Permafrost (1)
Did Yoon Jay Kill the LIS Deputy Leader?
······Among netizens, speculation is mounting that the operator disguised as an Eastern missionary was none other than Yoon Jay, based on the claim that he was the only Asian member of that squad.
······The LIS deputy leader killed by the operator, Asad Yasin Qadir, is known to have ordered the Gangnam 1224 Disaster, the Incheon Airport bombing, and terror attacks in Busan and against military bases in northern Gyeonggi Province.
What people guessed among themselves was one thing; hard evidence was quite another. Unaware that talk about him was spreading in every corner, Yoon Jay opened the door to the waiting room.
“Hello.”
“There he is.”
“Yes. Did you all get home alright yesterday?”
Yoon Jay noticed that the glances fixed on him were different from yesterday's.
So they've heard too.
But no one pressed him with questions — most likely Moon Chang-min had set the tone beforehand, telling everyone to keep their mouths shut about anything unnecessary.
“I can't wait for the final cut.”
“I wonder how it'll turn out······”
They were all such extraordinary actors that their pretending not to know anything was masterful, and whether the rumors were true or not, Permafrost — the film their livelihoods depended on — came first.
“Director, if you kill any more of my scenes, you're a dead man.”
“Me too!”
“Oh, come on. We can't do soup-takes next time. Oh, Jay's here?”
Lee Han-lim, wedged between Im Ji-hwan and Heo Sung-ik, sprang to his feet and clapped Yoon Jay on the shoulder with a meaningful look on his face.
Then he lowered his voice to just under what the other actors could hear.
“I looked out for your screen time, Jay.”
“······? Thank you.”
What screen time was there to protect? His role was just to fight a monster and die. Still, Yoon Jay bowed his head politely.
Lee Han-lim stole a glance at Yoon Jay's profile.
Wow. So it was all true?
On the surface, it read like something out of a video game or a movie······ but the source was supposedly credible.
It was a stroke of coincidence that it broke today of all days. Riding the surge of Intermission's success, Permafrost had used Yoon Jay to lift Captain Jin Young-do into the spotlight as well.
I hope a lot of people come see our film······
The actors quietly took their seats, and the journalists murmured, sneaking glances back at them.
Yoon Jay could feel the stares burning into his face, but he paid them no mind and fixed his gaze on the screen.
How did the editing turn out?
Even with Intermission, the final result had differed from what he'd imagined on set. He was curious what Director Lee Han-lim's hand would do with this one.
The lights of the screening room dimmed slowly, and the Antarctic research base revealed itself. Around the state-of-the-art facility, patches of green grass caught the eye. It was an environment no one could possibly mistake for Antarctica.
“Damn this Antarctic weather, can't make up its mind — freezing one day, scorching the next.”
“Have you seen any penguins, sir?”
“Haven't seen so much as a nose. They say there were some last week.”
“Polar bears are starving to death — you think a penguin's going to show up?”
The glacier was melting further and further, and the Antarctic weather swung capriciously between sweltering summer heat and bone-deep winter cold.
In the easygoing atmosphere, the team members turned their heads toward Yoon Jay — toward Captain Jin Young-do.
Jin Young-do was lifting a heavy dumbbell and lowering it, over and over, one-handed.
He wore a sleeveless shirt that clung to his body, and scars showed all over his exposed skin. No makeup necessary — the assistant director had loved that.
“Captain.”
“What.”
“When you get back to Korea, what's the first thing you'll do?”
“Do what? Sleep at home, I suppose.”
“Oh come on. Where's your sense of romance?”
The mild-faced man — called 'the kid' more often than by his actual name — gently swiped across a tablet screen.
“Me, I'm taking my daughter to an amusement park. Haven't been in ages.”
On the screen, the kid's daughter beamed, gripping her grandmother's hand tight.
His wife had died of an unidentified virus, hadn't she? Boils had spread across her whole body.
“Wait for me, sweetheart. Dad will come soon······”
“Hey. Put the picture away.”
“Ugh, where do you get off being all sentimental, you lucky bastard.”
The team members around him rained merciless blows on the back of the kid's head. Even beaten like that, the kid only grinned like a fool.
(Before we show you this footage, we caution the elderly, pregnant women, and the faint of heart to exercise discretion.)
(At approximately six o'clock this morning, an unidentified monster attacked the city of Irkutsk in Russia.)
Jin Young-do, who had been quietly maintaining his knife after setting the dumbbell down, turned up the volume.
(Those bitten by the creature suffered violent convulsions, then rose and began attacking people nearby at random.)
“What the hell?”
“This isn't some zombie movie······”
The team members, who had been snickering among themselves, drifted one by one toward the TV.
It wasn't only Asians stationed in Antarctica — personnel of every race and nationality had been dispatched, and Jin Young-do was their overall commander.
(Now, a virus has broken out across Alaska and the northwestern regions of Canada. It is provisionally being called the 'spore virus.')
(Those infected suffer a severe illness in which inflammation spreads across their entire bodies.)
(Some are asking whether a pandemic is coming. Doctor, what's your assessment?)
These men were agents sent by partner nations, carrying out a classified project.
They had believed it a trivial mission: as the glacier melted, to collect samples of an ancient virus.
But there had been too many ominous incidents near the fortress-like base — suspicious shadows in the distance, team members driven to delirium by infection.
“Don't tell me that's why we came here······”
“Time's up.”
Jin Young-do rose from his seat and snapped his fingers sharply to draw their attention.
“Grab your gear and assemble by 14:30.”
He repeated the same words in English. And now, thoroughly sick of it all, he was about to tell them to get the hell out and go home — but before he could open his mouth, something went wrong.
BANG!
“AAAAGH!”
“What the—?!”
Something struck the base, and the ceiling crumpled like paper and collapsed onto Jin Young-do and his men.
The peaceful daily life they'd shared, tossing jokes back and forth, had been nothing but bait for complacency. Several journalists watching the film flinched hard at the shoulders.
A high-pitched ringing filled his ears. Jin Young-do forced himself up and bellowed.
“Report!”
“Sergeant Kim Yong-taek, no injuries!”
“Nothing here either!”
“The kid?”
“H-here!”
Fortunately, aside from light bruises, everyone was unharmed. They hurriedly gathered their equipment and headed for another section to respond to whatever had attacked the base.
“None of this would've happened if the kid hadn't kept spouting nonsense······”
“Aw, come on, Sergeant. What did I do?”
They tried to lighten the mood with easy banter, but it didn't last long. Because they laid eyes on the monster that had attacked their base.
“······Captain.”
“Hold.”
Fear bloomed across the team members' faces.
“Th-that thing······”
It was the same monster they'd watched on TV. During filming it had been a rig with a green puppet mounted on it; the visual effects had turned it into a monster of terrible craft.
The CG was astonishing in its own right — but Yoon Jay's acting was uncannily natural.
“Hold formation.”
Even facing the monster, Jin Young-do stayed calm. Just looking at his back was enough for the team members to recover their courage, and they shouldered their rifles.
Battle erupted at Jin Young-do's hand signal.
“The red part looks like its head! Concentrated fire!”
“Fire!”
“Kid! Get back!”
These were men who had breathed in rhythm with each other for years. But even their barrage was not enough against a monster the size of a house.
A single swipe of the monster's hand sent three team members flying and slamming into the ground, and with a sickening, skin-crawling crack, one of them was torn clean in two at the waist.
“AAAAGH!”
“Kim Yong-taek! Fall back!”
At his comrade's horrific death, Sergeant Kim Yong-taek lost all reason and charged. But the monster's grip seized him and crushed the life out of him, bone by bone.
“You······!”
Jin Young-do hurled a wire at the section of ceiling still intact and swung up into the air, then dropped three grenades straight into the monster's gaping maw as it tried to swallow Kim Yong-taek whole.
“You son of a bitch!”
He hit the ground fast and ducked behind a wall.
BOOM! Shreds of the monster's flesh spattered in every direction.
“Haah······ hah······”
Jin Young-do turned slowly, surveying the horrific scene.
The kid, who had been so excited about going home, lay broken and crumpled. Jin Young-do switched on the tablet lying nearby, and on its wallpaper, the kid's daughter and mother appeared.
He had seemed stoic at first, but now, from expression alone, you could see how deeply Jin Young-do had cherished these people — and how tortured and hollowed out he was in this moment.
As the camera pulled back to show Jin Young-do standing utterly alone amid the carnage, the film's title seized the screen in massive letters.
Permafrost
Then the location changed. Subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Five years later. Seoul.
It was not the country anyone remembered.
As if to display the desolation, the air hung yellow, thick with yellow dust.
Gray ruins lined the streets everywhere, and the garbage and beggars had multiplied.
Far in the distance, a siren rang out — the kind of sound made familiar by civil defense drills. Something, somewhere, had gone wrong in another region.
Snowplows scraped clumps of monster fat off the pavement.
On the walls, propaganda posters were pasted — 'Let Us Seize Freedom With Our Own Hands,' 'What Is the Government Doing?' — only to be torn down promptly by public officials.
Through the chaotic streets, office workers commuted wearing thick gas masks.
(We regret to inform you that trains will be delayed due to a monster's intrusion onto the tracks······)
“Ugh!”
“Late again today.”
The people waiting for the subway groaned.
At that, small laughter rippled through the audience. A disaster on that scale and they still wanted to clock in? But somehow it felt like something Koreans really might do — that was where the laughter came from.
“A shadow of a monster has been sighted on Baengnyeong Island.”
“The virus hasn't even spread as far as the islands yet, has it?”
“Jeju Island······”
It was a control tower receiving reports on the state of present-day Korea. On the great operations-room screen, a map of Korea was stained red wherever trouble had erupted — thirty percent of the national territory glowed red.
A section chief, phone glued to his ear, sprang up and hurried off somewhere.
“Prime Minister, Dr. Bae of the K.I Research Institute is requesting a meeting.”
“Dr. Bae Hong-ik? Tell him I'm busy.”
Prime Minister Kook Min-han, played by Moon Chang-min, gave off a 'I am a wicked man' vibe to anyone who laid eyes on him.
His mouth was pressed into a stubborn, obstinate line, and nearby, pork rinds and cans of beer piled up in reserve for whenever his mouth got bored.
Outside, people who had fallen out of society begged on the streets — while he lived in luxury.
“Well······ they say he's found a lead on a vaccine for the virus.”
“What did you say?”
And so the emergency meeting was convened. Around a long table sat the research institute's key personnel, the Prime Minister as acting president, officials from every administration branch, the leaders of every party — a crowd of them.
“This is the data transmitted from the Antarctic base five years ago.”
“Hold on. Five years ago?”
“It's data one of the researchers sent before he was attacked by the monster.”
“Then why is it only being found now? Don't tell me······”
The accusation hung unspoken: Were you planning to hog this all to yourselves?
Dr. Bae flustered and waved his hands in denial. He looked like a pure scientist through and through — a man built to be far away from politics.
“No! Five years ago, the Permafrost project was abruptly discontinued and the institute was shut down. This time, when the project was re-approved and we restarted operations, we found it.”
“Why was it shut down back then?”
The Prime Minister turned to look at the Minister of National Defense. The Minister turned to look at the brigadier general above him.
The Brigadier General — played by Choo Young-mi — was Jin Young-do's superior officer.
“It was Captain Jin Young-do.”
It's the man we framed, isn't it.