I picked up The Cabinet based on its quirky premise: the story of a harried Seoul office worker named Mr. Kong who finds himself in charge of Cabinet 13, the filing cabinet that stores all the data on a group of human mutants and aberrations called "Symptomers." The Symptomers include people who skip chunks of time, people with doppelgangers, a woman who allows a lizard to take the place of her tongue, and a man who has a gingko tree growing from his finger.

The book is accessible and the vignettes about Symptomers are amusing. There are even moments where it borders on the profound, asking readers to question what really differentiates ourselves from the Symptomers, given our own innate weirdness. But I found the upbeat, somewhat detached narrative voice kept me from really connecting with the story. I also craved more detail about the recurring characters like Kong and his employer, Dr. Kwon, and maybe a bit more integration of their lives into the stories of the Symptomers.