Following the success of Train to Busan (2016), Kingdom (2019) pushed the zombie genre to another level—where the King, the most powerful and protected figure in the kingdom, is himself among the living dead. Is the royal zombie a game-changer for the genre?
Zombies often appear contradictory in pre-modern settings, as they are typically seen as byproducts of industrial hazards such as toxic leaks and viral infections. If vampires and werewolves belong to the olden days, then zombies seem to be creatures born of modern conditions—urbanization, technological development, and rapid social change. Does this mean that zombies are the successors of vampires and werewolves? Perhaps the lineage of ghouls is not so linear. Zombies may instead represent the most recent stage in a long and complex evolution of monsters, making it difficult to categorize them within a strict chronological framework.
What’s striking in Kingdom—beyond its fast-paced, ultra-aggressive, and flesh-hungry undead—is how seamlessly zombies blend into the historical setting, as if they were age-old monsters drawn from folklore. There must be something in zombies that is both ancient and contemporary, making them uniquely resonant for our time.
How They Come to Walk the Earth
Kingdom is set in the early 17th century, following the two Japanese invasions that devastated the Korean peninsula. This period was ruled by King Seonjo until 1608. Historical records show that he fled the palace—the center of power—to save his own life. When he returned in 1593, he found it burned to the ground and became obsessed with rebuilding it, paying little attention to the suffering of the people who had endured the wars. In Park Chan-wook’s recent film Uprising, Seonjo is portrayed as a self-preserving, mentally unstable monarch.
While Kingdom clearly presents its zombie king as a fictional character, the series’ setting in the aftermath of the Japanese invasions is hardly an innocent coincidence. It invites a provocative reimagination of Seonjo as a zombie figure—unhinged, mindless, and singularly obsessed. He is portrayed as vulnerable to manipulation by those who supply what he craves. In this sense, the zombie king in Kingdom becomes a critical reflection of a ruler who failed to protect his country and people, choosing instead to preserve only himself.
The Democratic Undead: How Kingdom Rewrites the Rules of Horror
What Kingdom demonstrates is that zombies are remarkably versatile in representing malice across a wide range of scales—from the personal to the societal. While vampires are bound by exclusivity, selecting only a few to join their ranks, zombies are indiscriminate and capable of spreading their condition on a massive scale.
Take Count Dracula and his servant Renfield, for example. Renfield desperately wishes to become undead like his master, but he cannot—because Dracula withholds the transformation. In most versions of vampire lore, joining this elite bloodsucking clan requires two steps: the vampire must bite a human, and then allow the human to drink from them in return.
Zombies, by contrast, involve no such ritual or hierarchy. A single bite—or even a scratch—is enough to turn a person. Perhaps for this reason, zombies can be adapted to fit a wide variety of contexts, transcending specific time periods or geographic settings.
The Secrets of the Resurrection Plant
The infection route for the zombie king is somewhat unusual, as it is deliberately administered. Cho Hak-ju, the most powerful lord in the royal court, chooses to use the resurrection plant upon discovering that the king is dead. For political reasons, Cho needs the king to appear alive. However, the side effect of the plant is dire: those brought back to life develop an insatiable hunger for human flesh. They become zombies—driven by a singular, senseless urge to feed.
It is almost unheard of for a zombie infection to be intentional and man-made, as zombies are typically the result of unintended incidents. In Train to Busan, for instance, the outbreak begins with toxic leaks from a factory—the direct source being technology that has spun out of control. Although humans are behind this technology, the spread of the infection is not deliberate.
In contrast, Kingdom introduces a rare scenario: zombification as a calculated, human-driven act. This intentional use of the undead opens up a broader space for interpreting what zombies represent. One possible reading is that the threat of becoming a zombie is always present—latent in society—and it is human desire or ambition that activates it.
What a terrifying world, where the apocalypse is not an accident but a choice.