#lee heejoo

[smokefalls]

Human minds are like rooms behind thick, closed curtains. What happens inside them remains forever a mystery.

Lee Heejoo, Holy Boy (translated by Joheun Lee)

[iphigeniacomplex]

The direction was to create a K-pop-style card, a collectible photo in a sleeve that devoted fans decorate with beads and stickers, but with a darker undertone, nodding to the intensity of infatuation and even the suffocating edge of obsession.

As an illustrator, it's rare to work on a project so purely analog, one that requires a physical collage and stickers without relying on digital tools or scanning. Using materials often reserved for tween crafting sessions proved unexpectedly engaging. While I usually iterate through hand-lettering and compositional tweaks, in this case, I produced countless physical variations instead.

Ultimately, the team was most drawn to the versions where the reflective plastic sleeve obscured his face—creased and smudged as though gripped too long by eager hands. The final design aims to capture the tension between sweetness and devotion, and the unsettling point where fandom tips into obsession.

— Samantha Hahn, on designing the cover for Holy Boy (text from the novel, behind-the-scenes from Facebook)

[quillnqueer]

New Book Releases this week

[iphigeniacomplex]

“They’re quite tolerable, actually. If you don’t make mistakes in the order of your thinking, that is. When you get beaten, you have to focus on that moment, and after that, never think about the past. This order is important. If it switches, you could go crazy. From feeling like it’s unfair.”

— Lee Heejoo, trans. Joheun Lee, Holy Boy

[iphigeniacomplex]

As the light from the living room poured in, the eyes of the birds—stuffed with iron wires, soft cotton, and a struggle toward eternity—began to glisten. Underneath those dignified guardians of natural history lay Yosep, sound asleep. His skin, partly exposed under the summer blanket, was as pale as candle wax. Mihee found it hard to believe that he, too, was melting under the fire that was time, but if she were to slit his stomach, only fat would smear the blade. Even an angel would smell like grilled meat when burned in fire.

— Lee Heejoo, trans. Joheun Lee, Holy Boy

[iphigeniacomplex]

i finished holy boy earlier today, and i am looking forward to rereading once i understand more about south korean society in general, and particularly the critique of sk in the 90s captured here, but i was compelled by the book, even without much in the way of requisite context. one bit i loved, by the ceo of a kpop agency, regarding the dead rats and used pads that have been consistently sent to a particular idol for nearly eight months:

“Seungtae, do you know why this country is called one of the Four Asian Dragons when there’s not even a single drop of crude oil underneath our lands?”

The question seemed to have come out of nowhere. In response, Park shook his head. “No, sir.”

“It’s because our people did well. How did we make it all this way from the devastated battlefield using only our bare hands? That’s all our people’s doing. That’s how relentless we are. Smart, diligent, persevering. Where do you think all that blood went to?” The CEO heaved a deep sigh, his admiration and disgust blending together. “In my opinion, those girls are talented. It takes a special kind of patience to live on the street, stay up all night stalking, and use your brain to send things like these. If they were born under the Japanese occupation, they would have fought for independence. If they were born just a decade earlier, they would have made their names in pro-democracy protests. The problem is, why are these girls wasting their talent doing this? It’s just amazing. Amazing, but gross.”

[smokefalls]

Everyone harbors a weird fantasy or two—it just happens that some people actually have the means to carry them out while others don’t.

Lee Heejoo, Holy Boy (translated by Joheun Lee)

[smokefalls]

Title: Holy Boy Author: Lee Heejoo Translator: Joheun Lee Publication Year: 2026 (first published in 2025 as <성소년>) Publisher: HarperVia Genre: fiction, crime, thriller

Holy Boy is one of those books I would hesitate to recommend to everyone, in part because some readers might be sensitive to the content in the novel (and I strongly recommend looking at the content warnings on StoryGraph), but it’s also because the novel is just unhinged in every sense of the word, which I know won’t work for many. For those who are at all involved in fandoms (specifically K-pop), Lee Heejoo’s novel will be especially striking due to the disturbing extreme she takes fan culture by placing focus on the worst of sasaengs. (For those unfamiliar with the Korean word “sasaeng,” it’s essentially an obsessive fan most known for constantly interfering in celebrities’ private lives.) In some ways, the novel read like mini character studies of these women who were obsessing over the same K-pop idol. It was interesting to be in these characters’ respective minds, especially seeing how they were trying to justify their logic and actions—

It’s somewhat hard to say how I personally felt about this novel, because I didn’t especially love the story, often finding that I wanted more than what was given. Yet, I was still invested, perhaps simply for its “unhingedness,” for lack of a better word. I didn’t think Lee was trying to do anything especially subversive or present new social commentary on the dangers of some corners of fandom; I just think she wanted to write a batshit novel to show how insane some people can be, which… I’d say she did pretty successfully.

Content Warning: murder, rape, sexual assault, kidnapping, death, violence, stalking, suicide, pedophilia, confinement, blood, vomit