The title story “The .45 Colt” is an outstanding story in its attempt to overlap the surface of daily life with the depths of history. The story’s background is set in Sujeong-dong, Busan, a neighborhood where old houses are packed on the hillsides, reflecting Busan’s geographical characteristics of hilly and narrow flatland and also its history of being the capital during the Korean War. The protagonist “I” despises the mountain village and leaves his parents’ house by marrying at an early age, yet his honeymoon period quickly fades and he quarrels with his wife over her wish to buy an expensive tea set. Unable to control his anger, “I” raises his hand against her.

At his father’s call, “I” goes back to his parents’ in Sujeong-dong. There he finds his father aiming a .45 Colt at him. “I” is terrified, and his father recounts a story about the gun, while recollecting the Korean War. As there is no going back for a bullet shot out of a muzzle, so is for rage, his father says. “I” touches the .45 Colt and thinks of the tea set. The tea set and the gun have no apparent relation to each other, but they acquire homogeneity as the story unfolds. The reflection on rage and life that is made through the convergence of the macroscopic history and the microscopic story is ideal.

“The End of Festival” is a captiving work that is full of the author’s unique Sci-Fi imagination and apocalyptic atmosphere. People eagerly wait for the festival, the only occasion when they can drink the mysterious remedy Barnit, which calms down their emotions and removes the senses of shame and hatred so that they can throw themselves into life changing adventures. No one knows where and what Barnit was made of. The protagonist who is to be offered as a sacrifice in the festival breaks the taboo by investigating the secret of the festival. The truth that is revealed at the end of the story poses the question of distinguishing between a real human being and a robot that becomes self-aware or one that is made by perfectly copying a human being.

Gwangmo Jung, who received the 2013 Busan Writers Award for his story collection of The Man With Confabulation and the 2015 Arts Council Korea Creative Fund for his novel Toscu, has established his artistic world through imaginative and distinctive topics and critical perspective. In this new collection of stories, Jung invites the reader to a new world, exhibiting his artistic characteristics to the fullest. All six stories show a wide spectrum of genres from realism to fantasy and each story has the depth of penetrating the interior of a human being.