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The Head
“The Head” was also published as part of the short story collection Cursed Bunny, by South Korean writer Bora Chung. It won the 1998 Yonsei Literature Prize.
The story follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste.
It is available online on Samovar's website, a quarterly magazine of translated speculated fiction.
The story follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste.
It is available online on Samovar's website, a quarterly magazine of translated speculated fiction.
- GenresHorror
16 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Bora Chung
26 books1,209 followersBora Chung has written three novels and three collections of short stories. She has an MA in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She currently teaches Russian language and literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 25, 2024
How do you even come up with this
March 29, 2025
A cool, shameless metaphor.
My takeaway is that the titular head is a manifestation of the main character's growing feeling that she is wasting her life. It grows and grows without her intent, and comes to her when she's alone on the toilet, like most of these types of thoughts do. Perhaps she struggles with mediocrity.
The presence of these "thoughts" (manifested as a head) make her quit her job and jump into marriage and motherhood. This keeps the "thoughts" away for a time, but once her child leaves home, she finds herself old and again wondering if she has missed out on life.
The only downside for me is how it's written. It's an interesting story, but there's nothing interesting or crafted about the execution. It reads like a screenplay. It could easily work as a set of instructions for a short film. Maybe this isn't important for most readers, but I find you can definitely tell a good story in a bad way. Ask the least creative person you know to tell you a story, and see how much it could be improved with conscious technique and purposeful execution. It's unclear if there was something lost in the translation or what, but a story this creative could be told in a much more thoughtful way.
I dunno... does this do anything for you? Her old face facing her young face? There's got to be a better way to do this, right?
My takeaway is that the titular head is a manifestation of the main character's growing feeling that she is wasting her life. It grows and grows without her intent, and comes to her when she's alone on the toilet, like most of these types of thoughts do. Perhaps she struggles with mediocrity.
The presence of these "thoughts" (manifested as a head) make her quit her job and jump into marriage and motherhood. This keeps the "thoughts" away for a time, but once her child leaves home, she finds herself old and again wondering if she has missed out on life.
The only downside for me is how it's written. It's an interesting story, but there's nothing interesting or crafted about the execution. It reads like a screenplay. It could easily work as a set of instructions for a short film. Maybe this isn't important for most readers, but I find you can definitely tell a good story in a bad way. Ask the least creative person you know to tell you a story, and see how much it could be improved with conscious technique and purposeful execution. It's unclear if there was something lost in the translation or what, but a story this creative could be told in a much more thoughtful way.
She saw the face of her youth reflected next to her own, old face. Her young self was smiling at her old self. The old self slowly turned around to face the young self.
I dunno... does this do anything for you? Her old face facing her young face? There's got to be a better way to do this, right?
October 4, 2025
Excellent!
This was excellent, I need to review this, later.
RTC.
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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1998] [16p] [Horror] [4.5] [Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
★★★★★ The Head. [4.5]
★★★☆☆ Cursed Bunny. [2.5] <--
-----------------------------------------------
¡Excelente!
Esto fue excelente, necesito reseñar esto, más tarde.
RTC
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1998] [16p] [Horror] [4.5] [Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------
This was excellent, I need to review this, later.
RTC.
-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1998] [16p] [Horror] [4.5] [Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
★★★★★ The Head. [4.5]
★★★☆☆ Cursed Bunny. [2.5] <--
-----------------------------------------------
¡Excelente!
Esto fue excelente, necesito reseñar esto, más tarde.
RTC
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1998] [16p] [Horror] [4.5] [Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------
November 25, 2024
Um..wtf?💀
March 21, 2026
Rejecting the Waste
18 March 2026
I wasn’t really sure about this story. It is part of what seems to be a collection of Korean horror stories, though a part of me feels that I have encountered something like it before, such as the short story collection of [Author:Raold Dahl]. In a way it wasn’t horror, just grose.
The reason I say this is because a head pops out of a toilet and torments an unnamed woman who lives an average middle class life. Apparently the head is being formed from her waste, and follows her around wherever she goes. Finally it climbs out of the toilet, steals her clothes, and take over her life. The interesting thing is that she claims that her life is nothing fantastic, but the head responds that it is better than being stuck in the toilet.
Another thing that stands out is that she constantly rejects the head. The head sees her as her mother, but she refuses to accept this, and as such she creates animosity between the head and herself. I guess this has something to do with our relationship with others, and how we create rifts with others, and how those we reject end up coming back to bite us. I guess just as the head destroyed her life, we need to be aware of those we reject.
18 March 2026
I wasn’t really sure about this story. It is part of what seems to be a collection of Korean horror stories, though a part of me feels that I have encountered something like it before, such as the short story collection of [Author:Raold Dahl]. In a way it wasn’t horror, just grose.
The reason I say this is because a head pops out of a toilet and torments an unnamed woman who lives an average middle class life. Apparently the head is being formed from her waste, and follows her around wherever she goes. Finally it climbs out of the toilet, steals her clothes, and take over her life. The interesting thing is that she claims that her life is nothing fantastic, but the head responds that it is better than being stuck in the toilet.
Another thing that stands out is that she constantly rejects the head. The head sees her as her mother, but she refuses to accept this, and as such she creates animosity between the head and herself. I guess this has something to do with our relationship with others, and how we create rifts with others, and how those we reject end up coming back to bite us. I guess just as the head destroyed her life, we need to be aware of those we reject.
July 25, 2025
skibidi toilet
July 26, 2025
short story so baffling i had to rate it separately
February 9, 2026
I wonder if the director from Substance got inspo from this book!
June 4, 2025
hey so wtf 😍🫶
December 11, 2025
Muy bien escrito, pero demasiado bizarro para mi.
March 29, 2025
I read it as a metaphor about those things we want to sweep under the rug, push down... flush away.
Mental illness we'd rather try and run from, forget, disregard.
Maybe others in our lives will echo those impulses, and encourage us to do so, too. "Why don’t you leave it alone?", because really why are we like this, why do we focus on this, when we have all we need to be happy?
Maybe we'll teach others to look the other way too, tell our kids to not dwell on those things either, to keep moving, away from it all. Because, maybe if we try ignoring it hard enough, it will finally disappear.
It turns out, however, that the more we do so, and the more it grows, behind our back. We can momentarily run from it, like the nameless narrator getting married, moving into a new house, having a baby... Major events reduced to temporary distractions. We can try to kill it with all the self-hatred possible, this gross part of ourselves that we want to forget is ours. Maybe if we can't get rid of it, we can at least hate it to smithereens.
The truth is, none of that will do. On the contrary, it will keep growing. It will take a life of itself, it will keep coming back for us, relentless. Until we feel empty. Until avoidance and fear and suffering are all what's left of us. Until it has become more alive than we are, and it finally takes over the poor husk, empty of any self-love, that's left of ourselves.
Mental illness we'd rather try and run from, forget, disregard.
Maybe others in our lives will echo those impulses, and encourage us to do so, too. "Why don’t you leave it alone?", because really why are we like this, why do we focus on this, when we have all we need to be happy?
Maybe we'll teach others to look the other way too, tell our kids to not dwell on those things either, to keep moving, away from it all. Because, maybe if we try ignoring it hard enough, it will finally disappear.
It turns out, however, that the more we do so, and the more it grows, behind our back. We can momentarily run from it, like the nameless narrator getting married, moving into a new house, having a baby... Major events reduced to temporary distractions. We can try to kill it with all the self-hatred possible, this gross part of ourselves that we want to forget is ours. Maybe if we can't get rid of it, we can at least hate it to smithereens.
The truth is, none of that will do. On the contrary, it will keep growing. It will take a life of itself, it will keep coming back for us, relentless. Until we feel empty. Until avoidance and fear and suffering are all what's left of us. Until it has become more alive than we are, and it finally takes over the poor husk, empty of any self-love, that's left of ourselves.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews