"Contradiction" is the third full-length novel published by author Yang Gui-ja in 1998. It surprised the publishing world by reaching the top spot on the bestseller list at a breakneck pace within a month of its release, becoming the best-seller of the year and once again demonstrating the power of Yang Gui-ja's novels.


Although 15 years have already passed since the first edition was published, this novel, “Contradiction,” is following a very special path.
Readers who were in their 20s at the time said that even now that they are married and in their 30s, they still occasionally take out "Contradiction" and reread it.
Every time I reread it, I am surprised by the meaning between the lines of the novel that I didn't know before, or by the different interpretations that the passage of time has revealed, and I do not hesitate to call it "one of the most precious books of my life."
What makes "Contradiction" special is that most readers do not read it just once, but reread it at least twice, or even three times.

I often come across blog posts saying that they have read "Contradiction" more than ten times.
Passionate readers are constantly leaving traces by recording, passing on, and reflecting on sentences from novels.
It is truly amazing how this novel has continued to be recalled by readers, having been reprinted 132 times so far.


The publishing company "Ssuda", which recently acquired all copyrights to Yang Gui-ja's novels, kept such readers in mind when publishing a revised edition of "Contradiction."
It meets readers in a sophisticated hardcover edition, aiming to become a book that can be cherished for a long time, a book that can truly be owned as the book of one's life.


Understand the contradiction...

The protagonist of ‘Contradiction’ is Jinjin Ahn, a 25-year-old single woman.
Her family consists of a strong mother who sells underwear at the market, a father who wanders missing and occasionally returns home, and a younger brother whose life dream is to become a gang boss.
The aunt who appears here as an important character in the novel was born as an identical twin to the main character Jinjin Ahn's mother, but their lives have been quite different.
The rich aunt is struggling with her boring life, and the poor mother has so many misfortunes to deal with that she has no time to be bored.

The protagonist, Jinjin Ahn, begins to seriously contemplate how to understand this life full of contradictions as she observes the lives of her mother and aunt, who are divided into extremes.


As is always the case with Yang Gui-ja's novels, the author's sharp and delicate sentences in "Contradiction" play a major role in vividly portraying the lives of characters that appear schematic at first glance.
We cannot help but point out Yang Gui-ja's uniquely well-crafted novelistic structure, which progresses the novel by selecting extremely trivial and insignificant episodes from our daily lives.
With a stark contrast of life, nothing more or less, the author powerfully tells the story he wants to tell.
This is perhaps the power of Yang Gui-ja's novels.


Life is a quest

The author speaks to the readers through the main character in the novel.
Live your life observing your own life carefully.
Don't just let things happen, but live your life prepared to boldly turn the steering wheel of your life when the right moment comes.
Life is not something to be just accepted, but something to be lived while exploring, even if it means dedicating your entire life to it.


That may be why the main character, Jinjin Ahn, is twenty-five years old.
Many readers in their twenties sympathized with the serious self-censorship of the protagonist, who "is indifferent and cynical about life" and "has never seriously drawn up a balance sheet about life, just letting it slip through his fingers," and left reading reviews saying that it made them rethink their own lives. Therefore, "Contradiction" can be considered the greatest success a novel can achieve.

Reply 1998...

Published in the summer of 1998, 『Contradiction』 was a novel that garnered significant attention in the Korean publishing world, regardless of the author's or publisher's intentions.
That year, Korea was at a point where its economic structure was collapsing due to a massive financial crisis.
In that year, when the tears of countless unemployed people forced out onto the streets were broadcast daily and escaping bailouts was the biggest challenge for the Korean economy, the publishing industry was also struggling.

This novel, published immediately after the IMF crisis, could also be seen as a kind of test bed for the publishing industry, which was also in the midst of a severe recession, to see if the reading market could recover.
The publishing world, which had been watching to see if the success of Yang Gui-ja's novels, which had been published every three years and easily sold over a million copies each time, could continue during the financial crisis, was surprised to see that "Contradiction" entered the bestseller rankings at a much faster rate than the author's previous novels.

The author also asked, “In these times when everything has changed so suddenly, in these anxious and bewildering times, what can novels give us?
“I started this novel because I wanted to offer words of comfort to those who have lost courage and fallen, but this life, entangled in contradictions, is still difficult,” he revealed in his ‘Author’s Note.’ So, I hope that this novel, like the comfort it offered in 1998, will be chosen by many readers today and become an opportunity to interpret life in a new way.