospital in full police uniform, adorned with medals of distinction, reputation restored.

Koogi knew exactly what she was doing with Seungbae’s design.

Sangwoo and Seungbae’s final confrontation ends with Seungbae blowing up Sangwoo’s home with Sangwoo still inside. Despite Seungbae’s admonishment, Bum eventually tracks down Sangwoo’s hospital, desperate to see him again. He can no longer remember what Sangwoo looked like because he was so traumatised by the sight of his heavily disfigured face in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

Instead of Sangwoo in a hospital bed, Bum is escorted to Sangwoo’s ashes. He succumbed to his injuries two days’ prior, and according to patients in the nearby beds, he had been repeatedly calling out for Bum during his final hours. Bum takes the ashes in a stupor, returns to the ruins of the house, and presents a wedding ring to Sangwoo’s remains—the secret surprise he had been waiting to give to Sangwoo when he was still under the illusion of their relationship being normal and healthy.

The body of Sangwoo’s mother is discovered by firefighters during the blaze. Sangwoo had hidden her in a wall in his old childhood bedroom, positioning her body in a seating position to constantly watch over the house. As Sangwoo burned by the front door, he heard her prophecy about his demise coming from the bedroom.

The shocking discovery of the body explains why Sangwoo sleeps on the ground floor and not in his own room, and why he expresses discomfort about having sex with Bum in the bedroom. As explained by Koogi in one of her interviews, each floor of the house is symbolic. The basement is Sangwoo’s true self and the location of his secrets. It’s where his mother died and where he kills most of his victims. Notably, his own ashes were stored in the hospital basement. The one time we see Sangwoo murder someone on the ground floor (Bum’s uncle), everything goes pear shaped and he ends up leaving the house in distress at Bum’s panicked and reproachful reaction.

The upper floor is where time stands still: his room is in the same state of adolescent innocence, his mother is still physically there, the love letter he received from an old classmate remains tucked away in his desk, still sealed by a smiley-face sticker. Sangwoo has not healed from the past, and it is evident in every area of the house. It explains why he constantly hallucinates images of his mother in his day-to-day life, and why, just as he is about to climax during the first genuinely enjoyable sex session with Bum, he calls out his mother’s name, promptly drawing the sex to a close.

At the end of Killing/Stalking, Bum runs out of Sangwoo’s house, still covered in his ashes, to chase after a hallucination of his lost love. Someone who looks like Sangwoo is walking down the road, far away from him, arms linked with an unknown woman. Bum follows the couple, his eyes focused only on “Sangwoo”, not caring to pay attention to the busy streets around him. He scrambles across the road just as the crossing signal changes to red. Across town, Seungbae is panicking on the phone to his colleague, desperately trying locate Bum after finding his hospital bed empty. The story leaves us with the disconcerting implication that Bum met an untimely end on the busy crossing.

Killing/Stalking is the kind of story that tells you straight from the title what to expect. It has no scenes of brevity or humour (unless we’re talking gallows), and many moments are genuinely frightening. The cat-and-mouse tension between Seungbae and Sangwoo reminds me of Monster, and the toxic parental relationships are reminiscent of the ones explored in Trail of Blood. The obsessive, lonely Yoon Bum is very much like a male version of Kasane. But in terms of BL specifically, I find it very hard to find comparative titles, as it really uniquely subverts the expectations of a romantic relationship. This is a horror.

7/10