한국국제교류재단

Kim Jihye, the protagonist of Won-pyung Sohn’s second novel, happens to have the most common girl’s name of 1988, the year she was born. Thus, she is lost in a sea of Kim Jihyes, but the anonymity suits her. She quietly ambles through life, another anonymous member of the audience watching others take the stage.

At the age of thirty, she finds herself working as an intern at DM Academy, the educational branch of the sprawling conglomerate known as DM Group. Life has not turned out the way she wanted. Hopes and dreams are unfulfilled, and her prospects are murky. This all changes when Lee Gyuok enters her life like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky. Hired as the second intern at the academy, Gyuok is fire to Jihye’s water, but they become unlikely allies. Together with Mr. Nam and Muin, two other students enrolled in the academy’s ukulele class, they form a foursome dedicated to challenging authority and speaking up for justice. Their objectives are humble, though, and the means are benign pranks and stunts: leaving a ransom-style note calling out a higher-up at the academy for his boorish behavior, painting graffiti under an overpass, or egging an unpopular politician.

At first, their little pranks seem to have the desired effect. They are not overthrowing the system or changing the world, but they are making their lives a little better. Still, Jihye becomes uneasy with the scale of their actions. She wants to effect real change in the world. Finally, an opportunity appears to pull off the biggest prank yet. Will the foursome finally achieve the change that Jihye has longed for? Or will the pragmatists in her life be proven right about the futility of fighting the system rather than trying to succeed in it?

Jihye’s story, though very specific to her character, will probably be familiar to most people who have passed their thirties. As a teenager, you are still going through too many psychological and physiological changes to have a firm grasp on who you are. With that behind, your twenties are when you begin to transit the world, experiencing as much of it as you can. When you hit your thirties, though, society tells you that the time for playing around is over; now you need to figure out what you are going to do with your life. There are those who will tell you that the wisest course of action is to follow the path dictated by society. Others will tell you to resist the status quo and chase your dreams. However, Jihye discovers that neither option is correct — at least not universally. Everyone needs to find their own way to determine their own balance between dreams and reality.

That is what this reader came away with after reading Counterattacks at Thirty. Perhaps you will find a different message. The brilliance of Sohn’s work is that it offers no one-size-fits-all answer. Jihye comes to terms with life in her own way. She will surely face trials on the road ahead, but as we turn the last page, we know that she will be able to face them with her chin up.

In Okchundang Candy, Jung-soon Go recounts the story of her grandparents in affectionate words and charming illustrations. Perhaps because they were both Korean War orphans, they looked out for each other as best friends. During school holidays, they also looked after their granddaughter Jung-soon, who remembers their “house filled with summer lingering.” But we all grow older, and Jungsoon’s grandparents are no exception. All things must pass in the end, even as the world continues to go on around us.

The author is spare with her words. She chooses only the ones she needs to tell the story, while vivid artwork between the lines says more than the words ever could. They evoke times gone by, capturing memories not just as they appear in the mind’s eye but also in the way they move the heart. As the story draws to a close, Jungsoon recalls the only possession her grandmother left behind: “a tiny pair of house slippers.” But this book is a testament to the fact that people leave behind so much more than just objects. They carve out space in our hearts and minds that can never truly be filled again but remain preserved in our memories.

In 2007, a woman who went by the handle “javabeans” fell headfirst into the world of K-dramas. She scoured the internet, looking for a place to share her love of the genre, but could not find a website that gave K-dramas the attention she felt they deserved — so she created Dramabeans. Recaps of popular dramas are the website’s bread and butter, but the website’s authors also cover “dramaland” news, compose essays on dramaland phenomena (like Squid Game’s international success), and write open posts to spark discussion among community members.

The people who write for Dramabeans come from different places and different walks of life, ending up in dramaland in different ways, but they are bound together by a common love of — one might even say obsession with — all things K-drama. Many of the current “recap minions,” as they call themselves, were early fans of Dramabeans, and they describe being able to now write for the site as a dream come true. In other words, this is no top-down dissemination of knowledge to the masses. This is K-dramas lovingly dissected and analyzed by fans, for fans. If you share the recap minions’ love of K-dramas, Dramabeans should be among your browser’s bookmarks.