Olives Under the Sun: A Novel by Kim Cho-yeop

Author Kim Choyeop · Publisher Giant Books · Published 2026-08-03 · ISBN 9791191824582

About the Book

“Go everywhere, then come see me. Understood?”

The act of ultimately choosing to believe
what cannot be proven

To young Ire, Jun was the one who taught her how vast and unnecessarily beautiful the world was. He told her stories of deserts and glaciers, oceans and stars, and after asking difficult questions, he would say, “You ultimately have to do your own thinking.” Ire loved even his strangeness. But one day, Jun disappeared without a word of farewell.

Many years later, news of Jun reaches Ire. Around the same time, Solmin receives a suspicious phone call asking her to cover the Blue Agnes convent, and strangers appear before Ire, seemingly aware of her past. Seemingly unrelated events gradually begin to point to the same secret: that Ire’s past contains blanks she herself doesn’t know about, and only Jun can explain them.

Ire and Solmin, reunited after eight years, cross borders in pursuit of Jun’s traces. However, the moment they realize they are being followed, their journey deviates from its planned course. On a path where they cannot tell whose words are true or whose goodwill is a trap, Solmin grips Ire’s wrist, and Ire runs in the direction Solmin points. Ire moves forward by trusting people, while Solmin doubts every possibility to discern danger. The two clash repeatedly, but it is precisely this difference that fuels their journey.

As the two retrace Ire’s lost time, a secret slowly begins to take shape. But what awaits them at the end of the road is not an answer that will neatly restore the past, but the long span of a being’s life lived as itself. When Jun’s voice begins to be heard after a long silence, the racing story plunges into the silent deep sea.

In 『Olive Under the Sun』, consciousness cannot escape the matter that constitutes it, nor can it skip through time. To reach a distant future, one must live through that exact amount of time. The memories, sensations, love, and pain accumulated during that time form a being’s life that cannot be replicated. Consciousness thus formed is unique because it cannot be reproduced, and it knows sorrow because it is bound by time. Kim Choyeop proposes a fascinating hypothesis that these very constraints enable consciousness.

This thought experiment leads to an old question about the soul. Does the soul exist apart from matter? Or is it the unique trace a being imprints on its body and time? Whichever answer one chooses, the soul cannot be fully proven to others. All we can encounter is the voice of a being that feels, remembers, and suffers. Kim Choyeop reveals that she wrote this novel while contemplating the act of ultimately choosing to believe that voice, even knowing it cannot be proven. In 『Olive Under the Sun』, belief is not about asserting the uncertain as fact. It is the choice to listen to the words of a suffering being because it has a heart, and to not turn away from that suffering.

“Life is a single, one-time computation. The heart is bound by time,
and time leaves irreversible traces on us at every moment.”

What makes us human?
Re-examining the human condition from beyond the boundaries

At the beginning of 『Olive Under the Sun』, Ire sees an olive tree rooted in a strange land and thinks, “an olive growing where it shouldn’t be.” This is because it is not a tree that originally grew there. However, an olive tree does not choose where it is born. It is born there, and since it has already taken root, it simply lives.

This olive tree is an image that permeates the entire work. Can a life that has already begun be considered wrong simply because it did not originally belong there? This question soon leads to the lives of Ire and Jun. Ire has lost her memories from before an accident and does not know how the matter that constitutes her has changed. Jun is certain that he has a heart, but there is no way to prove this to others. Nevertheless, they love, feel lonely, suffer, and choose their own remaining lives. Can the time a being has lived be denied simply because its manner of birth or physical conditions deviate from familiar norms? Through their lives, this novel re-asks what makes us human.

Despite harboring such weighty questions, 『Olive Under the Sun』 is not a novel confined to abstract concepts. As Professor Kim Sang-wook of Kyung Hee University’s Department of Physics described this work as a “road movie-style thriller” in his recommendation, the story rapidly advances, driven by cross-border pursuits and escapes. Interspersed throughout, Ire and Solmin’s sharp arguments and unexpected jokes add a lively rhythm. The novel’s contemplations naturally become clearer as the two run, argue, and save each other.

The questions posed by 『Olive Under the Sun』 also connect with reality outside the novel. We clearly divide belief and fact, human and non-human, normal and abnormal, and readily judge beings placed outside those lines. We demand more explanations for lives that are difficult to understand and postpone unproven suffering. However, one does not have to fully understand another to respect them. Even if we can never fully know, we can listen to their voice and make room for them to live together. At that point, the question “Is that being human?” transforms into “What kind of humans will we choose to be?” That very question is why 『Olive Under the Sun』 must reach us now.

* Series Introduction

The endless stories we want, that you haven’t discovered yet
The expansion of stories continues

『Olive Under the Sun』 was released as the second series of the ‘Untold Originals’ project (a brand slogan of CJ ENM’s entertainment division, meaning ‘the endless stories CJ ENM has that you haven’t discovered yet’). This project aims to first present IPs co-planned by CJ ENM and Blossom Creative as novels, then expand them into video content. Other books in the series include Bae Myung-hoon’s novel 『The Strange Trajectory of Space Island Savi』, Kim Jung-hyuk’s novel 『Deleter: We Make Things Disappear』, and Chun Seon-ran’s collection of linked stories 『Moss Forest』. The expansion of stories continues.

From the Book

Escaped relationships, unbearable questions, a flooding past. All these things, piled up and suffocating Ire, were slowly pushed out by the hymns echoing through the cathedral ceiling, and only then could Ire finally breathe. She thought she was falling into an endless abyss, but it turned out to be a fall created by imagination. If she just made up her mind, solid ground was just a handspan below. She thought it was a deep well where not even light could enter, but there was something eternally bright that could push away even that darkness. Something she had been searching for so long. Ire fell in love. For the first time, she felt this was where she belonged. Not a troublesome thing wrongly grown in the wrong place.
---p.22

Solmin’s thought was firm. There is no such thing as a soul. There is no immaterial soul separate from matter. That is the rule of the godless world Solmin belongs to. The concept of a soul is not needed to explain the principles and phenomena of the world. Sorrow, joy, love, and death all belong to the material world, and are chemical reactions occurring within the moist biological tissue of the brain. The soul cannot be measured and is a concept that inherently refuses measurement, and thus has no meaningful impact on the material world. Therefore, it cannot be believed to exist, nor is there a need to believe it.
---p.107

If the Lord told the olive tree to be uprooted, should it obediently be uprooted? Ire… didn’t want to. Ire could feel the presence of God, and His warmth and love. Then why should she nod to words that deny her? Is her faith, which cannot be so obedient, truly pure? But why must faith always be pure?
---p.116~117

I wish there was something bright in the world.
Something absolutely bright and radiant.
And I wish there was meaning.
I cannot endure all that is meaningless.
How wonderful it would be if there were some eternal being that would tell me that all that death, all that love, all that misunderstanding is not meaningless.
---p.241~242

Can true friendship exist between someone who believes the world is comprehensible and someone who is suffocated by its incomprehensibility and tries to escape?
---p.243

Laughter resembles things that pour out. Joy resembles things that scatter. It overflows, spills, and can never be gathered again. There is a clink. The moment passes. Like that spring. Like a summer that happens only once. You want to hold onto time. You still love life. You want to pick up even broken fragments.
---p.304

Life is a single, one-time computation. The heart is bound by time, and time leaves irreversible traces on us at every moment.
---p.307

I wanted to confuse and shake people’s minds. I wanted to open the next door. I wanted to make them hate and like something, ultimately making them unable to say anything. Just as Solmin had surrendered beneath those stars, before the complexity and mystery of an unimaginable world.
---p.369

“Ms. Ire’s influence is certainly not purely benevolent. Regardless of whether it’s benevolent or not, it can’t be categorized. It will give people headaches and put them in difficult situations. It will continue to do so. But in such a complex world, I wonder if even the Lord could tell us to only act with absolute benevolence.”
---p.382

Instead of taking the easy path, Ire wanted to keep asking questions. She wanted to stand before difficult questions, even knowing there was much to bear. She decided to walk a path she suspected was rough and stony. But strangely enough, Ire felt incredibly proud of that choice now. Perhaps she could even call this feeling self-respect.
---p.383

Recommendations

A clever, warm, and very dangerous novel!
The believer and the doubter run together.
The destination of this fast-paced journey is not a simple truth. What awaits at the end of the road are questions about the soul and consciousness, memory and body, and believing in the suffering of others. You run with a smile, then suddenly your heart chills, and after closing the last page, the boundaries of the ‘human’ I believed in have shifted slightly.
- Bong Joon-ho (Film Director)

Kim Choyeop tackles heavy issues in the form of a road-movie thriller. Following the chase and pursuit, you’ll be swept away by the speed of watching an action film. But in the end, what this book asks is what humanity is, or if such a thing even exists. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to ponder with Kim Choyeop’s language. Before buying the book and opening the first page, I urge you to check if you have any urgent matters left. Once you start reading, it’s hard to stop.
- Kim Sang-wook (Professor of Physics, Kyung Hee University)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Wrong Olive
Chapter 2: Where the Soul Resides
Chapter 3: The Star Chaser
Chapter 4: A Single Computation
Chapter 5: As It Was In The Beginning
Recommendations
Author’s Note