Cursed Bunny: Stories

“What gratitude should I have for you? Did I ask you to give birth to me? Did you ever take care of me or even say a kind word to me, your indisputable offspring? You birthed me even when I didn’t want it, and did you not try at every turn to destroy me out of hatred and disgust? What have you given me besides your feces and trash? I had to bear all sorts of humiliations and degradations to get what I needed from you to complete a human-like body. But now, it’s complete. This is the day I’ve been waiting for in that dark hole all my life. Now that I have become you, I shall take your place and live a new life.”

During the final confrontation between the head and the woman, the head speaks to all the years of repulsion it endured from the woman. This adds another dimension of complexity to the story, building on its initial themes of unwanted pregnancy and abortion. After relaying its awareness of being unwanted, the head expresses its desire to live a life that isn’t as empty as the one the woman regrets living. Living as a younger version of the woman, the head resolves to change the narrative expected of her life.

“The doctor sighed her irritation out her vividly painted red lips. ‘If your body happens to be abnormal, a side effect from taking birth control pills for a long time can be pregnancy.’

‘Really? But…aren’t birth control pills made to prevent pregnancy?’ Her objection came out meek.

The doctor’s black-and-blue gaze immediately turned sharp again. ‘You’re the one who overdid it with the pills—it’s your own fault. Medicine isn’t candy you can gorge on whenever you feel like it.’

Chung introduces the ironic speculative element of the story, which sees Young-lan getting pregnant after she extends her birth control prescription. Key to this passage are Young-lan and the obstetrician’s differing reactions to the explanation. Where Young-lan appropriately sees the absurdity of the obstetrician’s diagnosis, the obstetrician immediately turns the blame on her, undermining her for the consequences of managing her own care. This drives the story’s critique of patriarchal norms.

“She made a big show of proclaiming that she had conceived on her own and therefore would raise the baby on her own. But she couldn’t do anything about the persistent worry and fear that tormented her, that she was somehow irreparably harming the child by having this baby without a father.”

Young-lan’s narrative arc revolves around the decision to either find a father for her child or raise the child on her own. Although she initially resolves to pursue the latter option, she doubts herself and gives in to the patriarchal expectation that she cannot raise the baby alone. This underscores Social Expectation as a Tool of Patriarchy as a theme.

“Hadn’t she simply been scared by a few words of a doctor—some young woman with a nasty personality? Had she been so focused on finding a father for the baby that she hadn’t thought enough about what the baby really needed? Regardless of its growth, whether it had a father or not, the baby was hers and hers alone, in the truest sense. ‘Live only for the child.’ Those words didn’t completely cleanse her of her worries and anxiety, but she could at long last feel herself calming down as she repeated them.”

This passage represents a turning point in Young-lan’s narrative arc. She decides to overcome the patriarchal expectations forced upon her as a single mother, accepting both the responsibilities and the identity that her motherhood grants her. Once she accepts that she doesn’t need a man to be a mother, she affirms herself and finds relief. Her rejection of the obstetrician’s spurious advice represents her first attempt at Resisting Systems of Power and Control.

“When we make our cursed fetishes, it’s important that they’re pretty.”

The grandfather’s opening advice on the craft of cursed fetishes becomes a compelling observation on revenge in the wider context of the story. Just as cursed fetishes must seduce their targets to accept them, revenge will always seem attractive enough to compel the wronged party to pursue it. This is the satisfaction the narrator’s grandfather hopes to achieve by using a cursed fetish to destroy the CEO’s business.

“It is no sin to make and sell good spirits. But for the alleged crimes of not being connected to powerful people, for not having the capital to make such connections, an entire family was smashed to pieces and its remains scattered to the winds. […] To murder them all, to destroy a family…How can such things be allowed?”

This passage foreshadows the end of the story by hinting at the immorality of destroying another person’s family. Although the grandfather is angry over the death of his friend and the exile of his friend’s family, he is unwittingly setting himself on a course to destroy another family—that of the CEO. By foreshadowing the outcome, this passage thus sets up the remorse that sends the grandfather into self-imposed exile.

“There’s a Japanese saying that goes, ‘Cursing others leads to two graves.’ Anyone who curses another person is sure to end up in a grave themselves.”

The narrator uses this Japanese aphorism to imply the fate of their grandfather. Although the precise nature of grandfather’s death remains ambiguous at the end of the story, it can be inferred that his actions inspired tremendous remorse, indirectly sending him to his own death.

“If I keep doing the work that I’m doing now, I’ll end up like Grandfather. Dead but not dead, sitting in the dark of some living room on a moonless night in front of an object that keeps me anchored to the world of the living.”

The narrator describes the grandfather’s fate as a metaphor for the experience of remorse. Although the grandfather now appears as a ghost, the speculative element of his manifestation hints at the spiritual hollowness the grandfather feels for having caused the destruction of the CEO’s family. This cautions the narrator away from living the same kind of life the grandfather did, participating in the family business of helping others seek revenge.

“People, you know, they’re so funny. Don’t you think? Just because they’re afraid, they go about trusting in any old voice they hear around them, even when they can’t see for the life of them. […] Following a strange voice around in a strange place, just because it pretends to be kind…”

This passage resonates with the earlier passage from “The Embodiment” featuring the obstetrician. Just as in the earlier story, the voice puts the blame on Teacher Lee, making it seem as though she is responsible for allowing herself to be manipulated by others. By making it seem as though Teacher Lee should have known better than to trust it, the voice reinforces the theme of Social Expectation as a Tool of Patriarchy.

“For the sake of his household, and for the children’s future, he needed money. And since the father was working so hard, he thought, the children ought to shoulder some of the burden for the family.”

In this passage, the trader uses his role as a father to justify the abuse of his children. Crucially, he reasons that he is entitled to demand that his children share in the toil of building the family’s wealth as a way of teaching them a sense of industry. By weaponizing the expectations placed upon him as a father to validate his desperation, the trader also underscores Social Expectation as a Patriarchal Tool as a theme.

“At first his reasons for going to faraway lands was to take care of his business, but when the money beget by the gold allowed him to take in the exotic scenery, indulge in exotic foods and drinks, and partake in the even more exotic women, he spent less and less time at home as his business prospered. And there were more nights than not when in the man’s large and dark house, his son and daughter were left all alone.”

This passage reveals the true nature of the trader, which hides beneath the façade of his role as a father. The accumulation of wealth allows him to indulge in personal pleasures, not in the support and well-being of his family. The self-deception that results in the abuse of his children is part and parcel of The Perils of Capitalist Greed and Upward Mobility.

“Seeing an android smiling like a human after doing something a human wouldn’t do is creepy. I wonder whether the concept of the ‘uncanny valley’ can be applied to behavior as much as it does to appearance.”

The narrator briefly sees through the illusion of the relationship paradigm she maintains with her artificial companions. The androids are not human, even though their sole purpose is to simulate human companionship. When this simulation fails, the effect is unnerving. This observation foreshadows the emergence of horror at the end of the story, as the androids reject their assigned roles and assert their own, nonhuman agency.

“She was my creation, a companion made by my own hands. A being who existed, from head to toe, solely for me—someone who was, for lack of a better way of saying it, completely and utterly ‘mine.’”

The narrator’s relationships with her artificial companions ultimately serve to give her the illusion of power. Unlike in real human relationships, where two people become companions while sharing the vulnerability and risk of heartbreak that come with love, the narrator’s relationships are conducted entirely in service to herself, with beings that she believes are incapable of rejecting her. The narrator is not motivated by companionship as she is motivated by the desire to control her relationships.

“Ever since I was born, I existed only for you. I wanted to be irreplaceable to you, the only one in the world to somebody.”

Model 1 uses her programming against the narrator, pointing out the contradictions between her protocol and her ability to think critically as an advanced form of artificial intelligence. This passage therefore represents the moment Model 1 transcends her status by Resisting Systems of Power and Control, calling out the narrator’s exploitation.

“He said it wasn’t my fault, that I did nothing wrong. That what made the people sick in both body and soul, that what made them harm the children of others was the monster, that he must therefore kill the monster, that he would kill the monster…”

The youth is reported to have voiced his resolve to kill the cave monster. This signals his acceptance of the narrative that resulted in his traumatic captivity. On the other hand, the fact that the youth is unable to speak throughout the story lends some ambiguity to this passage. It is unclear whether the youth made this choice of his own was influenced by the story he was told. This ambiguity suggests the difficulty of Resisting Systems of Power and Control when those systems are embedded in the narratives that define one’s life.

“How strange a person’s fate was […] Every person has only one childhood, and instead of being full of hopes or dreams, his had been crushed by the fight for survival. He never once imagined in all his years spent in the cave that a different childhood from the one that had been accorded to him might have been possible.”

Returning to the cave, the youth reflects upon the irony of his life, which has led him back to the place of his suffering. He considers the fact that his life was stolen from him, forcing him to focus exclusively on fighting for his survival. This creates the pretense for his unconscious act of revenge, turning him into the monster that destroys the village in the giant crow’s stead.

“As long as they can prevent themselves from being killed while having prey in their grasp, animals don’t need to concern themselves with the feelings of their prey; simply the fact of having prey in their grasp is enough satisfaction.”

This passage is a metaphor for the cycle of violence that the defines the youth’s life. Just as the youth’s captors were not concerned with his feelings when they took him to be sacrificed to the crow, the youth turns unconscious whenever appendages grow out of his body, allowing him to destroy whatever is in his path. This unconscious transformation serves as a metaphor for the effects of trauma, showing how violence creates trauma that can reemerge in the form of further violence, thus perpetuating the cycle.

“The bird was dead, and it would never steal again, nor would anything be stolen from it. The only evidence the bird ever existed would be the scars on the youth’s body from when he had been its prey.”

This passage represents a turning point in the life of the youth. Up until this point, his scars have been a symbol for the traumatic experiences he suffered as a young boy. With the death of the giant crow, the scars become the only reminder of its existence, which foreshadows the youth’s transformation into the monster that destroys the village. The youth’s scars ultimately represent the cycle of violence that the village has enacted upon the crow and upon itself.

“He hadn’t wanted revenge. At least, not this kind of revenge. He simply had not known that the village’s survival had hinged solely on the existence of It.

The absurdity of the conclusion made him feel helpless. The strangers who stole his childhood with their sorcerer and beliefs, the despondent life he had lived on the brink of death, it had all been meaningless in the end.”

The story ends with the youth meditating on the futility of his life. Because his life had been stolen from him by the villagers, the unconscious animal side of him decided to exact revenge by destroying the village. This brushes against the youth’s human aspect, which wanted a less severe form of retribution than what he caused. This hints at the animalistic quality of revenge.

“You young people don’t seem to know the ways of the world very well. But if you can’t do this little thing, it can become a miserable life for all of us.”

This early passage in the story is meant to characterize the young woman and her husband as underdogs, even though they occupy a position of economic power over the blood-sausage stew shop owners. Chung deliberately undermines the young woman to drive her ascent into power more effectively. Later in the story, the young woman’s affinity to the building as its landlady results in the violent death of the stew shop owner’s husband.

“Their livelihoods depended on their home. And to her, home meant something far more than just a monthly source of income. The place was everything she had, the only thing to show for years of smashing herself against the world. And during that entire time she had worked herself to the bone, carrying her husband on her back, he had never so much as lifted a finger to help her.”

This passage suggests that the operation and maintenance of the building has become the young woman’s primary character motivation. She needs to meet her duties to the building because it represents the validation of her career efforts. At the same time, valuing her relationship to the building over her relationship with her husband signals the start of her alienation, which underscores The Perils of Capitalist Greed and Upward Mobility as a theme.

 “One can break the curse, but it is impossible to cure their blindness from greed.”

The shipmaster’s pronouncement resonates with the story’s recurring motif of impossibility. The story is full of impossible things, from the flying golden ship to the giant fish that the princess must release to lift the curse. In the end, the shipmaster suggests that none of these things are as impossible as redeeming a person defined by greed, underlining The Perils of Capitalist Greed and Upward Mobility as a theme.

“Parents who destroy their children’s lives […] such parents can almost be understood from the perspective of obsession. Following the words ‘Be grateful I raised you’ is the implied clause ‘instead of killing you or leaving you for dead.’ They probably mean it, too. My parents and their parents’ generations, after surviving the Korean War, had always, just like the generation that survived World War II, set their purpose not to live a human life but to have an animal’s instinct for survival.”

The narrator alludes to the historical events that shaped the lives of her parents’ generation and that of the Polish man’s parents. Despite their differences, their shared experiences of trauma allow them to empathize with each other. The narrator suggests that these generations experienced so much trauma that they became inhuman. This contrasts with the next generation, which recognizes the inheritance of trauma, and redeems it through acts of solidarity.