Twenty-seven years after it was published, no one knows what became of him — the man who, in 1999, got stuck in an apartment elevator in Kim Young-ha’s short story, ‘What Happened to the Man Stuck in the Elevator?’
Though I read it more than 20 years ago, several scenes remain vivid, like a film: the man wedged at the fifth floor with his upper body caught between the doors, his feet dangling outside.
The narrator, a resident of the same building, sees the man on the way to work and decides to report it rather than pull him free — worried about being late. But he has no cellphone. The security guard is out on patrol, and no one will lend a phone.
The day only gets stranger: the commuter bus crashes, the narrator is mistaken for a sex offender, and at work he ends up trapped in an elevator. He is rescued much later, but his suit is ruined, he is late, and an important meeting ends in disappointment.
By the time he gets off work, he still has not been able to report what he saw. Back home, he asks the building manager and neighbors what happened to the man — but no one knows. More than that, no one even seems to know such an incident occurred.
The shock I felt then came from how chillingly real the story made “indifference” feel. The lingering anger came, too, from the author’s refusal to provide an ending. Kim, even now, has never offered an epilogue about the man’s fate.
When I first read the story, I resented the neighbors, bus passengers and co-workers who piled hardship onto the narrator. A scene in which employees debate how many squares of toilet paper to allow for bodily waste, to save supplies, felt absurd. The narrator’s helplessness also seemed pathetic.
Looking back now, I see the narrator differently: timid, perhaps, but in his own way admirable — the kind of worker who keeps showing up, enduring the long years, no matter what derails the day. Over time, my irritation at the bystanders has faded, replaced by a renewed respect for the many office workers who quietly withstand routine and then absorb sudden crises, solve them and move on.
Kim, who was just over 30 when he wrote the story, may have been driven by irritation at people who pride themselves on being expressionless, detached and narrowly focused on their own tasks. Whether he still thinks that way is unclear.
Now nearing 60, Kim met audiences on the 1st at a matinee concert that paired music and storytelling. The program placed the author’s commentary between performances of opera arias and film music.
There, Kim reflected on ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ screened at a commemorative film festival marking the 30th anniversary of his literary debut. “I used to see it as a story about having to leave,” he said, “but watching it again, I realized it was about understanding the past and the community that made you.” He also said that in spring, more people wander without a destination, and “in that process, love shows on their faces.”
The sharp edges in the author’s aura seem to have softened. So have mine. With time and experience, I have come to understand more of people’s smallness — and to value compassion more. I also find myself hoping that the story’s narrator, now surely older, would do something, anything, for a stranger in danger.
* Leftover Review: A review of the impressions that remain after the main takeaways from cultural content are set aside.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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