VOL.69/2024.04

 

Writer Kim Hye-Jung

The Story of Becoming “Me, Different from Yesterday”

 

2023.12.04

 

Adolescence is a time of imperfection, making it all the more precious and beautiful because you can envision anything you want in the future. Young adult literature also colors the minds of not only children but also adults with diverse stories that cross genres such as science fiction and fantasy. It is a genre you can pick up and read for fun, and once done, you feel deeply moved. Perhaps it is the perfect genre for Kim Hye-Jung, who became a writer because she loved stories. Listening to the inner thoughts of struggling teenagers and writing their stories with sincerity, Kim hopes that her books will give teenage readers a place to breathe. Her affectionate and warm perspective on the stories of teenagers could be felt throughout the interview. Following is an interview with Kim Hye-Jung, an artist who touches our hearts with each new story, hoping to paint a life full of the 100 colors that children possess.

 

 

It is an honor to have you with us on K-Book Trends. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

 

Hello, I’m Kim Hye-Jung, and I write “children’s stories” for children and “young adult fiction” for teenagers. My published works so far include young adult fiction Fifteen Years Old For 500 Years 1, 2 (Wisdom House), Fantastic Girl (BIR, the original story of the drama “Hello, It’s Me!”), Hiking Girls (BIR), and Diet School (Jamo Books), as well as children’s books Hunter Girl 1-5 (Sakyejul), Nosy Goblin Ohjirang 1-4 (Dasan Kids), and Counselor Ms. You’re Right (BIR).

 

You won the 1st Blue Fiction Award in 2008 for your book Hiking Girls. Since the award is for young adult literature, did you plan to write young adult fiction from the beginning? Why or how did you decide to write for young adults instead of adults?

 

I wanted to be a storyteller since I was a kid. I wanted to be a novelist, or a movie director, but I didn’t think I would write young adult fiction. Because when I was a teenager, there was no young adult genre in Korea. It was only in 2008 that the young adult genre started to take root in Korea. When I was in my 20s, I was submitting my work to various contests, and I came across a new award for young adult literature. I didn’t know exactly what young adult literature was, but I thought it could be anything with a teenager as the main character. And, as you said, I won the award with my story, Hiking Girls. I love teenage characters. It is because a story can change when the characters change, and teenage characters are very volatile. They have a big, dynamic emotional spectrum, and I think that is why they fit so well into different genres, such as science fiction and fantasy.

 

 

The book Fifteen Years Old For 500 Years, published in 2022, is often referred to as a “K-Fantasy” because of its Korean settings, including the myth of Dangun and the tale of Gumiho. Although the settings are very familiar to Koreans, they might be somewhat unfamiliar to international readers. Can you give us a brief description of the book and what international readers should keep in mind when reading these stories?

 

The idea of immortality has always been a favorite subject in both the East and the West. There are already many stories in movies and dramas about people who live forever without aging, but the main characters are usually “adults” in their 30s. The 30s are the best years of your life - you can do whatever you want, make money, and be physically the healthiest you can be. In the book Fifteen Years Old For 500 Years, the main character, Gaeul, a member of the “Yaho” tribe, is fifteen years old and has lived for five hundred years, just like it says in the title. I think “fifteen” is the most difficult and challenging age in life, the point where you wish it would just be over already.
Actually, when I told my teenage readers before the book came out that I was writing a novel about a fifteen-year-old kid living for five hundred years, they got very upset with me because they thought I was being too cruel - the character would have to go to school over and over again, take tests repeatedly, and go through puberty forever. I thought, “What if the life of a fifteen-year-old were to repeat itself forever?” The battle between the immortals, the Yaho and the Horang, would be a fun part of the fantasy world, and the comparison between the Yaho and human life would remind readers of the preciousness of finite time.
The Dangun myth, which inspired the novel, is one of the most powerful myths in Korea. But I was disappointed that it was rarely adapted into other stories - so I intentionally borrowed elements from the myth. The Gumiho story is a legend of a monstrous fox that eats human livers, and Gumiho is seen as a charming but evil image. I renamed the Gumiho as the Yaho tribe, and drew them as beings who can stop time and live forever because they have a bead and that the liver-eating rumor is a myth.
There are so many interesting legends and folk tales in Korea. K-dramas and movies are becoming very popular these days, and they have their roots in Korean folk tales and legends. I think the power of K-stories is that they are passed down from generation to generation with many variations. In Fifteen Years Old For 500 Years, you will learn about various interesting Korean folk tales such as “Magpie Returns the Favor,” “The Tiger Brother,” “The Sun and the Moon,” and more.

 

 

Fifteen Years Old for 500 Years has sold 100,000 copies, and readers have been so enthusiastic that you recently released a sequel, Fifteen Years Old for 500 Years 2: The Weight of the Bead. Did you write it with a sequel in mind from the beginning? How did you come up with the story for the second volume?

 

I didn’t think of a sequel when I was writing the first book. Though the trend is different nowadays, fantasy was not welcomed in young adult literature two or three years ago. Before publishing Fifteen Years Old for 500 Years, I received feedback such as, “Korean teenagers don’t read fantasy,” “Write something that can be used for education,” and “I would rather change the age of the main character to elementary school students and write it as a fairy tale.” So I had a lot of doubts about whether the book would ever see the light of day, but after all the twists and turns, it came out, and it has been really well received by children and young adult readers. It has been my most popular book to date.
Within a few months of the first book’s release, I had a lot of readers requesting a second book. I ended the first book with an open ending, introducing a new transfer student, and readers responded to that. Even I felt disappointed that I couldn’t show more of Gaeul’s story in the first book. I was able to write the second book pretty quickly, thanks to reader requests. And because the first book was about the foxes, the Yaho, I didn’t get to tell much about the tigers, the Horang. But I got to write more about the tigers when I wrote the second book. After the second book came out, I had a lot of readers who wanted to know about the third book - and now I’m writing the third book!

 

 

My goal is to write stories that I never would have written in the past.

 

 

One of the major keywords of young adult fiction is “growth.” How do you hope readers of your work will grow?

 

I have been a teenager, been in my 20s, and 30s, and now I’m in my 40s. No matter how much I think about it, I think the hardest period of a person’s life is the teenage years. Growing up is an amazing thing, and I think it’s a miracle, but people who have grown up think it is easy. They say that you don’t have any responsibilities, you don’t have to earn money, your parents do everything for you, so there is nothing to worry about. But I think adults who say that have a “bad memory.” It takes a lot of energy to make soft clay hard. And because teenagers have a soft heart, they are bound to get hurt a lot. Although teenage life is hard and difficult, I want them to endure it, to hang in there, and to grow up in peace. I want them to grow up without hating themselves, and instead to be kind.
I want my books to be a “room to breathe” for teenage readers. I want to create a world where they can relate to the main character and take a moment to think, “Huh? There’s a world like this?” I don’t want them to finish my book and say, “Wow, that was really well written!” Instead, I want them to finish it and feel like, “Yeah, maybe life is worth living.”

 

It seems like a lot of adult readers are looking to young adult literature lately because it’s entertaining, but there are also parts of it that touch their hearts. Have you noticed a stronger adult readership than in the past?

 

When I write, my biggest goal is to write something that a fifteen-year-old Kim Hye-Jung would enjoy reading. I think that fifteen-year-old Kim Hye-Jung might exist in a parallel universe, or maybe inside of me. I love novels, dramas, and movies that feature teenagers, and it is not just because I write young adult literature. I really love stories where the protagonist goes through an event and becomes a different version of oneself a day after. Those stories still make my heart flutter. Even if I hadn’t become a writer of young adult literature, I think I would still love stories with teenagers as the protagonists. If you are an adult, but you still have that adolescent “me” in your heart, and if you still get excited about reading coming-of-age stories, I think you are a reader of young adult literature.

 

Writing about teenagers seems to require a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the culture of that generation. How do you do research on teen culture, and where do you find inspiration for your work?

 

I give a lot of middle school and high school talks - probably about 100 a year - and that is where I get a lot of my research and inspiration for the characters in my novels. Because I’m already an adult, and there are a lot of adults around me, I can’t help but have adult conversations. But when I go to a school talk, I get to think, “Oh, the fifteen-year-old in my novel must be like this kid,” with the character automatically popping up in my brain. And when I give a talk, I don’t just sit there and give a lecture, but I get to talk to teenagers about this and that. I get to learn about episodes that happened in class, things that happened after school, conflicts with friends, school festivals and events, and quite a few scenes are actually based on things I have heard and seen at school. I think if you live with the same kids every day, there is less room for imagination. So, it’s nice to see different kids every time, and to be able to make up my own little stories about them.

 

 

I think a person’s growth is something like a miracle.

 

 

The interaction between you and your readers must have been very meaningful for them as well. What kind of stories do you usually tell in your talks, and do you have any memorable moments with young readers?

 

I talk a lot about going through adolescence when I was a teenager, and when I was a teenager, I submitted a novel to a publisher and got a novel published called Runaway Diary (Munhak Soochup) - I think that’s the funniest thing for teenagers to hear. I tell them that I became a writer not because I was good at it, but because I loved it. And I also tell them the things that I wanted to hear when I was a teenager. I tell them not to let adults in their lives who say things like, “If you live like this, you will be screwed,” or “If you don’t do what adults tell you to do, you will be in trouble.” It’s not the adults of today who will know more about the world in 20 years, it is the teenagers of today. I don’t want the adults of today, who can paint with 24 colors, to stand in the way of the teenagers who can paint with 100 colors.
It has been 15 years since I became an author and started giving talks. So, I often meet readers who have grown from teenagers to adults nowadays. Recently, I met a woman in her 20s at one of my talks. Since my talks are mostly for teenagers, I wondered, “Why did she come?” When I was signing autographs, she said, “Hey, I attended your talk in Cheongju six years ago. I happened to be on the Internet and saw that you were giving a talk, so I came.” It was a middle school girl who had become a college student, and I was really touched by that. Since then, whenever I go to a lecture, I think of middle school students, and I think, “Oh, these kids are going to be in their 20s in six years.” In fact, I have met several readers who read my novels as teenagers and are now in their 20s, and because of that, I wrote my first novel with a character in their 20s. It will be published next year as a novel titled The Lost Thing is Back.

 

Can you recommend any of your books that you think young readers abroad would enjoy?

 

I would recommend Hunter Girl 1-5, Fantastic Girl, and Diet School.
Hunter Girl is a story that started with the idea of “What if the Pied Piper was alive and well?” Hunter Girl and Hunter Boy were born to catch the Pied Piper, and they do their usual job of punishing bad adults. I hope this book will encourage young readers to not be afraid of bad adults when they encounter them, because adults aren’t always right, and adults aren’t always well.
Fantastic Girl is a novel about a 17-year-old Oh Ye-Seul who is accidentally transported 10 years into the future by an airplane crash and meets a 27-year-old Oh Ye-Seul, who is living a messed-up life that she doesn’t even want to imagine. So, 17-year-old Oh Ye-Seul tries to change 27-year-old Oh Ye-Seul’s life somehow, and while time travel stories usually involve going to the past and changing it, this one involves going to the future and changing the future. It is a novel based on a KBS drama called “Hello, It’s Me!” and is also available on Netflix.
Diet School is about 15-year-old Ju Hong-Hee, who goes to a diet school during her vacation to lose weight. She thinks that once she reaches her desired weight, she will never want for anything else, but the abusive environment in the diet school makes her question, “What is dieting? Why am I dieting?” And she makes a plan to escape from the diet school. I had a weight complex when I was a teenager, so that is why I wrote this story. I think a lot of teenagers liked it because they could relate to it.

 

 

Since you love to write so much, we are eager to hear what you will write about in the future. Do you have any plans or goals for your future writing?

 

My goal is to write something that I wouldn’t have written five years ago. When I first started writing, I had no idea I was going to write fantasy, because all the fiction I had been taught and read up until then was all about real life. But as the characters got younger, I was able to tell science fiction and fantasy stories. I’m often asked if I find writing difficult or boring. I don’t think I ever get bored because every story I write is different. With series, it might be a few years, but it’s three years at the most, and it is fresh because I’m always telling a different story with different characters and events. It can be challenging if I can’t think of a story or if the story isn’t working out, but it is like playing a game. Eventually, you end up with a story, and it is fun.
I want to write new genres, and I have recently gotten interested in the mystery genre, which is something I wouldn’t have written five years ago. So, that is my goal now - to write mystery novels.

 

 

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