When Daechi-dong's Top Student Go Mi-jeong Fails
Author우신영PublishedApril 13, 2026
Pages · Size184p · 142*206ISBN9791167553799Price15,000원
About This Book
"Can you survive without being crushed to death by studying?"
A hyper-realist Daechi-dong drama so real it's suffocating
A raw portrait of a generation exhausted by the endless refrain of grades Daechi-dong—where kids blow millions of won on private academy tuition yet eat at convenience stores and fast-food joints, carry phones stripped down to calls and texts only, and even run away from home by hopping into a study car. In the final dungeon of the college entrance war, can our protagonist Go Mi-jeong avoid becoming a patron saint of the academy district's coffers, survive her mother's daily uppercuts without getting knocked out, and make it through this bitter neighborhood alive?
Woo Sin-yeong, winner of the Honbul Literary Award, Bir Publishing's Golden Dokkaebi Prize, and the Sahoe Pyeongnon Story Grand Prize—who in City View painted a complex, shadow-laden bird's-eye portrait of Songdo, alternating between its luminous bright spots and darkened corners—has poured everything she witnessed in Daechi-dong into young adult literature: the anxiety, the worry, the love, and even the tears that permeate the neighborhood. The gaze that follows the utterly exhausted Mi-jeong can be cynical, yet it is also warm enough to gently peel back and empathize with everyone's private struggles. Veering off the track where everyone runs in lockstep is terrifying. But on that same track, we can each run at our own pace. In our own way.
The world that readers will witness by following these children—some stunted, some overgrown—is precisely that place.
A hyper-realist Daechi-dong drama so real it's suffocating
A raw portrait of a generation exhausted by the endless refrain of grades Daechi-dong—where kids blow millions of won on private academy tuition yet eat at convenience stores and fast-food joints, carry phones stripped down to calls and texts only, and even run away from home by hopping into a study car. In the final dungeon of the college entrance war, can our protagonist Go Mi-jeong avoid becoming a patron saint of the academy district's coffers, survive her mother's daily uppercuts without getting knocked out, and make it through this bitter neighborhood alive?
Woo Sin-yeong, winner of the Honbul Literary Award, Bir Publishing's Golden Dokkaebi Prize, and the Sahoe Pyeongnon Story Grand Prize—who in City View painted a complex, shadow-laden bird's-eye portrait of Songdo, alternating between its luminous bright spots and darkened corners—has poured everything she witnessed in Daechi-dong into young adult literature: the anxiety, the worry, the love, and even the tears that permeate the neighborhood. The gaze that follows the utterly exhausted Mi-jeong can be cynical, yet it is also warm enough to gently peel back and empathize with everyone's private struggles. Veering off the track where everyone runs in lockstep is terrifying. But on that same track, we can each run at our own pace. In our own way.
The world that readers will witness by following these children—some stunted, some overgrown—is precisely that place.