VOL.97/2026.08

New Books

 

Hands Picking Strawberries, Faces Erased

 

 

2026.08

 

 

 

Novelist Kim Soom is an author who quietly listens to and observes the lives of the socially vulnerable, such as Comfort Women survivors and visually impaired individuals, expressing their stories in her own unique literary style. Strawberry Theory is a work that depicts the lives of workers in a strawberry field through the eyes of "Hshapyae," a female migrant worker who moved to Korea from Myanmar. In Hshapyae's homeland of Myanmar, a tragedy of fratricidal war unfolds due to civil conflict, while the aftermath of earthquakes leaves her family living on the streets.

 

The money Hshapyae sends home goes toward repairing their house, putting her only younger brother through school, and enabling her mother, who sells fish at the market, to visit the hospital. To her, strawberries represent money and family, but also labor and a chain of burden. Her hands are covered in scars from picking strawberries, and despite frequent overtime work, she remains unpaid. Her salary is never delivered on time. Though she dreams of returning home one day, her younger sister, whose life hangs by a thread, earnestly urges her not to return. Hshapyae's roommate, Bopha, comes from Cambodia. She is an undocumented migrant worker who fled a brutal farm known locally as the "bad strawberry field" and took refuge where Hshapyae works.

 

Though the two share a room, they speak different languages and face different circumstances, making it impossible to share their daily lives or their pain. They exist merely as hands that pick strawberries. Called daughters, elder sisters, and nieces by others, they live as walking automated teller machines, transferring the cash their families need. In Hshapyae's lodging, besides Bopha, there are Wanna from Cambodia, Thura, an undocumented worker from Myanmar, and Mariel from the Philippines. All of them came to Korea dreaming of ordinary lives, but as they work endlessly submerged in a sea of strawberries, the things precious to them paradoxically drift farther away. Thura chose to have an abortion after being betrayed by her lover, and Mariel, longing for her husband and child back home who have gone silent, dreams every single day of boarding a plane. Even when the waves of life rise to their chins, they head back to the strawberry fields once more. For them, strawberries are life and family.

 

The characters in the novel are alter egos of the real workers the author met. Though they endure the chains of poverty and racial discrimination through hard work, they are never respected as precious human beings. The strawberries they work so hard to harvest become expensive cakes, yet their lives show no sign of improvement. Beyond these strawberry pickers, author Kim Soom continues to record the tragic lives of other workers whom Korean society has failed to protect.

 

On December 20, 2020, Sokheng, a Cambodian worker who froze to death inside a greenhouse during a severe cold wave, met a lonely death just two months before her scheduled return home. Boonchu, a Thai worker who died of a heart attack after working in a pig farm for over ten years, was secretly buried on a hillslope by the farm owner and his son before being discovered by a coworker. Tulsi from Nepal took his own life just six months after starting work at a pig farm, unable to endure constant harassment and physical abuse.

 

The novel opens with a few lines of monologue: "I came as a human being. First, as a human being. You are the same. You came to the strawberry field first as a human being. Even if they spit on their luck, grumbling that 'a person showed up' when they didn't ask for one." These migrant workers are unable to step into the future they once dreamed of. They cannot break free from the families and homelands they left behind, nor from poverty, war, disease, and an unfulfilled future. Strawberry Theory is the personal confession of Hshapyae and Bopha, who write in their journals, bathe, and cook dishes from home every single day to shake off the haunting fear that, at any moment, they might sink into something less valued than the very strawberries they pick.

 

Unless they take care of themselves, keep themselves alive, and feed themselves, their efforts become a struggle for survival, a resistance against discriminatory, numb eyes that reduce them to nothing more than hands picking strawberries. No one can live entirely alone. Every moment of joy and sorrow, of despair and hope, begins through someone and is healed by someone. Though invisible to those lighting candles on brilliant, sweet strawberry cakes while singing "Happy Birthday to You," the lives of these women, who undoubtedly exist somewhere out there, are just as real, just as much of a reality. This book is a sheet of photo paper capturing time, recording their breathing and their pain.

 

 

 

 

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Written by Jung-Ah Shin (Culture Critic, Adjunct Professor, Division of Performing Arts, Baekseok Arts University)

TV documentary writer who has scripted over 400 episodes, the author is deeply interested in the intersection of cultural content and humanistic imagination. With a love for the stories of people and the world embedded in media, she believes in the power of good content to change the world. Major publications include Elderly in Media, Elderly outside Media, Living with AI, New Media and Story-doing, Cultural Content and Transmedia, and Media Literacy Education for Digital Literacy, etc.