Kim Jae Min Reading Journal Blog

 Visitors that come at night, By Ryujin Jang 8/10 One’s homestead is commonly considered to be a zone of comfort and safety. Even those who have to face problems like disagreeable family members still consider their home as a place of expectation. Thus, to a citizen of a modern country, ‘unwanted visitors’ are easily a shocking experience.   I myself have never had a similar experience, but I once was the unexpected visitor myself. When I was about fifteen, our family left the city of Changwon where I loved my whole life, and moved to Seoul. The apartment we moved to was a seven story building, and our house was on the fifth floor. One day, when I came back from school, I used the staircase only to unconsciously step up to the third floor, which was the floor our house in Changwon was. When I pressed the password into the door dial, it only lett out a dull rejection bell chime. Right after that I saw that this floor was the third, and I scrambled up two more stairs. I still ...

Snowman, By Seo Yoo MI (2012) 9/10 Through the earlier part of the story, Yoo was described as a sort of enemy, that one guy who was better than you in every possible way. I believe me and most of my fellow readers share the experience of having a guy like this in life. But after finding his frozen corpse, the only feeling I had left for him was pity. Yoo was not the enemy nor the opposite of our main character, but just another victim of the cruel system, now dead and defeated like a worn-out gear that once belonged in a huge unstopping machine. If I have to pick out an opposite of our main character, I would instantly choose the delivery person. Unlike the businessmen who found it so hard to clen up the snow, he appears to find it so very easy. This seems to be metaphor about the difference between the two jobs. A businessman is considered default, probably decent job. Yet really, they suffer from overwork and stress. A delivery person is considered to be poor and uneducated, but i...

 Extreme_Chulsoo, By H.S. Kim  8/10 I found it very ironic that Chulsoo left the original system of CSAT only to join a different system of SNS starship. Chulsoo found the students studying for good grades to be unable to understand,, while he chose to perform every stupid trend and material that can get him a bit more attention any day. I personally believe the regrets he felt at the last moment were not just about risking his life for some attention on the internet, but possibly because he suddenly realized he failed to really venture past the system. He may have chose a life most others don’t, but I don’t think that didn’t mean he really found himself the true meaning of life. But I can’t blame Chulsoo for his choices, for the real target to blame is the society itself. In modern South Korea, you’re either the overworked whitecolor businessman inside the window, or the SNS addict dopamine junkie hanging outside the building cleaning it. A vicious caste forced upon most soul...

 Revelation, By Flannery O'Connor (1964) 8.5/10 Despite being the main character, Mrs. Turpin is a disgusting person with twisted thoughts. She makes up strange castes inside the mind, and considers most others she meets to be below her. As a moderner’s view, she is both racist and mammonistic. The worse thing is, she uses these wrong ideals to feel good about herself while belittling others. Everyone in the waiting room is severely mean toward certain others in the room. This may be because of the whole twisted notions about supremacy that was natural in the era. The rich hated the poor, the white hated the black, and so on. This story points out countless contradictions and wrong ideas that are portrayed with characters with terrible personalities. This story also holds countless details related to Christianity. To start, the title itself is from the Book of Revelation by John the apostle. Mary Grace functions as a messenger sent by God to deliver the ever-important message to Mr...

 The Tower, By  Marghanita Laski  (1995) 8/10 I was surprised about how much this story was similar to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. They both share feministic messages depicted by an oppressing male husband figure and a female main character trying to break free from him. Also, the slow progressive call of madness was an important factor in both stories. On the other hand, the two stories differ in the most important way. In The Yellow Wallpaper’, the main character did go mad, but still managed to break free from her husband and triumph over him. However, in ‘The Tower’, the main character is swallowed not only by the madness, but also with fear. Thus, instead of teaching her husband a lesson, she descends, trembling and stuttering into the abyss. I found the detail that the ‘tower’, which is supposed to take someone higher, ended up taking the main character down then where she started from to be very ironic. Overall, I think this story would have been a bit better wit...

 The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) 9/10 I know the author didn’t really intend to anything with this topic, but I couldn’t help but feel that this story was very similar to cosmic horror stories. The slow, slicky descend into madness and the shocking ending totally fit my taste. During my second read, I came up with an interpretative thought that the ‘ripping away the wallpaper’ and ‘letting the woman out’ is a possible metaphor for giving birth. It seems the main character is mentally obsessed with the concept of birth after actually giving birth to a child. This obsession, combined with the stress originating from her husband’s oppression, might have been expressed in the form of seeing a woman, symbolizing both the newborn baby and herself, who must be freed. I also focused on the husband character. He doesn’t show any intense form of emotion during the story except the ending, and treats the main character almost like a child. His actions are based on...