Hellbound is a popular dark fantasy South Korean TV series. What speaks to me most about it is how the story is about a society’s metaphorical descent into totalitarianism. Totalitarianism you ask? Yes, that totalitarianism that we have already encountered in history from fascist Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union and the horrors of the Khmer Rogue regime in Cambodia.
For those who have not seen it, to avoid spoilers, perhaps you might wish to watch it first before listening to this video. The premise of Hellbound is that a supernatural being appear to some people who seemingly are selected to die and go to hell. They are told by this being when this would happen and when the time comes, demons arrive to bash up and kill the victim. Why this happens, no one knows but a group called The New Truth seized upon these events to build a dogma, a doctrine concerning how humankind have sinned, should repent and these events were a punishment to the condemned and a warning to the others. They soon joined up with a fringe fanatic group called the Arrowhead who are vigilantes going around wreaking violence to the opponents of the New Truth, in short, they did the New Truth’s dirty work. Do you see the parallels to totalitarianism yet?
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines totalitarianism as a “form of government that permits no […] individual freedom and seeks to subordinate all aspects of individual life to the authority of the state.” How does the fictional society in Hellbound become totalitarian?
Hellbound is set in present day South Korea, a developed technologically-advanced modern society. In both the show and in reality, South Korea has a democratically elected government along with the usual instruments of state such as the police, a judicial system and institutions such as a free press and universities. However, with the occurrences of these supernatural events, the New Truth seized the initiative to frame the narrative, choosing to interpret the events as god’s wrath, punishment and a divine warning against sin.
They made use of the press to spread their message and capitalised on our desire for explanations to reinforce their doctrine. They played on people’s superstitions, beliefs in the supernatural and their fears to keep them in line, and soon managed to capture the instruments of state such as the police and the courts, and companies such as telcos and the press to act as their feelers and their enforcers.
Those who opposed their ideas were systematically hunted and silenced through violence and murder with impunity. It seems as if in New Truth’s aim to spread how people should not sin, they themselves had the right to sin against others to prevent these others from sinning. It is this idea of how, to save you from sin, I need to sin against you, by using violence on you and somehow that absolves me of the sinfulness of that act of violence. From our distance in front of our screens, we recognise this logic as twisted, in fact the show depends on us recognising this. But as the show demonstrates, people can get rather carried away even while recognising the brutality of such a warped logic.
The New Truth played on people’s fears and then used these fears to make the people restrain themselves without any physical force, at least at first. The people became paralysed with fear. In the show, they capitalised on the people’s fears to first control them, and then used them to spy on each other and report each other. This is similar to tactics employed by the secret police of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and the Khmer Rogue.
In the most telling sign of such a totalitarian regime, when the reality did not fit with their doctrine, they modified reality to be in keeping with their inviolable doctrine. They do what Jean Paul Sartre called violence to facts, reality and truth. Describing totalitarianism in Search for a Method, Sartre writes: “Men and things had to yield to ideas – a priori; experience, when it did not verify the predictions [of the doctrine], could only be wrong.”
Sartre’s example was how Rakosi, a communist and the de facto leader of Hungary from 1947-1956, had envisioned a subway for the country’s capital, Budapest. Sartre writes: “Budapest’s subway was real in Rakosi’s head. If Budapest’s subsoil did not allow him to construct the subway, this was because the subsoil was counter-revolutionary.” To a reasonable person, you’d think that to build a subway, you have to do so in accordance to what the soil conditions allow. If building a subway in a specific ground was according to the laws of soil mechanics not possible, then it was simply not possible. Not to the totalitarian leader. For such a leader, any obstacle, even if the obstacle was the laws of science, needs to be removed at whatever cost.
In Hellbound, the subordinates of New Truth’s leader were loyal to a fault, after having committed themselves so deep to the organisation that they could not come out because either they had invested too much already or they might be harmed if they tried to leave. They then had to take the leader’s orders and carry them out, by whatever means necessary. They partnered with the vigilantes to repress, cover up or twist the events to fit their narrative.
A counter-group called Sodo tried to use the New Truth’s playbook to show how the New Truth was wrong. They saw an opportunity when a newborn baby was visited by the supernatural being to tell it that it too was going to die and go to hell. As the doctrine of the New Truth did not contain the concept of original sin, the New Truth was caught in a bind. Since one of their aims was to oppress the people by making them fear from committing any sin, if original sin was a concept, then the people were all sinful by definition and hence could not then refrain from sin, making the New Truth’s doctrine moot.
The leaders of the New Truth saw the danger of this paradox and hence worked to suppress the baby’s event at all cost. This plot twist helped resolve the story in the TV show in a neat way. The writers of Hellbound seem to draw their inspiration from the playbook of real-life totalitarian regimes who likewise suppress and hide the reality. Such regimes also modify their doctrines to cope with ideological difficulties, reinterpreting and revising their principles to take care of any contradictions. This move was likewise suggested in the show, when the Sodo people were afraid that the New Truth would somehow interpret the event in such a way as to fit their twisted narrative.
Hellbound is a clever piece of television which brings us through how a totalitarian regime can develop and overtake an ordinary society. It is a cautionary tale using the fictional device of the supernatural beings to show how idealogues can arise and then take over through a reign of terror. If you found the show frightening, the episodes in our history where this had really happened is far more frightening.
Part of the drama of Hellbound comes from how the balance of power was so slanted against those opposing the dogma that they risk being disarmed and destroyed before they could convince the people that the New Truth dogma was wrong. The strength of New Truth’s opponents comes from a scepticism and non-conformism from the prevailing beliefs and customs of the masses. We should likewise maintain a healthy scepticism towards all doctrines though that can be difficult given how we may be so immersed in the doctrine that we don’t even recognise that we are within the system of the doctrine, for e.g. the doctrines of capitalism.
It can also be difficult to know what is and is not the truth, since the authorities, be they politicians, religious leaders, scientists and other intellectuals, may have their own agenda for pushing their own narratives. Even if that isn’t happening, our state of knowledge is also limited. New theories and discoveries might inform our knowledge but only after terrible things had already taken place.
We also have history to look to, where we can see what has happened before, try to understand how and why it happened, and try to not allow such bad things to happen again. This too comes with difficulties since the narratives of history are not neutral and factual but interpretations, often from the victors. It also takes a kind of contemplative thinking to see the parallels which is not easy to do when we are in the thick of the action.
In conclusion, our reasoning abilities and our collective knowledge in the form of science, history, the humanities and the arts, are our safeguard against totalitarianism, though they too might fail us, just like they failed South Korea in Hellbound. The Koreans were finally saved through the actions of a few brave souls. In real-life, it is not entirely clear what can save us should a totalitarian regime arise. Hellbound showed how the nature of human beings, in the form of fear, vindictiveness and emotion got them into that mess, but how the nature of human beings in the form of a recognition of injustice, scepticism and reasoning also got them out of the mess. Perhaps this should tell us also that we must not be complacent with our societal institutions such as the democratic process and human rights though it was the permissiveness of the society that allowed poison to be spewed by the Arrowheads over social media channels and the rise of the cult of the New Truth.
It is a paradox of tolerance, where Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies wrote, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
His solution is not the censorship of the intolerant so long as it is possible to “counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion.” However, if they cannot be appealed to rationally, and seeks to use force, then Popper says that we need to “claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal.” Looking at how this applies to the New Truth, they did seem to use reason in their preaching but they were also ready to resort to force if they felt their reasoning was not complied with. It is then that we know that they are an intolerant group and hence became a threat to the tolerant society.
While Popper’s theory seems reasonable, it comes with its own difficulties. What constitutes rational argument? Who would be the judge of what is rational and what is not? Didn’t the arguments of the New Truth seem rational at least to its adherents? There appears to be a presupposition of the monopoly of violence by the state, i.e. the state is the only entity to enact violence through criminal punishment or war. That is problematic at least to the extent that the state could be the intolerant or totalitarian entity that needs to be fought against, for instance during colonisation. If the state uses force first, does it then legitimise the use of force by its opposition? But without the threat and instruments of force, how can a state then enforce its legislation? This question is not simply theoretical. In the current covid pandemic situation, governments have been using force to suppress protests, violent or otherwise, and other coercive measures such as restrictions. We might agree that some or even all of these measures are legitimate. But where would the line be crossed? In the case that vaccinations be made mandatory, how should the unvaccinated be made to comply? If they do not comply with reason, should force be used on them? Austria has experimented with a lockdown only for the unvaccinated. What’s next? A rounding up to a concentration camp? How far is too far?
There are unfortunately no clear answers, which is why such a show as Hellbound could even be made since it is this grey area of our systems of governance that the plot revolves around. While a story, a work of fiction, can tie up its loose ends and resolve its plotline, this is where fiction and theory and philosophy depart. I would have to leave this in a state of aporia, where the contradictions remain unresolved since reality is not quite as tidy as in a fictional world. If you do have a solution, please let us know in the comments section. If you don’t, that’s fine too, please let us have your thoughts too, and please like, share and subscribe to the Philosophical Bachelor. Thank you.
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