The Essence of a ‘Sweet Home’ (Kdrama Series)

By Sabrina Kim

St. Margaret's School

‘Sweet Home’ is the title of a Korean (Naver) Webtoon series created by Carnby Kim and illustrated by Youngchan Hwang. As a Webtoon, ‘Sweet Home’ is now completed with 143 chapters and currently has around 1.2 billion views, justifying their extreme popularity to those with even the slightest doubts about the work. The Webtoon is available in both English and Korean, spreading their fame beyond just the country of Korea, to international Webtoon readers. To get readers hooked into the Webtoon with just the first click, the author gives us a short yet intriguing overview: “After an unexpected family tragedy, a reclusive high school student is forced to leave his home -- only to face something much scarier: a reality where monsters are trying to wipe out humanity. Now he must fight alongside a handful of reluctant heroes to try and save the world before it’s too late...”

On the 18th of December, 2020, this horror-filled Webtoon series was finally turned into a live-action Korean drama/ Netflix original series and not long after it’s release, reached the US top 10 on Netflix's charts . And as can be seen by the ratings, the viewers were not disappointed with the outcome. Starting off, the incredible performances displayed by a full cast of talented people including: Song Kang (also starred in Love Alarm: available on Netflix), Lee Do-Hyun, Lee Si-Young, Go Min-Si, Park Gyu-young, and Lee JIn-Wook. These actors were all able to portray each character with a strong, unique individuality and act out each scene with such a deep connection to the story, that our shirts would be drenched in our bitter sweat and tears by the end of each episode.

What really drew the new audience and familiar readers into this series though, was the art. The raw and pure form of the creative color sewn into the story was fortunately not just left sitting on the pages of a Webtoon. From the eerie music that violently pulled at each hair on our arms and neck, to the credits illustrations that, contradictory to the simplicity of the work, seemed to speak to us from the screens, everything was nothing short of perfection. Not to mention, the true stars of the show, the monsters. When watching the drama, it’s not hard to tell that the creators’ intent with the depiction of the monsters was not just to get us fidgeting in our seats by it’s ‘scary’ image, but to show us the essence of every shade and hue circling the eyes of the artists. When looking at the monsters, the worn out hands of the artists can also be seen, but those hands were done justice when each monster did not fail to carry their own sense of horrific beauty, even through the CG in the live-action drama.

Though the drama itself has us hiding in blankets, just peeking through the small hole we created with our shaking fingers, when the next episode didn’t pop up onto the screen after the final seconds of episode 10, we jumped up from our seats, running to the screen in terror. The viewers of Sweet Home, are dying to know what will happen in the upcoming season 2, and will be not-so-patiently waiting for it’s release.