Written by Choi Yang Sun

The moon, disappearance, us, and today
Cosmic connection among words that seem totally unrelated

What will happen on earth if ‘the moon’ disappears? What will happen in the universe without ‘the moon’? How much does the moon impact on earth, the universe, and people? The book, titled ‘The Room of the Moon’, the 128th book of 1318 series published by Sakyejul, contains five teenage novels to look into the youth living around us who keep their own ‘moon’ in minds.
By crossing the boundary between fantasy and real world, the writer, Choi Yang Sun, deeply observes and deals with human psychology and our society. The writer also delicately comforts readers that it is ok and even those moments are shining moments even if ‘our own moon’ disappears.
The main characters of five stories are having different life but all of them have moments when they want to hide from others, or moments when they want to disappear sometimes. Da Yeon, the main character of ‘Pause’, actually goes through the experience that the world literally is paused whenever she feels that moment. “Da Yeon sometimes went through the moments the time has stopped since the age of 15. And she couldn’t remember what happened while the time stopped for a while as if her time was just cut.” (p. 13) Why did some moments of Da Yeon have to pause? The time of the world flies regardless of Da Yeon, but why did she have to pause? While following her emotional phases, readers will be able to actually feel her stopped moments since the age of 15, and will definitely support her and wish that her life never stops and smoothly flies through.

This also applies to Jae Ah, the main character of ‘Reach the Wind’, that she was behind in this world. She had to go for a family trip to Jeju island due to his parents, but she always felt nervous that she should not have come here as a high school senior student. She also felt unstable because she might be far behind other students. Her anxiety flew in the air and reached the ribbon Na O installed, and their encounter became supports for each other in their life.

Jeong Eun, the main character of ‘The Room of the Moon’, thinks of disappearance all the time. “I can see people, but can’t hear them. I think I come to disappear as a being lower than a dust while being isolated by the world…… Again, I feel tickling under my feet.” (p. 48) When Jeong Eun faces the total eclipse of the moon, she has felt sad and lonely emotion toward something and she also experiences fantastic event that cannot be logically explained. What has happened to her that night when the moon disappeared?
Teenagers often feel like running away from their realities and even want to disappear sometimes these days. However, they can also look back on themselves better when their moments stop in daily life or when the moon disappears, because that means what they really need is to stop everything and slowly and carefully think through themselves. While observing the phases of everyday life of Da Yeon, Jae Ah and Jeong Eun, they are all led to one story even though their time and space are all different.
They are the same ‘moon’, but the moon of Woo Joo, the character of ‘The Universe without the Moon’, has different meaning from the one of Jeong Eun in the chapter of ‘The Room of the Moon’. Her menstruation stopped since she had sexually harassed by her art teacher at private school, and now she cannot draw anything due to trauma. While doing so, she felt even more confused when she found out another girl who seemed to experience the similar harassment. “I have thought about myself all the way to home. About how I felt. I wanted to forget, and wanted to live as if nothing happened. However, I couldn’t completely ignore Ji Soo.” (p. 79) Can Woo Joo never forget, never disappear, and never ignore Ji Soo?
Nam Joo, the character of ‘Red Vest’, has trauma of disappearing itself. She is afraid of her mother, who passed away due to disease, disappearing, and also afraid of her grandmother disappearing as well. With this fear, she used to get along with bullying friends at school, but the emptiness in her mind cannot be filled with those friends. Then, something happened in her grandmother’s workplace. One of her colleague died of issue related to working environment, so the workers began to strike. However, the grandmother decided to turn away and stay besides Nam Joo. Nam Joo is afraid of losing her grandmother, but still cannot hold on to her grandmother all along……
For Woo Joo and Nam Joo, the easier choice would be just to disappear - turning away others and pretending as if nothing ever happened, and even running away from their realities. However, nobody just runs away – even Woo Joo, Nam Joo, and we all. Instead, we all choose to raise our voices and never disappear. If these voices are raised one by one, they become diverse movements to make our society even better than before. Therefore, it is much more important that we have to focus on our own ‘moon’, which are our small voices inside us dreaming of making better society, the decisions not to disappear any more, and the desires of us. The writer intended readers to discover their own moon, which they have neglected so far, after reading these five novels. And as a result, we all have expectations that that moon can change today’s society, and this cosmic event will actually happen that everyone just looks at that moon.