Part 1
Part 2
Author's Note

Perhaps becoming a real adult means waiting for something?
To a boy growing up under parental neglect
Life is not a series of choices, but a series of waiting.

The brothers have been living alone for three years now.
Jinwoo, an eighteen-year-old who works part-time as a restaurant deliveryman and supports his younger brother and a cat named Bird who harbors a secret, often leaves home to search for his father who ran away from home three years ago while he was attending school.
Jinwoo, who had been looking around train stations and subway stations where his father might be for a day or two, decides that this is really the last time and goes out to find his father.
But this outing is a bit long, and the younger brother, left alone, spends the summer vacation waiting for his older brother who never returns.
The younger brother's name, who the older brother believes is 'Iron Man', is 'Hope'.

The author's gaze, which looks directly and calmly at the daily lives of siblings who have never chosen to stand alone early, portrays the children's anxious and sometimes innocent psychology without reservation.
The irresponsible adults in the novel make readers think about what it means to become a real adult.
Taking responsibility for someone's life, becoming a parent, becoming a child to someone else—isn't life itself a matter of waiting for something? Before we know it, readers find themselves standing side by side with the two children, watching together as they wait for the end.

In a cruel city that turns children into adults
Summer vacation spent with neighbors seeking 'real life'

According to the "Child Abuse Protection Status" published annually by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, there were approximately 37,000 cases of child abuse in 2021, of which approximately 5,000 cases involved neglect, meaning that one in seven child victims experienced neglect.
While public awareness of child abuse has increased following reports of horrific cases of child abandonment and neglect, neglect remains one of the forms of abuse that can be difficult for those around us to recognize.

But the neighbors in 'Seoul Child' are different.
Although he doesn't actively report or directly help the children, he protects the boys in his own way, such as occasionally talking to them to check on their well-being or absentmindedly filling their refrigerators when they are left in the city's indifference.


I won't live so hard that I lose my mind.
That's not easy.
why.
Because the world won't leave you alone.
_From the text

This loose solidarity toward one another does not simply stem from a sense of camaraderie among neighbors living in a shabby neighborhood.
The empathy between people who are actually living a life that is not a 'life that is built up plausibly' in their imagination, a 'real life', a life that cannot be known exactly but can only be seen once you start looking for it, naturally manifests into solidarity.

Encountering the secrets of life called ‘waiting’ and ‘hospitality’
The warm and painful period of growing up in adolescence

Bird was looking down at me from up the stairs.
Even though the distance got closer, he didn't run away, but sat down in a toasting position and watched me.
Even blinking my eyes.
I know a little about how to handle stray cats.
If a stray cat blinks first, you must blink back.
Otherwise the cats will get hurt.
So I also slowly blinked my eyes and climbed the stairs.
_From the text

It was thanks to this loose community hospitality that a boy who was routinely ignored was able to make eye contact with a stray cat who was routinely mistreated.
The secret of life that I encountered a little early in the square where people who are not welcome anywhere else are given a place to wander freely.
The story of a ten-year-old's summer vacation unfolds in a city that turns children into adults.

A person who no one notices, a life that no one notices.
The author's upright and warm gaze welcomes the lives of others by never averting his gaze, even if he cannot embrace them all.
In this way, 『Seoul Child』 offers the possibility of heartbreaking ‘hope’ to those of us living in this merciless, mega-city.
This book is a revised edition of 『Seoul Station』 published in 2014. Some expressions have been revised and a short epilogue not included in the first edition is included in the last chapter of Part 2.