Black Deer (검은 사슴)

Black Deer follows In-yeong, a withdrawn young woman whose life becomes entangled with that of Ui-seon, a fragile and taciturn coworker. The novel opens in a dreamlike state, establishing an atmosphere of unease, darkness, and bodily anxiety. In-yeong senses from the beginning that something is deeply wrong, though it cannot yet be named. Her attention is drawn to Ui-seon after witnessing her illness and physical weakness, and this concern slowly turns into a form of attachment. Ui-seon appears bruised, exhausted, and strangely emptied, as if violence and despair have already hollowed her out.

As their relationship develops, In-yeong begins to see Ui-seon not simply as a colleague but as someone she is compelled to protect or understand. This impulse is tied to In-yeong’s own past: years earlier, her older sister Min-yeong disappeared, and In-yeong accompanied her mother on a fruitless search across Jeju Island. That unresolved loss left In-yeong with a lasting sense of responsibility toward the vanished and the broken, a need to look for those who slip away.

Ui-seon eventually disappears as well. Refusing to accept this absence passively, In-yeong sets out with a junior coworker, Myeong-yun, to trace Ui-seon’s origins. Their journey leads them to Hwanggok, a decaying former mining region marked by abandoned shafts, polluted water, and towns suspended between life and death. The landscape is harsh, cold, and blackened, mirroring the emotional state of those who live there. Along the way, they encounter bus stations, inns, and waiting rooms that feel like liminal spaces—places where people linger without direction, suspended between past disasters and an uncertain future.