Failure Story Crew… 7
Sister… 49
Good feelings… 83
In the middle of the light… 121
Just One Child… 155
On the beach we left… 189
Accelerated orbit… 225
About my aunt… 255
Living people… 299

Commentary | Kang Ji-hee (literary critic)
People who cross the line… 339

Author's Note … 365

“The desire to intervene in other people’s narratives, the desire to teach others,
“We decided not to interfere.”

Misunderstanding between different generations and classes
People who fiercely protect their own things within it

"No People Zone" features a variety of stories from different generations and classes.
"Failure Story Crew," which opens the door to a collection of short stories, is the story of 'I', a lawyer in my thirties who joined the 'Failure Story Crew', a group that confesses the experiences of failure in life, and is also the youngest member of the group.
Among the members of the group, who are middle-aged and have established social standing, 'I' try to gain their recognition by telling them a great story of failure.
However, 'I's' presentations repeatedly end in failure, and 'I' am overcome with humiliation and defeat.
Through the image of such a 'me', the novel coolly captures the misunderstanding between generations and classes regarding success and failure.
This is a masterpiece that can be read with particular empathy by those who are living fiercely in their first year of life “to avoid being eliminated” (page 44), or by those who have just passed that period.

"Sister," which has garnered attention since its release, is a work that sheds light on "Sister In-hoe," a senior who remained in my heart during my college days in my early twenties like "a distant light that cannot be explained" (p. 81).
In-Hwi, a teaching assistant, takes on the workload of her advisor and works hard, but instead of receiving recognition for her work, she is treated unfairly and excluded from the school.
Sister In-Hwi staged a one-person protest against him, and 'I', who once worked with Sister In-Hwi, stood by him in support of her.
In the uncertain times of one's twenties, when there is no clear future, the figure of 'me' standing on the side of the weaker sister rather than the strong and the system symbolized by the university professor evokes no small amount of emotion in the reader.

While "Failure Story Crew" and "Sister" show the figures of people in their twenties and thirties, which can be considered youth from a life cycle perspective, "Good Feelings" and "In the Middle of Light" portray middle-aged people who support their parents, the older generation, or raise their children, the younger generation.
"Good Feelings" is a medical drama set during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, depicting the dilemma faced by a doctor working at a hospital with a competitive performance-based pay system, one day when a patient dies, which may have been due to his own medical malpractice.
What the novel focuses on is not the truth of the truth, but the second half of the story, in which the daughter, who was the guardian of the deceased patient after the incident, reappears as 'my' patient.
This is a novel that powerfully questions what the 'line (線/善)' that must be maintained between people is.

"In the Middle of Light" is a story that unfolds around the friendly relationship between two women, Ahn-hee, who is raising a son, and Mi-ryeong, who is raising a daughter, while the shocking incident that unfolds when Ahn-hee's teenage son is accused of being a perpetrator of a deepfake sex crime unfolds on the other axis.
Literary critic Kang Ji-hee, who wrote the commentary, analyzes the novel's two-axis structure and interprets the deepfake incident not simply as "a specific youth's deviance," but as "a problem in which the sexual objectification of women accumulated over generations and the morals that disregard sexual violence are combined with digital technology to reproduce it as violence" (p. 363).
An-hee's heartbreaking cry, "No, I'm not that kind of mother" (p. 153), as she rebels against her husband who only defends his son, is read as a sharp voice that "breaks the tenacious bond" (p. 363) of "male domination" symbolized by the patriarchal system.


“Something that remains somewhere even though it does not exist,
“Hannah could never stop thinking about just one child.”

Beyond the harsh realism of "care," a story that confronts its structure.

“Only One Child” and “About Aunt” are novels that can be read with the keyword “care.”
However, unlike in most stories where the subject and object of care are set as family relationships, the care in Jeong I-hyeon's novel is unique in that the subject and object are not family, nor is it a story that highlights emotional empathy between them.
Rather, Jeong I-hyeon's novel seems to visualize the structure of the employment environment called care work and question the position of women who are hurt and marginalized within it.

"Only One Child" is a work that depicts the time spent by Hanna, a woman in her twenties who gets a job at a play tutoring company, with Hayu, a child who appears to be psychologically unstable.
As an employed caregiver, Hannah is required to keep an appropriate distance from the child and not interfere in the child's family affairs.
Then one day, Hanna discovers something concerning about Hayu and reports it to Hayu's guardian.
Before working as a play teacher, Hannah, who had “no interest in children” (p. 157), began to care deeply about the inner workings of children for the first time.
What kind of lives will Hannah and Hayu live from now on?

Meanwhile, "About Aunt" is the story of Jae-yeon, a team leader at a company, who, when pregnant with her second child, hires a Chinese compatriot, "Aunt," to live with her so she doesn't have to take parental leave again.
Unlike Hannah in "Only One Child," Jae-yeon is in the position of an employer in a caregiving relationship, but the novel shows that care work is not easily solved even with economic means.
Contrary to what the agency had revealed, her aunt's identity was somewhat questionable, and Jae-yeon's husband did not fully understand her feelings of trying to hold on to hope.
The emotions that Jae-yeon, who had been holding back, finally explodes and pours out to her husband make the reader feel the desperate “experience of a career break” (commentary, p. 352) of “harsh realism.”

How long do I have to be like this?
Jaeyeon screamed again.
I hope that my foolish husband, with his face turned pale, will become an accomplice in this dark plan.
If you never noticed, you still couldn't do anything.
Tears poured down.
I'll just live like this and die.
I guess I'll never be able to escape.
_「About Aunt」, p. 294

People who cross the line outside their familiar confines
The world of 'Jeong I-Hyeon Zone' is renewed there.

"To the Beach We Left," "Accelerating Orbit," and "Living People" are works in which Jeong I-hyeon's current sensibility shines through in capturing current social issues.
"To the Beach We Left" is a dating variety show, "Accelerating Orbit" is about dating violence, and "Living People" is about real estate and private education in Gangnam.
"To the Beach We Left" is a story about writer Seol and producer Seonwoo, who cover the current state of the so-called "Choi-ker (final couple)" who appeared on a dating variety show and became a hot topic over a decade ago. It is a lyrical and beautiful novel that makes us think about what emotional truth we can discover when love ends.

Just because we're like this now, does that special love we had back then disappear or disappear?
No, it won't disappear or disappear, Seol muttered to herself.
But, just because it's there, does it really stay that way?
Everything that stops fades, cracks open, and becomes worn out.
(…) Only the hope that even a love that does not move would one day disappear like that was what kept Seol going all this time.
_「To the Beach We Left」, p. 219

"Accelerating Orbit" is the story of Sojin, a cram school instructor whose daily life is filled with fear when a meaningful malicious comment is posted on her cram school blog one day.
Sojin's fear stems from the presence of an ex-boyfriend she had in college a long time ago.
Memories of her ex-boyfriend, who gaslighted her while they were dating and stalked her after the breakup, still send Sojin into a state of panic, like a car accelerating without brakes, even after more than a decade.
This work, which shows “why some women’s survival burns so quietly” and “stares at the source of that violence” (commentary, p. 359), maintains a dense suspense until the end, squeezing the reader’s breath.

"The Living Person" is a story about Dami, who works as a counselor at a private academy, who receives a request from a student to receive an exam paper in advance. The other story is about her going to a real estate agency with her boyfriend to live in an upscale apartment complex.
The novel's setting, Gangnam School District, where private education and real estate sharply intersect, sharply reveals the class-based desire of humans to climb even just one rung.
The multi-layered nature of "The Living Person," which evokes the charm of readers interpreting the meaning of "the living person" differently, such as living, buying, or surviving, seems to symbolize the complex and multifaceted state of Korean society.
As the author says, it is a novel that gives you a “premonition” (from “Attention Book”) that “tells you the direction of the next world you will move towards.”

In her commentary, Kang Ji-hee says that the characters in Jeong I-hyeon's novels "violate the familiar rules of the game" and "go beyond 'a room of one's own'" (p. 364).
The characters who “become each other’s older sisters and seek solidarity” are now trying to “break the inertia” (become on the same side) from a position beyond that line.
It is literally a 'no people zone' because nothing has been completely resolved and no one has arrived yet, but that void is "the other face of possibility" (same side).
"No People Zone" awaits us beyond the line drawn with that calm determination.

Today, too, I live surrounded by countless contradictions.
A desire for selective isolation, a desperate desire to be alone but not completely alone, would also fall into this category.
I wrote slowly and without stopping, looking long and hard at the contradictions and desires inside and outside of me.
_From the author's note