I said hello (home edition)

Author Kim Ae-ran · Publisher Munhakdongne · Published 2025-06-20 · ISBN 9791141602376

Book Introduction

“I will assert that Kim Ae-ran has long been a sociologist,
and now she is unequivocally so.”
_Shin Hyeong-cheol (Literary Critic)

Features “Good Neighbors,” winner of the 2022 O Yeong-su Literary Award,
and “Home Party,” winner of the Excellence Award at the 2022 Kim Seung-ok Literary Award

Novelist Kim Ae-ran returns with a new collection of short stories eight years after 『The Outside Is Summer』 (Munhakdongne, 2017). 『I Said Hello』, which includes a total of seven short stories, including "Home Party," which won the Excellence Award at the 2022 Kim Seung-ok Literary Award with the praise, "a novel that sharply demonstrates her unique ability to capture emotional particles floating in social spaces and give them clear expression," and "Good Neighbors," which won the 2022 O Yeong-su Literary Award, still showcases her characteristic ability to build a world in multiple layers with powerful emotional appeal and dilemma-ridden questions, but one can also encounter a slightly cooler and more dispassionate Kim Ae-ran than before.
The protagonist of this collection could be said to be 'space'. As the expression in the novel, "Many incidents in plays began with 'invitation' and 'visit,' 'intrusion' and 'escape'" (「Home Party」, p. 42), this book unfolds stories as characters visit someone's space. That place might be an elegant and stable space that suggests the homeowner's aesthetic taste and余裕 (「Home Party」), or a detached house overseas that allows for a month-long trip, "a luxury enjoyed for the first time in life," thanks to cheap prices and low accommodation costs (「A Small House in the Forest」). Or it might be a jeonse home (a rental system with a large lump-sum deposit) that has been carefully tended and used but now needs to be prepared for the new homeowner to move in (「Good Neighbors」), or a bookstore opened after quitting a job and investing all saved money (「Lemon Cake」). The reason why space is important in 『I Said Hello』 is not simply because it functions as a backdrop for the story, but because it is synonymous with the characters' lives themselves. Especially for Kim Ae-ran, who has described with unique insight the meaning of 'a single room' in our society, certain spaces are places that allow one to gauge someone's economic and social standing, and also complex, holistic places that contain a person's entire history. Therefore, the conflicts surrounding space in this collection can be seen as clashes of different people's life standards. Entering someone else's space, in other words, is an event of stepping outside the boundaries of the life one has lived as oneself.
In "Home Party," Kim Ae-ran asks, "How difficult is it for one person to stand in another person's shoes?" (p. 24) Will visiting another's space be a path to expanding understanding of others, or a path of intrusion that breaks down each other's standards? In a reality where it is harder than ever to step out of the boundaries of 'me' and move towards 'us,' where the scenery before our eyes and the people we interact with are increasingly being converted into monetary figures, Kim Ae-ran's question feels even more urgent. And that question can be rephrased: when shared disappointments and renunciations are experienced and a new starting line unfolds, what has changed from before and what has been preserved? Or what should change and what should be preserved? This is probably Kim Ae-ran's way of greeting us, necessary now when asking for someone's well-being and peace has become so deeply desired.

A different dimension of experience in emotion, perception, and thought
Kim Ae-ran's shining present

If the protagonist of 『I Said Hello』 is space, then we, following the story, are visitors invited alongside the characters into unfamiliar spaces. Just as the characters' senses are keenly expanded the moment they step into a new place, we too, with Kim Ae-ran's novels, experience our five senses opening more widely than ever, seeing what was previously invisible and hearing what was unheard. For example, in "Home Party," when Yi-yeon, who has lived a completely different life from the 'social mainstream' CEO Oh, is invited to CEO Oh's house and carefully walks in, when she instinctively senses how the furniture and interior design placed throughout the house create a 'narrative luster,' and when she constantly becomes aware of the subtle line drawn between herself and CEO Oh, we cannot help but wonder what lies hidden behind the glances, expressions, and conversations exchanged between CEO Oh and her acquaintances, following Yi-yeon, who sensitively takes in the information around her.
Kim Ae-ran's observational power, which delves deeply into the hidden aspects not apparent on the surface, also shines in "A Small House in the Forest." In "A Small House in the Forest," 'I' am currently traveling abroad with my husband. The reasons we could take a month-long trip were the pretext of finally going on the honeymoon we had been postponing, and the fact that 'I' had recently quit my job, but "the biggest influence was the price" (p. 51). While initially satisfied with the cheap local prices and low accommodation costs at the travel destination, 'I' soon felt uncomfortable precisely for that reason. After realizing that the woman who cleaned our accommodation every day was around the same age as me, "I was somewhat flustered by the blatant class difference I encountered in a foreign country" (p. 66). That is, because "it's nice that prices are low and goods are cheap, but the fact that the labor to make them is cheap still feels awkward" (ibid.). How to tip that woman and what to call her are intertwined with this perception, making what might be a simple and easy problem for some into a huge problem for 'I', one that mobilizes all the ways of life I have lived so far.
The intense emotional turmoil the character feels from the awareness of being distinctly separated from the other by class is once again manifested in a complex way in the subsequent short story, "Good Neighbors." 'I', a reading instructor, faces two immediate problems. One is that Shiu, a student I teach, is about to move. The other is that I also have to move. The difference is that Shiu's family is moving to a larger home they own, while 'I' has to find a new home in a situation where real estate prices have skyrocketed in recent years. 'I' had felt pride and satisfaction teaching Shiu, but when Shiu's mother asked if I could continue teaching Shiu after they moved, I couldn't easily answer.
In this situation, a sharp question cuts through the novel, confronting us: 'What does it truly mean to be a good neighbor?' Kim Ae-ran explores the possibility, or impossibility, of us being good neighbors to each other amidst the realistic conditions that make it difficult to be 'good neighbors'. When words like "community, neighbor, solidarity" (p. 125) are honestly spoken through the mouth of a character in the novel, we are acutely reminded of how those natural and familiar values have been fractured in recent years, and what has accelerated that process.

Asking for well-being and peace for us, the weak,
The greeting of our time

Characters who are keenly aware of the differences between themselves and others appear in other novels as well. In "Foreign Body Sensation," Gitae, a bank employee, cannot hold back during a conversation with his juniors and gives a 'piece of advice' as an older generation about how they received benefits differently from him, only to immediately regret it. In "Lemon Cake," Gijin feels a 'sense of undertaking a big task' during the brief time accompanying her mother, who came to Seoul for a hospital examination, yet thinking of her mother returning home alone, she feels "pity and regret, annoyance and relief, compassion and guilt" (p. 209) simultaneously amidst the "obvious fact that my today and your today are different" (p. 214).
As they age a little, as their environments change, and as their immediate concerns differ, characters often feel friction in their relationships with others and are frustrated by a sense of a foreign body, something not fully digested, remaining within them. However, this sense of difference does not always lead in a negative direction. Kim Ae-ran also focuses on the beautiful moments that this difference creates. Jisoo in "Like a Raindrop" is in a situation where she seems to have lost everything and is pushed to the brink. Jisoo, who called a wallpaper hanger to cleanly finish her 'last' without bothering anyone, instead receives some comfort from her and feels a very slight possibility of a 'beginning'. This could be because the wallpaper hanger didn't fully understand Jisoo's situation, or perhaps didn't presume to know.
Reaching a realm of understanding through not knowing also happens in "I Said Hello." Eunmi, who broke up with her lover long ago and recently lost her mother, is learning English online because "studying a foreign language makes me feel like there's still some possibility and opportunity left for me" (p. 226). Of course, Robert, the native English speaker instructor, doesn't know about Eunmi's circumstances. Similarly, Eunmi doesn't know what kind of loss Robert has experienced. When these two people bravely take turns revealing a little bit of their situations as if playing Twenty Questions, and gain hints to walk towards each other, we see how a few words and limited time, rather than many words and ample time, illuminate each other's core. And as the title 'I Said Hello' implies, it is also a journey from misunderstanding to understanding. In the past, Eunmi once misheard a part of a pop song lyric as 'hello' while listening to it with her lover. Her lover corrected her misconception by telling her the correct lyrics, but much later, he apologized for what he did that day. That is, for overlooking the possibility that "our lives can only be right in such a wrong way" (p. 253).
Thus, the characters are able to close a chapter of their lives by embracing past misconceptions and misunderstandings. According to the dictionary, 'annyeong' (hello/goodbye) "contains both the meaning of 'nice to meet you' and 'goodbye'" (p. 222), a word placed at moments of meeting and parting. But for Kim Ae-ran, 'annyeong' becomes a necessary word not only for a single relationship but also for properly opening and closing a period of life. And it is a word that quietly nods to someone without correcting their misconceptions or misunderstandings, and through that, wishes for their peace. Therefore, we can say this: 『I Said Hello』, where Kim Ae-ran's deep and mature sense of the times shines in every page, is a book by and for the contemporary generation.

Table of Contents

Home Party 007
A Small House in the Forest 045
Good Neighbors 097
Foreign Body Sensation 143
Lemon Cake 189
I Said Hello 217
Like a Raindrop 257

Commentary | Shin Hyeong-cheol (Literary Critic)
Love Your Neighbor as Your Money 295

Author's Note 315