After leaving her job and husband, Yeong-ju opens a bookshop in the district of Hyunam-dong. Although the location does not at first seem ideal for a bookshop, she sets her heart on it upon noticing that the hyu (ýÌ) in Hyunam-dong is the Chinese character for “rest”. Rest seems to be exactly what the characters in this novel long for. Yeong-ju herself suffers from burnout; Min-jun, the barista in the bookshop, falls into depression after he can’t land a secure job despite having been a straight-A student all his life;  Jung-suh, Yeong-ju’s most loyal customer, is in a constant state of anger due to unfair work conditions; Seung-woo, a blogger and author, quits his exhausting job as a programmer; Ji-mi, the owner of a coffee-roasting company, finds herself lost in a self-destructive marriage; and both high-school student Min-cheol and his mother Hee-ju feel overwhelmed by their roles as son and mother. 

      Yeong-ju’s bookshop brings these characters together and provides a safe space to reflect on their life decisions. It’s not a place where problems are miraculously solved, but a place that encourages people to rethink. This means the hyu doesn’t imply inactivity but rather the leisure to have time to think. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is not a novel that caters to our cognitive laziness by offering simple truths; it challenges us to question old views and open up to new ones. Although Yeong-ju is full of self-doubt, she treasures stories that guide her to places she never expected. 

      The novel explicitly refers to more than twenty books and films to stimulate thinking on certain problems. For example, at one point the barista Min-jun and Yeong-ju discuss whether it makes sense to follow a dream. Is following an unachievable dream a waste of one’s life?  Or can following a dream itself be so fulfilling that it might be worthwhile to devote your whole life to it, whether you reach it or not? Yeong-ju then cites Hermann Hesse’s Demian and suggests that no dream is permanent. Since each dream is replaced by a new one, we shouldn’t cling to any of them. This is a typical example of a discussion among members of the Hyunam-dong Bookshop community. 

      These discussions don’t end with a clear answer, but they do encourage both the characters and the reader to keep thinking. Although Yeong-ju is the central figure of the community, she is not a voice of wisdom that tells the others how to lead their lives. Many conversations don’t even involve her. For example, at one point Min-cheol asks Seung-woo whether people should pursue what they like to do or what they are good at. After Seung-woo gives several suggestions, Min-cheol concludes that the point is not to feel relaxed and carefree. Sometimes, it seems we just have to accept a complicated situation and its ensuing confusion, and continue to ponder it. 

      At other times, it’s books or films that help the protagonists find their answers. Despite his growing reputation as the barista at the bookshop, Min-jun still wonders why his life is so difficult and nothing seems to work according to his original plans. After the film screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After the Storm at the bookshop, he identifies with the film’s protagonist Ryota, a former writer turned private detective crippled by a gambling addiction as he struggles to reconcile with his ex-wife and son. Min-jun realizes that life might have been so difficult for Ryota because it had been the first time for him to live life. This realization brings him some comfort. How can something be easy when we do it for the first time?

      Adam Grant’s bestselling book Think Again encourages us to break out of our cognitive laziness and stay curious about the world. Although the comfort of conviction may seem more inviting than the discomfort of doubt, questioning ourselves and “thinking again” is the only way to open our minds and to learn. We can read Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop as Think Again in novel form. The remote bookshop feels like an oasis that invites us to rest and to think again. The pillars of this oasis are the love of books and the community of book lovers that is not exclusive but waiting for us. Who knows when the time will come when we need a story in our life to help us think again?

Barbara Wall

Associate Professor of Korean Studies,
University of Copenhagen