Review: 'Molka' by Monika Kim

I very much enjoy being a woman and yet it can be one of the worst things in the world because, unfortunately, the world is also populated by absolute creeps. In Molka, Monika Kim tackles one of the worst kinds of creeps, namely the kind of men who film women without their consent. It should go without saying that Molka is not an easy read. Thanks to Erewhon Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 28/04/2026
Publisher: Erewhon Books

Molka: an abbreviation of molrae-kamera, a “sneaky camera” hidden to capture covert images and videos for voyeurs.

In an unassuming Seoul workplace, IT technician Junyoung’s network reaches throughout the entire building. He sees every entrance. Every lobby. Every bathroom. The women in this building may be cold and dismissive, but he can always pull up his favorite images of them and remember who holds the real power. Until one, Dahye, sets herself apart from the rest.

Dahye, ever the romantic, yearns to be cherished after years of living in the shadow of her perfect older sister, who tragically drowned years ago. Only her boyfriend seems to appreciate Dahye. He’s rich, handsome, and generous—and she’d do anything to hold on to the happiness he brings her.

But when a hidden camera scandal rocks the city’s elites, Dahye’s dreams of a fairy-tale romance twist into a grotesque nightmare. Her boyfriend abandons her. Her parents reject her. Her grip on reality begins to shatter as visions of her dead sister suddenly appear.  And as Junyoung’s interest in Dahye turns to obsession, and the truths of their troubled lives are revealed, Dahye must go to extreme lengths to bring the truth to light . . .

I read Molka back in April and yet I sat on this review for quite a while. Or rather, I sat on my thoughts for quite a while before I then sat down to write this review. As the title makes clear, this is a novel about the phenomenon of "molka" (Korean: 몰카), short for "molrae-kamera", a term which apparently originated in a prank show where people were filmed without their initial knowledge. Because of that origin, so Wikipedia, the term molka refers to prank and spy cameras at the same time. This straddling of two different things, one meant to be funny and the other horrifying, also shows itself somewhat in how people treat the very fact of such spy cameras. It is not taken as seriously as other forms of privacy invasion and violence. The placing of small cameras in bathrooms and other public places is a major issue in South Korea, although recent revelations in Europe and America regarding online rape networks and what happened to Gisèle Pelicot we really can't pretend this kind of invasion of female privacy and violence against women is only a Korean issue. I think it is incredibly important that topics such as these are discussed in literature, that authors like Monika Kim take them on and explore their various facets. This also means that the reading of books like Molka can be very difficult and every reader will have to judge for themselves how to best approach them.

Molka begins with Junyoung, who works as an IT specialist at a company, salivating over the invasive images he is capturing of his female coworkers in the bathrooms at work. I was grossed out immediately. He becomes fixated on Dahye, who also works at the company. Aside from Junyoung's POV, we also get Dahye's, and we find out that she is in a somewhat-hidden relationship with a rich man. While she dreams of a fairy-tale romance in which she is finally seen and loved for who she is, it becomes horrifyingly clear that he does not care about her. As Dahye spirals, also increasingly haunted by her sister's death years ago, Junyoung tries to transform his obsession into a white knight-effort to "save" her. In many ways Molka is a very brave book, not only because it tackles such a complicated topic but also because it includes the perspective of a perpetrator, Junyoung. I think it is important to at least consider how people (mostly men) get to such a place; not so we can pooh-pooh them, but because it might be one of the few ways of intervening early or locating them. However, I had a visceral negative reaction to the time I had to spend in his head. Kim also makes Dahye somewhat naive, which is fair, because she is a young woman, but it means you're also constantly wishing for her to be smarter, to be more cautious, less trusting, etc. This too, I think, has to be this way, even if it is uncomfortable, because we need to learn to not judge women who experience things like this. Molka takes on a slightly paranormal touch towards the end, hinting at the sweet release female rage might offer but not taking the easy way out.

I absolutely loved Monika Kim's The Eyes Are the Best Part; it was one of my favourite reads last year. I was very impressed by how she managed to balance writing a really fun and gripping suspense thriller with incisive commentary about the experiences of Asian-American women and complicated daughter-mother relationships against a migration background. For all these reasons, I jumped into Molka quite eagerly, despite knowing what it was about. I am still impressed by how Monika Kim picks up these themes and topics and shows so much nuance in her treatment of them. To be clear: there is no doubt in Molka that filming people without their consent is a disgusting practice and that the people who do so are pieces of sh*t. There is, however, as I tried to discuss above, a good attempt at considering the issue from various sides. With how disgusting the whole thing made me feel, I found myself slightly less capable of enjoying the suspense/thriller aspect of the novel. I liked how Dahye develops, how she becomes willing to go to extremes, and how the novel hints at a sense of female solidarity, but Monika Kim doesn't go for an easy ending. I felt a certain satisfaction at how the novel ended, the fact that it didn't sugarcoat anything while still reveling in female rage, but I was also stuck with this deep pit in my stomach. That pit is still there when I think about Molka but I would recommend this book to everyone. It is the kind of read that is meant to be difficult and confronting and it is the perfect example of why literature is so important as a cultural medium. 

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

I did not always like reading Molka, but it was the kind of book I had to read. Monika Kim could have easily written a less socially aware, less incisive novel that would have been entertaining, but the empowerment behind it would have been empty. Instead, Molka is sticky and difficult, but also sharp and necessary.