Kim Ae-ran debuted in 2002 with her short story “No Knocking in This House.” At the time, she was a junior studying theater at the Korean National University of Arts and a first-time winner of the Daesan Literary Award for College Students, established by the Daesan Foundation. Three years later, her short story “Run, Dad!” was awarded the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, making her the youngest recipient in its history. The Hankook Ilbo said that given her young age, the decision to give her such a prestigious award was both “shocking” and “monumental.”

        Such a response was warranted because she was just twenty-five years old and only three years into her professional writing career. But that’s not to forget that Kim had already been singled out by Korean literary circles as one of the best emerging authors of the 2000s. At the time, the memoir genre and writing that emphasized interiority were on the decline. Kim’s fiction, set against the backdrop of the economic anxiety following the 1997 IMF Crisis, was seen as a pioneering work among a newly emerging generation of authors. Her most famous works from this period are contained in her short story collections Run, Dad! and Mouthwatering.

        Kim’s insights into life at the time, expressed with immense sensitivity toward the Korean language, are surprising despite her youth. Her intellectually attuned sentences, neither pedantic nor obfuscatory, explore the problem of how to retain one’s existence and dignity in a rapidly neoliberalizing society. Her works revealed the existence of young women’s voices even before the feminism reboot in Korea. Not only do her works disrupt the patriarchal order and affirm the accomplishments of women’s labor from previous generations, but they also uniquely capture the precariat imagination of young women in a consumer society.

        Although aware of the dissonance that threatens life in Korea, Kim’s stories also carefully aimed to produce harmony in the lives of its characters through her literary imagination. But in the 2010s, with works like Vapor Trail and Summer Outside, Kim shifted away from discovering the value of life between everyday joys and unexpected tragedies—a shift that may have been influenced by the 2014 sinking of the MV Sewol and the impact of hate—toward darker stories, including eschatological narratives about the climate crisis and allegories about the MV Sewol.

Aside from a steady stream of short story collections, Kim has also written two beloved novels, My Brilliant Life and A Lie Among Truths. Both full-length novels share crucial themes of growth, family, and lies—themes that apply to this KLN issue’s short story, “They Said Annyeong.”

        “They Said Annyeong” was published in the anthology Collection of Stories on the Theme of Music alongside works by authors Eun Heekyung, Kim Yeonsu, Yoon Sung-hee, and Hye-young Pyun. The story begins seven years in the past when the first-person narrator of the novel, Eun-mi, is listening with her partner and housemate Heon-su to the cover of the song “Love Hurts” by indie rock artists Kim Deal and Robert Pollard. As she listens, she mishears the lyric “I’m young” for the Korean greeting, “annyeong.” This memory re-emerges in the present when her current English tutor, coincidentally also named Robert, asks her how to say “hello” in Korean.

        The story switches back and forth between two narratives, one set in the past with Eun-mi and Heon-su, and one with Amy (Eun-mi’s English name) and Robert. Like the song “Love Hurts,” “They Said Annyeong” is a story about hellos and goodbyes. And like Kim’s love stories “Night There, Song Here” and “Where Do You Want to Go?” it also raises questions about the nature of communication by focusing on language and media.

        This aspect appears most clearly during Eun-mi’s English lessons. Through the online tutoring platform called Echoes, Eun-mi meets (and says goodbye to) people of various backgrounds, nationalities, ages, and genders. Robert is one of Eun-mi’s many tutors. During one of their lessons, Robert asks her how she differentiates between the two different meanings of “annyeong”—“hello” and “goodbye.” Eun-mi tells him that she “just know[s].”

        Such linguistic differences, while subtle, exert great influence on the characters’ relationships. Because Eun-mi and her tutors come from different linguistic backgrounds, they have trouble completely understanding these nuances. For example, Eun-mi is shocked to realize that she and Rose (another English tutor) have starkly different ideas about what constitutes a typical “dating show.” Instead of trying to clear up these misunderstandings, however, Eun-mi thinks that one must accept the inevitable losses and omissions that occur in translation.

        Although Eun-mi’s thoughts are complex and layered, in the end, they become reduced to the simplest sentences in translation. Not only does this make communication more efficient, but it is also a way to protect and defend the ego. When talking about the sexual tension in foreign language classes, Eun-mi discreetly notices how the act of exchanging languages exposes one’s most intimate self. In classes where her personal life often becomes the conversation topic of the lesson, Eun-mi resorts to lying—assuming her mother’s career as her own and pretending to like things that she doesn’t—all for the sake of conversational convenience.

        Despite the misunderstandings that start to pile up, Eun-mi’s English lessons become a path toward understanding these strangers who teach her English through the slow accumulation of information. Linguistically, it can be difficult for non-native speakers to differentiate between “nice to meet you” and “goodbye,” but that doesn’t mean that contextual understanding and situational inferences are impossible. Likewise, although Eun-mi is unable to correct a misunderstanding about raunchy dating shows, she feels a deep sense of socioeconomic camaraderie when Rose shares that she nearly lost her home during a major hurricane.

        In “They Said Annyeong” the word “situation” often refers to inevitable human and interpersonal vulnerabilities, such as impoverishment, loss, and pain. The reason Eun-mi starts studying English is that she dreams of escaping such situations. Because of her mother’s illness, Eun-mi’s finances and social life are ruined. When she confesses that her 15- and 30-minute English lessons are sometimes her only interactions with people, we begin to sense the depths of her emotional isolation. For Eun-mi, a woman in her forties whose career has been cut short, her only chance to restart her life is to leave her mother tongue and learn a foreign one.

        It is under these circumstances that Eun-mi starts to feel close to Robert, her last English tutor in the story. Eun-mi, Heon-su, and Robert—like many of Kim’s characters—are introspective. But in most cases, this introspectiveness appears as reticence—the characters often don’t expound what they really mean or refrain from talking all together. At such times, the limits of language extend beyond mere linguistic barriers. Heon-su’s observation that “Love Hurts” sounds like a farewell song, “the kind sung by someone who doesn’t often express their pain,” also applies to the main characters.

        Such reticence becomes all the more significant when Heon-su and Robert finally reveal their inner thoughts. The courage to do so only comes during states of intoxication. Heon-su, for example, drunk dials Eun-mi after many years to talk to her about the lyrics of “Love Hurts.” Robert is only ready to talk about his family after a glass of wine, after he realizes that it is their last class together. Through Robert’s confession, we too become aware that he, Heon-su, and Eun-mi are all in the same situation. Those who have gone through pain and loss are the ones who can understand others in similar situations.

        In particular, each of the three characters finds that their hardship and pain overlap and begin with their parents. The traces of their parents—literally the roots of their existence—put their lives in precarious positions. Eun-mi can empathize with Heon-su, who spent many years caring for his parents in the hospital, but only after her own mother falls ill. By then, it is too late, and she will never be with Heon-su again. Robert says that although many stories end with some great revelation or appreciation for life, the life that he’s experienced has only been a series of losses “without purpose.” Similarly, Eun-mi says that life and death are clichéd, hackneyed, and banal. She says that sometimes relations rupture and people just leave; that being able to cope with the recurrence of such things is the exception to the rule.

        It has been twenty years since Kim Ae-ran published “Run, Dad!” This is roughly the amount of time it takes for someone to become an adult. In that story, one of Korea’s best coming-of-age novels, Kim created a father who runs around the world in his shorts. But the story is also a happy lie, a fantasy about growing into better people than our parents. The attachment that Eun-mi has for her mother tongue is an attachment to her roots and traces (i.e., her parents). But now it is time to learn a new language. Although it may be cliché, we need to say “Thank you, I’ve learned a lot. Annyeong.” Eun-mi can now say goodbye.

Translated by Sean Lin Halbert

Mi Ryeong Cha is a literary critic and professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST). She has published a collection of literary criticism titled A World of Abandoned Possibilities.

Korean Work Mentioned:

Kim Ae-ran, Run, Dad! (Changbi, 2005)

김애란, 『달려라 아비』 (창비, 2005) 

Kim Ae-ran, Mouthwatering (Moonji, 2007)

김애란, 『침이 고인다』 (문학과 지성사, 2007) 

Kim Ae-ran, My Brilliant Life (tr. Chi-Young Kim, Forge Books, 2021)

김애란, 『두근두근 내 인생』 (창비, 2011) 

Kim Ae-ran, Vapor Trail (Moonji, 2012)

김애란, 『비행운』 (문학과 지성사, 2012) 

Kim Ae-ran, Summer Outside (Munhakdongne, 2017) 

김애란, 『바깥은 여름』 (문학동네, 2017) 

Kim Ae-ran, A Good Name to Forget (Yolimwon, 2019)

김애란, 『잊기 좋은 이름』 (열림원, 2019)  

Kim Ae-ran, A Lie Among Truths (Munhakdongne, 2024)

김애란, 『이중 하나는 거짓말』 (문학동네, 2024) 

Kim Ae-ran, et al, Collection of Stories on the Theme of Music (Franz, 2024)

김애란 등 『음악소설집』 (프란츠, 2024) 

Kim Yeonsu, “What Kind of Person is Kim Ae-ran?” Literature and Society (Moonji, 2012)      

김연수, 「김애란 씨는 어떤 사람인가요?」, 『문학과사회』 (문학과지성사, 2012)