Interview with Novelist Byeon Seong-ha of <The Boundary of Zero>

✑ Reporter Ryu Young-hyeon | ⏼ Approved 2026. 08. 01 00:00 | 𐀏 Modified 2026. 08. 04 12:27 | ❑ Page 7 | 🀱 Comments 9

Writer Byeon Seong-ha, Winner of the Newcomer Literary Award for Debut Work 'The Boundary of Zero'

[Review] A work that must be read by anyone who has experienced a life-shaking parting.

“At the boundary of sorrow, humans can finally become beings that traverse between fantasy and reality.” Parting and farewell, presence and absence. Moving through the blurred space between them with text, he portrays the miserable beauty of those who have lost something precious.

❝

First, I must ask this question. Your first work received critical acclaim for its dark, non-mainstream subject matter. What inspired you to conceive such a work? I didn't write it with the intention of creating a dark piece. Perhaps it's closer to say that I didn't use the theme of parting to write a novel, but rather used the novel to somehow resolve the parting and subsequent sorrow I experienced. There was someone who told me that when you can't handle certain emotions alone, organizing them through writing helps, so I simply tried to organize them in text.

❝

Based on your previous answer and your acceptance speech, it seems you drew a lot of inspiration from actual experience. Yes. To be honest, the entire novel is reality to me, to the point where it could be called an essay rather than a novel.

❝

In the novel, the former lover returns as a ghost to the protagonist, who is devastated by their death. Even now, after many have seen the ending, opinions are divided between those who believe what the protagonist saw was the actual soul of the lover and those who believe it was a hallucination seen by a mentally weakened protagonist. Was there an intended meaning behind this? There isn't a single line in this novel written with any specific intention toward the reader. The soul of the lover seen by the protagonist is exactly what it is described as: the returned soul of the lover. The returned soul is not a literary device meant to imply the protagonist's sorrow or broken state. She simply came to exist in a form different from ordinary people due to an unfortunate accident; she is a person who clearly exists within the novel and within the protagonist's reality.

❝

The protagonist never learns why the lover returned as a ghost, and the ending is neither a parting nor a reunion, but simply ends with them acknowledging each other's presence in an untouchable state. What does this ending imply? Again, there are no intentions or implications in my novel. However, if you accept what is shown in the novel as reality, you will be able to see the same scenery I saw while writing this book.

❝

The moment her blue hand, piercing through life, overlaps with my body, I lose that part of me. Our inability to touch was not because she became a ghost, but because of someone's foolishness. I felt the absence of my own body from the presence of my lover. From <The Boundary of Zero> The above sentence seems like a metaphorical expression suggesting the protagonist's guilt over the lover's death. In the novel, the lover's death is portrayed as an unavoidable disaster, so why does the protagonist feel guilty until the end? He feels guilt because he believes he has committed a sin. But even if the protagonist had 0% fault in the lover's death, he cannot be completely free from it. Simply because he survived alone, he must atone to his lover forever. The lover has now become a being that can never be touched or held. Therefore, perhaps instinctively, the protagonist believes that atonement is the only form of love he can give to his ghost lover.

❝

Finally, is there anything you would like to say to the readers who will read this novel in the future? This was not written with the assumption that someone would read it. Therefore, if you are looking for meaning or a lesson, I recommend not reading this novel. However, if there are readers who have had experiences like the protagonist, this work was published as a novel because I was curious about how their endings turned out. The protagonist and I have not seen the ending yet, and we are afraid of it.

The Boundary of Zero Novelist Byeon Seong-ha 2026 Newcomer Literary Award August Issue