Bright treetops
Dispersing clouds
One breath
Between the borders
Sowing night
Man in the Snow
High and slow forgiveness
Hotter than breath
Moonrae

Commentary/Involvement and Secrets · Kim Mi-jeong
Author's Note

A new collection of short stories by Jo Hae-jin, author of "The Escort of Light" and "Simple Sincerity."

This book contains a total of nine novels, including the autobiographical novel “Munrae” and “The Bright Tree Top,” which won the 2019 Kim Seung-ok Literary Award for Excellence.
In particular, "The Bright Treetop" is a work that allows us to glimpse the author's unique strengths, as the judges commented, "a novel written with delicate sentences that seem to grope for light in the darkness," and breathe bright life into emotions that are difficult to express in words while soothing the twists and turns of life.


Over the years, Jo Hae-jin has been working to add color to the lives of those who remain in the darkest corners of society, including immigrants, adoptees, and the working poor.
This book also focuses on the lives of those who are hidden and neglected, such as a middle-aged woman battling cancer with no one to turn to, child laborers forced to work without even knowing what mercury poisoning was, and men and women who have wasted their youth without achieving any significant results and become exhausted.
The author adds warmth to the individual stories of “unperceived but existing” individuals with a “desperate heart” that their lives do not end here.


"Reading a novel is like staring at your cold eyes with your bare hands for a while.
Faced with a dilemma we cannot ignore, we may feel dizzy and lonely many times, like a child alone on a merry-go-round, but such isolation does not end there.
This is because we have the beautiful and delicate 'language of prayer' of Jo Hae-jin, who melts the pain of others with his own warmth and hopes that it will lead to salvation on a higher level.
- Recommendation by Kim Geum-hee (novelist)


The hidden truths that follow 'but'
The starting point of life that rises again from where it ended

The future with Hojae was just canceled.
The thought that my life would now be a repeating chain of visits to this coffee shop actually made me feel more at ease.
The countless coffee shops, connected like train cars, where I sit hunched over and drink coffee alone, become a new stage in my life, free from the lonely ring.
however……
But I didn't know that this might be the last thing I wanted to say.

_「Scattered Clouds」

If we can call a party a climax moment that is given equally to everyone, then all parties eventually end.
Even the daily life filled with “pure passion,” the moments filled with the joy of life, and sometimes the times when it was so difficult that I couldn’t escape from “pessimistic emptiness.”
However, as if this is not the real end, author Jo Hae-jin continues the story by leaning on the words he “wanted to say for the last time” after the climax.

After spending 12 years together, Hojae and I decided to break up, and apart from my expectations that a “new stage in my life” awaited me after a long relationship, the novel focuses on my true feelings that follow the “but.”
The sincerity is a true confession about how a life with Hojae was possible, and how the words Hojae said in the documentary he participated in as an assistant director helped me live.

Events such as the end of a love affair are sometimes transformed into variations such as the death of a classmate ("Bright Treetop"), a minor who loses consciousness in an unfortunate factory accident ("One Breath"), and a father who disappears in an unfortunate incident and a sister left behind ("High and Slow Forgiveness"). The author catches the tail of the story that is nearing its end and breathes life into the individual stories crouching behind the "but."
Even though our relationship is sometimes disrupted by death, separation, or a vast gap in time and space, isn't it the truth of life that I still have stories to tell you, stories I haven't told you, that keeps us alive?
The author focuses on the true feelings of each individual who remains in the stories of scattered and wounded individuals, and suggests that we cautiously begin again with the belief that the tragic ending is “not the complete end” (literary critic Kim Mi-jeong).



Brilliant moments created by a sincere heart
The 'I-you' involved when discovering each other

“Not long ago, someone who worked for a civic group came to the hospital and said that this society made it that way.
Is that so, sir?”
“……”
“But, I’m saying this because I don’t really know.
It's because I'm bad that one of them ended up like that.
“I’m a high school dropout, a single mother, I guess I’m kind of a loser.”
_「One Breath」

The conjunction 'but' mentioned earlier also exerts its power in Jo Hae-jin's main narrative, which focuses on the lives of individuals swept up in the violence of history and society.
One day, as I was working as a non-regular teacher at a specialized high school, I heard the news that my student, Hana, had lost consciousness after a serious accident at the factory where she had gone for training.
The story of the boys who died from mercury poisoning in "The Night of Sowing," another novel included in this book, and the internal conflict of a new reporter who takes the place of an unfairly dismissed reporter but is not recognized by anyone in "Between the Lines" are recurring but still unresolved incidents.

However, behind the short summary that “society made one that way,” there is a ‘one’ who wants to believe that there is true happiness, and there is a person who hopes that ‘one’ will dream of happiness even in their subconscious.
The inner wills that emerge when the individual worlds and dreams behind the cross-section of society, and the bright hearts that are kept fairly, sparkle, create points that can never be reduced to a system, carving out the shining scenes of a novel.

For example, in "The Man in the Snow," 'I' and Yeo-jin participate in a publishing company's oral history project and meet Choi Gil-nam, a scout who participated in the massacre of North Korean soldiers by the US military during the Korean War.
Choi Gil-nam, who lives in shame for having killed so many people just to save his own life, secretly reveals the one moment that made him truly feel his heart.
That handful of brilliant moments, which made him throw his body away to save “a fragile life with short limbs and a thin torso” while trembling in fear amidst a hail of gunfire, brings out another side of Choi Gil-nam that was hidden beneath the easily hurled criticism.
In this way, Jo Hae-jin's works show that each person can have their own story within the large framework of society, while at the same time providing readers with the experience of discovering each other's uniqueness.
Regarding this experience, critic Kim Mi-jeong says, "Rather than a simple 'connection,' this is closer to events that are deeply 'involved' in a certain world or event."
That is, those who are located in markedly different positions, “here and there, this being and that being, past and present,” permeate each other while maintaining their own uniqueness.
Subjects who cannot be simply reduced and aligned within a group ask how they can reach each other's hearts, even if they cannot fully understand each other, and where their stories can begin again.
“The world becomes immeasurably deeper and wider in front of Jo Hae-jin’s novels, which willingly invite us to engage with these difficult questions” (Kim Mi-jeong).