Cha Mi-ryeong: It is so nice to see you. It’s been 10 years since you made your debut and you continue to publish. When did you first start writing fiction?

Jeong Yi Hyun: It’s been 10 years since my literary debut, but I completed my first work of fiction not long before 2002. Several years after I graduated from college, I returned to school and studied creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. That’s when I started studying literature and writing seriously. Back then I wanted to be a poet.

CM: That is surprising. I thought you were a born novelist.

JY: I still believe that poets are born with the poetic gift. They possess something that I lack. That’s probably why I admired them so much. Something happened in 2000 during my first year at the Seoul Institute that drove a wedge between poetry and me. My professor, the poet Kim Hye-soon, assigned the class to keep an observation journal over the summer break. We were supposed to observe situations that could be used in poems and describe them in prose. Professor Kim later wrote detailed comments on everyone else’s work, but she returned mine untouched, save a single comment at the end: “You seem much more talented in prose than poetry.” I laugh about it now, but I was quite heartbroken back then.

CM: She is definitely a great teacher who discovered your talent as a novelist for you.

JY: I studied novel writing under the novelist Park Ki-dong. I guess I received more praise for the fiction I submitted than I had for my poems. The title of my first more or less complete story was “Suffering.” Professor Park suggested changing it to “Pain.” That had a huge impact on me. Until then, my world was one in which there was no distinction or need to distinguish between suffering and pain. I puzzled for a long time over the question: what is the difference between suffering and pain? I still don’t know the answer, but I concluded back then that “Pain” rather than “Suffering,” and “An Apology” rather than “Pain” was a better title for the kind of fiction I wanted to write. Just as life can be felt in a concrete way, shouldn’t fiction be the same? From that point on, I pondered over the kind of literature I wanted to pursue, and many of my vague worries disappeared. If literature was a concrete, accessible entity, then I had things to say.

CM: Your debut work was Romantic Love and Society. I believe you borrowed the title from Jacquie Sarsby’s nonfiction book.

JY: In grad school I did some research on the sexual experiences of unmarried women in their 20s. At the time a lot of research on women’s sexuality and the body was being published. My story was a kind of experiment combining social science case studies with literature. Even though it was published 10 years ago, I still meet women in their 20s who express their shock at reading it. I am intrigued that there are still people who find it radical. Since it means that the reality faced by 20-something women has hardly changed, I hope that ceases to be the case.

CM: The footnotes in the story create the impression that the narrator is making objective observations from outside the text.

JY: Perhaps because I had only studied social sciences up until then, I thought an author should have an objective point of view. I could not understand why an author had to have empathy for her characters. Now I know that even a camera, even exclusion carries feelings. When I reread Romantic Love and Society, my reaction is complex for a number of reasons. I sense the ambitious enthusiasm of a fledgling writer. That is to say, maybe I would not be able to write that kind of story now. My thinking continues to become more complicated and I have grown more cautious.

CM: Your first work of fiction Romantic Love and Society comprises stories of women. Was that intentional?

JY: No, I noticed it only after I finished. It probably means that my attention at the time was directed that way without my realizing it. There was a point in my reading of Korean fiction where I became puzzled over why none of it had female characters who reminded me of my own friends. I wanted to write about people whom I knew best, characters who for some reason had been overlooked in literature. I think I re-reflected on my own desire only after my finished product came out. My view on it has since changed, and now I think some characters were robbed of the chance to tell their own hidden stories, as my stories back then showcased women. I was too inattentive to the anonymous minor characters.

Critic Cha Mi-ryeong and novelist Jeong Yi Hyun

CM: I see. The urge to recover stories derived from a certain person can also be detected in “Sampoong Department Store,” which received the Hyundae Literary Award. I can sense in that story the plea to see this person.

JY: When I started off, I believed that writing fiction was to discover the stories that floated around the world. My understanding of fiction began to change because of “Sampoong Department Store.” I cried almost the whole time I was writing that story. After I finished it, it felt like something that had been hardened and embedded in my heart for a long time was softened. I might describe it as a healing kind of writing. That’s when I first realized that the act of novel writing was not just to show something to others but perhaps also to understand and change myself. I hope writing will always make me reflect on myself.

CM: Isn’t shedding light on characters at a crossroads one of the characteristics of your novels?

JY: Isn’t everyone always at a crossroads, even if some of the choices seem very minor and trivial? These small choices contain the essence of each individual’s worldview, though unknown to others. Faced with a choice, ordinary people tend to try as hard as possible to downplay it as trivial rather than fatal or decisive.

CM: The reason your novels come across as argumentative is that choice itself becomes a question aimed at the reader. Don’t many of your novels end with what can be perceived as cold-hearted choices?

JY: My characters seem to make the most realistic choices possible for them. Of course, I could have given them a chance to reflect on themselves and repent. If they had chosen the good, it would have been morally right but it would have shut out certain possibilities. Some readers ask why my characters don’t make the right choices.

CM: Maybe they are finding fault with not their wrong choices but their lack of a fight?

JY: Why do my characters have to fight that fight?

CM: Then should it be the task of the readers?

JY: I think so. Novels do not enlighten; they merely show.

CM: My Sweet Seoul was your first novel. Many of the readers’ comments note its realism.

JY: Many people relate to the character Eunsu. They think her story resembles theirs, but Eunsu is actually not a universal character. Isn’t reality a lot drier than fiction? In reality hardly anyone has a boyfriend who is seven years younger and very few single women can afford their own place, making it easy for their boyfriend to come over and spend the night. As a writer, I find it interesting that readers see Eunsu’s story as their own, even though the former contains small elements of fantasy that distinguish it from the harsh reality.

CM: My Sweet Seoul also started the chick lit boom.

JY: I’m not sure about that, as chick lit has a set pattern. Chick lit always ends with the triumph of a female character; she undergoes a great deal of trouble but in the end she achieves success in both love and career. In that sense, My Sweet Seoul might be anti-chick lit. The story I wanted to tell did not lie within or outside established institutions. Rather, it was about the character—a kind of coming-of-age story that begins with the character at the starting line and ends with her still there.

CM: I just realized that Romantic Love and Society features a college student in the story “Sampoong Department Store,” a recent college grad applying to jobs, and My Sweet Seoul, an office worker.

JY: You’re right. It is important for me as a writer to grow old and feel the changes as an ordinary person. It seems natural that as one’s life changes, so does one’s writing. I always want to write about what intrigues and interests me the most at the moment.

CM: I heard that What You Never Know is in the process of being translated. Do you have any reservations about the translation?

JY: Of course I am not completely without reservations. But fundamentally, I regard the translator as a second author. It is important to have a creative translation that respects the original work.

CM: The novel involves diverse events against the backdrop of the kidnapping of a young child still in elementary school.

JY: It was a subject that I had researched and wanted to write about for a long time. The initial spark came from my interest in Chinese residents in Korea (hwagyo). Born in Korea, these ethnic Chinese are perceived as Koreans in China and as Chinese in Korea. Then my subject expanded as I developed the questions, “Are hwagyo the only people in this predicament? Isn’t everyone like that?”

1. What You Never Know

Jeong Yi Hyun, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2009, 496p, ISBN 9788954609647

2. My Sweet Seoul

Jeong Yi Hyun, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.

2008, 442p, ISBN 9788932017150

3. Romantic Love and Society

Jeong Yi Hyun, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.

2003, 251p, ISBN 9788932014487

4. Hyundae Literary Award:

Sampoong Department Store and Other Stories

Jeong Yi Hyun, Hyundaemunhak Publishing Co.

2005, 276p, ISBN 8972753416

CM: If Please Look After Mom is about a missing mother, What You Never Know is about a missing child. What does a child signify in Korean society?

JY: In Korean society, a child might be a concrete symbol of one’s place in the established institutions that can be felt with every fiber of one’s body. Isn’t the obsession and love for children universal rather than Korean? I didn’t have any children when I wrote What You Never Know, but now I have two children. Now that I am a mother, my thinking on my novel about a child has become more complex. If I rewrote it now, it would definitely be more heartbreaking. There would be more bloodshed and a more violent end. The characters’ emotional life would hit rock bottom more in a more devastating way.

CM: What does family mean to you?

JY: Though it is not possible to understand each other completely, something weaves you together. You keep saying, “You don’t know [me]” but in the end your family teaches you, that you don't know them either. Of course this might not apply only to families bound by blood. The concept of family is expanding steadily and therefore not fixed. I am very interested in the relationship between individuals, which has been changing along with changes in family relationships.

CM: You have a new work coming out soon.

JY: Alain de Botton, who is based in Britain, and I, both explored the common keyword “love project” in our novels. It can be summarized in the question: “Doesn’t everyone have a third, fourth, and fifth love?”

CM: Rather than “everyone has a first love?”

JY: It’s a love story not about one’s first or last love but about love and dating. It might be a love story that subtly escapes the fixed patterns of a typical love story. I write a love story set in Seoul, and de Botton tells the story of married couples in London on the theme of love. What’s interesting is that my characters are dating throughout the novel but part ways in the end, whereas the couples in de Botton’s novel are constantly chilly and in conflict but ultimately conclude that they have to stay together and work on their relationship. Maybe that’s the difference between love and marriage.

CM: That is quite interesting. Lastly, do you have anything you want to say to your readers abroad?

JY: I am grateful for their interest in Korean literature. I just hope that it is read more widely. Even though there are many works of Korean literature of a universal nature, it is not easy to publish them abroad. It’s really too bad. I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I can interact freely with readers all over the world.

by Cha Mi-ryeong