Before it gets bright
recovering human
Europa
Hunza
blue stone
left hand
Yellow-spotted Newt

Preface | Layers and Sides_Jo Kang-seok
Author's Note

You have to look back to find the trajectory.
Over the course of the three volumes of her short stories, there are some things that have changed and some that have not changed in Han Kang's short stories.
In 『Love of Yeosu』, the lonely and isolated beings who desperately express their longing for humanity and the world, and who leave, abandon, wander, and fall, end up falling out of sync and getting hurt as they clumsily try to accept the world and each other that they so desperately longed for in 『The Fruit of My Woman』.
And in 『Yellow Patterned Eternity』, the will to regenerate and the life force burn even stronger in despair.
The dignified being, still in pain, finally tries to embrace the other.
The place we must eventually return to, the leaves pushing up their veins, the flowers blooming during the recovery period, the natural changes and flow that we tried to capture during the 'connecting the dots' work are in harmony with the work of photographer Lee Jeong-jin used on the cover.


On the other hand, isn't the Han River's fierce question unchanging?
He never lets go of the questions, “I want to live, I must live, how should I live?” and asks about human existence, life and death, and this world throughout his twenty-one novels, but inevitably he cannot reach an answer.
But the question itself, like a faint flame, and the heat of loneliness and delicate sadness that arise from the question, become the force that draws them in the work and keeps us, the ones we love, alive.
Because it has changed but not changed, I have carefully rearranged the arrangement of the novels and touched up some expressions, but left what needed to be left as is.


In response to the author's own question in "The Fruit of My Woman," which previously asked "who," we will now look at the author's newly written words in "Yellow-Patterned Eternity."
I encourage you to retrace that trajectory together.
Someone has been writing alone for over twenty years.
The Han River is still walking.


I know.
The twelve years I spent writing these novels can no longer be returned, nor can I ever meet the vivid self that wrote all these sentences again.
I don't think that fact should be felt as a loss.
This should never be a goodbye, because I am someone who wants to live and keep writing.

―Author's Note (2018), 『Yellow-Striped Eternity』

A momentary movement and a quiet silence are passionately engraved
Han Kang's third collection of short stories,
Yellow-patterned Eternity

This is Han Kang's third collection of short stories, which contains seven works written and published over 12 years, including the short story "Yellow-patterned Eternity," written over seven months starting in the summer of 2002, and the short story "Recovering Human," which was named as the author's major work when she won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature ("True recovery does not occur, and suffering appears as a fundamental existential experience that cannot be reduced to a passing pain," Swedish Academy).
While the seasons changed dozens of times, all of Han Kang's strength and senses, which explored the origin of existence and the world, stayed in pain or in the traces of pain, and while doing so, short and medium-length novels closely connected and in harmony with long novels such as "The Vegetarian" and "The Wind Blows, Go Away" were written, and those traces were fully captured.


If you ask the characters in 『Yellow-Striped Eternity』, who live believing that “a heartless and listless attitude is the only shield I have against life” (「Europa」), “How come you don’t get so tired?”, they will only answer.
“No, that’s not true.
“I’m tired, but I just have to endure.” (“Hunza”) “I grit my teeth and toss and turn until dawn, answering those persistent and burning questions.” (“Recovering Human”) The will to regenerate and the vitality to move forward little by little burn even more fiercely in despair.
“I have gone as far as I can go inside of me.
There was no way out but to go outside.
[… …] I knew I couldn’t live like I was holding a funeral anymore.” (Europa)

Han Kang's sentences reproduce not only the heavy pain and suffering, but also "a moment of light, a tremble, an inhaled breath, the stillness of water" on the manuscript.
The author's intuition, which overwhelms experience and concepts, will be conveyed to us, the readers, like paint seeping into the grain of paper.


Author's Note

These novels were written without any requests for manuscripts.
I wrote it by myself, put it in a drawer, and opened it whenever I remembered it and revised it little by little.
Maybe it's because I spend months writing each piece like that, but I feel like I'm ingrained in the entire book.
Of course, it is not a direct translation of personal experiences, but there are emotions that have been irrevocably imbued.
Thick and thick.
Desperately.
Sometimes strangely clear.
It causes stabbing pain.

I know.
The twelve years I spent writing these novels can no longer be returned, nor can I ever meet the vivid self that wrote all these sentences again.
I don't think that fact should be felt as a loss.
This should never be a goodbye, because I am someone who wants to live and keep writing.

I would like to express my gratitude to the members of Munhak-kwa-Jiseong-sa, who have quietly tied a knot, for watching over me.
I would like to thank author Lee Jeong-jin for allowing me to use his photo on the cover.

On a dazzlingly bright afternoon in the fall of 2018
Han River