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

I made that child my first friend
I remembered it for a long time

Who was my first friend? Of the countless people I've met in my neighborhood, at school, and at various gatherings since childhood, how many remain friends, or do I remember as friends at one point? Adolescence is a time when we spend a lot of time with friends and have a profound influence on one another. However, it's also a time when we face the greatest anxiety about our friendships.
What happens to friends? What does friendship mean in our lives? What kind of friend can I be to someone? Author Kim Jung-mi shares her life story, one that cannot be told without mentioning her friends.


Kim Jung-mi, who opened a study room in Manseok-dong, Incheon in 1988 and has lived with children ever since, always has someone by her side.
They are friends of different ages and genders.
We gather together to study and read books, prepare for performances, go camping in the summer, and do farm work in the spring and fall.
It's as if they were born knowing how to get along with people and living in a community.
However, Kim Jung-mi had a dark period in her school days when she hated sharing side dishes with other friends, to the point where she didn't bring her own lunch box, and she hid away by herself without socializing with anyone.
This is a story that anyone who knows the current Kim Jung-mi would find unimaginable.


The story begins with the story of a child she remembers as her first friend, a shy and timid little girl who became the Kim Jung-mi she is today, and then brings up the friends who were by her side at every moment of her life, one by one.
Kim Jung-mi had a friend who taught her how to communicate with the world and who became her gateway to the world.
Author Kim Jung-mi's honest story, in which she says that she now has within her the various aspects of the people she has met, will resonate deeply with those who are increasingly accustomed to being alone and find socializing tiring.


“You don’t have to do anything.
Just meet up and keep going”
People should live together among people.

In the third grade of elementary school, I became a weekly tutor with a child.
The child washed the dirty mop with his bare hands under cold tap water.
I heard my child say that he does his own laundry at home, and I held his rough, cold hand.
When thinking of her friend, the first thing that comes to mind is her friend's icy hands, which make her nose feel cold. This is author Kim Jung-mi's first memory of her friend.


I don't know when or how I started thinking that way, but I thought that friends meant sharing secrets that we wanted to keep hidden, liking things we liked together, and being sad together when we were sad.
- Page 12

As a child growing up in Dongducheon, I had friends with whom I could skate and go on adventures around the neighborhood.
The fun times of hanging out with friends ended when I entered middle school.
The middle school in Incheon where I transferred was a terrible and violent world.
The children simply ostracized the transfer student from Dongducheon, and the school discriminated against him by ranking him based on his grades.
During those times filled with shame, anger, and feelings of injustice, it was my secret friend, Jeong-ah, who was by my side.
It was the imaginary Jeong-a who helped me get through the hard times, but it was the friend who approached me first that allowed me to no longer stay in the cave I had created for myself and to come out into the world.


“What is that?”
“Pumpkin pancake.
I was going to give it to you.
But can I call that number anytime?
The moment I saw Ja-ae, who was wide-eyed and didn't know what to do because she was so sorry, tears welled up in my eyes without me knowing.
It was the first time I received such hospitality since coming to Incheon.
- Page 56

The author shows through several episodes that it was thanks to the friendship that gave them a warm hug, food, and a place to rest during the hard times of working the night shift at a university hospital and opening their first daycare center, when they couldn't even wash properly, that they were able to endure and survive in a harsh and difficult world.
Thanks to her friends, Kim Jung-mi was able to lean on others and lend them a shoulder to lean on.


It is I who change, but it is the people around me who bring about that change.
Thanks to them, the thorns inside me become soft fluff, and I learn how to wait for a long time and express my feelings.
If not from friends, where can you learn?
So I realize it once again.
That people must live with other people.
That even if you don't do anything, you just have to keep meeting.
A relationship where you are just there, without any conditions, without any responsibilities, without any obligations.
That's a friend.


The 'me' of today is not the pure 'me' that was born from my mother's womb, but a 'me' that has been refined, corrected, deepened, and enriched through relationships.
There are many aspects of the people I have met in my life that permeate me.
A friend is someone who enriches each and every person.
- Page 94

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.
Above all, I hope to experience the mystery of connecting with a book.