As in her novel Concerning My Daughter, for which author Kim Hye-jin is best known not only in Korea but in several countries thanks to multiple translations, her 2022 novel Counsel Culture also places the theme of care at the center of the conversation. In Concerning My Daughter, one of the protagonists is a caretaker for the elderly. In Counsel Culture, the protagonist has worked as a psychotherapist for ten years. In principle, their common task is to help and—to some extent—protect. Nevertheless, for different reasons, both fail and the terrible ostracization that results disrupts their previously stable lives.

      Besides working at a therapy center, Im Haesu, the protagonist of Counsel Culture, is a consultant on a television program where she gives her professional opinion on a variety of topics. One day, Haesu thoughtlessly repeats a talking point that the screenwriters have given her about an actor while on air. Her comment is just one of the many already in circulation about this actor’s chaotic behavior on set and his strained relations with his co-stars. But to her surprise, her opinion becomes the final blow to his online public crucifixion. The actor commits suicide and the shoal of digital commentators line up against Haesu to destroy her reputation and career. The words carelessly spoken on air return to Haesu like a boomerang, leaving her perplexed. “She learned that a few words or one line was enough to stab a person in the heart. In the days following the incident, she died hundreds, thousands of times looking at her phone and her computer screen.” 

      Her husband, her best friend, her neighbors, her boss, her colleagues—everyone distances themselves from her. The author masterfully reveals all of this very slowly, through the letters the protagonist writes day after day. Letters that never reach their conclusion much less the mailbox. Letters in which       Haesu strenuously tries—but fails—to explain her behavior to her closest relations nor manages to confront those who have done her harm. 

     Haesu wanders through her neighborhood at night, using the darkness to avoid being recognized. On one of her errant walks, she meets a girl and shortly after, the two of them join efforts to save a stray cat which, like Haesu, wanders through the streets scared and hurt. Here is where another of Kim’s recurring themes appears. The woman, the solitary girl, and the sick and hungry cat quickly form an unconventional family, even more so than the one in Concerning My Daughter. And it’s the girl who becomes the head of this quite unusual family. She makes suggestions and gives guidance in coordinating the rescue project, despite living a solitary life at home and being excluded at school. It is she who names the cat “Turnip.” Not long after, an enormous ginkgo tree on the edge of the neighborhood becomes home for the three of them where  they gather in the afternoons. In this tree, they set a trap to catch the cat and take it to the vet. “The ginkgo tree becomes something of a place of worship to Haesu. The time she spends there waiting for Turnip brings her calm. She does not know where this calm and peace are coming from. Sometimes she stays past sundown, until darkness settles in.” The waiting in this green sanctuary cures her, to the point she finally decides to meet the wife of the deceased actor. Their meeting teaches Haesu how powerful words can be, something she had not fully grasped in her previous life as a therapist. 

      Kim Hye-jin’s novels move on a scale that some might consider minor. Even her transparent writing, transmitted with serenity and efficacy by her translators, can give the false impression of lightness. There is no epic catharsis, nor lessons. Rather, her book deals with a discovery of themes that concern us today—the nature of care, the reach of language in the age of social media, the intangibility of forgiveness—through ordinary fumblings in the dark and new ideas of family. Kim tells us that if we give these factors sufficient attention, perhaps we can find the path of return.

Translated by Lucina Schell

Andrés Felipe Solano

Writer, Gloria (Counterpoint, 2025)