The author’s autographed book, her name in Korean script (Photo by Liana Garcellano)
THE rule in reading fiction is to never assume that the main character is the author and vice versa, according to my former literature teachers. It made sense. Ponder it: Is the author reflexively a street walker—or a vampire, an assassin, a drug dealer—because the story’s main character is one?
Yet this is the situation Korean author Hwang Bo-reum often finds herself in, with her readers believing she’s the doppelgänger of Lee Yeongju, the lead character in her bestseller debut novel Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (2022).
“I never realized that I resembled Yeongju when I was writing it until I met my readers. There’s a tendency to see Yeongju in me,” said Bo-reum when a reader asked if she had patterned her characters after herself.
The question was raised at the Q/A session for Conversations with Hwang Boreum: Stories in the Bookshop, held Sept. 12, 2025 at the University of the Philippines Diliman’s School of Urban and Regional Planning. It was one of Bo-reum’s three book talks organized by the Korean Cultural Center (KCC)-Philippines in connection with the 2025 Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) held Sept. 10–14. The other two were held at KCC in Taguig City on Sept 11 and at the MIBF main stage and National Bookstore booth on Sept. 13.
That people drew parallelisms between author Bo-reum and fictional character Yeongju isn’t unexpected. Both had successful careers that they left behind, fed up with the rat race, and both got back on their feet. But the similarities end there. Bo-reum became a full-time writer, and Yeongju, after her divorce, opened Hyunam-dong Bookshop in Seoul.
Bo-reum is the second Korean writer to visit the Philippines under the auspices of KCC (after Park Sang-young, author of Love in the City, who had his book talk at Ateneo de Manila University in September last year). Like K-drama and K-pop, K-literature in translation is part of hallyu (or the Korean wave).
Writer and book character had successful careers that they left behind, fed up with the rat race
Jieun Kiaer, a Young Bin Min–KF professor of Korean linguistics at Oxford University, said the genuine interest in Korean culture is an important factor in the popularity of Korean books in English-language countries (thebookerprizes.com).
Anton Hur, writer and translator of Korean literature, said the growth of K-literature is influenced by Korea’s history. “It transformed from being the poorest nation to one of the richest in the world, and did it in a space of essentially a generation…,” Hur said. “The memory of poverty, war strife, being refugees is very, very fresh…yet we now have the means to confront and to consecrate these experiences in various forms of media like K-drama…” (thebookerprizes.com)
‘Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop’ has sold 150, 000 copies in Korea since its release in 2022. (Photo by Liana Garcellano)
K-literature’s popularity soared further when Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, which celebrated her “poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” (nobelprize.org) Other Korean authors who have received international recognition are Bora Chung for Cursed Bunny (2022), Cheon Myeong-Kwan for Whale (2023), and Hwang Sok-yong for Mater 2-10 (2024). They were shortlisted as Booker Prize nominees.
Similarly, in an interview with aplussingapore.com in March, Bo-reum attributed the success of her compatriots to their ability to probe the human psyche. “Since everyone experiences profound pain and sadness at least once in their lives, perhaps that’s why stories that originate from these emotions have the power to draw the readers’ attention,” she said.
Bo-reum’s novel has been labeled as “healing fiction,” a literary trend in Korea that Google defines as the genre focused on stressed, burned-out characters finding joy and pleasure, and, in turn, giving readers solace. The settings are usually stores, cafés, and small businesses like Yeongju’s bookshop. Other novels considered as healing fiction are The Rainfall Market (2024) by You Yeong-gwang and The Dallergut Dream Department Store (2020) by Miye Lee.
Bo-reum worked as a software developer for seven years at LG Electronics before calling it quits. She said that despite meeting good people, she found coding uninteresting and, at 29, her dislike for it gnawed at her. A year later, “at 30, I decided to do something I like, which was ambiguous. After resting for two years, I realized I wanted to be a writer, and one random day I wrote things,” she said, adding that she never dreamed of what she wanted to be growing up and just chose a course in university that everyone hungered for.
(In an interview with The Korea Herald in March 2024, Bo-reum said she gave herself 10 years to explore new avenues. She attended writing classes while working part-time jobs. She soon came out with her collection of essays—Everyday I Read, Trying Kickboxing for the First Time, The Perfect Distance, Simple Living. Taking a break from writing essays, she wrote Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, pouring everything she loved into it—books, characters who read books, and conversations with readers.)
Bo-reum’s life changed when she became a writer. The upside, she said, was having no one to give her tasks to complete; the downside was “no tasks, no salary.” She wasn’t discouraged because, as she put it, she’s a “voluntary person”—someone who willingly does tasks she likes.
The most challenging aspect of her writing career, she said, was “writing, because making a decision to write for hours is quite hard.” She hurdled it by reading books on writing and without resorting to tying herself to a chair, as one of the authors she read did, or placing a door in the writing space that only opens from the outside. Like Yeongju, Bo-reum simply sat behind her desk, called up a Word document, and wrote.
The “writer’s wall” was another difficulty she faced: She was unable to write for close to five years. But she didn’t push herself to write. Instead, she engaged in quiet introspection and eventually wrote short pieces “to not lose my writing and self-confidence.”
Conversely, the most rewarding part is readers saying that her work is life-changing. She recalled the time when, at one of her book talks, she was told that a mother’s depressed teenaged son took a turn for the better after reading her novel.
Bo-reum recalled the time when, in one of her book talks, she was told that a mother’s depressed teenaged son took a turn for the better after reading her novel
Bo-reum had three things on her mind in writing her novel: “a bookshop starting with the character hyu (‘rest’ in English), Yeongju, and Minjun, the barista.” As she wrote in her Author’s Note, “Everything else fell into place as the novel progressed.”
She set Hyunam-dong Bookshop in a “serene neighborhood,” which one didn’t conveniently stumble upon but purposely went to. At “Conversations,” she mentioned that she chose the bookshop as setting because it was a familiar place to her. Also, she wanted the characters, like Yeongju and Minjun, to have conversations about life’s purpose in the bookshop—something uncommon in Korea.
Bo-reum explained: “Such conversations with a 20- or 30-year-old friend might not be possible, and so in the novel there’s the Book Talk Club. Using a book as a medium, you can talk about issues with others. The bookshop is a place where you can discuss.”
However, she clarified that although Hyunam-dong is a sanctuary for the wearied and disenfranchised, a space to talk doesn’t have to be a bookshop: “There’s a need to move the space to another, especially those with varying opinions. I’ve encountered someone with an opposing mindset and political view and it was hard, but you must communicate. It’s important to address the polarization of people, and encounter people with different perspectives.”
The world has noticed the novel, and it has been translated into English, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Spanish. Bo-reum admitted that she considered a translation done well if her novel is reviewed as good. Interestingly, her work has also caught the attention of a drama director, but exciting as that may sound, she declined the proposal of turning it into a series. She didn’t want Yeongju, Minjun, and Seungwoo, former office worker-turned-author, figuring in a love triangle.
Readers also felt an affinity towards Minjun and Jungsuh, whose struggles reflected their own hardships. But the connection was never intentional, Bo-reum said, explaining that her characters’ concerns about their careers just flowed naturally, mirroring questions she asked herself —“How do I live? What should I do?”—when she was met with rejections by publishing firms.
Her questions formed the basis of the characters’ situations and life choices, which was “what I wanted to write about,” she said.
Minjun is the student voted most likely to succeed in life—motivated, passionate, and hardworking. He had planned each semester after getting into his university of choice and maintained a steady GPA of 4.0. Yet, after graduation, he was always rejected by companies despite making it to the final round of interviews. Dejected and disillusioned, he hopped from one part-time job to another until he became a full-time barista at Hyunam-dong and finally found his footing.
Jungsuh is the crocheter, a former overworked contractual worker made to hope for eight years that she’d be made a regular employee. She gave Yeongju a bag of crochet scrubbies as a thank-you present for letting her stay in the bookshop unconditionally. She quit the company altogether when credit for her completed project was given to someone else and was patronizingly told she couldn’t be promoted. She turned to meditation and crocheting to calm her anger.
Welcome to Hyunam-dong Bookshop illustrates literature’s therapeutic power as readers—Filipinos included—find healing, relatability, and validation with Yeongju et al. Readers connect on a personal level with modern-day struggles—burnout, loneliness, the pressures of a competitive job market, and learning that quitting the rat race isn’t a sign of weakness. The novel embraces self-care as not entirely a narcissistic bourgeois practice.
The novel illustrates literature’s therapeutic power as readers—Filipinos included—find healing, relatability, and validation…The novel embraces self-care as not entirely a narcissistic bourgeois practice
And it comes across as a subtle critique on Korea’s hierarchical, hypercompetitive culture. Bo-reum explained: “The novel is slow in tempo, so it’s a way of criticism. Korea is fast-changing. Senior citizens have to adapt to new developments even if they’re old, so they’re stressed and oppressed. They don’t have time to think.”
But here’s a snag. Yeongju and friends putting their lives back together is uplifting, yet the words of Carol Hanisch, the American radical feminist activist, continually pealed in one’s mind: “The personal is political.” One was inwardly nagged by the question: “Will Bo-reum’s future characters extend the healing process to overcome class and gender biases?”
Post-book talk group photo with Hwang Bo-reum (center) at UP Diliman (Photo by Korean Cultural Center–Philippines)
The author did say that she’s in the midst of writing her second novel.
