In Seoul, there’s a route that will let you get around without using a crosswalk, not even once. Little clues are carved here and there on the route. They are hidden pictures brought to light by Kim Junghyuk. Following the author’s map, you’ll come to encounter new places and people in the city. The author has made this possible through a unique mapping system.

Yang Yun-eui: Your third collection of short stories, 1F/B1 (First Floor, Basement Floor) has been published. Could you tell me a little bit about this collection?

Kim Junghyuk: The last story in The Library of Instruments, my second collection of short stories, was the last story I wrote for that collection, timewise. It was called “Syncopation D.” Having written that, I had an idea as to what my third collection was going be like. The last story I wrote for the third collection is “Kryasha,” the last story included in the collection. The story seems to contain everything in the collection, in a condensed form. I could see the direction my fourth collection would take as I wrote “Kryasha.” The story ends with the sentence, “The city never grows old. Only I do.” This sentence seems to sum up the entire collection.

Yang: As you can see in “Kryasha,” which you just mentioned, I got the feeling that in this collection, you took an interest in spaces, and things that go extinct in those spaces.

Kim: If my first collection of short stories, Penguin News, is about things, my second collection, The Library of Instruments, is about sounds, and my third is about spaces. If I put the focus on things in the past, this time, I started out with spaces and people who live in those spaces. As you said, I came to take an interest in extinction because I was talking about people who grow old or go extinct in spaces, and the lives of those people.

Yang: It seems that your attention is expanding from things to people, from sensation to the world. You could call it an expansion of themes. Would you say that such change in interests led to a change in the point of view? Most of the stories in your first collection are told in the first person point of view, and the stories in your second collection are told in the first and the third person. In your third collection, the stories are told mostly in the third person.

Kim: In the past I looked at things from the characters’ point of view, but this time I wanted to take a look at the world, apart from the characters’ point of view. I was an observer in the past as well, but back then I focused on the sensations I myself felt. But since I began using the third person point of view, I wanted to express an interest in events and the objective world.

Yang: It seems that your various cultural activities had an impact on the change in the point of view. You’ve written two novels, Zombies and Mr. Monorail, and a variety of essays as well. You also worked as a producer of a literary radio program, and you’re a professional illustrator.

Kim: Those activities probably did have an impact. It took two or three years for me to finish “Kryasha,” for example. The story is an outcome of thing that happened to me while I was writing it, as well as my cultural interests, and social issues such as the Yongsan incident.

Yang: You could say that your social and cultural interests became integrated with the various media of expression you’ve taken notice of. I’ve noticed the variety of methods you used, such as signs, drawings, and formulas. Even the title, 1F/B1 (First Floor, Basement Floor), can be read differently by different people.

Kim: I wanted people to read the titles of my novels in different ways. The title of the collection, as well as “C1+y = :[8]:.” Some may read it as “C One Plus Y Equals . . .” and others may read it as “The City is a Skateboard.”

Yang: The word “kryasha” comes from the English word, “crusher,” showing that the same word can be pronounced differently by different people. The actual pronunciation changes according to the speaker, and so do the meaning and the context. I felt that you wanted to protect the individual nature of what’s embodied in different expressions of a word. What kind of a message does the title seek to convey?

Kim: That question makes me think that signs are political in a way, and also a social product. When I first saw the word “kryasha,” I thought it sounded soft. But actually, it has a scary meaning, as the name of heavy equipment that breaks and pulverizes things. It felt strange when I learned the difference. I thought there was a gap between how the word was actually used, and what it meant. You could say that through this collection, I’m showing my interest in such gaps, in my own way.

Yang: You said “gap,” which is one of the key words in the collection. The graffiti on the city walls and the signs that divide a space give you a glimpse into unexpected events and spaces that weren’t detected in everyday life. The graffiti and signs lead you to hidden spaces, such as the “skateboard lot.” The signs seem like a sort of code.

Kim: I wanted them to come off as a code. I also wanted to talk about what signs show, or what signs hide. That’s why I wrote the title “C1+y = :[8]: (The City Is a Skateboard)” in the form of a sign. I think formulas and signs are what best represent cities. They’re regulations that all city dwellers have in common, but at times, those regulations weigh down on us.

Writer Kim Junghyuk and literary critic Yang Yun-eui

Yang: There must have been a lot of readers who didn’t know how to read “C1+y = :[8]:.” (laughs) You came up with a completely new word in the form of a formula, and a symbol representing a skateboarder. I’m curious as to how you came up with it. The signs show that you left the meaning open, so that it wouldn’t be interpreted in a certain way. I also wondered if it wasn’t a sort of an art theory.

Kim: “C1+y = :[8]: (The City Is a Skateboard)” had a different title in the beginning, but I came up with a new title after finishing the story, one that would express what I wanted to say. It’s the only story for which I decided on a title after writing it. I wanted the title to convey that the story was “a story of signs.” There’s a part in the story that says, “There was a city I wanted to build.” You could say that the city was a collage of my favorite cities. In fact, I wrote “Three Tables, Three Cigarettes,” in London, while looking at its streets. As I did, I thought of the streets in Korea. The buildings before my eyes and the buildings in Korea began to jumble together.

Yang: So in a way, a new city was invented, with the near overlapping of reality and imagination. If you’re talking about gaps, you can’t leave out the title piece, “1F/B1.” What gave rise to it?

Kim: This story had its beginning in a person. I’m not sure if I should talk about this (laughs), but I once met an apartment manager with autistic tendencies. He lacked social skills, and was engrossed in his work. The story came about as I tried to imagine his life.

Yang: So that’s how the alliance of building managers, who live in the basement, came about. It sheds an interesting light on the occupation of building managers. The story is humorous, but managers who have a sense of vocation emphasize that spirit in the story.

Kim: I think it’s money that moves my stories forward. It’s through money that people move. You can’t talk about people without talking about money. I think it’s no fun to move because of your beliefs. People follow money, but are also disillusioned by it. In our lives, things happen mostly because of money. They happen as things we do to make money collide against or crash into each other. In that process, people form alliances, come into conflict, and scatter. I also thought it would be important to take a close look at an occupation if it involved direct moneymaking.

Yang: In “The Museum of Useless Things,” people who put more importance on hobbies or tastes than on material value come together and construct meaning. There’s no direct criticism of capitalism, but affirmation of a hobby-based community does have the effect of shedding critical light on the capitalistic society. The latest collection, however, seems to show interest in the common sensations of people who have been endowed with identities within a social criterion.

Kim: I’ve always been interested in capitalistic societies. If there’s a common thread in my three collections, I would say that it’s an interest in occupations. I’m also interested in people who have failed, especially in the moment immediately after the failure. Communities of such people seem to be an ideal of mine. I’ve always harbored an ideal of such communities.

Yang: They are people who work to earn money, but haven’t achieved success in society. Their history could be summed up as the history of a hidden basement world, as in “1F/B1.” Seen this way, this collection does have something in common with the former collections. The attitude shown by people, who are maniacal in a way, is close to positive amateurism. They seem to say, I don’t need to be a winner, but I do need to acknowledge my feelings. They aren’t the kind of people who would devote themselves to maintaining their social position.

Kim: In a way, I do want to portray people who devote themselves to something, but I don’t have much interest in such people. They could appear as villains in my stories. There are such characters in my full-length novels. I’m interested in people who seek to build and perfect their own world. Not to compete with others, but to hone and cultivate themselves, to refine themselves. It’s the worlds of such people that I’m interested in.

Yang: You could say that building managers are a typical example of those who have perfected their worlds. They are those who exist in the so-called gaps. And the “slash” between the first floor and the basement is the symbol that signifies that.

Kim: As you know, a slash is a sign that separates something from something else. One day, I felt that the slash was a very large space. That’s how the novel came about. People called my generation, who entered college in 1989, the “in-between generation.” I think every generation is an in-between generation. Any generation is between the generation before, and the generation after, and seeks to find its identity, and originality. I think people who live in cities want to create their own space and live their own lives in their in-between state.

Yang: It seems that the slash implies many different things. I feel as if I’ve met “Mr. Inuk, the concept inventor” from “Penguin News” in person. (laughs) You mentioned earlier people who have failed. The inclining shape of the slash (/) seems to depict the speed of someone who has just been through a difficult situation, though the speed of someone who has experienced failure seems trivial and insignificant. For them, though, it’s probably the fastest they could go.

Kim: It’s interesting that you think it depicts speed. (laughs)

Yang: Shards of glass appear in “The City of Glass,” in “Three Tables, Three Cigarettes,” cigarettes ashes, as the cigarettes burn down to a zero, and in “Kryasha,” buildings crashing and turning into powder. Looking at those motifs, I thought of Karl Polanyi’s expression, “the devil’s millstone.” An enormous system called capital destroys the original form of things or people and turns them into dust. The stories don’t merely show the zero point at which things disappear. You can’t restore what has been torn apart, but the dust can return to life, joining the root of something.

Kim: We come back to the sentence, “The city never grows old. Only I do,” which I mentioned earlier. I think you could say that this is a collection of seven questions on cities. Cities change, cities are under threat, cities become dangerous . . . but still, cities could become a new space for us. I’d like for there to be a possibility of being a part of that new space.

Yang: Questions are important to the girl in “Three Tables, Three Cigarettes” as well. She says something remarkable—“I know the answers already, so what I need are questions.”

Kim: I think a good author is one who asks good questions. I don’t think any author throws out a question with an answer already in mind. I don’t, either. In fact, I throw out questions, thinking it’s all right even if there’s no answer. After I throw out the question, there comes a moment somewhere down the road when I think, oh, this is the answer. If someone has the answer, “I want to live in such-and-such way,” the questions that are important to me would be, “With whom? Doing what? What kind of a life, specifically?” Through this collection of stories, I think I’ve thrown out seven different questions to the readers.

Yang: You’re getting ready to write a novel, aren’t you? I’m curious as to what new questions you will ask.

Kim: I’ve gotten started on one. The questions in my novels may look different, but they’re asked with a similar attitude. I think as I continue to ask questions, I come to understand how to ask better questions with a better attitude. I think I grow as well, as I repeatedly ask questions about issues I’ve taken an interest in. You could say that my world has expanded. I think you’ll be able to see the history of my questions after I publish about 10 collections of short stories. (laughs)

Yang: There could be a chronology of your questions, like the “Chronology of Fatsos,” created by “Fatso 130” in Zombies. (laughs)

Kim: The last stories in my collections are always linked to the issues dealt with in the next collection, so there could be a chronology of questions. (laughs)

*

The place where I met Kim Junghyuk felt like the “skateboard lot” among the large buildings in Seoul. A place where hidden stories are revealed. The title piece of the new collection, 1F/B1 talks about a strange hidden space (a space created by /) between the first floor and the basement. I think the slash is Kim Junghyuk himself—the author who for 10 years has been leaning over (/) to observe the world.

by Yang Yun-eui

1. Penguin News

Kim Junghyuk, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.

2006, 377p, ISBN 8932016755

2. Mr. Monorail

Kim Junghyuk, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2011, 408p, ISBN 9788954615396

3. Zombies

Kim Junghyuk, Changbi Publishers, Inc.

2010, 376p, ISBN 9788936433802

4. The Library of Instruments

Kim Junghyuk, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.

2008, 308p, ISBN 9788954605670