Digging up a grave
What I want to say
Anonymous
Coming Things

Author's Note
Announcement page of included works

Why are there so many martyrdoms?
This book began with that question.

In the author's note, Hwang Jeong-eun said, "I have often met people named Sunja throughout my life," and that this book began with the question, "Why are there so many Sunjas?" The four short stories included in "Yeonnyeonseseyeonnyeon ...
This series of novels, which allows readers to reflect on Korean society here and now through the past lives and present daily lives of the mother and sister, surpasses Hwang Jeong-eun's previous novels once again with an inimitable sensibility and depth of thought, allowing readers to immerse themselves in an even more dazzling and rich 'world of Hwang Jeong-eun.'

"Broken Grave" begins with Lee Soon-il and his second daughter, Han Se-jin, deciding to destroy Lee Soon-il's maternal grandfather's grave and leaving for Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do to hold a final rite.
Han Se-jin silently accompanies her mother on her way to the funeral, believing that the tomb is her mother's home, but her husband, Han Jung-eon, her eldest daughter, Han Yeong-jin, and her youngest brother, Han Man-su, do not understand.
There was only one time when her husband accompanied her, but he didn't even bow and turned around, then muttered something about how it was not customary to cut down the weeds on the gravesite near her wife's family, so Lee Soon-il was annoyed and stopped asking her husband to accompany her.
Now that he is over seventy and has difficulty climbing up and down the mountain with his bad legs, Lee Soon-il decides to dig up the grave.
On the way back after the last bow, the soles of both of Lee Soon-il's hiking boots fell off one after another.
They leave the place, leaving two soles deeply embedded in the dirt.


"What I Want to Say" is the story of Han Yeong-jin, the eldest daughter of Lee Soon-il, who got a job right after graduating from high school and became responsible for supporting her family.
The store managed by Han Young-jin, who was good at sales, always had high sales.
Since Han Yeong-jin started working, Lee Soon-il waited for Han Yeong-jin to come home late every night and prepared fresh rice and soup for his daughter's dinner.
After Han Yeong-jin got married and had two children, Lee Soon-il took care of the household chores for both families. In return for this work, Han Yeong-jin and his wife paid for the old couple's living expenses and took care of their mother's things and annoyances.
One day, Han Yeong-jin suddenly hears from Lee Soon-il a story he has never told anyone, and for a moment, Han Yeong-jin is horrified.
Han Yeong-jin wonders why his mother said that to him, and he wants to ask her, "Why did you keep me at your dinner table?", but he doesn't have the confidence to say it.


Living well
But what on earth was that?

Lee Soon-il was called 'Soon-ja' when he was young.
In “Nameless,” Lee Soon-il recalls “Soon-ja, a friend, neighbor, same age and name” whom he met in Gimpo when he was fifteen.
In the summer of 1960, Lee Soon-il left his maternal grandfather and went to Gimpo with his aunt, who had promised to teach him. However, upon arriving there, Lee Soon-il had to take over his aunt's household and look after her seven children.
Lee Soon-il is stuck at home, unable to go to school and prohibited from going out, and is frustrated. Soon-ja, who lives next door, comes to fetch water, and the two become friends.
Lee Soon-il receives Sunja's notebook and learns to write by copying her beautiful handwriting.
However, Lee Soon-il, tired of working as a housemaid for a long time, runs away from her aunt's house in 1967.
Through Sunja's introduction, she learns nursing at a hospital in Namdaemun and works there for about six months. Then, she is taken back to her aunt's house by her uncle, and Lee Soon-il begins to resent Sunja.
When he returned to his aunt's house and met Sunja after two weeks, she just stood there without making any excuses, and Lee Soon-il slapped her in the face.
As time passed and he remembered Sunja, whom he had long since forgotten, as "scenes so vivid the more he thought about them that they seemed like dreams and lies," Lee Soon-il thought, "There are things in the world that cannot be forgiven."


Han Se-jin, who writes the screenplay, stays in New York for five days to participate in a book festival in "Things to Come."
There, Han Se-jin meets Jamie, Norman Kiley's daughter.
Norman is the son of Yoon Bu-gyeong, Lee Soon-il's aunt. When Lee Soon-il and Yoon Bu-gyeong first met on the stone wall road of Deoksugung Palace in 1987, Norman Kylie was next to Yoon Bu-gyeong and Han Se-jin was next to Lee Soon-il.
They watched together the scene of an aunt and nephew who looked exactly like each other, 'like images reflected in a two-sided mirror split into the present and the future.'
Jamie tells the story of Yoon Bu-kyung's life as an immigrant named 'Anna' in America, and Norman's life as a child growing up with his mother calling him a 'two-faced woman'.
While staying in New York, Han Se-jin recalls the words of his girlfriend Ha Mi-young and scenes from Mia Hansen-Löwe's film L'avenir (2016), calls him in the hospital to ask how he is doing, and shares the trivial details of his day that passed safely.

A dazzling sentence that keeps life going here
A story that will be remembered forever, a story that is absolutely necessary.

Through four novels, Hwang Jeong-eun poses questions about the world in which 'I' is formed through various relationships such as family, society, friends, and country.
And in it, it shows how we should overcome the tragedies and disasters, the pain and sorrows big and small, and how we should continue on with our lives, through the small conversations and ordinary daily lives of Lee Soon-il and his two daughters, Han Young-jin and Han Se-jin, and Han Se-jin and Ha Mi-young.
“I hope my children live well,” “I hope they grow up safely without experiencing anything terrible, and I hope everyone is happy” (page 138), Lee Soon-il’s wish may be coming true little by little as we spend our days busily, comforting each other as if we are indifferent, and enduring the day.
Even if there are things you can't say in the end, even if you don't receive forgiveness later, even if you disappoint people, life goes on busily.
“While crying, disappointed, disillusioned, and angry, in other words, while loving.” (p. 182) For us who do not forget the past that made the present possible and who create the present that makes the future possible, 『Yeonnyeonseseyeonnyeon ...