Reaper GoStop

You are dead. Your judgment is settled over a game of HwatuYou are one of the dead. At the gates of the afterlife your judgment begins, not in words but in cards. The Reaper deals a hand. Reach the score and you pass to the next gate. Fall short and hell takes you. Korea's national card game, remade as a run for your soul. The hand you draw is the life you livedEvery card that reaches your hand is karma you earned in a past life.

Live well and the cards come kind, and their order never changes, because that life is already spent. But luck alone will not carry you through a gate. When to call Go and when to stop, what to collect and what to let pass, that is yours to decide now. Your opponent is the ReaperYour opponent wears black robes and a wide brimmed gat, the horsehair hat of a Korean death messenger. He is not trying to beat you.

He simply takes the cards you were building toward, one step ahead of you. He is in no hurry. Time is on death's side. Korean history and culture, dealt across 48 cardsKorea from antiquity to the present day, spread across the 48 cards of a Hwatu deck. Ttakji, the folded paper tiles Korean children slam against the ground. Dalgona, the honeycomb candy they pick apart with a needle.…