Recommendation: "There is hope for those who do not give up on love!" 010
Prologue 014

Chapter 1: Something More Precious Than Money 019
Chapter 2: The Moment Weakness Turns to Hatred 039
Chapter 3: Endure Today, Tomorrow Will Come. Take One Step at a Time. 047
Chapter 4: Kindness is found everywhere, even among strangers. 061
Chapter 5: Hug Your Mother Now 081

Chapter 6: One Good Friend is Like Gaining the Whole World 107
Chapter 7: Education Saves People 123
Chapter 8: If You Lose Your Humanity, You Lose Everything 137
Chapter 9: The World's Greatest Machine: The Human Body 151
Chapter 10: While We Live, There Is Hope 165

Chapter 11: Miracles Happen Even in the Darkness 187
Chapter 12 Love is the Best Medicine 199
Chapter 13: My Happiness Is in My Hands 219
Chapter 14: Shared sorrow halves it, shared joy doubles it. 231
Chapter 15: What I Want to Share Is Not Pain, But Hope 245

Epilogue 256
Acknowledgments 260
Translator's Note: "No matter how difficult it is, try to love your life." 264

A novel-like story of a person who survived a death camp
“It is in your hands to make your life beautiful and happy.”

Stories of people who miraculously survive even after enduring extreme hardship always move our hearts.

Santiago, the main character of 'The Old Man and the Sea', and Pi, the main character of 'Life of Pi', both moved us by their tenacious and strong vitality in overcoming the tragedies that befell them.


Now, here's another dramatic protagonist.
His name is Eddie Jaycou, and he lived a life much more novelistic than the main character in the novel.
Born in 1920, he was a German-born Jew and one of the survivors of Auschwitz.
He is a person who survived dozens of near-death experiences while moving between various concentration camps in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Poland for about seven years from 1938, when he was 19, to 1945.
After much hardship, he escapes and reunites with his family, living in hiding for a short time, but is eventually arrested again after a neighbor reports him and ends up experiencing a subhuman living hell in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

This book, The Happiest Man on Earth, which became a worldwide sensation, is a memoir that summarizes his life, which he describes as unfortunate but fortunate, and about a third of it is filled with his experience in Auschwitz.
This book vividly depicts his daily life: losing his parents in the gas chamber, meeting a college classmate who became a Nazi guard inside the camp, risking his life to escape and then being shot in the leg while seeking help from a civilian home, seeing his friends and colleagues die every day, doing hard labor for those who murdered his parents, and feeling humiliated every day while being stripped of his human dignity.

Unlike other works written by Holocaust survivors, such as Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning, Primo Levi's If This Is a Man, or Edith Eva Egger's Escape from the Prison of the Mind, this book is simple and intuitive.
The author, Eddie Jayku, is neither a psychiatrist, a professor, nor an intellectual. He is a mechanical engineer who simply tells his story in a calm and collected manner.
Rather than commenting on the origins of humanity or philosophizing, it simply shares stories of experience and makes us reflect on our lives.

His experiences are very rare and special, but the emotions contained within them—friendship, love, hatred, betrayal, pain, our attitude toward adversity, etc.—are universal human emotions.
This is probably why this book rose to number one on Amazon and became a worldwide sensation.

Author Eddie Jaykoo, with a faint smile that belies his experience with such a tragic event, describes himself as "the happiest man in the world."
And it tells us how to live each day to the fullest.
It reminds us once again that love, friendship, kindness, hope, and the small joys we feel in everyday life are the fuel of our lives.

After being published in 2020, the year he turned 100, this book reached number one on Amazon Australia and was also ranked in the top 10 on the overall bestseller list in the US, UK, and other countries, and was exported to 37 countries around the world. It also won the 2021 Autobiography of the Year Award and the 2021 Publishing Culture Award.
He has been awarded the Order of Australia and his TED Talk videos have surpassed one million views on both YouTube channels.
Eddie Jaykoo, who told us beautiful words that melted frozen hearts and tense life stories that made our palms sweat, passed away in Sydney in October 2021.

Professor Kim Hyung-seok, a 102-year-old philosopher who is the same age as the author, said, “I really want to read this book to all the sons and daughters in the world.
“I hope that many young people will read this book and come to believe that those who do not give up on love can be reborn as protagonists of hope and happiness,” he commented.

More beautiful than "Man's Search for Meaning" and more tearful than "The Last Lecture"! "Even if misfortune befalls you, love your life.
If you hate your life, you will never be able to live.”

When misfortune strikes, when a loved one passes away, when it feels like no one is on our side, when the world is so cruel to us, how should we live? Many people surrender to fate when faced with trials.
Living a life that is so difficult day after day can lead to anger and regret, and in many cases, you may never be able to escape from it.

Who would dare say to someone caught in the vortex of an overwhelming fate, “Still, try to live positively”?
If you're not careful, you'll only end up hurting the person who was hurt more.
Because of this, we have a hard time opening our hearts to messages that affirm life.
But this is exactly what the author of this book, Eddie Jaykoo, tells us.
“Love your life even when bad luck comes,” he said.
At the very beginning of the book, he borrows the words of an unknown author and says:

Don't walk behind me.
I don't want to lead.
Don't walk in front either.
I don't want to follow.
Let's walk side by side and be friends.

In this passage, we can see the author's attitude toward the reader; he does not want his story to be read as a sermon, admonition, or teaching.
I just want to empathize with each other while respecting each other's existence.
Perhaps because of that, after reading this book, I find myself looking back on my life and finding positive aspects.
Moreover, the precious values ​​of life that he emphasized to us are not really new.
These are all truths we know.
But his every word, which may seem ordinary and insignificant, shines brighter and penetrates deeper into our hearts than the wisdom of any great man, thanks to the profound emotion that his life, full of hardships, gives us.

In these difficult times, when everyone is feeling depressed due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, everyone, regardless of gender, age, conservative or progressive, or class, will find warmth and comfort in this book.
Moreover, it will leave a heavy resonance in our society, which has seen an unusually large number of victims of state violence in modern history dominated by the Korean War, division, and military dictatorship.

-Sharing the good luck I have with others, that's life.
-Please go home today and give your mother a big hug.
-If you have just one good friend, it's like gaining the whole world.
-A small act of kindness I do for someone could save their life.
-Remember that there are as many kind people in this world as there are cruel people.
-Hatred is the beginning of a disease like cancer.
Hatred kills enemies, but in the process it also destroys itself.
-Happiness comes from the people we love.
-We can choose our own happiness every moment of every day.
-There are many more difficult days in life.
But don't forget, if you're alive now, you're lucky.