Kim Miwol (born 1977) is a South Korean novelist.
1. Life
Kim Miwol was born in 1977 in Gangneung, Gangwon Province. She studied creative writing at Seoul Institute of the Arts. She made her literary debut in 2004 when her short story “Jeongwone gireul mutda” (정원에 길을 묻다 Asking Directions to the Garden) won the Segye Ilbo New Writer's Contest. Her first short story collection, Seoul donggul gaideu (서울 동굴 가이드 A Guide to Seoul’s Caves), was published in 2007. She has since published the short story collections Amudo pyeolchyeoboji anneun chaek (아무도 펼쳐보지 않는 책 An Unopened Book) and Yet aineui seonmul bajahoe (옛 애인의 선물 바자회 Rummage Sale of an Ex-Lover’s Presents), and the novels Yeodeol beonjjae bang (여덟 번째 방 The Eighth Room) and Iljuirui segye (일주일의 세계 The World of a Week). She is the recipient of the Shin Dong-yeop Literary Award and the Today’s Young Artists Award.
2. Writing
Kim Miwol's work traces the daily lives and worries of today's precarious youth. She has been hailed for writing stories that follow the exhausted development of the “880,000 won generation” who refuse to become discouraged even amid a difficult environment with her characteristic positivity and optimistic perspective.
“Seoul donggul gaideu,” the title story of her first collection, is a deep-dive into gosiwon, cubicle-sized housing often used by students studying for important exams. When the protagonist walks along the gosiwon's hallways, she starts believing that she is walking inside a cave. There is no contact between the forty residents. The gosiwon is portrayed as a place that was originally found with a hopeful heart, but soon becomes a space where the exit is also the entrance and escape seems impossible.
In her first novel, Yeodeol beonjjae bang, Kim reconstructs her own twenties through the lives of two characters in their early twenties. Jiyeong, leaving behind her parents who run a bookstore in the provinces, goes to Seoul for college, while Yeongdae, who was born in Seoul, is returning to school after completing his military service. One day, Yeongdae moves into the basement room that Jiyeong previously lived in and discovers the rough draft of a novel she wrote, also titled Yeodeol beonjjae bang. The novel realistically portrays the lives of youth during the 2000s through Jiyeoung, who feels an overwhelming sense of defeat after continuing to fail despite her best efforts, yet nevertheless tries to overcome this through her writing, and Yeongdae, who discovers through reading Jiyeong’s novel that even amid his anxiety over the future, this is not the end.
Kim's Yet aineui seonmul bajahoe, published in 2019, depicts the exhausted daily lives of youth who enter their thirties and continue to be weighed down by their tough circumstances. The evaluation committee for the 2020 Dongin Literary Award reviewed this work as “a book that acts as a warm companion to life and is thus simple, yet nevertheless a solace.”
