VOL.69/2024.04

 

Reading: Sorting Out the Unchanging from the Changing

Sportsperson’s Pick

 

2024.02.19

 

 

Although I am currently doing sports as a career, it was not my major. My major was Korean language education. I became a sportsperson by chance, but I also used to teach writing to elementary school students. I remember coming across the book One Day I Died (Baram Books), which left a strong impression on me at that time. At first, I doubted that it was a book for children. I had to read it for class, but I found the story to be quite compelling. I’m not sure if the kids in my class at the time enjoyed it. But, if you have ever lost someone you were close to, like Yumi from the book, and felt like it was your fault, even though it wasn’t, then you will definitely find this book consoling.

 

 

The book begins when the mother of her deceased friend Jae-Joon hands Yumi a diary, with the first sentence written in it being “One day I died,” which is the title of the book. The main character, Yumi, is in the third grade of middle school and is not enjoying her school life - her only friend is Jae-Joon. The sudden death of Jae-Joon was something she couldn’t fully grieve or understand, but as she reads through the diary, her feelings become clearer. Perhaps such loss is something that is characterized by not wanting to understand, or not being able to understand. In the book, Yumi’s feelings are described with just the right words and organized sentences. So much so that while Yumi might not understand the feelings she is going through, the readers can. The words are not emotional, but they do evoke emotions, and the word with two different feelings clashing in the same sentence creates an odd sensation. Although we think that Yumi doesn’t know, and we do, we end up becoming Yumi in our own lives.

 

“The insult was far greater than a simple “no,” because there was an underlying arrogance in those words, an arrogance based on trying to console an inferior opponent.”
“The word ‘lonely’ is itself a lonesome word, yet somehow the chunks of that lonesome word bounced and popped into my mind. I played with the words gushing out of my mind like a fountain, rolling them around like a ball.”
“Why was it that the breathless silence of the children sounded like loud screams. I really felt like my eardrums were going to be torn out.”

 

What makes this book so immersive is not only the well-written descriptions, but also the cinematic editing. Yumi reads the diary at the request of Jae-Joon’s mother, but she does so sporadically, every few days. Yumi reminisces about events with Jae-Joon in the past and then returns to the present, and the transitions are edited like a movie. As she smokes a cigarette, Yumi recalls the conversations she had with Jae-Joon, and she also flashes back and forth between Jae-Joon’s mind and her own. Talking to her teacher, Mr. Park Ho-Min, Yumi learns things she didn’t know about Jae-Joon’s first love. Yumi pulls out the past by reading the diary entries and re-edits the scenes to the present, storing them in her memory. Although it is an edited memory thanks to Jae-Joon’s diary, it is a memory that will support Yumi as she moves forward in life.
The book ends with Yumi reading all the way through Jae-Joon’s diary. I was in tears as I reread the book, and if I hadn’t had a handkerchief next to me, I would have been in trouble. This book has been out for 20 years and has gone through 50 printings. The elementary school students who read it with me would be adults now, and probably would have experienced the same pain of loss as Yumi. As for me, my cat turned 18 this year. He recently had an unexpected visit to the hospital, and I feel the pressure to prepare for his passing. There will be moments in the future when I will need consolation. The beauty of this book is that it can give such comfort, even though I don’t know if having it beforehand will help.

 

 

When I read books in the past, I would barely remember the writer’s name, let alone recognize their face and voice. Maybe it was because of the old textbooks, but when I was a student, I had a perception that people who wrote books were not of this world. However, in recent years, it has become more common for people to become writers after becoming famous. With so much video content being poured out through various platforms, I wonder if anyone will buy and read books. I even wonder if the book as a medium can survive.
The book A Thousand Witnesses (Bookrum Publication) is one such book. The writer, who has become quite famous as a forensic video analyst, talks about his work in the book. He talks about his time in the military and college before he became a professional, but mostly he covers meeting with clients, working with photos and videos, and writing down his findings in a report. In fact, when it comes to this kind of material, it is better conveyed in images than in letters. This is because there are a lot of interesting and stimulating topics like a detective story, where you find the criminal or the cause through the images related to the incident.
However, the book didn’t contain a single photo. Now that I think about it, it’s a strange book. Strange, but understandable. Because behind every dramatic event, there are so many different people: people with righteous hearts, people enduring painful times, people refusing to admit their faults, people indifferent to other people’s suffering, and people accidentally making mistakes because they don’t know any better. The writer speaks about such people in a humane way. Since the stories of such people are not fictionalized like novels, but real events that happened in our time, it makes me worried that it could be my story or my family’s story. In fact, the writer said that he got more concerned as he worked. That is why it was hard to put the book down - such incidents could happen to me or my family.

 

“While it would be wonderful to live in a world where no-one is wronged, this world continues to need my help.”

 

Well, my current job is in sports, not criminal investigations. There are more injuries in sports than you might think, and we often use video in training. I often rewatch videos multiple times to find clues to failed movements, so maybe that’s why I felt a kinship with the writer of this book, as we work with similar tools, albeit in different fields. I admire him for striving to be a professional, and it’s great to see that he loves what he does. The book left me with the warmth of an expert’s heart, not the results of a horrific event or the culprit, and I felt more secure than I thought I would to live in the same time as him.

 

 

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Written by Jeong Ji-Hyeon (Former national climbing athlete, currently the head of Jeongjihyeon Climbing Gym)