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“One Lucky Day” is a novel published in 1924, which is set in Seoul during the Japanese forced occupation of Korea. The lives of people who were living in Seoul at that time, and the appearance of Seoul is written inside the novel.
Modern day Seoul[edit]
Seoul during the 1920s was starting to turn into a modern city. Modern factories, schools, and hospitals were starting to form around Seoul. This is noticeable in “One lucky day”, as the rickshaw that Kim is driving was a popular form of transportation, because the citizens of Seoul during the 1920s needed an easy-to-use transportation due to their busy everyday life. The fact that there were already train rails and stations, and the fact that there were modern schools and hospitals is also written inside the novel. [1]
Life of the lower class citizens[edit]
However, while the settings of “One Lucky Day” was Seoul, a modern city, Hyun Jin-geon focuses on the daily life of lower class citizens in the story, and how harsh it was. In the story, Kim conflicts between earning money to sustain life, and looking after his dying wife. This shows the pitiful life of lower class citizens during the Japanese forced occupation, who couldn’t do much and had to go out and earn money, even when their wife was dying. [1]
The setting of “One Lucky Day”, Seoul, was already starting to become a modern city during the 1920s. However, there were still a lot of people working hard to survive day by day. There were a lot of “Kim”s out there, living difficultly. Seoul was full of lower class citizens who were tormented by poverty, and this poverty is the problem that Hyun Jin-geon, along with other realism authors at that time, tried to point out with the settings of their stories. [1]