Fear Spreads Faster Than Truth
Jeong Minho first saw the post that morning on his commute, inside the subway. It was the fourth day since the Barrier had gone up.
Even though the country was cut off from the outside world, the domestic internet ran perfectly, and people spent their entire days glued to their phones. Jeong Minho was no different. Gripping the handrail as the train swayed, he scrolled through the text on his screen.
Let’s think about this. Who is he?
The writing was calm. It didn’t excite or curse, which made it easier to read.
We cheered at what he showed us. At the sight of the corrupt being punished. That’s natural. I felt cathartic too. But after a few days, I suddenly grew afraid.
He has never told us who he is. Where he came from, what he wants, when he will leave. None of it. He simply appeared one day, locked the entire nation inside a cage, and now decides alone who the sinners are.
The man he struck down today was a villain. That much is true. But what if tomorrow he decides you are the villain? Who will stop him? There is no one in this world who can judge him.
That is precisely dictatorship. No matter how benevolent his face may appear.
Jeong Minho lifted his eyes from the screen. He caught his own reflection in the dark subway window. For some reason, a chill settled in the corner of his heart. Only days ago he had felt pure catharsis. He had even choked up watching that mother’s tears. Yet these few calm lines had etched a tiny crack into that feeling.
It sounded reasonable. Just who was that being? Why had he never once doubted him? Doubt, once awakened, refused to be silenced easily.
At the office, the same conversation dominated every corner. In the break room, colleagues gathered and whispered. These were the same people who had cheered only days earlier. Now their voices had changed.
“Doesn’t it make sense? What he’s doing is good, sure… but it’s kind of scary.”
“Exactly. Today it’s a chaebol, but who knows who’s next?”
“Our company isn’t exactly spotless either. What if tomorrow the boss’s dirty secrets pop up in the sky…”
Someone had said it like a joke, but no one laughed. Jeong Minho listened while stirring his coffee.
Only a few days ago he had clenched his fists watching the video of Park Sang-woo’s case, moved by the mother’s sobs as she looked up at the sky. Now that emotion had grown hazy. In its place, something else had taken root.
Vague anxiety. Who will it be tomorrow? Could it be me?
The seed the post had planted was already sprouting within a single day.
The post had not been written by one person. Dozens of nearly identical pieces had flooded the internet in just a few days. The tone, the logic, even the conclusion were eerily uniform.
They began calmly, raised reasonable doubts, and ended with the word “dictatorship.” Anyone could see it was organized. Yet most people failed to notice. They simply read. And little by little, they wavered.
Fear spread that way. Faster than truth. Truth was slow. It required gathering evidence, weighing it, confirming it. Fear needed none of that. One sentence was enough.
It could be you tomorrow.
That single phrase lodged in people’s hearts and refused to be pulled free. Jeong Minho was no exception. His mind knew the post was suspicious, that it was orchestrated.
But the anxiety embedded in his chest would not disappear no matter how hard his brain tried to suppress it. The human heart worked that way. Knowing what was right and feeling what was terrifying happened in different places.
That was exactly what they were aiming for. Not to stop people from making the right judgment, but to make them shrink back in fear even after they had. Fear was stronger than most people thought.
Yet there were also people shaking in the completely opposite direction. That evening, at City Hall Square, Jeong Minho saw the crowd on his way home from work. Several hundred people holding candles had gathered. At first he thought it was another protest. But as he drew closer, the atmosphere felt different.
They were bowing toward the sky.
Someone climbed onto a makeshift platform and shouted.
The crowd echoed after him. He. He. Like a chant.
A chill ran down Jeong Minho’s spine. These must have been ordinary people only days ago. Their eyes looked unfocused, as if they had stopped thinking entirely.
The man on the platform pulled something from his coat. A drawing representing His image. A faceless mass of light. People prostrated themselves before it.
A middle-aged woman wept as she placed her bankbook on the platform. Others followed. Jeong Minho hurried away from the scene as if fleeing. Those who feared a dictator and those who worshipped a god.
Their directions were opposite, yet both seemed equally dangerous. Both groups wore the faces of people who had stopped thinking for themselves.
As he left the square, a familiar face caught his arm. It was Mr. Kim from the same apartment complex. They usually only exchanged greetings in the elevator. The man’s eyes gleamed as he gripped Jeong Minho’s sleeve.
“Mr. Jeong, you came too! Good. He called you here. People like us.”
“Mr. Kim… what are you doing here?”
“I quit my job. What use is a company when His era has arrived? Mr. Jeong, open your heart quickly. If you entrust everything to Him, you won’t have to worry about anything anymore. You won’t even need to think.”
You won’t even need to think. The words sent another chill down Jeong Minho’s back. Mr. Kim’s eyes no longer belonged to the man he knew. They were the eyes of someone possessed. A father who had gone to work normally only days ago had become a man bowing to the sky with his bankbook in hand.
“I… I should go. My kid’s waiting.”
Jeong Minho pulled his arm free and quickened his pace. Behind him, Mr. Kim’s voice followed.
“You’ll understand soon, Mr. Jeong. It’s all His will.”
All the way home, those words echoed in his ears. It’s all His will. They sounded like comfort. They also sounded like the most terrifying sentence in the world.
In a darkened office somewhere in the city, the people who had orchestrated all this stared at their screens.
“It’s working.”
One of them, a man from the chairman’s faction, muttered with satisfaction.
“People really are weaker to fear than to truth. No matter how right that being’s actions are, the moment you say ‘It could be you tomorrow,’ everyone wavers.”
The man beside him asked, “But won’t that being notice? They say he sees everything.”
“He probably does. But he can’t stop it.”
The first man’s lips curved upward.
“Think about it. What if he steps forward and says ‘Those posts are all lies’ and pins us again? That’s exactly the picture we want. See? Anyone who says anything unfavorable to him gets punished. Isn’t that the act of a true dictator? That’s how it plays out.”
“…So whether he silences speech or leaves it alone, it still shakes people.”
“Exactly. No matter how he responds, this is a game we win.”
On one side of the screen, the cult gathering at City Hall Square was displayed. Someone watching it let out a low chuckle.
“Those crazies are an advantage for us too. Look at them. The being they worship as a god—what’s the difference between him and a cult leader? We just have to tie them together.”
“Fanatics and a dictator. If both sides attack at once, ordinary people will gradually distance themselves.”
“And while they’re distracted, our real crimes will slowly be forgotten.”
They clinked their glasses. Even trapped inside the Barrier, they still had weapons. The human heart. They had spent their entire lives honing the art of shaking it.
“Cheers. ‘Normalization,’ my ass.”
One of them sneered.
“The world has always worked this way. Smart people playing with the stupid majority. That’s the natural order. Whatever that being does, it won’t change.”
At the same time, inside a convenience store, Kim Jeongsang stood behind the counter reading those posts. It was a quiet afternoon with no customers.
He scrolled through his phone with an indifferent expression, examining one article after another that called him a dictator. He knew exactly where they had come from. Who had paid, who had written them, which accounts had spread them. He saw it all.
With one flick of a finger, he could project every detail into the sky. These posts are fabricated. Someone ordered them. Yet he set the phone down.
If he did that, he would be stepping right into the trap they had set. A being who silences speech unfavorable to himself—that was precisely the image they wanted to paint.
Besides, there was a more fundamental problem. The question the posts raised was not wrong. He truly had not been verified by anyone. People had no choice but to believe the truth he showed them. If that was trust, it was beautiful. If it was blind faith, it was dangerous. And blind faith could be exploited by anyone at any time.
Kim Jeongsang hated that. He hated forcing people to believe in him. He hated them raising him up as a god. That was not the world he wanted to normalize. What he wanted was a nation that could run without him. A nation that knew how to doubt him.
He opened a can of coffee and took a slow sip. They were clever. They thought they had built a board where they won no matter what he did. But they had missed one thing.
They saw the game as a simple binary: silence the speech or don’t. But in this world, there was a third move. A move they could not even imagine.
Kim Jeongsang set the can down. For the first time in days, the corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly.
It was a quiet murmur.
That night, Jeong Minho watched his sleeping daughter’s face. She was five years old. As he stroked her forehead, listening to her soft breathing, the anxiety from the day returned. Who will it be tomorrow? That vague fear still lingered in his chest.
Yet at the same time, another memory surfaced. The mother he had seen in the sky a few days earlier. The woman who collapsed in tears when her dead son’s name appeared across the heavens.
What Jeong Minho had felt watching that scene was not fear. It was… hope. The kind he had not felt in a long time. The hope that the world might finally become a little fair.
Which one was his true heart? The surge of emotion he had felt days ago, or the anxiety the post had planted today?
His wife came over and sat beside him. She, too, was unable to sleep.
“At the office today, everyone was criticizing him. Calling him a dictator. Saying he’s dangerous.”
“…What do you think?”
His wife was silent for a long time.
“I don’t know. I’m scared too… but isn’t it strange? Wasn’t the world before he appeared even more frightening? People like us had nowhere to turn when we suffered injustice. We didn’t even realize how scared we were. We were used to it.”
Jeong Minho looked at her. She gave a small smile.
“But when I think about it, entrusting everything to one person doesn’t seem right either. He may be good now, but what if that power falls into the wrong hands? My head’s a mess.”
“…Mine too.”
The couple sat in silence for a while, carrying the unanswerable question together. That was the scene unfolding in living rooms across the country that night. No one could give a simple answer.
Not cheers, not curses—just trembling. And that trembling was exactly what the men in the darkened office had aimed for.
Jeong Minho took his daughter’s small, warm hand. He thought about the country this child would live in.
A country where truth floated in the sky, and the old country where everything was buried again. Which one was truly frightening? The unidentified being, or the faces that had walked out of court smiling after killing people?
The answer did not come easily. So he could not sleep.
The entire nation was trembling that night just like Jeong Minho. Between hope and fear. Between faith and doubt.
And the being who had been watching that trembling finally made a decision.
The next day, the sky lit up once more.