From One Champion to Another: Jiyou Kim Analyzes Jiwoo Kim's Yeouya (여우야)

Please take some time to read Jiwoo's multi-layered story: Yeouya. 

Songs hold memories and can act as the trigger that awakens deeply buried memories. Songs have such an effect that they hold no distinction for heartfelt or painful memories. Some may call songs, despite their beauty, even indiscriminate in a sense. Songs can dictate our mood, and even how we perceive our surroundings. Jinyoung, the main lead of Yeouya, confronts the past on a journey to rid himself of his writer’s block. 

Jinyoung, in Yeouya, can be categorized as someone who drowns himself in work, a person who goes on for days on end working on his stories. You might wonder, why would an already established author with various stories under their belt work so hard? Well, it could be for a multitude of reasons. It may be that he simply finds writing interesting, or it could be to distract himself from the past he does not want to face. 

Jinyoung, through his sudden remembrance of the song “Yeouya,” comes face-to-face with the embodiment of his youthful past, Yuna Kim, a former lover during college.  

Character Web 

Relationships are often built on common ground: a similarity, an affection for the same thing, or even a dislike for the same thing. This common ground pulls people together in an almost gravitational pull and builds lasting feelings that are not shed even with the wear of time. 

 What pulled Jinyoung and Yuna together was one thing: their love for writing. However, that love for writing itself became the trigger for their break-up. The difference in their love for writing had destabilized a once-romantic relationship.  “On the surface, we seemed to get along, but in reality, we would fight every day because of our differences,” Jinyoung mentions. 

Jinyoung, a rational writer who builds on logic, and Yuna, a writer who writes from her heart, were two sides of a coin. So close yet so far from one another. Their writing styles were opposites, reflecting on their personalities. 

Author Jinyoung, in a sudden spurt of nostalgia, recalls his hidden memories. In that unstable state, he even sees Yuna while on a coffee run. The interlinking of the two characters leads to a confrontation with the past. Both come to reflect that they are happy now, with Jinyoung, who felt “a need for certainty,” receiving a confirmation.  

Author Jiwoo Kim expertly weaves a character web around the two key characters, Jinyoung and Yuna. Jinyoung’s rebound after confronting the feelings he had buried deep into his heart spurs on a new drive, motivation. The turn of events serves to highlight just how important human relationships are to us, and how they can dictate our mood or even outlook on life. 

Character Weakness and Need 

To some, what may be a strength to others may be a weakness. What gave Jinyoung the qualification to write acclaimed pieces of literature cost him his relationship with Yuna. His rationale and focus on logic that shone brilliantly in his writing had become the trigger in the downfall of his relationship. “On the surface, we seemed to get along, but in reality, we would fight every day because of our differences.” This difference, his personality, had cost him the four years he had spent with Yuna. 

Author Jiwoo Kim builds a delicate image of Jinyoung, a resilient yet weak “tree”. He who has the resilience to last and continue onwards as if nothing happened, buries the memories of the past in fear of pain. He had never confronted them, hence sinking deeper into the depths of his mind. 

When Jinyoung heard “Yeouya” playing on the radio, his impression was “familiar” and stopped at that. Only after a moment did he recall. In Yeouya by Author Jiwoo, Jinyoung gains the confidence to face the past through a reunion with Yuna, and reaffirms his state of mind. 

Jinyoung, experiencing writer’s block, needs to finish the manuscript by the deadline. No matter how much he attempts to write or how many cups of coffee he consumes, he only finds himself clicking “delete” over and over again. He felt a need to finish the manuscript, to rid himself of his writer’s block, a weakness he felt. Author Jiwoo Kim, not through crafting instant means like epiphanies, but rather a realistic confrontation with the past, has Jinyoung overcome his weakness, shedding the writer’s block and, by extension, his inability to face the past with Yuna. 

Self-Revelation: 

Jinyoung writes a story different than his usual; channeling pure, raw emotions rather than the cold and logical reasoning his usual stories had. 

Through “Yeouya,” Writer Jiwoo Kim emphasizes the importance of following one’s heart. 

The heart, a storage of feelings, acts as a compass for the direction you wish your story to follow. It is so vital in fact, that half-heartedly writing a story makes you forget who you were when you started writing; just an aspiring author who wanted to show their piece to the world, what Jinyoung in “Yeouya” had been. 

In the real world, some become “one-shot wonders,” people who gain immense fame through a singular piece or story. However, due to the overwhelming expectation that their fanbase puts on them to produce a new story, and perhaps even various investors trying to amass profit, authors lose their direction among distractions, losing their soul for writing. 

Jinyoung, an acclaimed writer producing his fifth work, finds himself in a writer’s block, and finds himself only writing for a deadline. Not yielding results, he traps himself in a vicious circle; writing and deleting, writing and deleting what he’s written on repeat. 

Getting up for a breath of fresh air, Jinyoung gets up and drinks a cup of iced water, turning on the radio for some music. That was when he heard a song he had not heard in a long, long time, “Yeouya,” which represents his relationship with a fellow college student at the time, Yuna. As the memories of the past that he had buried resurface, he goes out to clear his mind with a cup of coffee in a cafe. In a twist of fate, he finds Yuna in that very cafe and faces her. At that point, as he converses with her, he feels something loosening within him, and gradually puts behind his writer’s block to later write something fresh, a story from a genre he had never written. 

“She would often tease me about how my writing was so rational,” Jinyoung says in an excerpt. This point stands out as readers glean that Jinyoung believes his writing to be rational. This sets the tone for the self-revelation where Jinyoung gains a new perspective on writing. He then goes on, following his heart to publish a piece that he would not have if not for his reunion with Yuna. “Yeoubi” is his completed piece, a work that was created through confronting his past and eventual affirmation that writing is not limited to a certain genre. 

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Author Jiwoo Kim takes Jinyoung on a self-confronting journey, reaffirming his path as a writer through utilizing the elements of Character Web, Character Weakness and Need, and Self-Relevation. Jinyoung’s writing of a different genre not only represents his growth as a writer but also as an individual, a maturity that is willing to defy the standards set by people.