Books and thoughts: Culture: News: Hankyoreh

Novelist Kim Hye-jin is interviewing ‘Link of Metaphor’ at a café in Hyochang-dong, Seoul. Journalist Kim Bong-kyu [email protected]

When he was thirty years old, his mother asked when the delivery boy was chosen for Dong-A Ilbo’s Shinchunmunye (2012) as the main character, ‘Chicken Run’. “Did you deliver it?” I did everything but that. I went to and from pizzerias, restaurants, libraries, and logistics warehouses. It was difficult to be a novelist, but I also lived as a novelist. There are more than 100 writers every year. I had to continue writing, without paper, without cost and without readers. At the essay writing school where he made a living, he was interrupted and directed to a contest, and only wrote and wrote. The novel, which was desperately written, won the 5th Central Literature Prize (2014). The path of a full-time writer opened like a miracle. The monetary prize was 100 million won.
The work that unveiled the existence of novelist Kim Hye-jin (2017) is a middle-aged woman who grows up understanding her lesbian daughter, and (2019) is a middle-aged man who loses himself after working for 26 years in a telecommunications company. It appears in homeless people. Recently released silver dealt with the inner sentiments surrounding redevelopment. On the other hand, the constellation is clear due to the connection. The history of work, love, alienation, hatred and discrimination of those who have been left without power. Why are you writing this novel? What can a novel do in this world? I met him at a cafe in Hyochang-dong, Yongsan-gu, Seoul, on the day of the spring rain when I woke up the grain (April 17).

Looking closely at homeless people
– What does fire mean in the title?
“When the fire is lit, it does not go out well and spreads more and more. I thought about some kind of discrimination, the anxiety I felt in class, the rejection and that image. ”
Have you ever experienced discrimination due to housing, like in fiction?
“I was the last generation of the” Kookmin School “, but I think it wasn’t that bad. But these days, the story of my peers raising kids was amazing. My friend was in debt and moved into the apartment complex. The child must move before admission. I heard about the importance of school placement for a child. ”
―When you hear that story, do you tend to expand your thoughts on the problems of the social structure?
“I think I shouldn’t get married (laughs). Later, when I search the Internet or see current events, I realize that it is a rampant problem. I wanted to write about what happens within an individual when development occurs. ”
Hyejin, a girl who played outside until her mother called, closes the book as a high school student. I read the same novel. When I put the book I was reading on the desk, the teachers said, “Wow, read this!” Praise Reading was a way of flying. The university went to the Korean language department. He worked as a citizen reporter and also covered the news during the Daegu subway tragedy. At the age of twenty, the novelist’s dreams became clear. The name of the university was often seen in the authors of the novels he saw. After graduating from university in Daegu, I entered Seoul National Arts University in 2006. With two admissions and graduations, and livelihood and work, he filled the twenties. The place where the novice novelists who spent the “everyday was very uncomfortable” period was the plaza.
“This is a story about the love of homeless people. How did you write it?
“My friend was working at the Dari Clerk Center at Seoul Station. If you don’t write a novel for me, come volunteer. After a few trips on a summer night with a friend, I got used to it. I wanted to tell a love story, but the background naturally became the Seoul station. ”
“I think it would have been difficult to reach the homeless.
“It made me a little scared too. Speaking of homeless people, I just think they are on the way, but there are very few people who try to stay healthy while doing self-sufficient work at Seoul station. In fact, I am independent and work in a center near the Seoul station. ”
“If there was something that you looked at closely and broke prejudice against homeless people?”
“When my friend went, the teachers liked it. I’m only talking about myself. When I asked him why he was here, he said yesterday, he went to the pig farm to work, but he was so lonely and there was no one to say. When he comes here, he has friends, so he came back because he couldn’t bear it. For them, Seoul Station is like a hometown with many people having little space. ”
Through the event of “Making coincidence a destination” in the context of the plaza, the only space that fully accepts them, not the family, the law or well-being, a person who has never been given the right of speaking in the world of narrative. The critic pointed to this young novelist who carefully restored him to existence. Literature critic and editor Park Hye-Jin cited her suggestion for a feature book for Hye-Jin Kim as “the most useful choice among all the suggestions I’ve made since I became an editor.” It is a novel born like that. So far, 60,000 copies have been sold and foreign rights have been sold to Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and France. In 2018, he received the Shin Dong-Yeop Literary Prize.

Work undermines a person’s uniqueness.
– He said that in 2016, while living in Seochon (Jongno-gu, Seoul), I saw the strange parade by chance. Not everything I’ve seen in my life has been written.
“The deadline was urgent at the time. (Laughs) At the time, I was interested in seeing related films at the Women’s Film Festival. And I wanted to write a story about an older woman speaking in the first person.”
-Why? It’s close to your daughter’s age. The young woman’s point of view would have been easier.
“I am happy and comfortable with older people. You keep telling me funny stories. I think I wanted to understand my parents’ generation when I was 30 years old. I wrote it thinking that it is not a novel that focuses on homosexuality, but rather the process by which older people accept the changing world through it. ”
“Actually, older people don’t change well. Especially during election season, the words that the pros and cons of homosexuality ask for become violent in the air. How can you change those people?
“I think you should first create an institution or a law instead of telling them that they don’t dislike it. Does it seem impossible to convince you?
Reading a novel he published in 2019 reminds me of Herman Melville’s novel. If Bartleby repeats “I don’t want to do that” and puts his hands on the table, the protagonist comes out with an “I’ll do anything” attitude and pushes him over the edge. Bartleby disturbed the system by “doing nothing” and disappeared on his own, but man 9 is randomly destroyed by “doing” and is cut off from the world. Leave these lines. “I am an employee of this company and the company will do it. Do anything. Is that wrong?
“In Korean society, working hard, being honest is skill and virtue. In the novel, sincerity is increasingly catastrophic.
“It is worth thinking that people are good. Good and sincere. It is also worth seeing negatively. Bad, lazy. I think that’s ambivalent. It is not always good or always bad. When I ask what to do, I don’t know. However, there are things that learn and grow on their own, but I think they are completed while the uniqueness of people is compromised. ”
What do you think was damaged when the author worked as a novelist?
“I don’t think my health is improving. (Laughter) I have to sit down, and the novel is made by itself, so I think it would be devastated.”
– I wanted to think that it is important to live and judge “what not to do” instead of “do”. Is there a standard for what you don’t do?
“I don’t do anything that I can’t do well. For example, when you’re asked to review articles or novels from other genres, like reviews and prose, instead of writing novels, you’re trying to minimize the number of things you’re unsure about. I say that I should increase and try to stay locked in the box, but it is very difficult to do it, and after doing it, there are situations where I cannot do what I want to do, but I think it is difficult to maintain that level. ”
– In the second half, the battle of Miryang Transmission Tower comes to mind. Rather than fighting against the construction of the transmission tower, the situation is viewed from the point of view of workers mobilized from all four sides.
“I wasn’t thinking about writing a Miryang song, but I had it in mind. And when we share good and evil, is it so clearly distinguished? I think it’s difficult to get in. ”

Housing problems, sexual minorities are not far from me
The work of novelist Kim Hye-jin in her eighth year in her thirtieth year of school gives a slight sense of ambiguity. It focuses on work rather than gender, and the style is dry rather than magnificent. The title is also simple. The characters live instead of judging. His novel, the sum of these elements, makes the reader darker than comfortable. It is to make the world and you unfamiliar.
“The artist seems to have a different behavior from other colleagues who write sensual writings.
“It may be a story that is not in fashion, old. So … why is that? (Laughs)
Are you born I have just read novels since I was a teenager.
“At that time, I think I wrote a novel in Mandam Poong. Recently, I discovered a novel that I used to write when I was at school. That’s too embarrassing, because I was involved in a protest against imports of American beef. When I became TLC, I thought Korean meat would disappear. This is a story about a character who visits Hanwoo for his sick mother. I was surprised to see the novel. ”
“Wow, it’s a lot of fun. His short film ‘Chicken Run’ was sad but joyous.
“Usually, I hear a lot of stories about my friends being ridiculous and funny, but I’m not sure why the novel is like this.”
“What don’t you like about it?”
Is the novel too heavy and boring? So I think there are other factors that are also obtained. When I was studying, my teacher did it. Writing is a gene after all. No matter how you write it at first, if you try to write it differently, you will eventually have to reveal yours and face it. I deeply regret it.
“Maybe you’re writing stories about people you don’t see well?
“It is a frequent question. Why write stories of the underprivileged? I’m really embarrassed. Actually, when I write a novel, I write about an individual I knew closely, but I’m not sure what to say because it’s called an outcast class. I don’t think they and I are far apart. When I go to the Seoul station, people think that it is difficult to become homeless, but it is also happening right now. There are so many sexual minorities out there, because they don’t know it. ”
“At the time of using homeless people, sexual minorities, etc. As characters, the author did not write with a party sense. What are your efforts to avoid falling into materialism?
“Stand close to the person. I try to listen to the story around these people and the story inside the person as much as possible, rather than making evaluations or judgments by making the person very close. ”
“In the past, there have been a lot of paragraph issues, such as sexual violence and copyright infringement. It was exposed by writers. How do you feel about this?
“I was embarrassed by these problems, but I think I took it for granted. But I think there are many men in a position to decide something. It was the first time I knew about the copyright infringement clause in the ideal literature, but it was very shocking. ”
Are you trying to combine life and writing?
“I think there is someone who agrees with that.”
“Endless encounter with humans!” (Laughs)
“I think it is natural and inevitable that there are conflicting contradictions within you. So today, writing a novel seems to see my contradictions and discordant parts. ”
-For example?
“You are very conservative. I didn’t say anything about politics with my parents. But as I get older, I see snobbler things in my progress. If you’ve constantly put me on the good side and on the victim’s side, oh, I’m not that person. Would you have confirmed the self-contradiction within me?

Writing a novel is contradictory
“A novelist is a person who deals with people. Does he have a prize for authors?
“I think humans are weak. Holding love, beliefs, and values ​​can be strong. It’s too fragile to do that for me. ”
What did the writer want to keep while showing human weakness and duality as a novel?
“It is always difficult and uncomfortable to live in the good and the right, but I try to stay close anyway.”
“Can I be a better person reading a novel?”
“Isn’t he going to be a worse person?”
―If a person who reads, for example, knows the feelings of hatred and exclusion within him, what can be different?
“Would you think that at least you are not a harmless person or a good person? I think I can think of myself as something touchy. ”
In the work of British artist Graffiti Banksy, there is a statement that when a flask with a liquid called ignorance is heated with a fire called fear, a liquid called hate is drawn into the test tube. The artist Hyejin Kim, who describes the plan of the human world to build two parallel universes dividing it into two sides and one side in a small city, asks if the coals of disgust originate from “self-ignorance”. He is quietly playing inside a person with a good face. “The anxiety that established the limits between this side and that side, inside and out, and made them cross those limits as bad things. Imagine that you have not seen it, make you go back and fear that you cannot avoid it. “Self-gaze through a novel. This is also your answer to the fundamental question:” Why is it literature? ”
“In fact, reading the type is patience. Even the same story is really fun to watch on video, but what are the advantages of reading it in typography? Still, isn’t the genre of literature optimized when looking at an individual’s inner world?
Recording Hyewon Hong