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Kingdom and Kingship and Zombies
Zombies have been everywhere this past decade, or at least it sometimes feels that way. There’s relatively classic takes on the topic, like The Walking Dead, as well as subversions, like In The Flesh. In all of those cases, zombies are used to say something about humanity as a whole, but what they are used to say is something different every time, ever since George Romero used them as a metaphor for mindless consumerism.
The West, however, isn’t the only place that has been making use of zombies in their media. It’s been a staple in Eastern media as well, and there’s been quite a few recent Korean movies or TV series that deal with zombies, for example #Alive (an unintentionally poignant exploration of two people stuck in their apartments during a zombie apocalypse that came out in 2020), Train to Busan (which I haven’t seen), Zombie Detective (ditto) and Rampant (a movie where zombies attack historical Korea). The last has the most in common with the series I want to talk about here: Kingdom, a Netflix Original which is also a quasi-historical series, and also features a Joseon Korea threatened by a zombie apocalypse. But due to being a series, Kingdom has more room to explore its themes, which I would like to talk about here.
But before I start, I’d like to make it clear that I am not as into zombies as I could be. I am not an expert on the topic. My knowledge on Korea isn’t super in depth either (although I did pick some bits up during uni), and I am not Korean. I am also not saying that my analysis is The Definitive Way The Author Intended Things To Be Read. In fact, I think the author probably just wanted to create a fun zombie story. There’s a very good chance my analysis and interpretation are wrong. I’m just trying to have fun, and criticism is welcome.
Having gotten that out of the way, I really like the way zombies are used as a story element in Kingdom. For one, I am used to zombies either being a story element that doesn’t threaten the status quo (like in What We Do In The Shadows - the movie, not the series, which I haven’t seen), or in a full blown zombie apocalypse that ravages the land and leaves a few survivors struggling to find a way to survive. The Walking Dead, basically. Even In The Flesh takes place after the zombie apocalypse happened. Kingdom is different. It starts before the apocalypse and follows the main characters as it unfolds. And it ends up not being an apocalypse at all – due to the efforts of the main characters, a zombie apocalypse is actually averted. And both of those are intimately tied to the actions of the nobility and the king and prince in a way that reminded me of the Mandate of Heaven.
For those of you who don’t know – the Mandate of Heaven is a concept originally from China (but later also exported to Korea). It refers to the emperor’s divine right to rule, but unlike what you might expect, the Mandate of Heaven isn’t granted unconditionally. A ruler – any ruler – must be “worthy” of the Mandate of Heaven. If a ruler is not, then his subjects have the right to rebel to install one who is. People also believed there were signs when a ruler lost the Mandate of Heaven – for example natural catastrophes or plagues. And this is where zombies come in.
We don’t ever really get to meet the king in Kingdom, but we get to learn a lot about his rule. For starters, the common people are starving. He has also abdicated most of his power to the powerful Haewon Cho clan – the clan of his wife, whose father is the most important minister. And Cho Hak-ju is more interested in making his own family more powerful than in governing the country well. Then there’s the king’s most outstanding achievement – vanquishing a superior Japanese army with just a few men. An achievement that, as we later learn, is based on murder and the use of forces that are beyond human control. In other words, he was kind of a shit king, all things considered, and his failures come back to haunt his country.
You could argue that Heaven tried to correct the way of history by killing the king, albeit in a rather mundane way – he dies of smallpox at the beginning of the series. That should have left the more able and less corrupt crown prince to take the mantle of king, were it not for the Queen and Cho Hak-ju, which is where the first of the king’s mistakes comes back to haunt the country, followed closely by the second: Cho Hak-ju orders the king to be revived via the resurrection plant, hoping to keep the charade alive until the queen gives birth to a son who would take the crown prince’s place (since his mother was only a concubine). Then the now-a-zombie king bites the doctor’s assistant, who is taken back to his village by the doctor. There, the patients are starving, and so one of them decides to make a stew out of him to feed the others in a desperate attempt to save them from certain death…
So, as it stands, the king is both the actual (by way of the assistant), indirect (by way of his mistakes) and metaphorical source of the zombie apocalypse, as under the Mandate of Heaven, the king is considered to be the reason for calamities just as earthquakes or floods. A good king would have fought against the famine. A good king would have spread power to more than just one powerful clan. A good king wouldn’t have endangered the succession of his (adult) son by marrying a young woman whose infant child could supplant him. A good king wouldn’t have turned to zombies to save his throne. The main character’s father is not a good king or a good ruler.
As the start of the would-be zombie apocalypse is all about the failure of leadership, stopping it in the end is all about addressing wrongs and the main character proving that he is different. It’s about re-establishing order in more ways than one.
Lee Chang – the crown prince and main character – has to fight not only against zombies, but also against the people who would rather have the kingdom destroyed than see him on the throne. It’s an interesting twist on the usual human-on-human violence we see in zombie apocalypse movies, and it honestly feels more real to me, because it addresses our very human desire to just ignore something bad until it’s too late. I always have trouble believing that humans are other human’s worst enemies in the face of something like zombies, because humans are kind and ultimately band together when something really unignorably bad happens. But the bit where many officials just deny something bad is happening until there’s literally a zombie eating their face? That I can buy all too well.
Then there is the king’s old allies – now on opposing sides: Cho Hak-ju and Ahn Hyeon. They are both guilty and both need to get their cosmic punishment before a zombie-free peace can be established, although I don’t really want to spoil too much. The same applies to the queen too, of course.
And as for Lee Chang: he has to prove, in the end, that he is not his father. That he cares about what is best for everyone more than he cares about what is best for himself. And when he finally does, it isn’t exactly in the way you might expect. Again, I don’t want to spoil too much, for those of you who might be reading this without having seen the series. (Do watch it, it is great.) In the end, the Mandate of Heaven is restored, a balance is created and the zombie plague goes away.
Well, hopefully. ;-P There’s always Ashin… but that’s a different story.
The West, however, isn’t the only place that has been making use of zombies in their media. It’s been a staple in Eastern media as well, and there’s been quite a few recent Korean movies or TV series that deal with zombies, for example #Alive (an unintentionally poignant exploration of two people stuck in their apartments during a zombie apocalypse that came out in 2020), Train to Busan (which I haven’t seen), Zombie Detective (ditto) and Rampant (a movie where zombies attack historical Korea). The last has the most in common with the series I want to talk about here: Kingdom, a Netflix Original which is also a quasi-historical series, and also features a Joseon Korea threatened by a zombie apocalypse. But due to being a series, Kingdom has more room to explore its themes, which I would like to talk about here.
But before I start, I’d like to make it clear that I am not as into zombies as I could be. I am not an expert on the topic. My knowledge on Korea isn’t super in depth either (although I did pick some bits up during uni), and I am not Korean. I am also not saying that my analysis is The Definitive Way The Author Intended Things To Be Read. In fact, I think the author probably just wanted to create a fun zombie story. There’s a very good chance my analysis and interpretation are wrong. I’m just trying to have fun, and criticism is welcome.
Having gotten that out of the way, I really like the way zombies are used as a story element in Kingdom. For one, I am used to zombies either being a story element that doesn’t threaten the status quo (like in What We Do In The Shadows - the movie, not the series, which I haven’t seen), or in a full blown zombie apocalypse that ravages the land and leaves a few survivors struggling to find a way to survive. The Walking Dead, basically. Even In The Flesh takes place after the zombie apocalypse happened. Kingdom is different. It starts before the apocalypse and follows the main characters as it unfolds. And it ends up not being an apocalypse at all – due to the efforts of the main characters, a zombie apocalypse is actually averted. And both of those are intimately tied to the actions of the nobility and the king and prince in a way that reminded me of the Mandate of Heaven.
For those of you who don’t know – the Mandate of Heaven is a concept originally from China (but later also exported to Korea). It refers to the emperor’s divine right to rule, but unlike what you might expect, the Mandate of Heaven isn’t granted unconditionally. A ruler – any ruler – must be “worthy” of the Mandate of Heaven. If a ruler is not, then his subjects have the right to rebel to install one who is. People also believed there were signs when a ruler lost the Mandate of Heaven – for example natural catastrophes or plagues. And this is where zombies come in.
We don’t ever really get to meet the king in Kingdom, but we get to learn a lot about his rule. For starters, the common people are starving. He has also abdicated most of his power to the powerful Haewon Cho clan – the clan of his wife, whose father is the most important minister. And Cho Hak-ju is more interested in making his own family more powerful than in governing the country well. Then there’s the king’s most outstanding achievement – vanquishing a superior Japanese army with just a few men. An achievement that, as we later learn, is based on murder and the use of forces that are beyond human control. In other words, he was kind of a shit king, all things considered, and his failures come back to haunt his country.
You could argue that Heaven tried to correct the way of history by killing the king, albeit in a rather mundane way – he dies of smallpox at the beginning of the series. That should have left the more able and less corrupt crown prince to take the mantle of king, were it not for the Queen and Cho Hak-ju, which is where the first of the king’s mistakes comes back to haunt the country, followed closely by the second: Cho Hak-ju orders the king to be revived via the resurrection plant, hoping to keep the charade alive until the queen gives birth to a son who would take the crown prince’s place (since his mother was only a concubine). Then the now-a-zombie king bites the doctor’s assistant, who is taken back to his village by the doctor. There, the patients are starving, and so one of them decides to make a stew out of him to feed the others in a desperate attempt to save them from certain death…
So, as it stands, the king is both the actual (by way of the assistant), indirect (by way of his mistakes) and metaphorical source of the zombie apocalypse, as under the Mandate of Heaven, the king is considered to be the reason for calamities just as earthquakes or floods. A good king would have fought against the famine. A good king would have spread power to more than just one powerful clan. A good king wouldn’t have endangered the succession of his (adult) son by marrying a young woman whose infant child could supplant him. A good king wouldn’t have turned to zombies to save his throne. The main character’s father is not a good king or a good ruler.
As the start of the would-be zombie apocalypse is all about the failure of leadership, stopping it in the end is all about addressing wrongs and the main character proving that he is different. It’s about re-establishing order in more ways than one.
Lee Chang – the crown prince and main character – has to fight not only against zombies, but also against the people who would rather have the kingdom destroyed than see him on the throne. It’s an interesting twist on the usual human-on-human violence we see in zombie apocalypse movies, and it honestly feels more real to me, because it addresses our very human desire to just ignore something bad until it’s too late. I always have trouble believing that humans are other human’s worst enemies in the face of something like zombies, because humans are kind and ultimately band together when something really unignorably bad happens. But the bit where many officials just deny something bad is happening until there’s literally a zombie eating their face? That I can buy all too well.
Then there is the king’s old allies – now on opposing sides: Cho Hak-ju and Ahn Hyeon. They are both guilty and both need to get their cosmic punishment before a zombie-free peace can be established, although I don’t really want to spoil too much. The same applies to the queen too, of course.
And as for Lee Chang: he has to prove, in the end, that he is not his father. That he cares about what is best for everyone more than he cares about what is best for himself. And when he finally does, it isn’t exactly in the way you might expect. Again, I don’t want to spoil too much, for those of you who might be reading this without having seen the series. (Do watch it, it is great.) In the end, the Mandate of Heaven is restored, a balance is created and the zombie plague goes away.
Well, hopefully. ;-P There’s always Ashin… but that’s a different story.