Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop Review: Bookworms x The World

I’ve always had a book in my hands.

I still have a video of little Karen with an upside-down dictionary in her hands. I must have been about two or three when I proudly proclaimed to the world, in response to my mom’s question of what I was doing, “I’m reading”.

During high school, I would read a book a day, so addicted I was to how these stories made me feel. Books have offered me solace and guidance. They have allowed me to live different lives and see different places. And they have sheltered me when I needed a place to cry.

That’s exactly how Yeongju, the bookshop owner from Hwang Bo-reum’s debut novel Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, feels. That might also be, if you’re a bookworm yourself, how you feel. And I think that’s exactly why you would fall in love with the tale of this little Korean bookshop.

This review is spoiler-free. Enjoy! But if you’re in a rush, you can also pin our summary at the bottom!

What Yeongju’s Tale Is About and How It Unravels

Of course, if you’ve read the official synopsis, you know that there’s more to Yeongju’s story than that. But the magic of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is that you’re introduced to all its characters naturally, as if they were books themselves. Page by page, you slowly get to know them and the things that brought them to this cute bookshop that has the power to heal broken hearts and light up diverging paths.

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is a quiet ode to reading and yet, it’s also an act of rebellion against the modern world. Yeongju’s tale is all about how we are the only ones who can define our own happiness, and how we actually can find the courage to go against what society might deem as “success” by pursuing what truly brings us joy.

Life is too complicated and expansive to be judged solely by the career you have. You could be unhappy doing something you liked, just as it was possible to do what you didn’t like but derive happiness from something entirely different.

Hwang Bo-reum opts for an omniscient narrator who can guide us through all characters’ emotions, doubts, and thoughts. A perfect choice that allows us to understand that, truly, the main character of this tale is the bookshop itself. An omniscient narrator helps us see how the bookshop affects everyone who walks through its doors and how it bolsters their development. We feel their doubts and their pains all the while witnessing their process of healing, forgiveness, and acceptance.

The chapters are short and we comfortably jump around the little Hyunam-dong Bookshop universe, following not only the bookshop owner Yeongju but also Minjun, the barista, and Seungwoo, the writer who helps Yeongju with her weekly writing seminars. Through them, we establish relationships with secondary characters who are just as charming, such as the confused teenager Mincheol and his mom (who reclaims her name throughout the novel), the coffee roaster Jimi, and the knitting lady Jungsuh.

The Hyunam-dong Bookshop and Its Characters

The characters are rounded, captivating, and relatable. They feel real and, by the end of the book, you feel as if they’ve become your friends. You’re interested in their struggles and you want to know if and how they’re going to find the answers they are looking for.

This is a warm-hearted tale of people who are lost and, through sheer perseverance and patience, they find themselves again. They recognise who and where they are and make a conscious effort to silence the pressures of the world around them in order to create their own happiness. They accept their doubts and worries, their failures and mistakes, and they take one step at a time to create days full of small accomplishments and joys.

I should stop labelling myself an inadequate person. I still have opportunities, don’t I? Opportunities to act kindly, to speak with compassion. Even a disappointing human like myself can still be, occasionally, a good person.

Yeongju and Co. appreciate the little victories and the wonderful little moments that pepper our days but that we sometimes fail to acknowledge. They gather the courage to face themselves and their past and make their own decisions. For someone who is surrounded by the noise of the society we live in, they offer us consolation and a place to go back to when everything feels like a bit too much.

The Role of The Bookshop Itself

As we get to know this cosy setting and its characters, the bookshop slowly becomes a haven to both the characters and the reader, a place where we can relax and take our time to process whatever it is we’re facing. It embraces us as who we really are and not as who we’re supposed to be. It encourages us to see things from different perspectives and come to our own conclusions. Finally, it illustrates how literature can raise questions: through the confrontation with the book itself and other readers, it can help us learn and understand beyond what’s commonplace. The synergy between the characters, including the bookshop itself, creates bonds that inspire us to be braver and more compassionate towards ourselves and others.

The Hyunam-dong Bookshop introduces us to quite a few interesting titles that will have you reaching out to Google to find your next read. This is just one of the reasons why this environment feels so real. It also helps that Hwang’s narration is incredibly vivid without being so prolix in descriptions that you forget what’s going on. Her sentences are clear, warm, and welcoming, creating paragraphs that are easy to read exactly because they’re so endlessly engaging.

Author and Translation Notes

If you don’t know much about Korean culture, you can still thoroughly enjoy Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. However, I did find it curious that they chose not to translate honorific pronouns, such as “imo” or “eonni“, but didn’t offer any sort of explanation about them. If this is your first encounter with Korean, you might Google a couple of words to understand exactly what is going on. That doesn’t affect the narrative in any way, though, and you’re still able to follow everything with ease.

In the Author’s Note, Hwang mentions that she wanted the novel to evoke the mood of Little Forest (2018, dir. Yim Soon-rye) and I believe she succeeded. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop has the same tranquillity and heart as Yim’s feature film. Both works have this healing quality that makes them precious. I found myself tearing up at the end, simply because I was relieved to have someone tell me that I’m not the only one who is struggling and it’s okay to change course. That a life that feels suffocating and draining isn’t worth it. That we can and should find something else — because this is the only present we have.

Then… Is Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop Cliché?

Yes, a cynical reader might find Yeongju’s tale cliché. After all, here we are with a middle-aged woman who is burned out and decides to hit reset once again. Or with a young man who is struggling to secure a proper job in today’s rat race. If you’re Asian, you might have identified with the initially nameless mother who is trying to regain her own identity while worrying about her son’s future. Or you might recognise her son, an apathetic teenager who doesn’t know where to go next. And they all try to find their own paths through human connection and reading.

Haven’t we had these books before? Is this just a copy-paste of the same formula again?

I would have to disagree. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is refreshing exactly because you can identify with its characters so well. This is a book that was clearly written to provide comfort and not guidance. If you decide to read it to find solutions for your own life, you might have misunderstood the goal here. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is gentle and optimistic, a romantic perspective on a dark business culture that pressures, stresses, and enrages.

Instead of presenting a grim environment filled with bleak characters, Hwang chooses to frame things in a more hopeful light. Through Yeongju’s tale, she tries to tell us that we can all find something that we love, and muster the courage to live our own way.

Korea x The World: The Power of Universal Tales

Also, is this book about Korean work culture? No, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop isn’t here to discuss the state of Korean society in any way. It isn’t going to criticise capitalism and invite you to give up on your job and move to the countryside. Not at all. It’s going to say that it’s okay to feel tired. It’s okay to reassess your current situation. And it’s okay to make decisions that might not make everyone around you happy.

Isn’t that what life is about? Forging forward with the answer you have – stumbling along the way and picking yourself up – only to one day realise that the answer you’ve held on to for a long time is not the right one. When that happens, it’s time to look for the next answer. That’s how ordinary folks, like herself, live. Over our life span, the right answer will keep changing.

The story is likely to resonate with you regardless of where you’re from. This is a very universal tale that only happens to be set in Korea, which creates an intercultural bridge and favours the translation of the book into as many languages as possible. Anyone, anywhere can feel like Yeongju or Minjun. Most importantly, it helps to bring Korean literature onto the international stage. I have noticed that here in Italy, we now have several different Korean titles being translated into Italian — and yet, I can’t find a lot of them translated into English.

I do hope that works like Hwang’s, stories that show us that human beings are facing the same challenges all around the world, can ignite interest in more culturally diverse literature and introduce these books to the international market more often and more consistently.

I must confess that Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop has become one of my favourite books. And I am sure I’ll be coming back time and again to be greeted and consoled by its warm arms and friendly staff and patrons.

No time to read the entire review? So why don’t you pin our summary? Just click it to pin it!

Have you read Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop? What do you think about it? Let me know in the comments! And, if you’re looking for another tale set in a cute bookshop, have you read our review on Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days at the Morisaki Bookshop? Give it a try!