Part 1: Ghosts of Seven A.M.
Part 2: Seven O'Clock Breakfast for Those Who Have Been Broken Up
Part 3 150 kilometers per hour
123 couples in all 4 parts
Part 5 B747-400
Part 6 Incheon International Airport
Part 7 Hotel Life
Part 8 Tokyo
Part 9: Farewell, Sorrow
Author's Note

Suzy and Lee Jin-wook confirmed for film adaptation!
The Seven O'Clock Breakfast for the Broken Hearted: The Final Edition, 13 Years Later

Kim Young-sa is republishing Baek Young-ok's representative romance novel, "The Seven O'Clock Breakfast Meeting for Those Who Have Been Broken Up," which has garnered rave reviews such as "a transparent and beautiful narrative," "a unique setting and sophisticated writing style," and "a novel with a refreshing title."
The original novel of the movie directed by Im Seon-ae and starring Suzy and Lee Jin-wook is creating a buzz.
This is the final, complete edition presented after one revision since the first edition was published in 2012.
While following the narrative of the first edition, some sentences were drastically cut out and the words were refined to reflect the times.
I rhythmically refined the sentences that I could never throw away no matter how many times I read them.

The novel begins in a restaurant with a sign that reads, "Seven O'Clock Breakfast for the Broken Hearted."
At 7 a.m., people who have been heartbroken gather together for breakfast, watch a film about heartbreak, and exchange “heartbreak souvenirs” to heal their wounds.
The three main characters meet through a unique gathering where, rather than being a “gathering to comfort the wounds of those in the same boat,” each person “declares their heartbreak” and simultaneously insists on acknowledging it.
Yoon Sa-gang, an airline flight attendant who fell in love with a “new human race called men” but ended up breaking up with them and fell into a state of loss; Lee Ji-hoon, a consulting instructor whose daily life fell apart after the sudden end of a long-term relationship; and Mido, who worked on a secret project at a matchmaking company after breaking up with her office romance.
They become entangled and intertwined through an unexpected relationship… .

Misunderstanding and understanding of love

When misunderstandings in love deepen, love comes to an end.
The author calls it a 'heartbreak' that is not fulfilled in love.
It's not a breakup that could lead to a reunion someday, but rather a moment where we can no longer put our arms around each other.
Heartbreak “proves how devastating rejection and denial can be to humans, as it involves concrete pain, unlike abstract human emotions like sadness, despair, or fear.” And it encompasses not only the separation from a loved one, but also certain memories that are being denied and pushed away.

Sagang broke up after a short relationship.
I felt an “incomprehensible hostility” towards Jeong-su, to whom I was passionately attracted.
I had hoped that we would have a relationship where we could understand each other without having to put in any effort, but we ended up keeping our distance for a year to avoid meeting each other.
That separation made me face the pain and separation from my father, which I couldn't understand during my childhood.


Ji-hoon, who was looking at Sa-gang at the 'Seven O'Clock Breakfast Meeting for the Broken Hearted', broke up with Hyun-jung after 10 years of dating.
A lasting relationship where you know everything about each other ends with the conclusion that “love cannot be about trying not to change.”
The separation forced me to confront memories and resentment I had about my grandmother and older brother from my childhood that I couldn't understand.

This novel, which unfolds through the intersecting perspectives of protagonists with different stories, shows us that we can still learn to love even after love ends, through the common wound of separation.
It's not easy to wave goodbye and say "goodbye" to a breakup that you've been wanting to shake off with tears, but it makes you want to believe that "the miracle of understanding a real breakup" can happen.

Ji-hoon's words, "It takes a long time to understand someone, it's not that you can understand everything about them at a glance, it's that it takes work to understand each other," can be read as a confession about a sudden breakup after a long relationship, and as a truth about our love and life.

Self-improvement after heartbreak

《The Seven O'Clock Breakfast for the Broken Hearted》 delves into the emotional heart of breakup and unravels how that pain can transform daily life and help people recover.
Here, heartbreak is not a simple breakdown of emotions.
It becomes an inner training that twists the trajectory of life, brings up the forgotten past, and makes you look at yourself again.

Where does the pain of heartbreak take us and how does it change us?
Time is the medicine that heals wounds.
But it is an empty consolation to “tell someone who has fallen and is bleeding to cheer up and talk about a hopeful future.”
The author portrays heartbreak not as a 'final destination of pain' but as a 'place of self-development that cultivates inner strength'.

Sa-gang experiences not only a breakup with his lover but also a breakup with his father, and Ji-hoon looks back on his past love habits and looks back at his heart that has become a ruin after the breakup.
“The real comfort is being able to face reality.
Mido says, “If your knee is broken, pouring hydrogen peroxide on it and applying red ointment is the real comfort, even if it hurts.” She also says, “You have to break up to meet again,” and that you have to “ask for the contact information of the new person and repair your broken feelings.”

This novel begins at “seven o’clock in the morning” and ends at “seven o’clock in the afternoon.”
The twelve-hour time difference symbolizes the process from the morning of separation, when one faces “the sharp sunlight that seems to cut one’s wrist if one is alone,” to the evening of separation, when one realizes that “one must break up to meet, and one must meet to love again.”

Wounded Healer

Can each other's sorrow sometimes save each other?
“The pain of heartbreak is not abstract.
It is in touch with the vivid feeling of being cut by a knife or burned.” Because humans are fragile beings who “fall, regret, and fall in love again.”
Such vulnerable people are “sincerely comforted by seeing the sorrow of others.”

Those gathered at the 'Seven O'Clock Breakfast for the Broken Hearted' are wary of each other's pain, but soon find themselves connected by their shared grief.
Grief is the recognition of other griefs.
Mido, who talks about sadness as if it were a joke, Jihoon, who carries the heavy burden of pain and grieves, and Sagang, who embraces long-standing sadness.
Their narratives quietly foreshadow that we can all, at some point, become beings capable of hurting, being hurt, and healing.

《The Seven O'Clock Breakfast for the Broken Hearted》 is a romance novel, a coming-of-age novel, and a 'cardiopulmonary resuscitation novel.'
Through stories of dysfunctional relationships that ultimately lead to new recovery, stories of healing as traumas within the heart come out, and stories of reviving the hearts and lungs of those who live as if their hearts and lungs have stopped, the author reflects on the irony of healing: that a wounded person can sense and embrace another wound.

The novel says:
“Every relationship needs an ending, a period that must be put on the end.
Only then can we start again.
As the number of things that can be known without being said increases, as the number of things that cannot be heard increases, people become adults inevitably.
“When time passes and you see both the inside and the outside of what you cannot hear, that is love.”
That love allows us to center ourselves without being completely tilted towards one another, and to wave goodbye to the sadness that seemed to last forever.