Healing fiction is currently hugely popular in South Korea, and has been since the 2022 release of Welcome to the Hyunam Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum. A raft of English translations are aiming to capitalize on the trend for all things hallyu to make Korean healing fiction an internationally known literary genre. This is a genre that aims to soothe readers exhausted by the pressures of a hypercompetitive and hierarchical society.
Category Archive: Fiction
Jaime came home drunk once. I woke up from the maid’s knock on our bedroom door. She said my husband was in the living room. Jun had him lie down on the sofa. When I got downstairs, Jun explained that Jaime and his clients seemed to have had a drinking spree. That didn’t surprise me. It was for times like these that we hired Jun as a driver. Jun apologized as though it was his fault. He said he didn’t know that Jaime was going to get that wasted. Jaime had thrown up in the back of the car. ‘Do not worry,’ I told Jun, this happens just once in a while. Just a few times a year. Only when he gets together again with his clients.
Surrounded by water, the house overlooked the lagoon. Beauty was everywhere, but with that came beasts.
For such a small girl, this dignified-sounding name was certainly somewhat startling. But even more surprising was her temperament. Until something was broken, she did not believe in fixing it. For one, at such a young age, she took care of a couple of children as if she were a mother. And, on top of that, as a bonus, her mother would beat her up. Being the oldest might have many advantages but, in Chandangauri’s share, there had only been disadvantages. Her mother always gave her the last and the smallest portion of food. It was good that Chandan was second to none. So, when Ma wandered away, Chandan would force a bit out of everyone else’s portions by yelling at someone, or making another cry, or threatening another sibling. Otherwise, the poor one would have been mired in misfortune.
Residents of Qingdao or attentive followers of local news may have heard of the affair I wish to discuss. On the 14th of August 2013, during a routine fire-safety inspection, a worker from the residential committee of Shinan District’s University Road discovered a heavily decomposed corpse by a small building inside the courtyard of Number 5 Longkou Road.
Like millions of Indonesian female workers abroad, Mega Vristian, the author of “The Jade Bracelet”, works as a live-in maid, performing domestic and care work. Their labor is indispensable in the global/regional labor market, which is in need of cheap, young female workers. At work, they face various forms of exploitation. It is this experience of inhuman working conditions that encourages some of them to take up a pen to tell and share their stories—sometimes in the form of a short story like this one.
Detective Kar had slept badly. He had eaten nothing during the long hours of interrogation at the NIS headquarters and the raw beef at dinner hadn’t gone down well. His stomach was aching when he awoke. He didn’t feel like getting out of bed but the phone had been ringing off the hook.