* Park Wan-seo × Lee Ok-to Recover Special Edition Published
* Recommended by authors Jeong I-hyeon, Kim Geum-hee, Jeong Se-rang, and Kang Hwa-gil

“What does it mean to live?
“I wrote it all here.”
-Kang Hwa-gil (novelist)

The work that author Park Wan-seo cherished most during her lifetime
A new encounter through collaboration with photographer Lee Ok-to

The representative works of Korean literary giant Park Wan-seo, the 'Self-Portrait in a Novel' series, 'Who Ate All the Singa?' and 'Was That Mountain Really There?' have been republished and are now available to readers in a special edition.
The cover and binding are redesigned with the work of photographer Lee Ok-to, who heated up the '2025 Seoul International Book Fair,' bringing back that intense yet beautiful space of memory.


"Was That Mountain Really There?" is a sequel to the unfinished "Who Ate All Those Singa?", and remains the work that author Park Wan-seo cherished most during her lifetime.
This novel, which covers the author's adult life from 1951, when he turned twenty, until his marriage in 1953, vividly and tearfully depicts the struggle to preserve the nobility of life despite the tragedy of family disintegration and loss of humanity amidst the intensifying war.

The years I lived through, of course, would be a very common personal history, but when I unfolded it, I found that the weft of the times had been woven together in such a reckless way that I could not weave the pattern I wanted.
That part is a personal story, but it is also something that can be shared by anyone who lived in the same era, and it is also a part that contains the foundation of the current well-being world, so I reveal it despite my shame.

'That's how we lived.'

While trying to evoke a sense of sadness toward this peaceful era, the speed of change is so dazzling and the power of forgetting is so powerful that I sometimes wonder if such harsh times really existed. My own memory sometimes becomes doubtful, and the futility of such an endeavor makes me feel a pang of sadness. This is one of the difficulties I had while writing.
--- From the author's note

“It sounds better than stealing.” Olke had already made all the preparations.
It seemed like I had found every tool in the house: a chisel, pliers, chisels, screwdrivers, hatchets, and so on.
If you don't steal, you might as well kill.
While living without electric lights, our eyes were bright like those of owls.
It wasn't a full moon, but there was a moon, and the snow that covered the frozen roads and roofs of every house looked solid, as if it would never melt.
The severe cold weather continued.
As I stepped outside, the cold itself seemed to be dazzling, as if it were brightness itself.
The shame and fear of what you were about to do would have made it difficult to be more bright.
Olke, who was in the lead, headed towards the higher slope.
--- From "I Dreamed, I Never Dream Again"

My brother was a natural thinking reed to me.
He was now training himself and his family hard to become fat pigs.
As he became more talkative, his taciturn demeanor disappeared, and he became timid and miserable.
The ideological front my brother crossed was beyond my imagination from the beginning, but whenever I saw him like this, I would shiver at the cruel and sinister destructive power of that front.
It was not a line that a weak idealist like my brother could carelessly cross.
How can a person change like that?
Even if my brother had returned with his face missing, it would have been easier to find similarities than with my brother now.
--- From "I Dreamed, I Never Dream Again"

I lay alone in my blanket, trembling with despair and anger.
This damn country was truly scary.
What made them tremble was not the strong dictatorship or the powerful People's Army.
How can you be so perfectly and naturally innocent?
About the age-old truth that humans must eat to live.
How can we not be afraid of those who force citizens to enjoy art instead of food when they face the fear of starvation?
It seemed like it would be less scary if they had injected poison into me.
Because that was the worst treatment I've ever received since I was at least acknowledged as human.
Murder is also a form of communication between humans.
This was a world where communication was impossible.
How did our family end up trapped in this terrible world?
--- From "Don't Cross the Imjin River"

It was a sunny day, and it seemed much easier to dry diapers outside than to leave them in the diaper rack.
I was spending my free time in a remote house a little way from the village that had been completely burned down, and I was walking among the beautiful piles of ashes, captivated by the silence that enveloped the village.
I saw flower buds swelling on a bare tree branch standing next to the kimchi storage jar.
It was a magnolia tree.
It was just a change that made the hard outer bark look softer, but I knew that if this tree felt the slightest hint of spring, it would swell uncontrollably.
Even though I didn't see that crazy bloom, I felt like I saw it, and before I knew it, I let out a scream, "Oh my, this kid must be crazy."
But in reality, it wasn't a personification of a tree, it was me who became a tree.
It was a cry of shock at the atrocious, mad deeds of humankind that I witnessed as I woke up from a long winter's sleep as a tree.
--- From "Crazy White Magnolia"

As I entered this village, I started catching crabs as the children had taught me.
The net was not suitable for catching and confining them, so I sometimes let them go, and sometimes got stabbed here and there, and brought them home, and I just poured a little soy sauce on them and fried them in a thick iron pot.
There has never been such a delicacy in the world.
I didn't realize how fresh the meat tasted after such a long time.
The traces of the fight left all over his body made the taste even more delicious.
We conquered that rough and tough shell without mercy like devils and devoured its flesh until our bellies burst.
It was the most delicious and most miserable meal I have ever had, one that I will never forget for decades to come.
--- From "Crazy White Magnolia"

My mother proudly encouraged my brother to walk.
My brother walked in front of us on the stone steps almost to the middle gate and then came back.
Olke's eyes turned red.
Should we walk one more time? This time, my brother volunteered to go all the way to Jungmun and back.
I counted with my eyes the number of family members participating in this touching scene several times.
There were twelve people.
The family of Gaeseong's uncle must be seven people.
As expected, the certificate was missing.
Olke seemed completely oblivious.
Even if there were twelve people, they were all my children, and I wouldn't notice if one or two more people were added or subtracted, it was a large family.

It was impossible for me to notice that at least one of my cousins-in-law was missing.
Grandmother was the first to scold them, saying that they didn't even know that they had given up a family member.
That's what it was like.
Only then could I believe I was back home, and I collapsed on the floor, breathing a sigh of relief.
I already knew, Myeongseo didn't tell me that he had visited me.
You shouldn't tell anyone, because it's a confession of love that goes much deeper than friendship between siblings.
--- From "Sometimes Even a Rake Gets Angry"

I didn't hate it one bit.
I was worried, but my heart was pounding and my mind was racing, as if I had stepped into a completely new world.
Now I was sick of being a shadow.
My mother had lost her only son, so what joy could she hope for in the future? My sister-in-law had also become a widow, so living without dying would have been the best option, but for me, there were plenty of possibilities for happiness.
I thought that the period of compulsory military service that I had been doing with my mother and Olke was enough.
For the first time in a long time, I could definitely feel the will to live stretching pleasantly within me.
Even though I felt like I had been through everything, I was only twenty-one years old.
He was incredibly young.
--- From "Winter Tree"

When it comes to making friends, I only make friends who don't chatter too much and who don't feel burdened even when they keep their mouths shut.
It's not that I didn't have any close friends or friends who would fall down, but at some point I would quietly withdraw. I'm not sure if it was because I got tired of them or because I was afraid of getting tired of them.
Most girls have one or two close friends who always stick together and wait for them to go together if their cleaning times don't match up. If they get left out, it's a common experience in school to have friends, but I was more used to going alone.
On the way to or from school, if a friend I wasn't very close with was walking ahead of me, I would deliberately slow down to avoid walking with them.
I didn't want to be arrested.
Being conscious of others was a kind of constraint for me.
It may seem like I'm a terrible selfish person who hates caring about others, but I think it's a habit that was already formed in my childhood.

--- From "The Men Outside the Door"