Joo Ho-minโs Along with the Gods (์ ๊ณผํจ๊ป) ran on Naver Webtoon from January 8, 2010 to August 29, 2012. It is split into three parts: the Afterlife arc (78 episodes), the Living World arc (68 episodes), and the Myth arc (66 episodes), 212 episodes in all, collected in eight volumes (three, two, and three). The Afterlife arc follows Kim Ja-hong, an ordinary office worker who dies and spends forty-nine days being tried in turn by the ten kings of the underworld. The framework comes from the Buddhist belief in the Ten Kings, in which each king judges one kind of sin a person committed in life. An afterlife defense lawyer, Jin Gi-han, argues Ja-hongโs case, while the grim reapers Gang-rim, Haewonmak, and Deok-choon fetch the dead. The Living World arc is about household gods trying to protect a grandfather and grandson whose home is about to be demolished for redevelopment, and the Myth arc shows how the gods and reapers of the underworld came to hold their posts.
The comic was winning prizes while it was still running. The Afterlife arc took the Online Comic Award at the 2010 Readersโ Comics Awards, then the Excellence in Story Award at the 2011 Bucheon Comics Awards and the Presidential Prize at the 2011 Korea Content Awards. In Japan, a remake redrawn by Yoshiyuki Miwa ran in Square Enixโs magazine Young Gangan from 2011 to 2014 under the title Kami to Issho ni, collected in four volumes. It went on stage too. The Seoul Performing Arts Companyโs original musical Along with the Gods: The Afterlife premiered in 2015 and returned in 2017, 2018, and 2023, and Along with the Gods: The Living World premiered at LG Arts Center in June 2019.
What made it a national webtoon was the films. Kim Yong-hwaโs Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds opened on December 20, 2017 and drew 14,414,658 admissions, and Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days, released on August 1, 2018, drew 12,278,010. When the second film passed ten million on August 14, the series became the first in Korean cinema with two films over ten million admissions each. The two were shot back to back. Ha Jung-woo plays the reaper Gang-rim, Cha Tae-hyun plays Kim Ja-hong, Ju Ji-hoon plays Haewonmak, and Kim Hyang-gi plays Deok-choon. The films rework the structure heavily, dropping the lawyer Jin Gi-han and folding his role into Gang-rim, so if you only know the movies the webtoon reads almost like a different story.
The reason to pick it up now is part three. Parts three and four were promised right after the second film, and in December 2018 Do Kyung-sooโs casting was confirmed alongside a 2021 release target. The pandemic pushed the schedule back, and in December 2022 Joo Ho-min said on his YouTube channel that the project was being โtorn down and rebuilt from scratch.โ The most recent word came in August 2025, when producer Won Dong-yeon of Realies Pictures said the plan was to shoot part three โat the end of next yearโ and that he would โlike to work with Ha Jung-woo again if possible.โ Director Kim Yong-hwa has been developing parts three and four with writers for five years, and part three is expected to be a new story set after the three arcs the webtoon covered. As of August 2026, however, there has been no announcement confirming a start of filming or a release date.
The original is available from episode one on Naver Webtoon. If you saw the films first, start with the Afterlife arc and see what the adaptation changed; the household gods the second film borrowed are in the Living World arc. (As of August 21, 2026)
