Consider director Lee Chang-dong’s film Peppermint Candy as the story of a man’s life filled with failures. Countless lives struggling to survive amidst the vicissitudes of an epoch, yet only able to glimpse back at the beliefs, kindness, and goodness they have lost along the way: director Lee provides a portrait of the ruthlessness of the times while questioning the nature of life.

        Kim Seong-gon, the protagonist of Won-pyung Sohn’s Tube, is something like a parallel universe version of Peppermint Candy’s Kim Yong-ho, with the difference that Kim Seong-gon is offered a lifeline. People often say success cannot be replicated, since it depends on opportunity, luck, and many factors that can only be recognized retrospectively. Nevertheless, anyone who wants to learn about success must watch where people fall and how they manage to get back up, especially since there’s never any guarantee that escape is possible. Sure, most people can recover from falling into a metaphorical sinkhole in their twenties, but what about in their forties or fifties? No matter how strong you feel mentally and physically, at some point the body starts to falter. You risk getting trapped in a sinkhole for the rest of your existence, like so many others.

        Sohn’s novel depicts life like an express train: once aboard, one cannot jump onto the tracks or get off between stations. It begins with the protagonist, Kim Seong-gon, feeling trapped. As we follow the story, we have to learn how to dance with failures while keeping the hope that his life will bounce back from its setbacks. I see this as the heartfelt message the author embodies in Tube.

        The novelist Eileen Chang once wrote, “If you knew the me in the past, perhaps you’d forgive the me in the present.” Sohn mirrors this attitude in dissecting Kim’s past self. He is an ordinary man, neither Satan nor saint, jostled forward by the turmoil of life and exhausted by society’s demands. Little by little, he changes until his previous self becomes unrecognizable to him.

        Our perception of the present is defined by our senses and deductions. Oftentimes, the meaning of the past only becomes clear in retrospect. In this sense, failures are not entirely meaningless. Nervous breakdowns and anxiety attacks caused by past experiences can be essential parts of self-healing. Things need to be broken before they can be fixed. This novel brings to mind the 2018 tvN drama series, My Mister, which suggests that all the setbacks experienced by the main character should be understood as external forces, outside personal control. To avoid collapsing, one’s internal strength must remain greater than these external forces. After wandering aimlessly for so long, Kim Seong-gon finds answers through a chance encounter with Park Shil-young, who works as a chauffeur: he finally learns that the answers he has searched for have nothing to do with achieving a goal but instead lie in the process of wrestling against the external forces that are always working to destroy us.

        However, Tube does more than repackage the inspirational cliché of “starting anew.” It puts this lofty-sounding ideal into everyday practice. Sohn shows us how even the most insignificant parts of our routine matter: tending to our physical appearance, reclaiming the joy of living, making the effort to see the world from a new perspective, and adjusting the boundaries between oneself and others. Any of these can become a first step toward a meaningful personal transformation.

        In unassuming and accessible prose, Sohn guides readers through her protagonist’s moments of helplessness and hopelessness, while suspending judgment of him. The narrative explores humanity as a whole, including the ugly corners where greed and evil reside. The unexpected yet logical twists and turns unveil Kim Seong-gon as a human being—his fatal flaws and self-deception rendered both authentic and deeply resonant.

        While it is never too late to change oneself, the author understands that the real world may not offer the protagonist a hand in his time of need. Instead, she dissects his seemingly aimless life, allows light to shine through the most unexpected cracks, puts together the scattered fragments of his existence, and guides him to lift himself back up. In this journey, any random encounter has the potential to become Kim Seong-gon’s salvation.

        Reading this book feels like a warm, gentle pat on the shoulder, a persuasive reminder that life isn’t simply a smooth sail even for the most luminous people; that true success is never about effortless achievement, but about learning how to dance with failures and walk alongside adversity.

Translated by Jianan Qian

Kristin

Author, The Waltz of Light and Shadow

(Star East Press, 2021)