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Author's Note

Humans consumed outside of the manipulated truth
The triangular structure of ethics, public opinion, and power surrounding dignity

'Her', a female police officer who obtained a false confession from an unexpected suspect while investigating a kidnapping case of a young girl.
Meanwhile, the real culprit kills his family and then commits suicide.
The narrator in the work, who is unable to overcome the pressure of the chief investigator who reprimands him and submits a leave of absence, suffers from insomnia.
Her husband stays by her side faithfully, but cracks slowly appear in their daily life.


Meanwhile, her husband's college classmate, neuroscientist Lim Yun-seong, is working on a 'memory correction' project to selectively delete or control human memories using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.
To his seductive question, “Is there a memory you want to erase?” she reveals her instinctive rejection by replying, “Memories are that person itself.”
The narrator's beliefs clash sharply with those of the technologist Im Yun-seong, who claims that the uniqueness of humans and memory is an illusion, but their argument does not last long.

One morning, unable to endure a sleepless night, the narrator impulsively heads to the old city center and, in an abandoned building, witnesses a confrontation between a bathroom vandal and homeless women.
She intervenes in the case with her police instincts and is hospitalized with serious injuries from a hammer drill wielded by the criminal.
The mayor announces that the arrested toilet vandal will be the first official test subject of "memory correction surgery," and begins a massive public relations campaign to justify this.
Lim Yoon-seong pressures her to give false testimony supporting the technology at the public hearing.
For Lim Yun-seong and his wife, Choi Jin-yu, the introduction of this technology is not just a scientific achievement, but a means to gain power.


This work also vividly shows the process of how truth is manipulated and distributed in the age of social media.
“The truth is something that must be seized.
Besides, it's a very fragile thing.
The sentence, “It’s very difficult to handle,” conveys a chilling sense of reality to readers living in this day and age, while also containing the cold insight that truth is not fact, but merely an arrangement of preempted and fabricated information.


The irony of a 'safe city'

The novel is set in a starkly divided city.
There is even a commercialized app called 'Safe City' that displays safe zones by level.
The new city center, which has been redeveloped under government control, and the old city center, which has been neglected by the government and is called the 'X zone', where various crimes and hatred are concentrated.
To make matters worse, a bizarre chain of vandalism attacks targeting only women's restrooms in the "X Zone" has occurred, fueling public anxiety and disgust.
A banner hanging in the old city center reads, “We are in danger.
The conflicting slogans of “Fix us!” and “Leave us alone! There’s life here!” vividly reveal the city’s divisions.

Cities are not only places of residence, but also serve as laboratories of power and public opinion formed by various classes and groups.
Through the hierarchy of these spaces, the author keenly dissects the mechanisms of power structure and public opinion formation, and depicts the ethical confusion and psychological cracks experienced by the characters within them with his uniquely sensuous prose.
In particular, the irony inherent in the term “safe city”—the paradox that the more we pursue safety, the more dangerous the city becomes—symbolically demonstrates the dystopian reality created by technology and control.

A philosophical exploration beyond mystery

"Safe City" straddles the line between genre fiction and serious literature, offering readers both intellectual thrills and ethical tension.
Although it is based on mystery and science fiction imagination, the questions contained within are thoroughly directed towards reality.
The themes this work addresses are complex and multi-layered, from the existential awakening that accepts that even imperfect and wounded memories are part of our existence, to the ethical dilemmas posed by technological advancements and the question of gendered violence.
A serial crime that destroys only women's restrooms, a crisis of trust created by the frame of a "female police officer on leave after a miscarriage," and the increasingly vulnerable presence of homeless women in downtown areas.
The author delicately captures the intersections of issues of memory and power with gender, and goes beyond simple social criticism to explore the fundamental conditions of human existence.
"Safe City," which delicately addresses such a weighty subject while maintaining its narrative momentum, demonstrates a new realm for Son Bo-mi's literature and the new possibilities of social fiction.


In an age where memory manipulation is possible, what should we protect and what should we give up?
It is time to confront the most pressing and fundamental questions that pose to all of us living in an age of technological supremacy.


Author's Note (partial)

The word "Stop" written in front of an X-shaped circuit breaker.
I put my hands in my jumper pockets and suddenly looked up, and I saw a forty-story building under construction in front of Yongsan Station.
A red light flashes ceaselessly from the top of the building.
By then, the construction was almost finished.
The cold wind made my nose numb.
It was only about a kilometer away, but somehow it felt so far away from me.
It seemed even further away from the village I had just passed.
A completely different way of life.

But I knew that this thinking I had was wrong.
Arrogant.
There, too, and here, there were places where people lived.
I had no basis for evaluating the quality of that life.
No, making that distinction itself was a sin.
All the time we lived in Yongsan, there was talk of redevelopment around the railroad tracks and development of the Yongsan Business District.
We were the ones who were going to leave anyway and had nothing to do with development.
But sometimes I wondered.
If that really happens, if this area is developed, where will the people who live there go? Where will the owners of the old-fashioned pubs selling fried chicken near the train tracks go? What about the property owners who have to open metal sliding doors to get in? What about the clothing store owners with their old mannequins in their window displays?
Will terrible things happen again?

(syncopation)

I had to admit that I too had a desire to differentiate, a desire to be superior.
I had to acknowledge the subtle and entrenched false consciousness that underpinned my sense of safety (or the desire to be completely safe).
Perhaps, you could say that 『Safe City』 is a novel written at the height of such a cruel admission about myself.
At the same time, I also had this thought.
If I had been an honest and upright person, I might not have been able to write a novel at all.


Summer 2025
Son Bo-mi