One day, Wooyeon and Semyung wake up together in an all-white, sealed room. They are step-siblings… who have different biological parents to each other, with no blood ties, and became a family only in legal terms. Even the legal relation is broken as their parents divorce, at the time the story begins. Anyway, as works of the same genre do, there’s no way to escape the room by their own efforts no matter how thorough they search the room, and on top of that the elder sister Semyung is chained with a leash in a strange manner so she can’t move her own body properly.

To the surprised sister and brother, a voice comes out from somewhere in the room. The owner of the voice introduces the room as ‘Shame Room’ and he promises them to send home if the two accomplishes every mission they give. The person also tells them to find a key hidden somewhere in the room. Hot-blooded Wooyeon flied into a temper, but what can he do to the voice while he even can’t see them? It’s a traditional development.

The strange tying, a key, and a mission which I mentioned above are quite important keywords. The basic structure of this webtoon is like that way. The white room continues as it has no end at all, and each room gives a new mission which Wooyeon and Semyung have to solve with their combined effort. The missions, however, make the siblings quite shameful. For example, in the first mission, the key to unlock Semyung’s chains is located at Semyung’s body, specifically at a certain body part where women would feel shame. It is stuck with glue and they need water to remove the glue – and in a room with nothing, where can they get the water? Yes, it’s obvious. – It goes like that. The missions are somewhat like Japanese adult TV’s midnight entertainment programs.

My explanation could be enough for you to understand the overall structure. It could be a good webtoon for continuing fun missions alone, but ‘Shame Room’ doesn’t stop at that. In fact, while the space ‘Shame Room’ is only a method or a tool, the important part is the relationship between the step-siblings, Wooyeon and Semyung.

The relationship between two step-siblings is very complicated or so it seems. Before the divorce, they didn’t talk to or look at each other, and it was by one-sided refusal from Wooyeon, a younger brother. For the present time, they don’t seem to detest or hate each other. Instead, they seem to be building subtle emotion toward each other, as siblings or as a couple. The space where only two of them are and the missions forcing their physical and psychological contacts make them to focus on each other and think about each other more than ever.

Even more amusing point is, the relationship between them is described mostly by Wooyeon’s point of view. In other words, all this panorama of the relationship could be a sheer delusion of the hot-blooded younger brother who liked his elder step-sister. A kind of the unreliable narrator technique.

It’s a mature webtoon showing overall quite good quality. If there wasn’t the tension between two siblings, then I would define it as a Mature for Men work with a bit uncommon material, but as it was, I might put a nickname tag of psychological thriller on it. Besides, the fun scenes are not in a shortage, so, to the readers who want a fresh fun and somewhat well-made story, I’d recommend it gladly.