VOL.93/2026.04

A Story of Friendship and Growth Built Through Fanhood

2025.08.04

People often feel a sense of connection when they meet someone who shares their interests. This is because common interests make us feel like we have similar preferences. Teenagers, in particular, often form social connections by creating fandoms for their favorite singers, actors, or characters, as friendships hold significant importance to them. Fandoms formed in the online space can open up another world for them offline. A fandom refers to a community of people who share a common interest, building a culture through friendships and emotional connections. It is a collective phenomenon where fans communicate and interact with each other beyond simply liking individual content. Fandom culture is growing to the point where, according to a survey of readers by K-Book Trends, it ranked first as an essential part of K-POP culture in Korea. However, there is also hostility towards things they don’t like. That’s why it can sometimes be hard to say out loud that we like what we like ? and this is where the phrase “respect your taste” comes from.

This month’s issue introduces Our Garden (Sakyejul), a young adult coming-of-age novel about how a protagonist, who is afraid of building relationships, learns about friendship and the world through fandom. The book tells the story of how “liking something” can move a person, connect people, and teach a person about the world. For seventeen-year-old Jung-Won, who has always found it difficult to make friends, pop idol A-Seven is the source of her life and her favorite singer in the world. However, it is difficult for her to open up to her friends about them because she is afraid of how they will react to someone who means so much to her. One day, she meets a friend, Dalyi, in an A-Seven fan cafe, and shares her feelings about A-Seven with her only. Then, on the day Dalyi’s account disappears, Jung-Won is shocked and heartbroken, realizing that their friendship could end at any moment. Eventually, she meets another group of A-Seven fans at an offline book club that she inadvertently joins, and for the first time, she shares her heart about “liking something” with someone in person. The experience teaches her that each person has a different type and temperature of affection, and how to have confidence in relationships.
This is not the only lesson Jung-Won learns from being a fan. As she watches A-Seven become such great singers through painstaking hard work, she indirectly feels the bond that kept them together through their difficult years. She also examines her inner self, imagining herself as an adult in 10 years, in the quest to become a real adult. This is not just about the world of fandoms or deokjil (a Korean slang, meaning “the act of enthusiastically supporting and engaging with one’s favorite idols or characters, often through various fandom activities”); it touches on deeper sentiments, including relationships built on preferences, loneliness, and connection in the digital age, as well as teenage anxiety and growth. Every experience of being a fan teaches Jung-Won to cultivate his inner jungwon (정원; meaning “garden”), to understand others, and to live together. The author of the book, Kim Ji-Hyeon, brings together the relationship-affirming attitude of the characters in both online and offline spaces, carefully maintaining distance and respecting each other. The book, Our Garden, is a book that I would like to recommend to everyone who wants to live in a kinder world that “respects each other’s taste.”