Author Kim Ana, winner of the 15th Honbul Literary Award for her novel "Children of the Fourth Person," has created a powerful work that gives voice to survivors of institutional abuse and collective trauma. The award-winning author began writing the book as a personal mission to connect with others who might have endured similar painful experiences throughout their lives.
The novel follows two central characters, Gwangji and Aurora, who grow up in a town called P before being sent to an island facility called Happy Children's Welfare Foundation, also known as Haengabok. The facility's name deliberately echoes the Korean word for happiness, "haengbok," creating a cruel irony for what the children actually experience there. While the institution promises the children a better life under its care and protection, what they actually encounter is a systematic regime of control and exploitation disguised as benevolent guardianship.
After enduring significant abuse at the facility, the children are eventually cast out and forced to return to their hometown. Upon their return, they make a startling discovery: they share the same recurring dreams, and their memories and psychological pain are mysteriously interconnected. This shared trauma becomes the foundation for their journey as they set out together in search of what Kim describes as the elusive "we" - a collective identity born from shared suffering.
At a press conference held on Tuesday, Kim opened up about the deeply personal origins of her novel. "I went through a series of painful experiences that left deep scars, and since childhood, I've had recurring nightmares," she revealed. She explained that early last year, these nightmares returned with renewed intensity, prompting her to consider the broader implications of trauma. "I suddenly wondered how many other women might have gone through similar things, how many of them might also be haunted in their sleep. I wanted to reach out to them, but I didn't know how. So I wrote a novel."
The novel's most innovative aspect is Kim's employment of what she calls the "fourth-person one," a narrative perspective that transcends the conventional first, second, and third-person viewpoints. This concept encompasses collective pain and amplifies voices that have been systematically silenced or completely erased from public discourse. The central question the novel explores is how these individual voices, when brought together, can form a unified "we" that speaks with collective power and shared understanding.
Kim explained that this innovative narrative approach developed organically during her writing process. "When I finished my first draft, the idea of the fourth person didn't exist," she said. "It came up later in a discussion with fellow writers when one of them mentioned Olga Tokarczuk's notion of a fourth-person narrator, which I then began to apply consciously to the novel." Polish Nobel laureate Tokarczuk has described the fourth-person narrator as one that transcends individual perspectives and "manages to encompass the perspective of each of the characters."
Kim's interpretation of the fourth-person perspective is distinctly her own, describing it as "a flexible, fluid community of people bound by shared experience." She elaborated on this concept, saying, "It's a collective that communicates through pain, but also one that allows freedom. People come together, then drift apart. In the novel, the children gather at a place to heal, and eventually return to their own lives. That movement between solitude and togetherness is what the fourth person means to me."
As her book was officially released on Tuesday, Kim admitted to experiencing complex emotions about sharing such a personal work with the public. "It's no longer mine. It will soon belong to the readers. That makes me afraid, restless. I can't sleep, wondering where this story will go," she confessed. The vulnerability required to publish such deeply personal material clearly weighs on the author, who has transformed her own trauma into a vehicle for collective healing.
Kim also reflected on the therapeutic aspect of her writing process, revealing the intimate dialogue she maintained with her younger self throughout the creation of the novel. "The person I spoke with most while writing was my younger self, the child who once felt despair. I used to think only the 'first-person one' could describe me, but at 38, I found a new pronoun for her, and it's a new way to speak through the language of imagination."
Looking toward the future, Kim announced her plans to begin work on another novel this winter. In contrast to the heavy themes of her current work, she intends to write "a lighter story about women who dance freely, unbound by convention," suggesting a desire to explore themes of liberation and joy after delving so deeply into trauma and recovery.
The Honbul Literary Award, which Kim received, carries significant prestige in Korean literature. The award was established to honor the literary spirit of Choi Myung-hee (1947-1998), author of the epic novel "Honbul," which chronicles three generations of women living under Japanese rule during the 1930s. The award recognizes outstanding works of full-length fiction without distinguishing between new and established authors, and comes with a substantial cash prize of 70 million won ($48,800), reflecting its importance in the Korean literary community.
