Overview

Busan on stage

Six local authors write about their city, Busan

A compilation of thematic short stories, The Mosaic of Busan, about the past and the present Busan is published. It was written by six writers with Busan as the backdrop, the book unravels the stories of people who live there, showing the particular spaces that only the locals would know about. 

A new Busan emerges

With the convergence of scattered pieces

Through a box discovered by chance, Kim Minhae’s “The Box from the Attic” depicts the visage of Busan during the time when the US Army Camp Hialeah was based there. Jin-gyo who moved to a house near the People’s Park finds an unidentifiable box in the attic while she is doing repair work. In the box, there are love letters and pictures that a Korean woman and a U.S. Army soldier sent to each other from the nineties; and she gets the desire to return them to their rightful owners as well as find out more about their story.  

“The Condor, Beside Us” by Park Younghae takes place against the background of the Jeungsan Park where the Busan Fortress used to be. The protagonist, who is visiting from Los Angeles, goes to the Jeungsan Park in her old neighborhood. Where it used to the Busan Fortress had been turned into a cemetery after the Hideyoshi Invasions and with the construction of the zoo, the graves were moved to somewhere else. The zoo that had reached the completion stage never opened and homeless people moved in there instead; for a long time, the protagonist found it difficult to be at the boundary of the living and the dead. Many years later, she could begin to hear faintly what they were saying. 

Na Baek, the protagonist of Jo Mihyoung’s  “The Noblewoman Is in the Cornfield” is a mosaic artist who lives alone in “Noblewoman,” a fishing boat without an engine that is anchored at Imrang Beach, Busan. U-bong who runs a seafood stew restaurant and Do-uk, owner of a surfing shop coerces him into eating the sea anemone stew in order to increase the number of clicks on the SNS, and they demand increasingly more and more. The maniacal night passes and in the morning, Na Baek starts working on his very own bizarre and destructive art. 

Oh Youngyi’s “Without Anyone Knowing” is about addiction to violence and tells the story of a five-year-old girl who dies from her stepmother’s abuse. It takes place in a high-rise apartment with a view of the Haeun Beach. The stepmother who’s never had a friend in life leaves the little girl in the car on a very hot day and bangs her head against the wall. Violence is something that can start for no reason and one could become addicted to it—without anyone knowing. 

Jang Miyoung’s “Unended Promise” is about a child’s attachment to her mother who died long ago. After his wife, Su-jin, died of brain tumor, the father of the child moved to Dolsan Village where he and his dead wife grew up together. One day, Chae-yeung, his daughter tells him she saw a woman with a protruding belly in front of their house. That evening, Chae-yeung tells him she talked to her and many times after that, she goes off with this woman or disappears without letting him know. The protagonist discovers this woman, in front of a mural at Su-jin’s former house that his daughter talks to, is not an actual person; he then makes up his mind to tell his daughter about Su-jin on the day of her birthday.

An Jisook’s “Meeting Dokkaebi at Geojeri Station” is about forgiveness and reconciliation. The middle-aged protagonist faces a divorce and when her mother gets inflicted with a hip joint injury, she comes to Busan under the pretext of looking after her. She who had always endured life’s hardships by walking takes a daily promenade along the riverside. Then by coincidence, she happens to walk on the East Sea Railway trail. It is a path that holds a deeper meaning for her father used to work for the railway. There, she meets a dokkaebi (Korean goblins) who has hedgehog fur on. .

About author

Kim Minhae debuted as a writer in 2012 in Monthly Literature and Dongri Weolgan literary magazine. She is the recipient of Geumsaem Literary Prize and is the author of Cheerful Outing, a collection of short stories, and Your Umbrella, a full-length novel, chosen as a Token Book for youths in 2021.

Park Younghae is the winner of 1996 Busan Daily New Writer Award. She won the Busan Literary Fiction award in 2008, and in 2009, Deulsori Literary Prize. She is the author of the following anthologies of short stories: A Bed Where Four People Lay, The Mural We Draw, and A Paper Flower. 

Jo Mihyoung debuted as a writer after winning the Kukje Daily New Writer Award in 2006. She is the author of Heungbu Village at Four in the Morning, a collection of short stories and The Secret of the Haeori Sea, a full-length fiction. Her work, Cube Sugar, was on the list of recommended books for Hyeon Jin-gwon Literary Award in 2009. She signed the copyright contract for The Secret of the Haeori Sea with Cheonggwang, the Chinese Publishing Company. 

Oh Youngyi is the recipient of the Literary Movement (2009), Korean Fiction (2012) and Dongri Mogweol (2015) New Writer Awards. In 2019, she won the Seongho Literary Prize. She is the author of The Stars Are Now Headed for the Island and The Three-layer German Frying Pan; both are collections of short stories. At present, she lectures at Kyungsung, Tongmyong Universities and the National Korea Maritime & Ocean University. 

Jang Miyoung was the recipient of Cheongang Literary Award in 2012. She is the winner of 2019 Kukje Daily New Writer Award.

An Jisook was awarded the Silla Literary Prize in 2012. Her novel, Mi-hong’s Brightness That I Lack was chosen for book sharing and Derinkuyu, a work of fiction, won the Arco Creative Grant for writing in 2019