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Updated: 2026-03-05
- Posted by TC Agency on 2026-03-05
Description 작품 소개
A disgraced bank employee survives a mysterious kidnapping just as human-shaped wooden figures called “piles” begin appearing across South Korea, triggering uncontrollable grief in those who encounter them. As the government moves to suppress the phenomenon, he must uncover buried histories of exploitation and injustice to understand why the piles have emerged, and how he is connected to them.
Jang, a sidelined loan officer at a bank, has been quietly pushed out of favor after humiliating his division head. Assigned to tedious collateral inspections with fellow outcast Jeon A-jeong, he lives a stagnant life on the margins of a corporate system that treats employees as expendable. One night, he learns that he may be reinstated through a prestigious restructuring project involving a company named Daemin. The same night, news reports emerge of strange human-shaped wooden figures, called ‘piles,’ appearing along the coast. Jang recalls how he had seen these piles years earlier with his former partner he had planned to marry.
The next morning, Jang is lured to the trunk of his car by a cryptic note. Then he is abducted, bound, and locked in his trunk for twenty-four hours before being inexplicably released. Jang reports this to the police, only to face difficulty as there is a lack of evidence. He wonders if the culprit is Tae-i, a friend Jang had rebuffed after Tae-i had fallen into gambling addiction. Soon afterward, piles begin suddenly appearing throughout the country, provoking overwhelming grief and emotional collapse in those who encounter them. Authorities struggle to contain public panic as experts debate their meaning.
Jang learns from law enforcement officials that one of his old business cards was discovered inside the mouth of the first pile recovered. He recalls giving the card years earlier to a foreign worker at a refinery who had begged for money to bury a coworker. Though he officially rejected the loan, Jang secretly gave him cash and his personal account number, an act of compassion he had long forgotten.
As piles appear in public squares, government buildings, and private homes, including Jang’s own apartment, society starts to destabilize. People gather around the figures to weep collectively, while authorities attempt to confiscate them and suppress their influence. Martial law is declared, and possession of a pile becomes illegal. At the same time, Jang becomes entangled in a corporate conspiracy involving Daemin Group, whose executives believe the piles could be used for advanced computational research exploiting their liminal state between human and nonhuman existence.
Jang tricks a Daemin group heir into trading the pile at his home with documents that would prove Daemin’s exploitation of workers. Jang traps the heir and runs away with the pile, but the heir gives chase, though Jang is mysteriously saved by the piles and evades the heir. With a casino chip left by his now-deceased friend Tae-i, who turns out to have lived out his remaining days in a monastery in Macau, Jang travels to the Daemin refinery with the pile. There, Jang learns that this pile is Temuulen, a Mongolian subcontractor at Daemin’s refinery who died of cadmium poisoning after borrowing money from him years earlier. When he places the chip into its mouth, the figure transforms into light and disappears, allowing the dead man to pass on.
In the aftermath, piles across the country detonate simultaneously, killing senior government leaders and abruptly ending martial law. Months later, new piles begin appearing again, though they no longer provoke grief. Investigations expose labor abuses at Daemin’s refinery, aided by evidence Jang obtained. One lingering anomaly remains: no one remembers the existence of Daemin’s heir, who had orchestrated the research into the piles, as if he had been erased from collective memory.
As Jang starts his life anew, he visits Temuulen’s surviving family and introduces himself to Temuulen’s son.
Author Bio 작가 소개
There are no expectations.