Target Baek On-yu, half-half-half… 007

Author's Note | Crossing Between Life and Fiction
Commentary | Inayoung's Inheritance of Faith

Kang Bo-ra Bauer's Garden… 051

Author's Note | New Trace
Commentary | Jeon Cheong-rim's Meisner-style elegance

Seo Jang-won Little Pride… 101

Author's Note | Always Small and Fragile
Commentary | Comrade and colleague, but not a comrade-in-arms, An Se-jin

Seong Hae-na's Guilty Club: Tiger Touching… 137

Author's Note | Wet Paper {Love}
Commentary | Park Seo-yang's Parallax and Time Difference

Seong Hye-ryeong's original view… 195

Author's Note | What Doesn't Shine
Commentary | Jeon Seung-min: Two Methodologies for Anxiety

Lee Hee-joo's favorite child... 237

Author's Note | So what do you want to do next?
Commentary | Choi Da-young's Secret Good: Idol Generation 2

Hyunho Jeong ~~Waving~ Body~Floating~ Soul~~ … 297

Author's Note | 。oㅇO
Commentary | Genesis Rewritten with a Liquefied Body

2025 16th Young Writer's Award

Judging process… 341
Judges' comments… 344

The reason the Young Writer Award has been held every year without fail since its inception in 2010 is thanks to the judges who are in charge of judging and commentating.
The selection process for the Young Writer's Award was based on the quarterly review section of the Munhakdongne magazine, which meticulously reviewed numerous short and medium-length novels published throughout the year and critiqued particularly noteworthy works.
Critics Seong Hyeon-a, Jeon Seung-min, Jeon Cheong-rim, and Choi Da-young, who have been in charge of this project for the past year, selected twenty works from among the works to be reviewed, and novelists Kim Mela, Kim Yu-jin, and Ahn Bo-yoon, who were appointed as recommendation committee members this year, each added five recommendations.
As a result, a total of twenty-nine novels were selected for the final round, excluding duplicate works.
(…) After repeated discussions and voting over Kang Bo-ra’s “Bauer’s Garden,” Baek On-yu’s “Half of Half,” Seo Jang-won’s “Little Pride,” Seong Hae-na’s “Guilty Club: Touching the Tiger,” Seong Hye-ryeong’s “Wide View,” Lee Hee-ju’s “My Favorite Child,” and Hyeon Ho-jeong’s “~~Waving~ Body~Floating~ Soul~~,” “Half of Half” was selected as the grand prize winner.
This novel contains the persistent irony of human history, where expectations can quickly turn into resentment and suspicion can become faith.
Wherever you look at the seven award-winning films, you find a subtle irony that is both desolate and beautiful, hypocritical and sad, and grotesque and elegant.
I believe that readers will be connected to a new world through this colorful aesthetic.
We would like to extend our sincere congratulations and gratitude to the winners.
_From the 'Review Process'

Baek On-yu, "Half of Half of Half" This novel, which reveals that Yeong-sil, the pride and joy of the family, was in fact a person starving in isolation and loneliness, barely maintaining her appearance through her own vanity and self-righteousness, contained everything I expected from a novel, including stable sentences and development, vivid character expression, and careful examination of various aspects of the situation.
_Kim Geum-hee (novelist)

Yeongsil has always been compliant.
In a world where parents are gone, in a world where a life is born to take responsibility for, in a world where a husband is gone, in a world where she is no longer beautiful, and in a world where she suddenly becomes a grandmother.
But it wasn't easy to adapt to a world where you couldn't control your own body.
It felt like moving my body from here to there was as difficult as moving a mountain.
Even in that situation, there were things I didn't want to let go of. (『Axt』 May/June 2024 issue)

■ He began his career as a writer in 2017 with the full-length children’s story “Jeonggyo.”
His novels include 『Amusement Park』 『Peppermint』 and 『A World Without Cases』.
He won the 13th Changbi Youth Literature Award and the 44th Today's Writer Award.

Kang Bo-ra, "Bauer's Garden" is a work that delicately depicts the ethics of creation, the creation of one's own world, and the problem of making a living through the actors participating in the audition.
As I watched actors Eun-hwa, Mu-jae, and Jeong-rim, where they stand now, what choices they make, and how they move forward, I thought about the difficulties and beauty of living.
It is a novel that leaves a long aftertaste.
_Gi-jun Young (novelist)

As she walked through the snowy streets of the end of the year, Eunhwa sensed the beauty of the world one by one, and in the process, she slowly became more miserable.
Young Eun-hwa decided to preserve that misery as an actress.
Because that was something that belonged only to her and no one could touch it.
A small, blue spark burned quietly in her garden. (『Axt』 November/December 2024 issue)

■ He began his literary career in 2021 when his work “In Tinian” was selected for the Hankook Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest.
Won the 2023 Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award for Excellence.

Seo Jang-won, "Little Pride" A good story doesn't end with realizing that we have similar deficiencies, but begins with realizing how different they are.
"Little Pride," which revealed this, was my 2024 "Novel of the Year." _Inayoung (literary critic)

I didn't know how to be seen as a decent man, how to be accepted as a man.
Whenever I had a small talk with another employee, my mind would become confused as I checked whether what I said and my body language were appropriate.
(…) could never be compared to my previous life.
But even so, it was really tiring work.
Sometimes, I find it more tiring to get a joke across than my job, or even more tiring to commute three hours round trip. (『Consonant and Vowel』 Spring 2024)

■ He began his literary career through the 2020 Dong-A Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest.
There is a collection of short stories titled “Stories You Don’t Know.”
He won the 2024 Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award for Excellence and the 2025 Lee Sang Literary Award for Excellence.

Should we continue to worship the director who abused a child actor during the filming of "Guilty Club: Tiger Touch"?
One of the novel's virtues is that it recognizes that the difference between those who can continue to admire and those who can no longer—that "the more you suffer, the more you are angry"—is an ethical dilemma for the community.
Shin Hyeong-cheol (literary critic)

That's what I thought.
Maybe I just saw a failed movie, maybe it was really fiction.
A lousy narrative that doesn't deserve even half a star.
A cliché that has been thoroughly polished.
A cheap ending that leaves no questions and nothing more to say.
A movie that the director lost.
A movie that no one wants to see.
I wonder if I've ever seen such a terribly poorly made movie.

But why does the more I think about it, the more… …empty it becomes?
Everything is perfect and flawless, so why do I feel miserable as if my limbs have fallen off, as if my flesh has been torn and tattered?
Why is it so terribly empty? (Honmono, Changbi and Criticism, 2025)

■ He began his literary career through the 2019 Dong-A Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest.
There are short story collections such as ‘When You Walk Through the Light, There is Light’ and ‘Honmono’, and the full-length novel ‘The Summer I Left Behind’.
In 2024, he won the Young Writer Award and the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award for Excellence.

Seong Hye-ryeong, "Wonkyung" As this thrilling story flows, it was thrilling to follow the pace of tension that was heightened and then released by a single sentence that seemed to be thrown in carelessly.
It's a novel where every sentence is on edge, but when you ask why you're so sensitive, you just laugh it off and ask, "What?"
Ina Young (literary critic)

Things that were wriggling, breathing even when they couldn't move, crying, and struggling with their feet to somehow get up.
Shin-O tried to look only at the ground.
I tried not to see the subtle movements, the writhing.
Maybe Shino should have realized it then.
That your future is predetermined.
That one day, he too will twist and turn, writhing in agony to survive, and eventually end up buried in a deep hole. (Munjang Webzine, May 2024)

■ He began his career by winning the Changbi New Writer's Award in 2021.
There are short story collections such as ‘Mushroom Farm’ and ‘Story of Going to the Mountain’.
He won the Young Writer's Award in 2023 and the Yi Sang Literary Award for Excellence in 2024.

Lee Hee-joo, "My Favorite Child" Lee Hee-joo seemed to not hesitate at any moment.
The story was told with conviction and the speaker was eloquent in telling it.
As I read, I felt the overflowing power and rhythm.
(…) It was because my heart, which had opened regardless of my head, was forced to close my eyes tightly and willingly embrace the narrative of destruction.
_Jeong Yong-jun (novelist)

I felt sad as I remembered my twenties, when I was so afraid of standing in front of men, when I would feel a chill down my spine and cower whenever I met the gaze of someone who judged me as a woman.
Perhaps it was in reaction to that that I fell in love with the pretty boy.
The high aesthetic standards that had become so ingrained in me ended up making me sad.
You missed the opportunity to love yourself, and that opportunity will never come again.
Isn't it truly miserable? But how lucky am I, so miserable, to have a child I can love?
A child of none other than Yuri. (『Munhakdongne』 Fall 2024 issue)

■ He began his literary career by winning the Munhakdongne University Novel Award in 2016.
There are the serial novel 『World of Love』, and the long novels 『Fantasy Pain』, 『The Holy Boy』, and 『My Angel』.

Hyunho Jeong, “~~Waving~ Body~Floating~ Soul~~” It’s dazzling when you read it once, profound when you read it twice, and lonely when you read it three times.
I was truly amazed by the biological imagination that could be called morphological and the eloquence that literally seemed to be 'heard'.
Shin Hyeong-cheol (literary critic)

Above all, the tenacious life that has continued until now is completely unfamiliar.
Because it's weird.
Because it's disgusting.
Because this doesn't feel like mine.
I don't think the shame of having it is mine.
I just can't believe that my body and my mind don't feel like they're my own.
After all that, I'm still here. I'm still here. I'm still here, lonely, hurting, sad, hungry. So, being here like this is none other than me... (『A Drop of Me』, Four Seasons, 2025)

■ He began his literary career by winning the 2020 Park Ji-ri Literary Award.
There are short story collections such as ‘A Drop of Me’ and novels such as ‘The Struggle of a Short-Lived Girl’ and ‘The Hole of Gogo’.
Won the Young Writer Award in 2023.