At Dusk
SynopsisPlot
Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighborhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernizing society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated for corruption, he’s forced to reconsider his role in the transformation of his country. At the same time, he receives an unexpected message from an old friend, Cha Soona, a woman that he had once loved, and then betrayed. As memories return unbidden, Minwoo recalls a world he thought had been left behind―a world he now understands that he has helped to destroy.
Story
About this book
Park Minwoo grew up poor in Seoul and built himself into the director of a major architectural firm during South Korea's rapid modernization. His career followed the country's own upward arc, moving from a struggling postwar economy into an era of large-scale construction and urban expansion. When a corruption investigation targets his company, Minwoo is forced to look back at what his professional life has actually cost.
Around the same time, he receives a message from Cha Soona, a woman he once loved and later abandoned. Her reappearance pulls him into memories of the neighborhood and the people he left behind as he climbed. Through these two pressures, the novel traces a tension between personal ambition and the communities that get cleared away to make room for new development. Hwang Sok-yong sets the story against Seoul's physical transformation, where old districts were demolished and rebuilt within a single generation.
The book is structured partly around Minwoo's present-day crisis and partly around episodes from his past. A parallel thread follows a younger character whose struggles echo earlier patterns of displacement. Hwang, one of South Korea's most prominent living writers, uses architecture and urban change as a concrete frame for questions about memory, loyalty, and complicity.
