prolog
Part 1: The Old Neighborhood Video Store
Part 2: In Search of Don Quixote
Part 3 Republica Libre
Part 4: The Land of the Sun
Channel 5 Don Quixote Video
Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Don Quijote Video, the video store in our hearts that has now disappeared
A story about people who find their dreams, pursue them, and become like those dreams.

"My Don Quixote" is a novel that begins in an old neighborhood video store that has now disappeared and contains the dreams and adventures of boys and girls that travel back and forth over 15 years.
As the title suggests, Cervantes' masterpiece, Don Quixote, served as the motif for the story, and the temporal and spatial background is much more expansive than in the previous work.
As the scale of the narrative grows, the characters do not stay in one place but move dynamically, and the changes in relationships and roles between characters that occur in the process are also points to note.
Author Kim Ho-yeon's eloquence and writing skills, which weave together all of these spectacular journeys in a thrilling way that draws readers into the novel in one breath, clearly demonstrate his status as a master storyteller.


In 2003, 'Don Quixote Video', located in the old downtown area of ​​Daejeon, was a hangout for several local middle school students.
The store owner, 'Mr. Don', who calls himself the Don Quixote of Korea, is generous to children.
Lonely and bored teenagers come and go to this place as if it were a playroom or study room, where they watch movies together, read books, discuss things, eat tteokbokki, and sometimes even have tutoring sessions.
There is only one thing they learned here.
To move forward with a dream.
Just as Don Quixote set out on an adventure with the dream of establishing justice in the world, Uncle Don encouraged them to achieve their dreams, nurture them, and go out into the world.


In late fall of 2018, 15 years later, PD Sol, who had been in the outsourcing production industry for 6 years, was suddenly cut from a popular entertainment program he had planned and, frustrated, returned to his hometown of Daejeon.
Sol, who was seriously considering the second act of his life because he couldn't just stay unemployed, decided to use his experience as a broadcast producer to start a personal broadcast on YouTube.
While Sol was planning an item based on the 'boring city' of Daejeon, he meets Hanbin by chance at an old video store that has now been turned into a cafe.
Hanbin is the son of Mr. Don.
Hanbin, who is still as cranky and rough as ever, tells the surprising news that although the video store is gone, the basement space where the old man lived remains the same.
Sol finds the basement with Hanbin.
The antique props from the Don Quixote video era that still remain there bring back fond memories.
The figure of Uncle Don, the owner of the place and the one who always cheered him on, calling himself 'Sancho'.


Hanbin asks Sol for help in finding his father's whereabouts, who disappeared three years ago, and Sol also becomes curious about his father's current situation.
Looking back, I think that the reason I ended up working as a broadcast producer was all due to the influence of Mr. Money and Don Quixote Video.
Sol decides to use this underground space as a YouTube studio to introduce the books and movies he watched back then, and to do a broadcast with Hanbin about finding Uncle Money.
The channel name is 'Don Quixote Video'.
The owner himself names it 'Jjinsancho'.

To find Mr. Money, you must first find his acquaintances.
You'll also need help from your regular friends at the video store, whom Don used to call "La Mancha Club Amigos."
Sol and Hanbin continue their march to find Don, despite their huge personality differences and constant bickering.
From Daejeon to Seoul, to Tongyeong, to Busan, I run anywhere I can hear stories about the old man.
Will they finally meet Uncle Don? Will they be reunited with their friends from the Don Quixote video?

The journey to find Uncle Money is a process of learning about the Uncle from the past, and is no different from a journey to find one's past self and dreams.
It's a useless thing in the world, but it's meaningful to me.
A dream that is more important than money, as Mr. Money always said.
If I find it, will I be able to gain the strength to live in the world again?
But in what form has the old man reached his dream now?
What adventure awaits at the end of the journey?

"My Don Quixote" is a "dreamlike story" that tells us that it's okay to choose our dreams and live them.
And it is a story about a person who came to believe in Don Quixote through a long adventure, or a story about a person who became Don Quixote.
Storyteller Kim Ho-yeon, who has been adventuring in the world of stories for a long time, has written a passionate and long story that encompasses the characters and worldview of his novels, and it unfolds fiercely like the march of Don Quixote and Sancho.


Where did he go, leaving behind these traces of his dreams?
Is there someone from your memories that you would like to meet?

Uncle Don's love for 'Don Quixote' is special.
He describes the story of an old knight over fifty going on an adventure to establish justice in the world as “a story boiling in the furnace that contains everything in this world,” and he copies the contents of the thick book into a notebook to learn the spirit of Don Quixote.
It is his dream to go to Spain with this manuscript.
Sol also finishes reading Don Quixote with the help of the old man's manuscript notebook, which he found in the underground space, like his alter ego.
And so, I feel a sense of nobility in the spirit of Don Quixote, whom I had only known as a mad old knight charging toward windmills.


When Sol was in middle school, he asked Uncle Don, “Why do you only use words that adults don’t use?” and that he kept bringing up “words like dream, hope, justice, and freedom.”
Now the question came back to Sol: “What kind of language do you want to use as an adult?”
Sol's YouTube broadcast is none other than the answer.


“Don Quixote’s impossible dream is sublime.
That is the reason for Don Quixote's existence.
[…] Humans cannot survive without dreaming.
[…] I can say that I feel more alive, more energetic and more energized than at any time in my 30 years of life.
This is the dream.
“I’m not talking about dreams that disturb your sleep at night, but dreams you have during the day.” (pp. 134-135)

Sol, who started the second act of his life as a YouTuber, reviews the movies and books that Uncle Don and his La Mancha Club friends watched together with his subscribers, the 'Amigos', and reads famous scenes from the novel 'Don Quixote' selected from the over 40 volumes of notebooks left behind by Uncle Don, while also hosting a public broadcast called 'In Search of Don Quixote' to find Uncle Don.
During his days at the video store, Mr. Don had a special love for Korean films, and he watched all kinds of films and wrote screenplays.
Why did the man, who had closed his shop and lived in seclusion in the basement, dreaming of one day making a film based on his own screenplay, suddenly disappear three years ago? Sol and Hanbin search for acquaintances who can testify to the man's whereabouts, and upload videos of their interviews to their channel.
We meet Don Uncle's college roommate and close friend, a classmate from his days as a Gangnam academy instructor, an editor who worked with him at a publishing company in Mapo, Daejun, a friend from the La Mancha Club who learned the secret to tteokbokki from Don Uncle, the president of a film company that signed a screenplay contract with Don Uncle, and a producer who met at the film company and developed the screenplay together. Through the stories they tell us, we draw a chronicle of Don Quixote Jang Young-su's life.
Through their testimonies, Sol learns:
How fiercely Mr. Money has fought against the injustice of the world.
How much humiliation he endured and how much wandering he endured for his dream of becoming a film director.
The old man was not only Don Quixote in words, but also in life itself.


The 'In Search of Don Quixote' series has become a popular channel's signature content, receiving support and encouragement from subscribers.
Now the Amigos are also joining this adventure, eagerly awaiting the day when Sol and the old man will meet.
Sol finally finds the last puzzle piece that will help him find Uncle Don.
It was not the end of the adventure, but the beginning of another.


Don Quixote is being chased by Uncle Don and Sancho Sol is being chased by Uncle Don.
The story of the two characters' love and friendship over the course of 15 years, the adventures and growth narrative that intertwine and overflow with Don Quixote, Sancho, and Cervantes, captivates readers' hearts, bringing laughter and tears to their eyes.
The friendship between the La Mancha Club and Uncle Don, and the friendship between Channel Don Quixote Video and Amigos are also engraved in my heart as if they will last forever.


“Uncle Don and I, and the Amigos of the La Mancha Club and the Channel Don Quixote Video.
We are all friends.
The word friendship is different from something, so it is often used in a general way.
Even people who weren't friends before would become friends the moment you added the word friendship to them.
“The moment we shared our dreams and embarked on adventures together, we became friends.” (p. 415)

A storyteller who has been adventuring in the world of stories for a long time
The definitive edition of Kim Ho-yeon's literature, three years later

Kim Ho-yeon's seventh full-length novel, "My Don Quixote," published three years after "An Inconvenient Convenience Store," can be considered the definitive edition of Kim Ho-yeon's literature, containing all the characteristic elements of his previous works.
The close friendship between the members of the La Mancha Club and Uncle Don is reminiscent of the 'Mangwon-dong Four Brothers' who fight and brawl in a small 8-pyeong rooftop room, and the journey of the characters starting in Daejeon and going through Seoul, Tongyeong, and Jeju to Spain is reminiscent of the journey of the two rivals in 'Love Enemy'.
The problem of proxy translation that Uncle Don fought against when he was working at a publishing company overlaps with the world of 『Ghostwriters』, and the fact that the classic 『Don Quixote』 was used as a narrative motif connects to 『Faust』, which was inspired by Goethe's novel 『Faust』.
Above all, the video rental store, which is the central space where the characters develop their dreams and share friendships, is connected to the 'Always Convenience Store' in 'Inconvenient Convenience Store'.
All these elements are melted into the work, creating an amazing and fantastic story unlike anything you've ever seen before.


The mega-hit success of "Inconvenient Convenience Store" must have placed a considerable burden on the author writing a new work.
Perhaps writing this work was a quixotic adventure.
Just as Mr. Money said, one doesn't go on adventures because someone wants to know about them, the author never stopped writing as a storyteller, and he never confined himself to any framework.
Now the real adventure begins with the readers.