“As a novelist, I felt a serious professional crisis.”
Novelist Jang Kang-myeong wrote this recommendation for convenience store owner Bong Dal-ho’s (49, real name Kwak Dae-jung) new book. Those who live on what is known as ‘geulbab’ will sympathize. As a current self-employed person, his writings contain sweat and tears, fun and excitement dripping from the scene of life. He is prolific in his calligraphy, to the point of saying, “Originally, Bonkae (original character) is a convenience store owner, and Bukkae (second character) is a writer, but now I’m getting confused Bonkae and Bukkae.” He currently publishes columns and articles in six media, including ‘Bongdalho’s Today, Convenience Store’, which he contributes to ‘Anyway, Weekend’.
He published his fourth collection of essays, Raising the Shutter (Dasan Books). The subtitle is ‘To the small shops that raised me’. Starting from his parents’ hole-in-the-wall shop, he wrote his memoirs of nine shops run by his family, including a pesticide shop, a snack bar, a rib restaurant, a duck soup restaurant, and the convenience store present . It’s like a real warehouse version of the play ‘The youngest son of a conglomerate’. From the Gwangju Democracy Movement to the Seoul Asian Games, the IMF, and the card crisis, the eras of Korea’s life have fully developed through the space of ‘shop’ experienced by individuals. The authors wrote recommendations, saying, “I can’t believe that a family business story can be so interesting and impressive” (Chang Kang-myeong), “There are many stories that anyone who has passed through Korea at the end of the century can nod their heads and tap their knees” (Kang Won-guk). . I went to this man to discover the secret of calligraphy. Bongdalho’s ‘writing factory’ was a small convenience store of 20 pyeong in the basement of a large building in Jamsil, Seoul.
◇ A family shop raised me
– In the meantime, I put my daily life in a convenience store into a book, but this time, ‘the store that raised me’ is the writing.
“After seeing my essay published in the newspaper, the head of the publishing house suggested, ‘What about writing a memoir?’ At first I turned it down because I wanted to write a biography at my age, but since essays are mostly self-narrative anyway, I thought maybe I could say something through my life. What got me up to this point, the main editing shop in my life, was the shop my parents and I ran.”
– It feels like a coming-of-age novel.
“To be honest, I’ve been writing a novel for two or three years now. There is a world that can be talked about through essays, and there is a world that can be told through novels. These are the materials I collected to put into my first novel, but I sorted them out all this time. (Laughs).”
– Since you are now known more as an author than as a convenience store owner, how did you get your first book published?
“I remembered what I saw and felt when greeting customers and displaying goods at the convenience store counter, in the fridge, in the warehouse and at the tasting table. It was busily scribbled on the corner of a ramen box, on a mobile phone notebook, and on the back of a receipt. I bundled the articles I had posted on the Internet convenience store owner’s cafe and sent them to three publishers, and all three contacted me. The first book, ‘I go every day, a convenience store’, came out from the construction company that contacted me first.”
-Why do you use the pen name Bongdalho?
“The nickname of the convenience store owner’s cafe was ‘Made Dalho’. When I submitted it to the publisher, I sent it under the pseudonym Bongdalho, which was abbreviated, and the editor suggested that it would be a good thing to publish it as it is. It was also a time when Bonkae and Bukae were popular. Looking back now, it seems like a good choice.”
◇ Disappointed in the movement cycle, ideological separation
His hometown is Naju, Jeollanam-do. The shop my mother ran in elementary school was the same as the supermarket run by the Ssangbong family in the play ‘Diary of a Country’. A shop with no name or sign. If the owner is not there, the customer writes ‘Eungsam’s Shrimp Cracker’ on a note and goes. It wasn’t until I became a middle school student when I moved to Gwangju that martial law soldiers waved a stick at the wholesale store building in Chungjang-ro, Gwangju where my mother stopped to pick up various goods. In 1989, when he was a freshman in high school, he became an activist under the influence of the Korean Union of Teachers and Education Workers, and joined an underground organization affiliated with NL in his sophomore year of high school. Later, in 1999, he served as student council president at Chonnam National University as an anti-Han Chongryon affiliate. After graduating, he opened a bar called ‘Soju Scholarship Student’ in front of the school without much preparation, and closed it in 4 months. He described how he felt when he put up the ‘closed business’ notice, saying, “I feel like I’m lost in life.” Afterwards, he moved to Seoul and served as editor-in-chief of the North Korea Democracy Network and editorial office chief of Daily NK, where he campaigned for North Korean human rights for seven years.
– Why did you join an NGO dealing with North Korean human rights issues?
“I thought I would have my own time to make up for the days I followed the North Korean regime. I had to choose a section, but the post of editor-in-chief to publish the newsletter was vacant, so I did it randomly. The editor-in-chief said it was a one-person editing room, and I had to write a large part of the manuscript by myself. It was the impetus for me to start writing.”
– You’ve been working out since you were young, so why did you break up?
“In my late teens and twenties, I was always looking for some ideology or value. Ironically, while serving in the army as riot police, I heard doubt about the ‘methodology’ for the first time when I stood in the position of throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and waving iron pipes, and stood in the position of blocking. Self-reflection was that the ideology I had followed was out of touch with reality and that I was moving away from the common sense of public opinion. A young man was found dead on our school campus. It was an incident where university student council executives mistook the young man for a police officer and dragged him into the student council room and tortured him. When a person died, the body was moved to another place to hide it as an accidental death. Some of the people who led the manipulative play were names I knew. Around that time, I heard that millions of people were starving to death in North Korea. In the end, we decided to part ways ideologically.”
◇ In business, even failures must be reliably reviewed
The book contains success stories and failure stories. What happened after he went to Shenyang, China and opened a restaurant is a textbook case of failure, saying ‘If you do this, you will fail’. He said, “I tried again without preparation and failed miserably.” “If you go to a bookshop, there are many books that boast success stories, but very few books that record the experience of failure. People try to hide the story of their failure and blame the outside world, but not many people look back on their mistakes seriously.”
– What is the reason for the ruin?
“First, second and third is lack of preparation. The fact that I cannot run the shop consistently is due to a lack of preparation. After publishing a convenience store book, many people came to me wanting to start a business. I’m sorry, but if you meet him, you’ll see if he’s worth it or not. I get angry when I hear people say, ‘I’m trying to make something easier because the company is having a hard time.'”
-Noted the list of ‘Special Committee for the People’s Livelihood Hope’ published by People’s Power.
“Cho Soo-jin, the Supreme People’s Power Commissioner, called me saying he was watching the column well. He asked if he could tell a tough story representing the reality of self-employed people. When I said, ‘You’re not going to say anything nice’, I said it was a place to hear such words. I want to speak honestly about the stories I felt while running a convenience store and the joys and sorrows of self-employed people.”
– When do you usually write?
“I wake up at 4 in the morning and write at home until 12 in the afternoon. After work, I run 10 km every day. My only hobby is running marathons.”
-Is the talent to write innate?
“Ever since I was young, I’ve hated writing. I had no talent, but I was confident in writing quickly. I’ve never won a prize in an essay competition, but I was the type to write everything down and play when other friends were working hard. Even now, I serialize in six mediums, but I’ve never been late for a deadline. There is no pressure when writing. I have an idea to interweave this or that chapter with a particular writing style, and once I start, I write smoothly. (Laughs)”
-Do you read a lot of books?
“I read 5 to 6 books a month, and I read about 50 to 60 books in excerpts. I buy and read all the job essays published in Korea. It’s fun to look at the world of other jobs, and learn what aspects of the job this person presents and how. Right now I’m reading a book by pianist Baek Hye-seon.”
“My wife is always my first reader,” he says. “Whether it’s a column or a book manuscript, I always read it first and give an honest review. He is a picky reader who rarely says he likes the first draft.” “I have just read this book and I really like it. Not that the manuscript was great, but it was a process of understanding the person I am. They say your whole life is right now.”
– What kind of store will you open after the convenience store?
“This may be the last time. A convenience store is a space with a wide range of relationships, but a shallow depth. It is not deep, but you have to walk through the shallow river. You must have a basic liking for people. As a writer, this place with a wide range of observations is the best factory.”
