Author's Note: Life Is Like Bitcoin

This novel is a story about reconciliation. The first thing reconciliation needs is communication. Only then can it lead to understanding and empathy. The narrator, who left his hometown for Seoul at a young age, has lived in isolation for a long time. He too is offered chances to communicate and to reconcile, again and again. But they are unfamiliar to him, and he is always clumsy.

The protagonist is the kind of fragmented urban worker we see all the time. This young man, with his tendency toward distorted thinking, works as an officetel building manager, a slightly unusual job. As many years as he has lived under pressure, that is how thick the crust has grown over his heart. Through the diaries of a tenant that he happens to find, the past of him and her, of the living and the dead, unfolds.

Fear at the sight of a stranger is an animal instinct. Human civilization overcame it through solidarity and grew. Meanwhile, the darkest chapters in the history of civilization were the work of those who tried to turn that fear into othering. In the twenty-first century, when we can communicate with the whole world in real time, this seems to be reaching its peak.

The internet helps people who share a religion, a philosophy, an ideology, a politics, a region, a school, an income bracket or a set of values gather comfortably together. Some people make online communities their reference group. What marks them is the high wall they build against the outside. Self-reflection is unnecessary. Contempt and mockery of others are the protocol. So they are always angry, or ready to be.

There are people that closed off in real life as well. People who can live without discomfort or want surrounded only by those who nod at everything they say. That is why politicians and tycoons cause scandals with remarks utterly detached from reality. The protagonist looks down on such people and thinks of them critically. A defense mechanism is not the only reason. It is because they are strangely like himself, measuring the world with a short ruler.

To understand others, we must first understand ourselves and make peace with ourselves. Only then is there room in the heart. If it is cramped and shabby, you cannot let in even an honored guest. What we need more than sharp criticism, cool judgment and analytical thinking is a wide embrace. Even when it is a little uncomfortable, we should try to accept and understand our differences. Better to do it before the crust falls away and the raw skin is exposed.

We must not fear those who are different from us, who aim for different things. We must widen the circle of people we talk to and the breadth of our understanding, and reconcile. We must be wary of those who stoke fear. What we should truly guard against is the violence of totalitarianism and uniformity. In a world that takes sides over small differences, desire matters more than love, and competition more than acceptance. In such a place, shouting good slogans has no power at all.

Following my previous novel, Goody Jeanne d'Arc, I have again written about the salvation of young people living a heavy reality. Searching for what an author has hidden behind the text is a reading habit of long standing for me, and the reason I came to love novels. I wanted to be a writer whose work shows something new on a second reading, so I too ask many questions in everything I write.

Some of you may read the author's note first, but most of you will have reached this page after finishing the novel. I recommend reading it again in a different season, in a different mood. You may feel different emotions and reach different interpretations, perhaps even a subversive conclusion. The structure of the novel, several sentences that serve as clues, and its allegory will help.

I am learning that what hides behind the words “writer” and “author” is a ferocious patience. Enduring the process by which writing you have labored over goes out into the world and meets its readers is more exhausting than writing all night. I will repeat that grueling process again and again, and I will keep overcoming it.