Sunday, April 27, 2008

How The Korean Vampires Came To Be

Korea was under the colonial rule of the Japanese Empire between 1910 and 1945.

During the Japanese occupation, thousands of Koreans were used as test subjects (guinea pigs) in secret military medical experimentation units, such as Unit 731, Unit 516, and many more. Towards the end of the colonial period, the Japanese military scientists were working on a new project, which was a "vampirisation process" on humans through genetic alteration.

If the project proved successful, the "supposedly-dead" could remain alive through parasitic life sustenance - a biological mechanism that mimics the blood-sucking vampire bats and leeches. The Japanese Army paid some poor hapless Korean parents to allow the medical officers to perform the experiments on their children. However, the Korean parents involved in the transaction believed that the experiments were merely another series of medical trials, and were not aware that it was actually a vampirisation process.

Theoretically-speaking, the success of this project would allow the Japanese Imperial Army to utilise the "undead" as "immortal soldiers" to fight through the end of World War II. The project, however, didn't seem to yield any immediate nor apparent result, as the Korean children in question didn't seem to show any physical sign of becoming "vampirised". The medical officers could not find any sort of cell mutation nor behavioural change in these children.

The project was finally abandoned, when the Japanese Army were forced to surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945 after the American dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. All documents and project facilities pertaining to the said experiments were destroyed, so as to eliminate evidences of the Japanese Imperial Army's atrocious deeds.

The children grew up normally - some of them joined the US-led South Korean Army (known as the Regiments), while some of them embraced communist ideals and became the insurgents (known as the Guerrilas). The two remained at war until the "Jeju Massacre" , which claimed the lives of more than 60,000 people. Their bodies were then sealed in the volcanic cave of Mount Halla. Amongst these 60,000 people were some of the test subjects who were earlier involved in the vampirisation process. The vampirisation process only became effective when these dead bodies were laid in the cave.

The geological conditions (temperature, mineral make-up, etc) of the volcano cave helped to promote the vampirisation process, and their genetic structure mutated to resemble the feeding patterns of bloodsucking creatures such as bats and leeches. Thus these group of the dead were resurrected to become vampires, as they acquired the ability to shapeshift into bats, and back into their human form. They are now doomed to roam the streets of Jeju seeking living human prey.
Could Seiji Inada, being a Japanese vampire hunter, somehow be linked to the vampirisation project conducted by the Japanese Army several decades ago?Hhhmm... It very well could, especially if his father, Kazuhito Inada was one of the soldiers involved during World War II...
Find out more in the sequel to the Curse of Jeju Island:
BLOOD ENEMIES OF
JEJU ISLAND
(In Progress of Writing)

Curse of Jeju Island's Library Traffic






I've been visiting the National Library's (click above link) web database recently to spy on my book's popularity and I'm glad that it's doing fairly well with an average 25% borrowing rate. It seems that the NLB has acquired about fifty copies of my book and roughly 10-15 of them are being borrowed... As the books seem to be borrowed from branches where the convent schools are located, I have a feeling that most of my readers are female... probably because of its supernatural/romance twist, which reminds them of Stephanie Meyer's TWILIGHT series...

While a 25% borrowing rate is considered good for a local book, I'd be much happier if a reader likes it so much that he/she decides to buy from the bookstore instead. The book is retailing at S$12.89 in the local bookstores, & you can find it at the Popular bookstore in the "SINGAPORE COLLECTION" shelves, & at Kinokuniya/Borders at the Children's Section...

Concerned parents may protest that a vampire fiction like mine shouldn't be located in the Children's section, with all the blood & gore... I grew up with a healthy dose of 'Hardy Boys', 'Famous Five', "Secret Seven', 'Three Investigators' sort of stories, but today's children are different are experiencing a different kind of childhood from mine. They have grown up prematurely and are already used to fast-paced action-packed media (games/movies), so I'm pretty sure my story doesn't require an NC-16 rating...
My books are sharing limited space on the shelves, competing with dozens other titles, and all you can see are the thin spines screaming silently for attention... So I'd like to appeal to anyone reading this: if you happen to visit any of the bookstores but have no intention of buying my book, I'd be most grateful if you could do me a simple favour of sieving them out of the obscure shelves and place them strategically at the conspicuous spots where people can notice them at first glance, ie. the New Arrivals section, Bestselling section, or place them next to the "Movie Tie-In" titles such as Nim's Island, the Caspian Prince, Speed Racer, etc... Xie Xie~!!!
The book has been reviewed on Sunday Times and TEENS magazine, and also appraised online by 2 bloggers. It's really heartening to know that there are actually readers who do care enough to give a tonne more than their two cents' worth and provided a critical analysis on this light novel... If you're interested, here are the links: