Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop

The next day, Yeongju is surprised when Heejoo, Jungsuh, and Sangsu pick up extra work to make her feel better and lighten her workload. This gives Yeongju the space to focus on the bookshop’s upcoming movie screening, after which she will lead a discussion with a movie critic. The movie they will watch is the 2016 Hirokazu Kore-eda film After the Storm.

Minjun is pleased to hear about the screening since he is a fan of Kore-eda’s work. The last time he saw After the Storm, he realized how miserable individuals’ pursuits of their dreams can make them. He believes that to pursue one’s dreams is to abandon the joys of everyday life. Yeongju asks Minjun if he is the type of person who would be willing to give anything up for his dreams. Minjun believes he is happier because he has abandoned his dreams. Yeongju, on the other hand, is happy because she enjoys achieving her dream of starting a bookshop. Minjun hopes that society will come to accept his decision to enjoy everyday life instead of his dreams.

Yeongju tells Minjun that the movie critic who is coming to the bookshop is an old friend of his: Yoon Sungchul. Minjun realizes that Sungchul reached out to Yeongju because he knew Minjun worked at the bookshop.

Yeongju and Seungwoo chat about the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. Yeongju feels that Zorba represents a certain kind of freedom, but she doesn’t necessarily aspire toward it. Instead, she likes the bookish narrator of the novel, who wants to be like Zorba.

Seungwoo asks about Yeongju’s ex-husband’s friend, making sure that he didn’t harass Yeongju when he came by. Yeongju reassures him that he didn’t. Seungwoo next asks why Yeongju decided to tell him who her friend was. Yeongju says she couldn’t keep that part of her life from Seungwoo, especially since he has special feelings for her. Seungwoo admits that his special feelings began when he started to read her writing, even before he met her in person. Ever since then, he has been nervous about asking her questions because he doesn’t want to make her flustered. Now that he has gotten to know her better, Seungwoo feels that Yeongju is a lot like the writing voice he became infatuated with because he can see the complexity of her emotions.

Seungwoo tells Yeongju that he will continue to like her and that he believes Yeongju told him about her ex-husband as a way to caution him against her. Yeongju admits to this, saying that she hoped Seungwoo would move on because she was the one who initiated the end of her last relationship. Understanding that Yeongju hasn’t forgiven herself yet about this, Seungwoo resolves to set aside the discussion of his feelings. He expresses his desire to continue leading the writing seminars. He reassures Yeongju that it is okay for them to just like each other since it doesn’t demand any further obligation from either of them.

Jimi arrives at the bookshop and announces that she is going to divorce her husband. She admits that she doesn’t know how to feel but spends the rest of the day in a light mood.

The bookshop screens After the Storm. Minjun joins after cleaning up his work station. He reflects on the protagonist’s incompetence and theorizes that it stems from the fact that he is living despite his lack of experience. This resonates with Minjun’s own failures. Sungchul leads the discussion in a way that moves Minjun. Sungchul has found a way to do what he loves for a living.

Minjun reached out to Sungchul the day Yeongju told him that he was the movie critic. They talked about Sungchul’s work, which he manages to practice without anchoring himself to a single publication. Sungchul stressed that there are no objective milestones for work and that anyone can assert that they are whatever they want to be. Minjun shared his own reflections of life as a barista, declaring that it is much better than his previous aspiration to simply find a company job. Minjun has more fun dedicating himself to the creative work of coffeemaking. The current state of his life makes him feel like he is not a failure. Citing the people at the bookshop, Minjun defines a successful life as “a life surrounded by good people” (267).

Before parting ways, Sungchul asked Minjun about how the buttonhole metaphor applied to his life now. Minjun answered that he changed his shirt so that he could cut his own holes in them to fit the buttons. Minjun asked Sungchul how he always made time for movies in college. Sungchul explained that he chased the thing he liked doing most.

At Goat Beans, Minjun asks if what he said to Jimi influenced her decision to divorce her husband. Jimi explains that Minjun’s advice helped her to see her marriage in objective terms, allowing her to realize that she and her husband would never get to work out their differences. She was afraid of being judged for pursuing a well-lived life, but Minjun’s advice convinced her otherwise. She took time to treat her husband nicely and assess how he behaved in response. Slowly, Jimi’s husband started to treat her better as well, which caused Jimi to ask him why he was behaving this way. He answered that his behavior was influenced by the way she was treating him. Jimi understood then that her husband was retaliating because she was a competent person, and he was not. This catalyzed her decision to get a divorce.

Yeongju comes home to find Jimi and Jungsuh waiting for her. Once again, they share drinks as Jungsuh reveals that she is restarting her job search for financial reasons. During her rest period, Jungsuh learned how to manage her feelings and prepare herself for the next set of work challenges to come. The group then discusses their respective stress-relief routines.

Jungsuh and Jimi tease Yeongju over her relationship with Seungwoo. They can tell he has a crush on her, but they also see that the topic mortifies Yeongju. Later, Yeongju explains her fear that she isn’t good enough for Seungwoo. Her friends strongly disagree, citing all her best qualities. Yeongju recalls a book that Seungwoo gave her recently: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. The novel is about falling in love in a lonely time in life, which Yeongju realizes was Seungwoo’s way of saying that he enjoys her presence.

Jungsuh suggests that Yeongju should test her feelings for Seungwoo by asking herself if she is comfortable with Seungwoo being emotionally invested in her life. If Yeongju wants Seungwoo to be concerned with her life, then it means that she likes him, too. Yeongju smiles, signaling her true feelings. She does not know what to do with her feelings.

This chapter is written in a first-person voice, representing Yeongju’s voice as she speaks to Minjun. Yeongju recalls her initial prediction that the bookshop wouldn’t last more than two years. Her inability to manage the business in the first few months made her feel that it was destined to fail. Once she moved past her grief, she started to take the business more seriously. When Minjun joined the bookshop, Yeongju not only had to balance commercial exchanges with her customers, but also the labor exchange that she maintained with him. This motivated her to keep working hard and ensure the bookshop’s success.

Yeongju expresses her gratitude to Minjun for all the effort and dedication he has put into the bookshop. She also expresses her hope that Minjun can eventually feel like he is working for himself, whether with or outside of the bookshop. She compares work to food: It is a necessary resource that sustains her life, but one that she eats with thought and care.

The bookshop has helped Yeongju to improve herself, embodying the insights she’s gained from all the books she’s read. She resolves to keep becoming better as she reads more books. This leads her to the favor she wants to ask of Minjun. She now recognizes that the continued success of the bookshop means that if she continues to dedicate herself to her work, it will likely outlive the two-year deadline she set. She commits to this vision of the bookshop as the fulfillment of her dreams. She invites Minjun to stay on at the bookshop as a permanent employee.

Minjun accepts Yeongju’s offer. As part of her plan to continue improving the bookshop, Yeongju sets two projects in motion: Plan 1 is to retain the people she trusts at the bookshop; Plan 2 to travel for a month, visiting longstanding independent bookshops around the world for inspiration. Yeongju cannot guarantee that Plan 2 will work in the bookshop’s favor, but she decides to try it out, hoping for the bookshop’s success. She plans adjustments in Minjun and Sangsu’s work schedules so that the bookshop can continue to operate in her absence. She similarly plans to continue writing blog posts while she is traveling.

On her way to the airport, Yeongju reflects on her mother’s anger toward her. From her mother’s perspective, divorce is the ultimate failure for women. Because her mother didn’t know how to handle failure, she reacted so violently against Yeongju’s decisions. Yeongju assures herself that she is no failure and that she doesn’t have to reach out to her mother to make her realize that.

Mincheol calls Yeongju to tell her that he has resolved not to attend university. Yeongju affirms his decision, telling him he has his whole life ahead to decide what he wants to do. Mincheol also reports that he finished reading The Catcher in the Rye, but he didn’t like it. Nevertheless, he felt a resonance with the protagonist of the novel. He struggles to identify where the resonance is coming from, citing everything from their shared disdain to their lack of interest. Ultimately, the book influenced his decision not to attend university, giving him permission to do what he felt was right. He worries that the decision is illogical, but Yeongju reassures him that she has had the same experience many times before with other books. She explains that the decision is supported by the heart.

Seungwoo calls to ask where Yeongju will be at the end of June. When she answers that she will be visiting Berlin, Seungwoo offers to join her there and be her travel partner. Yeongju tells him that the offer is too sudden, which he understands. Before he hangs up, Yeongju tells him that she doesn’t really know what to do with her feelings. Seungwoo tells her to imagine what it will be like experiencing Berlin together. When she does, she reports that she didn’t dislike what she saw. He asks again if he can see her in Berlin. This time, she accepts.

The novel jumps forward one year. Fresh from a three-month trip to Europe, Mincheol is now a part-time employee at the bookshop. Heejoo asked Mincheol to go on the trip so that he could have some experience of the world.

Sangsu is now a full-time employee alongside Minjun. He is embarrassed to admit that it is his first full-time job. Now, the customers treat Sangsu as an all-around book expert, coming to him to find out what he is currently reading.

The four members of the bookshop staff hold a monthly book talk where they all read the same book and discuss it at a book club meeting. This month, they are reading Franny and Zoey by J. D. Salinger, which Mincheol picked because he mistakenly thought it would be an easy read.

Following her trip abroad, Yeongju resolved to curate the bookshop’s collection more deliberately. The trip solidified her resolve to entirely remove bestsellers from the shop inventory. The rationale for this decision is to uphold title diversity, highlighting books that are ignored or undermined by the publishing industry. Along with several other changes, this decision allows the bookshop to better reflect Yeongju’s personality. She reminds herself that she has always been a book lover and that her passion will continue to draw fellow book lovers to the shop. The work—and the routine she has built around it with the people she loves—makes Yeongju happy.