Come Down to a Lower Place

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Come Down to a Lower Place

by
Yi Seoyoung

general information | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Come Down to a Lower Place
Author:	Yi Seoyoung
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2020 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	100 pages
Original in:	Korean
Availability:	Come Down to a Lower Place - UK
	Come Down to a Lower Place - Canada

	directly from: Honford Star

Korean title: 낮은 곳으로 임하소서
Translated by Janet Hong
A volume in the Lovecraft Reanimated-series (러브크래프트 다시쓰기 프로젝트)

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Our Assessment:

B : solid Lovecraftian horror

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

The main figure in Come Down to a Lower Place, Seul, is a project manager at Yukwang Construction who can hardly believe her luck when she is assigned an important project, a repair job at the large main building of the upscale Saesegae Department Store. It seems straightforward enough: "The job was simple. A smell was coming from the basement, and it could be detected on the first floor" -- naturally, something that is off-putting and that they want to get rid of.
When she visits the site she finds it's not quite as straightforward as expected. For one, the stench comes and goes -- there's nothing to smell when she first gets there, for example -- and its exact source hasn't been identified yet. Somewhat suspiciously and concerningly, too, when Seul inquires why the maintenance company that Saesegae surely employs didn't take care of the issue:

     The manager's face darkened. "The thing is ... when we mentioned the smell, they left in the middle of the inspection."
     "Pardon me ?"
     "They just took off. They said they couldn't do it and backed out of the contract. It was time to renew the contract anyway, so there was nothing we could do. Now we're trying to hire a company one a case-by-case basis ..."

       She also learns this isn't the first time the issue has cropped up: in the 1930s, during the Japanese occupation, when this was the site of the Mitsukoshi Department Store: "The malodor was so bad they had to reinforce the floor". But at least that seemed to have worked for a while, so maybe they can just do that again .....
       Seul also has her own malodor problem, which the novel in fact begins with: she frequently has a strong vaginal discharge, a smelly whitish substance; apparently there's something: "like a rotten squid smell from a fridge no one's cleaned for 3 years" down there ..... These and related female problems -- she gets her period, tries to deal with the discharge with a vaginal suppository, and has (as she often does) a urinary tract infection -- are dealt with at relatively great length (so buckle up, readers, especially you squeamish-about-these-things men ...).
       Seul gets to look at the old store plans and records, but the manager isn't very comfortable about that -- insisting also that they can not be copied or photographed, though Seul does anyway. They reveal more about the previous repair (which clearly did not go entirely smoothly) -- written in Chinese characters, as the document dates back to Japanese colonial times. Among the parts she decodes is a scrawled bit at the end:

"After that day, Gaebong fell ill for three days and eventually lost his mind. 牝汚災, 牝汚災."
She could easily read the second character, 汚 (o) for filth, and 災 (jae) for disaster, but she didn't recognize the first character, 牝. She opened an online dictionary and traced the character crookedly with her mouse. It was "bin," the character for "female." Bin-o-jae. Female, filth, disaster.

Yeah, so the omens don't look good .....
And it's not like she isn't warned, with an elderly man doing his best to scare her off:

The old man kept shouting as he chased her. "Stop digging ! You have to stop ! Or you'll unleash the curse ! You'll unleash the curse of Bin-o-jae !"

       Three guesses as to what happens .....
       Yes, Bin-o-jae lurks, and Bin-o-jae can't be kept down -- and "Bin-o-jae wasn't its only name. Long ago, it had been called Cthulhu, but even that wasn't its real name".
       Published as part of a Lovecraft Reanimated-series, it's not surprising to see the Lovecraftian figure feature prominently -- and, indeed, Come Down to a Lower Place is (successfully) Lovecraftian in atmosphere and sinisterness, with Yi very effectively tying it closely in with (specifically female) physicality. It's a graphically fleshed out little piece of horror, complete with dark end, and satisfies as such, a solid piece of homage and interesting variation in its very different cultural-historical setting (and female focus).

- M.A.Orthofer, 18 October 2025

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Links:

Come Down to a Lower Place:

Honford Star publicity page

Reviews:

Tony's Reading List

Yi Seoyoung:

이서영 at the Greenbook Agency

Other volumes in the Lovecraft Reanimated-series under review:

Lee Suhyeon's Alien Gods
Choi JaeHoon's The Call of the Friend

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Korean literature
See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books

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About the Author:

Yi Seoyoung (이서영) is a South Korean author.

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