[Bread-Baking Typewriter] In the End, Humans Were Scarier Than the Epidemic

Remastered Edition of Pyun Hye-young's 'Jae and Red' Reissued
A Prophetic Book That Accurately Diagnosed the Pandemic Situation 13 Years Ago

The author of Ash and Red, Pyun Hye-young, says, "It has become clear that what turns life into ruins is not plagues, garbage, or the constantly appearing swarms of rats, but blatant hatred and discrimination, and sophisticated capitalism. If this had been after the pandemic, this novel would not have been written." Photo by Getty Images

The first time I heard the name Pyeon Hye-young was around 2007. It was a time when young female writers were gaining attention in the literary world, often mentioned alongside Jeong Yi-hyun of "My Sweet City" and Kim Ae-ran of "Saliva Dripping." Back then, the somewhat musty term "female writer" was still in use. The common traits the world pointed out were bright stories and delicate, feminine prose?just the usual clich?s. Looking back, it was probably just because they were young female writers that they were all grouped together. After all, we are a people who like to categorize things as the "5 great XXX" or "3 great OOO." Among them was a writer who published books with a slightly different tone, such as "Aoi Garden" and "Towards the Breeding Ground." That was Pyeon Hye-young. The book I bought back then is still well kept on my bookshelf, unopened. Then, skipping over the collections I already owned, I happened to open the remastered "Ash and Red."

This book itself was originally published over ten years ago. It was exactly released in 2010. But the fact that I am reading it now is actually a good thing. The world we lived in for three years is exactly reflected in this book published thirteen years ago. The outbreak of an unknown infectious disease, people being quarantined, people falling to the bottom. If I had read it at the time of its release, it would have just been an unpleasant story.

Pyeon Hye-young revealed this through the author's note: "Over the ten years since the book was published, the pandemic has become not a fictional event but a current reality. When I was conceiving and writing the novel, the plague was something from the distant past and the Middle Ages to me. It was a time I had never experienced and a future that would never come. If I had experienced the pandemic, this novel would not have been written. It became clear that what ruins life is not the plague, garbage, or the constantly appearing rat swarms, but blatant hatred and discrimination, and sophisticated capitalism, so it would have been difficult to imagine otherwise."

For three full years, we were trapped. At the end of 2019, the existence of COVID-19 was confirmed and soon spread worldwide. The world was paralyzed, and many people died. Humanity fought the disaster while trying to find the cause. In the history of plagues, searching for the cause is both an act to find treatment or prevention methods and an act to find who is to blame for this suffering. It was Wuhan, China, and bats. "The world is suffering because people in Wuhan, China, ate bats." This was the prevailing theory, alongside conspiracy theories like "a biochemical weapon made in China leaked out."

This year, we are trying to move beyond the pandemic era. Like the hope in the summer of 2020 that herd immunity would be achieved and COVID-19 overcome once vaccination rates exceeded 70%, has COVID been conquered? Not really. Although cases have decreased significantly from the peak, tens of thousands still contract the disease daily. Despite hundreds dying daily, as if there was never a time when each death was counted, there is no interest. What we have learned over three years is that this disease will not disappear. And now, no one talks about bats anymore.

In this work, the protagonist is dispatched to a foreign country because he is good at catching rats and, after his life falls to the bottom, ends up having a job catching rats again. He himself does not believe rats are the cause of the plague. This book accurately captures the phenomenon of the pandemic through the protagonist. Regardless of the cause of the disease, it is ultimately humans and systems that spread the disease, amplify fear, and accept others' sacrifices to protect their own.

Ash and Red | Pyeon Hye-young | Changbi | 238 pages | 15,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.