"It was wrong then, and it's wrong now."
The lie of the life cycle
The lie that it was my fault
The lie that children don't know
The lie that the visible body is everything
The lie that it's just adolescent wandering
The lie that the 19+ label protects us
The lie that society is all like that
The lie that now is the best time

To Myeongju

There's one in our class too
Entering

Stone sender
A person with a bag of words
The person holding you in his arms
slow failure
A person with his own map
The person who draws the seasons

▶ A book about the season when cabbage becomes sweet

A person who falls in love easily
A person sitting across from tteokbokki
Poet reader
A person who gives a gift to himself
Someone who cares about me
A person named Yumi

▶ A book for the season when you want to become an adult

People who breathe in sync
A person who makes you dream
A person who stares endlessly
A person who measures wounds
The naming person
In spring, people

▶ A book for the season that will lighten your heart

To Sua

How to Remember a Friend
The child's hands were very cold.
Youngtae liked my younger sister
Yeonsuk knows the secret
Jeong-ah was another me
Compassion caught me when I wanted to hide.
Jinsuk crossed her arms without hesitation.
I spent all my first times with Jaeyang.
I fell in love with Jeong-hee right away.
Ivory and Yul protected each other.
Seonwoo just keeps meeting

To Central America

An Embarrassing Mind
Entering
If you feel alone
If you started your first love
If you don't have a dream
If you have something you want to do
If you find love difficult
If you are worried because it is your first time
If you think now is the worst
If you don't like me
If you can't adapt to an unfamiliar environment
If you're into fandom
If you regret the short meeting
If your will to live is weakened
If you want to know the meaning of now

To future readers

Asking 'different questions' in a taboo world
Life is an adventure through 'sudden' experiences!

Is there any other time as full of prohibitions and taboos as adolescence?
Is there any area that teenagers are allowed to indulge in, other than studying and reading?
No matter what you try to do, they always try to stop you, but no one tells you exactly why you shouldn't do it.
As if teenagers have no desires or wants, as if they are only 'qualified' to use such desires and wants once they turn twenty.
Everything you want to do and see is naturally put on hold once you “go to college.”

When you turn twenty and go to college, does a different world open up for you?
When a 'minor' becomes an 'adult', do they suddenly receive some special ability?
Author Hong Seung-eun returns to her teenage years, a time of taboo, and reflects on how she encountered, was hurt, and asked “different questions” in that world.


- Will living according to the 'life cycle' really make you happy?
- Should families always understand and love each other?
- Why is the body so closely associated with shameful emotions?
- Are you saying that teenage depression is just a result of adolescent wandering?
- Is it a sin for a teenager to seek orgasm?
- Are we the best of times? Then what hope do we have for the future?

In a society where even the slightest change in choice makes one fearful of falling behind and guilty of not doing as the adults "told" them, young people who are "flipped off the graph" have nowhere to go.
Author Hong Seung-eun realizes this only after turning the direction of the suspicion that was aimed at him towards the world.
That many things that I thought were natural and right were, and still are, 'wrong'.
Life is not a well-laid-out plan, but an adventure through "sudden" experiences. When we admit that we were "wrong," we discover that there are new landscapes and possible stories that unfold.

In a world that is going to end, the question, ‘How should I live?’ is changed to ‘What kind of world should I create with whom?’
Because the place where we gather is ultimately the reality in which we live.
Looking at the stars, I think about the countless planets that exist on Earth.
The fact that there are probably many more planets I haven't discovered yet than the ones I know of is a small light that helps me endure these desperate times.
“If you look up, you can see such twinkling stars.” - Page 110

"Why did you become like this?"
My 'story' that could continue through writing and reading

Born into a divorce, suffering from depression and insomnia, and dropping out of school at seventeen, the author was a teenager far removed from what society defines as "normal."
After Mom left home, people were aware of the "precarious state of an unsupported existence."
A friend asks the writer.
“Why did you become like this?”

A single word of compassion from a close friend was more powerful than the blatant bullying from other children, breaking the fifteen-year-old boy down.
Through his first attempt at a youth essay, author Hong Seung-eun goes back twenty years and confronts that question again.
Take courage to find out “what happened to me back then” and what those things mean.
The author, who had no adults to lean on throughout his youth, was able to avoid thinking of himself as “the only one having a hard time” or reducing himself to “a poor, unfortunate child” thanks to his continuous writing and reading.
By pouring out my anger, sadness, and loneliness in my diary, and reading “stories of beings who are similar to me but different,” I was able to gain the strength to ask questions and continue my own story.

“Stories give me a chance to escape from myself, even if only for a moment.
I come to know that there are beings in the world similar to me and how the lives of various beings are connected and intertwined with my own.
If we recognize the traces of discrimination that created unhappiness, rather than just the individual's unhappiness, we can create a different story.
I learned this through reading, journaling, and writing.”

The word 'mistake' means 'to be out of sync'.
The title of this book, 'Wrong Then and Wrong Now', implies that many of the demands society makes of youth, then and now, are wrong, but it also implies that then and now, 'I' am a person who does not fit the world's expectations and deviates from the standards.
I hope this book will reach young readers who have been 'out of touch' with the world because they are different.


Introducing the Hippocampus Series
The joy of reading essays for teenagers too!

We live in an age of essay overflow, where we can encounter all sorts of stories and lives in books.
But maybe it's because it's somewhat distant from the reality of teenagers.
Essays have long been considered the preserve of adult readers.
"This is exactly my story!" Shouldn't we also provide opportunities for young readers to hear stories they can relate to, or stories from people who have had experiences different from their own?
This is the background for planning the youth essay.

The times I cried, laughed, met, broke up, got absorbed in, ignored, liked, and disliked piled up one by one to become who I am today.
So we are also the sum total of our memories.
Memory is the device that makes each of us unique, and it is also a person's identity in itself.
The place that makes this possible is the hippocampus in our heads.
A place where memories are received, stored, and reproduced.
This is where the youth essay series 'Hippocampus' was born.


As each author's past and present collide, become entangled, reconcile, and overlap, stories with different charms and individualities are created.
I hope that young readers will also discover their own stories and fully enjoy the joy of reading essays as they embark on a journey to discover the powerful memories that shaped who they are today.
radish