A square is where countless people come and go

Where the smallest human connections come together to create a new flow

A square: a place where people gather and then disperse, or where they pass by from time to time. We often pass through a square no matter what city we’re in. Not to mention entirely new cities but also in one we thought we were very familiar with, a square appears different depending on the people gathered in it. Each short story in Jo Kyung Ran’s latest collection features the characteristics of a plaza. The protagonist in Daily Health and Poetry has worked the same job for 19 years and now meets strangers and street musicians in the squares of foreign cities, and the one in On Number 492, an author, walks around numerous squares with their mother.

In particular, the plaza where Hoon works, the protagonist of November 30th, oppositely presents itself at the beginning and the end of the story, demonstrating the meaning of the location in a more multi-layered manner. Hoon is a twenty-seven-year-old man who lives day to day “without knowing what to do for his future.” He is in a Mickey Mouse suit to promote a language school in front of a subway station, and for him, the space is a square of the neighborhood where myriads of people come and go and where he doesn’t have to expose himself.

On his way back from a farm, running an errand for his mother, Hoon gets off a bus at Gwanghwamun, missing his transfer, and finds himself engulfed in a crowd of protesters. Among the crowd gathered for a rally, he can’t tell where he is going but focuses on just “getting through this place at this moment.” If everyone at the square in front of the subway station has their own agendas and is simply “going with the flow,” the square at Gwanghwamun is full of people who gathered from different places with the same purpose; as one of the protesters puts it, “We have to push through.” At that place, Hoon isn’t working his job at a single location but has taken off his Mickey Mouse suit and keeps walking to pass through the plaza as his own self, as if the only thing he can do there is to take another step.

The keywords such as rally downtown, candle lights, Gwanghwamun, and crowd remind the readers of the rallies that united hundreds of people in 2016, and they will see themselves in the crowd and think of Hoon, the young man. The sight of those from different places taking one step at a time at a public place with their identities revealed for the same purpose allows us to imagine a faint yet enormous community that can be formed from a single reason that encourages each other; we can imagine ourselves in it as we pass through this moment for a better future. After he escapes the crowd and on the open road, Hoon says aloud, “Let t-today tell you where you are and let t-tomorrow tell you where you should be.” Even though he can’t know the future completely, Hoon resolves to live today’s life today and tomorrow’s life tomorrow. His words are Jo Kyung Ran’s support and consolation to those passing through day by day for a better tomorrow.

When the words piled up start to unfurl themselves

My life becomes different, and our lives are connected

Even then, we don’t expect that simply coming together in a space will create some kind of bond between us. Because gathering has no meaning other than simply gathering and nothing else.

The protagonist in the title story is a thirty-seven-year-old adoptee. He “doesn’t have a friend and never had a deep relationship with anyone without a single mention of his parents.” His father treats him as a person from “another household.” Gyeong-ah, a new domestic help, enters the two men’s home. She is described as someone with an unusual past, but to the protagonist, she’s “a young woman who can cook with the old cucumber without prickles” and, most importantly, someone who bursts into his life asking questions. When Gyeong-ah asks questions, he starts to tell her things that he has never told anyone else before; then her questions continue. As the things left unsaid come pouring out, the protagonist, his father, and Gyeong-ah develop into a family who eat dinner together.

In the end, what we need is words; words as a link that can bring people closer to each other and connect them appear in the day lives of the characters in this collection. A woman writing poems in short verses (Everyday Health and Poetry), Jeongmi’s words to a girl named Kim Jinhee (I Didn’t Know Kim Jinhee), a man slowly telling the story between him and his teacher to his students (Spring Nirvana), and another man writing letters for the words he doesn’t dare say face to face before a long farewell (Thinking about Long Farewell) all capture the moments when the characters’ own story flow out of themselves. In other words, the act of speaking and the relationship between the characters at the moment when words begin are what Jo continues to focus on in her latest short story collection. Considering that her words have been carefully written in an extraordinarily organized and accurate manner, the readers can imagine how much weight the author has placed on every sentence that seems ordinary.

In the last scene of the title piece, the protagonist watches television with Gyeong-ah and witnesses people getting rescued from homes being swept away by typhoons and floods. As the rope from the helicopter pulls each person back up to life with the link and grants them another tomorrow, the relationship with others in his daily life works as a rope that saves the protagonist, who has lived his whole life “in shame,” and lets him imagine the future where they are together. Perhaps the words that connect us are not the most grand; the ones that start with a simple hello or a caring question might be the first point that begins the human relationship. The conversation that starts with the smallest of words evolves into stories, and we pass through today, both individually and together, until we greet a better tomorrow than today.

Support from Moonji Publishing Company