Written by Lee Su Jin and illustrated by Yang yang


The award winner of the 5th Sakyejul Children’s Literature Award

Overcoming the pain of war, discrimination, and separation...
A child’s courage and friendship moving into the next season.

This story is set in Tokyo in the summer of 1959. It was a chaotic period when Japan, still suffering from the poverty and defeat of WWII, was seeking a path to survival due to another war that had broken out in Korea.
This unfamiliar time and space comes alive as a story of "here and now" from the moment the protagonist's name is revealed. That twelve-year-old child's name is Watanabe Haruto, and also Lee Hyun Jin.

This book delicately portrays, through the eyes of its protagonist Hyun Jin (Haruto)—born to a Korean father and a Japanese mother—the impact that the immense violence of "war" has on children.
War not only separated Hyun Jin's family and killed the families of his friends, but it also caused the surviving children to discriminate against and hate one another.
Furthermore, the conflicts Hyun Jin faces with his friends as a mixed-race child are events that could easily resonate in today's multicultural Korean classrooms. Therefore, the precious hope and warm friendship that Hyun Jin painstakingly rediscovers amidst the pain leave a deep, lasting impression on the reader.

The Sakyejul Children's Literary Award has long discovered and introduced "children's literature that thinks about today's children," including the fantasy, Monster Child which explores the power to overcome discrimination, and Gi So Young's Friends which focused on a child's right to mourn. This 5th winner, Dear Hyun Jin was praised by the judges for deeply exploring "the heart that does not turn away from those who are discriminated against, the courage to extend a hand, and a friendship that is not swayed by social conflict." The panel concluded that it "holds great value not only as a period piece, but also as a powerful narrative of friendship."