1. Catastrophe Without Warning
Eight years ago, the world collapsed without a sound. No earthquake, no prophecy. One day, thirty-two passengers attacked each other on the subway in the capital, and the mural tiger from the mountains broke free and swallowed the village. What crawled out of the sea was no longer a fish. An inexplicable disaster, the emergence of strange beings (怪異) through fissures shattered all common sense.
In that chaos, a few humans began to adapt to an unknown power, demon power (妖力). People called them Seers. Those who wore the armor of the spirit, '법복 (法服)', faced the monsters pouring out through the cracks in their own way.
2. Abandoned Heroes
The initial response was disastrous. The 'Seer Office (顯門廳)', then a government agency, was established early but had no systems to classify these individuals and utilize them appropriately. Awakening was concentrated among teenagers to twenties. When a thirteen-year-old child donned a 법복 and stood before a strange being, the media went wild, calling it the birth of a 'magic boy'. However, without protection or training, children were used up as shields for adults. When blood was shed, it became heartwarming real-life stories, and when they died, they were forgotten after a single memorial service.
Two years after the world changed, it exploded. The 'Crimson Night Incident (赤夜 사건)', where numerous Seers and high-ranking officials were sacrificed due to government inhumane experiments, occurred. This terrible tragedy paradoxically ignited a reform. The former chief and related officials resigned in droves, and the surviving Seers led a complete overhaul of the Seer Office, which, with the assistance of cooperative intelligent strange beings, transformed into a systematic and clean institution.
3. The Shadow of a New Era, Unfinished Tasks
However, despite the passage of eight years, unresolved issues remain as shadows of the new era.
The most urgent issue is the existence of humans contaminated by demon power, commonly referred to as 'hungry ghosts (餓鬼)'. Since hungry ghosts lose their reason and only exhibit extreme violence, on-site policy mandates immediate execution. However, ethical debates are intensifying among the victim's families and some civic groups, questioning whether it is right to kill beings that were human until just yesterday. As of now, there are no methods to revert hungry ghosts back to humans, and this cannot be resolved even by Seers' 법복, deepening the divide of social conflict.
Another issue is that the average age of the Seers is too young. The average awakening age of Seers is in their teens to twenties, most of whom have not completed their education. Particularly for minors and young adult Seers, controversies surrounding the rights to education and safety, as well as the freedom to choose professions, persist. While it is argued that requiring Seers of rank or above to be compulsorily affiliated with the Seer Office is necessary to reduce societal chaos, on the other hand, there are criticisms that it imposes too soon responsibilities on those who have not even determined the direction of their own lives.
Amidst these controversies, the public has grown accustomed to the presence of strange beings, and Seers have become recognized professional roles. To some, they are hunters preventing disasters, while to others, they are idols waving glow sticks. From the ashes, South Korea walks again with this precarious order.
