‘Trying Something Different’: Yun Ko-eun on Writing Across Boundaries

Introduction

It was October 2025 when Yun Ko-eun and I met at Fairshot Café in Covent Garden. She greeted me with a polite but warm bow as if I was her long-time friend she hadn’t seen in a while. As I—the interviewer who had shamelessly arrived later than the interviewee—sat across the table, she asked if I would like something to drink. “Well, I’ve already had two coffees,” I murmured, looking down for a moment. Then I noticed the mint tea beside her.

“Actually, I’ll have a mint tea like yours.” Dressed in a green satin blouse, she grinned and said, “그러시겠어요?” (“Would you like that?”) I should note here that the mint tea sold out quickly after her arrival—what an evening. For the next forty minutes, we laughed and laughed. 

I kept this interview for this issue not because Yun Ko-eun writes explicitly about feminism, but because she embodies something I find truly relevant to International Women’s Day. Her work resists easy categorisation. In her fiction, boundaries—between genders, perspectives, and even genres—are often crossed. In The Disaster Tourist, Yona works for a company that sells “disaster tour packages”, guiding visitors to sites of catastrophe. What should not be overlooked, alongside the singularity of the setting, is Yona’s struggle with the lingering consequences of sexual harassment in her workplace. 

From choosing male protagonists early in her career to building worlds that move between satire, speculation, and social critique, Yun’s writing reflects a literary imagination that is both playful and sharp. Her boundary-crossing sensibility multiplies the voices in her fiction and gives her work a distinctive place in contemporary Korean literature. 

What follows is a selection from our conversation, focusing on the ideas that feel especially resonant for International Women’s Day: crossing boundaries, shared sensibilities, and the attentive imagination that shapes Yun’s fiction. 

Presence, People, and Dots on Maps 

Eugene Kim:
You’ve been here before; how does this visit compare with your previous experiences?

Yun Ko-eun:
This is actually my second visit to London for a book event, and perhaps my fifth visit overall if I include travel. I’ve always stayed only briefly. What struck me immediately this time was how, when walking down the street, each individual seems to be treated as a distinct presence. In London, even in narrow streets or small alleys, cars often stop for pedestrians. It gives you the feeling that each person is recognised as an individual. 

Recently I’ve been thinking about how we experience ourselves as small dots on mobile maps. After the pandemic, services like delivery apps have made us used to seeing ourselves or others as dots moving across a screen.

So when people actually make eye contact or exchange signals directly, it feels unfamiliar again. 

Writing Across Gender

Eugene Kim:
I was introduced to your work through Zero-Gravity Syndrome (무중력증후군) when I was in graduate school. A senior student once told me that not every woman writer needs to write female protagonists, and he mentioned your work as an example.

So I’ve wondered since then: why did you choose a male protagonist? Was there a particular reason behind that choice? 

Yun Ko-eun:
My very first story was written when I was in high school. I had a literature teacher I admired very much, and I wanted them to remember me. I told them I had written a story and asked if they would read it—even though I hadn’t written anything yet. (The teacher’s gender is not specified in Korean, which often omits pronouns, so “they” is used here.)

And I went home and wrote the story in three days. The protagonist was a middle-aged man in his forties who was in a vegetative state. I was seventeen at the time, so it was as far from my own life as possible.

Later, when I wrote the novel that became my first book, I again chose a male protagonist. Apart from his gender, he was actually closer to me than that earlier character. 

But I was also just interested in trying something different. Many writers were already writing female protagonists in certain ways, and I was curious about approaching things from another perspective. 

Recently, I chose female protagonists again, especially for longer novels. I’ve become interested in stories about women who move through space, like who travel or go on journeys. But ultimately it depends on the story.

Shared Sensibilities: A Writer and Her Translator

Eugene Kim:
Many readers of Nabillera are translators or aspiring translators. They’re always curious about the collaborative process between authors and translators. What was your experience working with Lizzie Buehler on The Disaster Tourist?

Yun Ko-eun:
It was a little different depending on the book. Lizzie has translated three of my works. When she translated The Disaster Tourist, she would send questions as she progressed through the manuscript. Sometimes the questions were about dialogue, who exactly was speaking. In Korean I sometimes leave that kind of thing ambiguous because the context makes it clear. But in English, that ambiguity can be more difficult. 

She would send questions after finishing sections, and I would respond. With my more recent book, we worked more closely from the beginning, starting from the synopsis. However, I don’t think the number of emails between writer and translator is the most important thing. What matters more is that they share some kind of sensibility.

Writer as a Collector of Sentences

Eugene Kim:
You’ve mentioned that you collect phrases and observations that later become stories. When do ideas usually come to you?

Yun Ko-eun:
Often while walking.

I’m very grateful for that, because ideas can appear suddenly. Of course not every thought becomes a story. I usually record them on my phone either in notes or as voice memos. Or anything I note down, really. Sometimes ideas even come to me in the bath. 

Many people who want to become writers ask for advice. I often tell them to carry a notebook. Ideas appear constantly, but memory is unreliable. Once you start recording them, more ideas seem to emerge. Eventually, those fragments begin to connect with each other, and a story starts to develop.

Living Fully in Reality, Writing Unlikely Worlds

Eugene Kim:
Your fiction often feels deeply grounded in contemporary reality, even when it contains dystopian elements. I wonder if that comes from your strong engagement with everyday life.

Yun Ko-eun:
Perhaps. I don’t watch much television or Netflix. I rarely use YouTube. If I start watching them, time passes too quickly. Most of my time is spent reading and writing. I host a radio programme, and that environment constantly brings books, conversations, and ideas into my daily life.

All of that becomes part of the writing process. Reading, observing, making notes… these things are not separate from writing for me.  

Colour, Materiality, and a Woman Writer’s Imagination

Eugene Kim:
Many readers also notice your sense of style. You often appear very elegant and fashion-conscious, which might surprise people who have stereotypical images of writers.

Yun Ko-eun:
That’s funny. I do enjoy clothes, but I’m not very interested in trends. I simply know what kind of style I like. 

Actually, many writers I admire are quite stylish. The poet Moon Jeong-hee, for example, has wonderful taste. Once she gave me a pair of shoes she had bought but found too high to wear herself. I think writers, like anyone else, are surrounded by material objects. 

Observing those objects—clothes, streets, small details of daily life—often feeds directly into fiction.

Final Thoughts: Travel and the Limits of Choice

One word that stayed with me after the interview was travel. One of Yun Ko-eun’s novels that brought her international recognition, The Disaster Tourist, also takes travel as its central setting. In the novel, travel becomes both the beginning and the end of the protagonist Yona’s forced choices. 

Travel reveals a simple but unsettling truth here: we are always looking toward “elsewhere.” For Yona, the office is a reality she cannot accept as it is. Surrounded by patriarchal power structures, symbolised by the company name Jungle, she is unable to choose freely how to live within that reality. The Disaster Tourist slowly pulls the reader into its web and lets us feel Yona’s helplessness. 

The novel begins with the familiar promise of travel, but gradually turns that promise inside out. Yona works for a company that sells “disaster tours,” inviting travellers to witness the aftermath of catastrophe. At first glance, the novel seems to be a satire of tourism, but soon, it reveals something even darker. It is a story about how systems turn people into replaceable parts, and how even disaster—and human suffering—can become commodities.

In this sense, the novel is not simply a story about women’s issues. Rather, it portrays the vulnerability of the modern individual within late capitalist systems. People can easily become expendable, and Yona, the female protagonist, makes that condition particularly visible. Though the novel ultimately speaks to a broader experience of powerlessness within contemporary structures, Yona’s narrative would surely have resonated with women readers when it was first published in Korea. 

Yun’s playful use of absurdity cleverly adds layers that may leave readers wondering which one is harsher: is it the reality of work, or the journey Yona is sent on under the guise of escape? She does not teach us or offer an answer. Instead, she allows us to feel, and recognise, the quiet violence embedded in contemporary systems. 

Further Reading

The Disaster Tourist (밤의 여행자들)
Yun Ko-eun
Translated by Lizzie Buehler
Serpent’s Tail, 2020