페인트

A quiet yet engaging near-future story about a boy growing up in a state-run facility

The story: To address Korea's low birth rate, the government has encouraged citizens to have babies and surrender them to state-run facilities. When they turn 13, these kids can be adopted by families. Jenu 301, a child being raised in one of these facilities, went an unusually long time without being adopted and faces the possibility that he will age out and go through life with no family.

Not much happens in this story, and yet somehow I found it quite compelling, enough so that I read it twice! It's reflective rather than exciting, but the story manages to build suspense out of small questions and I always wanted to know more about Jenu and his roommate Aki.

For language learning: I see some other reviewers found it easy but to me it was a real stretch! Rather than a series of straightforward events, there was a lot of speculation, a lot of "If this were true, would we..." I struggled to tell who was speaking until I realized I wasn't paying close enough attention to honorifics and formality. (Everyone speaks casually to the kids, the staff uses honorifics to the pre-foster parents, and the pre-foster parents use polite speech but not honorifics to staff.) However the mild SF setting doesn't pose much special challenge, as there is very little SF jargon.