With all the other snowflakes
A single snowflake that looks very similar
French beginner course
Spanish thief
T Island's summer lawn
A story only German children know
Venus
Commentary by Lee So-yeon (literary critic)
Strange sorrow dreams of ancient wisdom
Author's Note

The truths of life, sparkling like constellations, discovered only by those who have endured time.

The scenery is always like that.
It may vary slightly depending on the season and weather.
I guess that means time is involved after all.
I go to see the scenery.
I was mostly lost.
Familiar times never come.
This is because I have a personality that is always learning but never becomes skilled, and because people close to me often become strangers.
Why is that?
Time must be working.
It's not my fault or your fault.
That's what I meant when I thought the scenery changed depending on how I got there.
I think about this scenery now.
I didn't go to the scenery, I was carried away.
I wasn't pushed away, but the brushing and scattering took me there.
The times I spent thinking like this became the stories in this book.
I can use it, thank you.
_Eun Hee-kyung, Author's Note

In the 'Author's Note', he talks about 'time' and the 'landscape' that time takes him.
About the place where “it was not carried away, but taken by brushing and scattering.”


Most of the stories in this collection are concise, single, and unified, but rather than telling a very long story, that is, the long life story of a single person (or a group).
So, if the novels of the past depicted a person's life in a concise and unified manner through a single event or moment that was considered the most important in that person's life, then the novels of "Snowflake" could be said to follow the numerous twists and turns of a person's life and the panorama of life in a cool and calm manner.
(…) I found the changes chosen by the novels of “Snowflake” very fascinating.
If our country's short stories are very stingy with things like the continuous triggers that determine life or the truths of life that only those who have endured time can discover, the novels of "Snowflake" are unusual in that they calmly show the process by which a finite human being discovers his or her own unique desires under the pressure of time and puts them into practice.

Eunhee Kyung: Actually, I think a lot about time.
I think that fundamentally, the reasoning is very much connected to things that are distorted, transformed, and crumbled over time.
Things like the passage of time, extinction, and the finiteness of existence.
Eunhee Kyung + Boseon Ryu, Munhakdongne, Spring 2014

Traces of the warp and weft that penetrate and pass through our bodies and minds_'Snowflake Series'

“The flow of time, fate, brushing past and scattering
“I think I was thinking about things flowing together somewhere.”
Eunhee Kyung, Munhakdongne, Spring 2014

Maybe that's why.
Could it be because he followed the traces of time that passed through us?
The six novels included in “Snowflake” are loosely yet closely connected.
Similar characters and identical spaces overlap in several novels, and episodes and motifs intersect.
And when we reach the final work, "The Venus Woman," which encompasses all six novels, we realize that they are not just vague similarities.
Therefore, this collection of works should be called the ‘Snowflake Series.’


The cohesion of 『Snowflake』, which is connected by small, fleeting episodes, may seem weak, but this loose cohesion is actually more in line with the author's critical awareness that runs through the entire series.
It is not far from this that the title of this series should be “The One Snowflake That Looks Very Similar to All Other Snowflakes”, i.e. “Snowflake Series”.
To put it bluntly, 『Snowflake』 does not pursue ‘synthesis’ or ‘unity (all snowflakes)’ that presupposes structure, but rather a more open form of ‘connection (very similar)’ that preserves the ‘uniqueness (a single snowflake)’ of each fragment.
_Cha Mi-ryeong, 『Munhakdongne』, Spring 2014

When each piece was scattered as individual fragments, the connections that were not noticed before are revealed when they come together like this.
Just as stars that seemed to shine alone gather together to form their own constellations, time, which was once a “line”, forms a “surface” as warp and weft intersect.

In it, our times are also intertwined.
The time you have been through is also the time we have spent together.
Each person's time, each person's place, each person's enduring.
Those times are powerful.
So, in this way, the story is ripe, sometimes tight, sometimes loose, but ultimately converges into one story.

We each live our own lives, but we constantly brush up against others.
I think I wanted to write a story about how there might have been moments when you were entangled with someone's life without even realizing it, and how that might have changed your life.
Eunhee Kyung, Munhakdongne, Spring 2014

Like knitting, where “a surface is created with lines,” even if one end of the tangled thread is uneven, each stitch, the accumulated time (inevitably) piles up.
Perhaps the ‘Snowflake Series’ is the totality of the traces of that time, the trajectories they drew, and their volumes.
They are each alone, and at the same time, all, and again alone.
Just as “one snowflake looks just like all the others,” we are all similar, yet ultimately, we are just one ‘me.’
Although we each spend similar times in life, we each knit different scarves.
And just as each of these constellations come together to form one large night sky.


From winter to spring, stories like the cold yet warm spring snow

Although his novels are, to be sure, never unripe, the six stories in this collection are nonetheless like ripe fruit, ready to drip juice down your lips and wrist if you take a bite.
The fragrance that has endured time, rain, wind, and sunlight already fills the spring air.


The air became softer and the ground began to hold moisture.
Even the dry branches that survived the winter are beginning to gradually absorb moisture.
It's almost spring.
While waiting for spring, there are days when I feel it is still a shame to completely leave winter behind, and then suddenly, spring snow falls.
I send off the snowflakes that bid farewell to winter and welcome spring, each snowflake carrying its own cold yet warm story.


It's amazing.
This is the place where Eun Hee-kyung has now arrived.
A single snowflake that looks very similar to all the other snowflakes.
I think of that single snowflake that was born from the poet's poem and given new life by Eun Hee-kyung.
Just one snowflake.
A snowflake that was destined to never reach the ground.
We will follow the trail of those snowflakes in the blizzard with dark eyes. _Cha Mi-ryeong (literary critic)

If we get too close, the 'relationship' swallows up the individual, and if we get too far away, the 'distance' creates isolation.
It's hard to find a writer better at capturing the artistic balance between the two than Eun Hee-kyung. —Kwon Hee-chul (literary critic)