Preface - What are animals to us?

Kim Geum-hee - Can I hug your dog?
Jang Eun-jin - The Watchman
Kim Jong-kwang - Postpartum Care
Seoijye - Inside and Outside the Skull
Lim Seon-woo - The Room with the Green Whale
Hwang Jeong-eun - born in the Myo family
Cheon Seon-ran - Bakita

Commentary - For a world that can change when we make eye contact

Why should you read animal fiction now?
What do animals mean to us? Animals have been a constant companion to human life in various ways.
Linguistically, it was used as a curse word or a derogatory expression, and was considered inferior or an object of disgust. Conversely, it also appeared as a friendly and admirable figure in various old tales.
These days, it's easy to see people walking down the street with their dogs, and photos and videos of pets are constantly being uploaded on social media.
As interest in animal rights, animal welfare, and companion animals grows, the way we view animals has also changed significantly.
We have now entered an era where it is difficult to call ourselves a true community unless we accept and seriously consider non-human animals as members of our society.

So how is discourse on animals shaped in literature? And what stories can we tell about the relationship between animals and humans through literature?

Animals viewed through the lens of 'capital' and 'utility'
In Seo Yi-je's "Inside and Outside the Skull," a hellish slaughter scene is depicted under the pretext of preventing the spread of a mutant virus.
When a contagious disease breaks out in livestock, the livestock must be euthanized and buried within 24 hours, but because there are “too many chickens,” they must be killed “quickly! Absolutely quickly!”
Those mobilized for slaughter operations are also put in a living hell.
People who have to bury chickens alive without even knowing the reason will suffer “a pain that will never go away for the rest of their lives.”
Every time the narrator feels the body temperature and heartbeat of a living chicken, he is tormented by the fact that he is killing a “warm” life.
This 'factory farming' method of driving animals to death is a system that can be implemented in a capitalist system where humans treat animals as commodities, and is designed to maximize efficiency and profit.

In Kim Jong-gwang's "Postpartum Care," there is a cow that has a hernia just before giving birth.
In a situation where even the vet couldn't guarantee whether the cow would survive, the grandmother took care of the cow with all her heart, and eventually the mother cow and calf survived.
The desperate survival story of a mother cow and her calf, who were on the verge of death, highlights the dignity of life even more as it coincides with the tragic times when countless livestock were culled due to foot-and-mouth disease.
To the grandmother, the cow may still be nothing more than 'property' and 'work'.
But the cow's life is "not mine."
The grandmother's words, "They are beggars themselves," contain her respect for cows as equal living beings, no different from humans, at least for the moment they live and breathe next to her.

A relationship of 'interdependent care' where we protect each other
In Kim Geum-hee's "Can I Hug Your Dog?", Semi is overcome with belated regret and self-reproach after sending her pet dog, Seol-gi, away.
Even her long-time friend, Yangyo, does not understand Semi, who is having a hard time getting over the grief of losing her dog.
Semi decides to hug other dogs at Yangyo's suggestion.
Through the process of hugging acquaintances' dogs and sharing their grief, 'Semi' reconnects with people.
Because they respected and acknowledged Semi's sorrow as it was, rather than dismissing it as something unusual or unusual, Semi no longer chose to dwell on her loss, but, like "dogs who never give up their hearts once given," returned to her place for the "reincarnation of love" with renewed faith.

The central character of Jang Eun-jin's "The Watchman," Mr. Kang, is an old and lonely railroad crossing guard.
Mr. Kang must take appropriate action when he hears the warning sound of an approaching train, but he is losing his hearing.
Moreover, since this crossing is scheduled to be closed, it is difficult for him to find a place to rely on anymore.
Next to Mr. Kang is a stray cat that is presumed to have been abandoned.
Mr. Kang, who has to leave the crossing, eventually tries to end his own life with the cat that was abandoned and returned.
However, the cat uses all its strength to escape from Mr. Kang's embrace and knocks him off the tracks.
Mr. Kang escapes the path of death and faces life once again.
Until now, it seemed like Mr. Kang was unilaterally protecting the stray cat as its guardian, but this is the moment when it is revealed that the stray cat was also Mr. Kang's guardian.

Beings who live a life of 'only bad things'
Hwang Jeong-eun's "Myo's Life" denounces human violence and cruelty through the eyes of a cat named "Bomb," who has lived five deaths and six lives, and whose life on the road is particularly remarkable.
The novel depicts people who take out their anger on stray cats, people who regard them as noisy and unpleasant creatures, and people who use them as a means of making money, showing how insignificant other life forms are considered in a human-centered world.
However, it does not stop at simply depicting the life of a stray cat. By juxtaposing the lives of 'Gok-ssi' and 'Bomb', who survive each day by collecting food discarded by others, it illuminates the suffering that all beings forced to survive commonly experience, and asks us to take responsibility for the lives that we turn a blind eye to.

A subversive imagination that blurs the line between humans and animals
Cheon Seon-ran's "Bakita" is a report written from the perspective of an Earthling who survived a space mission and observed the Earth after it was destroyed by the invasion of the alien life form "Bakita."
The few humans who survived the attack of the 'Vaquita' decided to coexist with the 'Vaquita' and evolved into two types: 'Civilized Humans' who became 'domesticated', and 'Forest Humans' who refused to coexist with the 'Vaquita' and became wild.
And they all live under the rule of 'Bakita'.
The cruelty and violence shown to humans by the 'Vaquita', which once lived on 'trash' created by humans, reminds us of the way humans have exterminated and exploited animals, and makes us reflect on how we have treated animals.

The fantastical setting where humans become animals, as if the positions of humans and animals are reversed, can be found in Lim Seon-woo's "The Room with the Green Whale."
In the novel, Yumi, who lost her lover in an accident, sometimes turns into a camel whenever her grief becomes too much to bear, and is caught in this camel-like state by Doyeon, who lives downstairs and comes up to fix a water leak.
Doyeon listens to Yumi's story and, before she knows it, she becomes close enough to Yumi to reveal her own wounds from a miserable failure that left her afraid to even go outside.
'Yumi', who was like a 'camel' walking through the desert, and 'Doyeon', a 'green whale' who was not understood by others, sympathize with each other's sadness and gain the strength to move forward in life again.

A story about a new animal you encounter when you approach and make eye contact.
Literature has been looking into the eyes and hearts of animals who have been unable to speak, and has been speaking out to create a better world where animals can coexist with humans.
Human language can be a tool for distinguishing between superior and inferior species, but it can also be a tool for ethics and reflection that represents the plight and suffering of voiceless beings.

Exploring new relationships and ways of being by making eye contact and listening to the hidden voice of the other.
And thus, to create a world where all life can survive on its own.
That's probably why we read and write novels about animals.
I hope that through 『Eye Contact Novel』, which talks about what kind of beings humans and animals should be to each other, we can get a little closer to those who cannot speak.