The Gumiho is a fox that has lived a thousand years and shapeshifts into a human to prey on human livers; it appears in Korean records around the 13th-century Samguk Yusa. It is the Korean branch of an East Asian motif shared with China’s Huli jing and Japanese fox lore.
Transforming into a beautiful woman to approach people, it carries the horror of mimicry — the dread that the one closest to you may not be human at all. At its center is the longing to become human and the ruin that longing invites.