In the world of the two Koreas, the North draws our attention with its nukes and strident parades, but the South has built an economic miracle on the backs of ordinary people like us preoccupied by housing, debt, and the daily grind, always guarding against losers and non-conformists who might endanger their hard-won security.

Yun Heung-gil captures these interesting Southerners from their roots in the civil war of the 1950s when they were refugees, displaced, traumatised - through to today when they must negotiate an equally complex and dog-eat-dog society, and he always portrays them with dignity, humor, and subtlety that makes him one of the greatest living Korean writers.