This guy needs to go to horny jail.
After I finished screaming wordlessly about what I had just read I felt ready to talk about this book. When they said that his works were erotic (and having read The Buckwheat Season) I didn't imagine... this. I doubt anything like this would get published nowadays - not because of "cancel culture" but because of the literary quality... which is quite lacking here. I mean this is just more elaborately written wattpad smut. I have no words that can describe the shock I felt at reading this story because the whole premise just screams horny teenager having weird fantasies. And as much as I think horny fantasies are good and should be explored (safely) I do not think that they warrant publishing as literature. This is not even long enough to be a romance novel where maybe this kind of plot would feel justified. In the preface Lee Hyo-seok's work is described as "shining artistic achievment" and "lyricism". Forgive me for not seeing the vision but my idea of lyricism doesn't involve a girl getting raped several times over the years and falling in love with each of the perpetrators and then marrying the first one in a mock "happy ending". Like yes I know our ideas about sex and consent have evolved but I highly doubt in 1936 there wasn't people talking about the very basic idea that maybe rape is bad? And it's not very romantic? Again, if this were someone's depraved fanfiction on wattpad I wouldn't blame them but this is supposed to be literature.
I honestly don't recommend this book because it took me through an emotional rollercoaster and not in a good way. I wish Lee Hyo-seok had stuck more to the fellow traveler literature instead.