The path the novelist walked! Reviving memories of that place

Breathing Life into Textbook Literature
12 Living Literature Tours

Can't we make textbook literature more fun to read?
Three writers, photographers, and artists have come together to create a 12-part textbook literary travelogue filled with interesting things to see.
Among the literary works included in the textbook, we selected works that resonate deeply with our times and have made a significant mark in literary history.
Starting with Park Wan-seo's "The Naked Tree" and "Who Ate Up All the Singa?", which contain anecdotes about the Japanese colonial period and the Korean War before and after liberation, the exhibition traces the lives and literary trajectories of the authors by walking through the backgrounds of 12 works, including Jo Se-hee's "The Little Ball Shot by a Dwarf" and Yoon Heung-gil's "The Man Left with Nine Pairs of Shoes," which depict the sorrows of the evictees based on the Gwangju Apartment Complex Incident in the 1970s, Yang Gui-ja's "The People of Wonmi-dong", which depicts the difficult daily lives of the common people in the 1980s, and finally Hwang Seok-yeong's "The Star Watching Dog Food", which depicts the wanderings of his youth.
As you walk through the novel and infer, "This must have been the house where Wanseo lived," "Which store did Sunam work at?" "Wasn't the factory where Yeongsu worked nearby?", you can feel the vividness as if the main character is about to jump out.

The book provides a helpful introduction to the author and the historical background of the novel in each chapter, helping readers understand the work. It also includes photos and illustrations taken while visiting locations that appear in the novel, providing a wealth of things to see.
In particular, the illustrations in the book fill the gap between the text set in the past and the landscapes in the photographs from the present, and colorfully recreate the space in the novel.
Rather than serving as a means to solve entrance exam problems, this book aims to help readers experience the charm and joy of literature itself. It guides readers into a deep literary forest created by the intersection of "author," "work," and "historical space."

The house of Lee Kyung that appears in the novel is in Gye-dong.
It is near Anguk Station and is home to the Constitutional Court and the Hyundai Construction building.
I tried to infer the route that Lee Kyung takes to and from work in the novel.
If you start from near Anguk Station and go to the current Shinsegae Department Store main branch, the route would roughly be south of Anguk-dong Intersection, past Hwashim Department Store where Jongno Tower is now, and then through Euljiro Intersection where Lotte Department Store and a hotel stand, to arrive at the Shinsegae Department Store main branch.
It's about 2 kilometers away, so it takes about 30 minutes to walk.
There might have been a way to take the tram to and from work, but it was only recently that the Korean War broke out and Seoul was reclaimed, so it probably wasn't running properly. Furthermore, the trams at the time were always so crowded that it was more appropriate to say that you had to hang on to them rather than ride them.
Therefore, Lee Kyung would have walked to and from work at the US military PX.
I left the main branch of Shinsegae Department Store, imagining what the Seoul landscape would have been like when she worked there.

---From "Death and Resurrection"

Reading the stories in the novel makes us realize that life goes on even during war.
The Seoul of the time described by the author was not so much a battlefield as a place of chaos, but rather a place on thin ice where people had to live each day cautiously.
It is cruel that daily life went on as usual even amidst the gunfire.
Leaving aside the question of life and death, surviving was also a problem.
After South Korea took power, it became a target of ideological conflict, with people accusing it of cooperating with the People's Army.
Even though the family was large, including the older brother who had been shot, the mother decided to at least pretend to escape.
When Wanseo was barely able to cross Muakjae Pass, let alone the Han River, pulling the cart carrying her brother, the fake shelter her mother had pointed out was, of all places, Hyeonjeodong.
Looking down from the house I was hiding in Hyeonjeong-dong, I could see the prison where my uncle had been executed and the empty road of Dongnimmun Gate at a glance.
It seemed like the Wanseo family was the only one left in the big city.
There, Wanseo makes a decision.
I'm going to write it all down someday.
And as time passed, Wanseo kept that resolution.
Thanks to that, we can remember those days and the Seoul of that time with a heavy heart.
---From "Where did all those people from Hyeonjeong-dong go?"

Meanwhile, Seongnam, where Youngsu's family leaves Haengbok-dong and heads, refers to Gwangju Daedanji.
Although it does not directly mention it like "The Man Left with Nine Pairs of Shoes," "Nansogong" was banned from sale because it deals with the Gwangju Massacre.
The two novels were published around the same time, in 1977 and 1978, and both illuminate the Seoul demolition boom that triggered the Gwangju Massacre and the sorrow of the victims.
The story of the bakery that Younghee went to is also based on the reality of the bakery in Seongnam.
Working conditions in the bakery were extremely poor.
I literally had to work nonstop.
Even today, stories about the poor conditions in bakeries are still heard frequently.

---From "Why the Dwarf's Ball Can't Reach the Moon"

Looking at photos from that time, you can see that while there are many tile-roofed houses or two-story buildings in front of Jongmyo Shrine, there are still many shabby shacks across the street.
A large-scale red-light district also emerged in the heart of Seoul. It was called ‘Jongsam’ for short because it was located in Jongno 3-ga.
There was one person who was extremely displeased with this situation: Mayor Kim Hyeon-ok, nicknamed “Bulldozer.”
He wanted to get rid of the red-light district in the heart of Seoul by any means necessary.
Finally, in 1966, under the name of ‘Operation Butterfly’, Jongsam was destroyed and a shopping mall was built in its place.
It is terribly paradoxical to expect 'all the luck in the world' to gather in a building that was built after kicking out the people who lived there for whatever reason.
That's why Seun Shopping Mall only enjoys a very short heyday and continues to experience a period of stagnation.

---From "What Did You Steal?"

When I stand in front of Dongdaemun, old things come to mind.
These are stories that carry such weight that it is difficult to call them history or the past.
If you take a walk around Dongdaemun, you can clearly feel those traces.
Stones of varying sizes according to the accumulated history and bullet marks from the Korean War testify to the passage of time.
Dongdaemun appears as the stage for Kim Seung-ok's work "History Man."
"History" is a short story published in the Literary Chronicles in 1963, one year before "Mujin Gihaeng."
The 1960s were a time of total fog.
The joy of the April 19 Revolution turned to despair due to the May 16 coup, and the military dictatorship that followed left intellectuals in a state of deep frustration.
The work "History" also clearly conveys the author's frustration at not being able to find direction at the time.

---From "Standing Up at Dongdaemun"

I was excited to feel the Chinese atmosphere for the first time in a long time.
While most tourists are busy enjoying the Chinese restaurants along Jajangmyeon Street, the real excitement lies behind the hills of Chinatown.
Chinatown is built along a small mountain called Eungbongsan, so most of the streets are hilly.
As you climb up the hill to Jayu Park, you can see the entire Chinatown area with the ocean stretching out before you at a glance.
As you come down the park, you will see a long staircase.
To the left of the stairs is the Qing concession, now Chinatown, and to the right is the Japanese concession, with a Japanese-style street created.
At the top of the stairs, there is a statue of Confucius, slightly tilted to the left of the center.
It is as if they are sticking to the Qing concession as if they are not going to cross the line.

---From "The Street Where Everyone Becomes a Stranger"

This story is an autobiographical novel by author Oh Jeong-hee.
Author Oh Jeong-hee's parents fled to South Korea in 1947, immediately after liberation, and settled in Seoul. Author Oh Jeong-hee was born in Sajik-dong in November of that year.
In 1951, the family was unable to evacuate because the mother was pregnant with her sixth child, and the war broke out in Seoul.
Later, he followed the retreating national army and fled, but his father was drafted into the army and his family began living as refugees in Hongseong, South Chungcheong Province.
In April 1955, he moved to Incheon when his father got a job as the head of the Incheon branch of an oil company.
I transferred to Shinheung Elementary School as a second grader and moved three times in four years in Incheon.
The hill across the street from my last home was Chinatown.
The novel begins with the father getting a job at an oil company and going from a refugee camp to Incheon, all of which are experiences of the author.
In 1959, he moved to Mapo-gu, Seoul due to his father's transfer.
The novel captures the life in Incheon from the second to sixth grades.

---From "The Street Where Everyone Becomes a Stranger"

In the late 1980s, when author Yang Gui-ja was writing “People of Wonmi-dong,” two crazes were blowing in South Korea.
One was democratization and the other was economic development.
Although the regime change failed, the new military junta achieved progress by making the June 29th Declaration, allowing the people to directly elect the president.
Economic development occurred in the late 1980s, more precisely during the transition of power between Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, with the triple low boom brought about by low oil prices, low interest rates, and a low dollar.
It all started in 1985 when the United States signed the Plaza Accord, which aimed to boost the value of the yen in an attempt to curb Japan's economic growth.
As the value of the Japanese yen rose, Korean products, which had relatively competitive prices, began to stand out on the international stage.
Oil prices fell there, and interest rates fell as a result, creating favorable conditions for exports.
It was said to be the greatest boom since Dangun, and it also recorded high growth of over 10% every year and a surplus in the international balance of payments.
This boom wind reaches even Wonmi-dong in Bucheon.
It is not unrelated to this background that Team Leader Kim went to great lengths to buy a truck and open a fresh fruit and vegetable store in a quiet alley.

---From "People Live There"

Actually, when I first read 『The Children of the Magpie』, I thought it was a bit artificial.
The children were all suffering from extreme hardship, abuse in single-parent homes, or in tragic circumstances.
Moreover, with the help of those around them, these children become harmonious like in a fairy tale.
I felt like the situation was a bit exaggerated and ended up with a forced happy ending.
But when I learned that the author himself had actually been with the children of the magpies for a long time, I realized that this was not just something from a novel.
It was a story of people she had seen and experienced for a long time.
Regarding the happy ending, author Kim Jung-mi says that people were able to live with hope through the process of supporting each other in the study room.

---From "Don't go to the magpie's nest"