Metafictional Writing and Fictionality : Focusing on Kim Yeon-soo’s Good-bye, Lee Sang

Fictionality is a central theme in Kim Yeon-soo’s novels. His works challenge the dichotomy of fiction and reality, truth and falsehood, and the real and the fake. Kim explores the possibilities of fictionality at the boundaries of these constructs, adopting a consistently metafictional approach. This study examines the semantics of fiction in Good-bye, Lee Sang. The second story in Good-bye, Lee Sang, “Lost Flower,” examines the dichotomy between fiction and reality, illustrating how fiction transforms into reality. Reality, Kim suggests, is merely another form of fiction—one that survives by fictionalizing its origins and competing with other forms of fiction. Therefore, the key issue is not “fiction or reality?” The third story, “Bird,” addresses the truth of life and its ambiguous boundary between fiction and reality. This theme is extended to life itself. Peter Ju, a character who identifies as Korean-American, experiences existential emptiness upon discovering his Chinese origins. However, he constructs a new fiction to fill this void, highlighting the human tendency to sustain life through narratives. The first story, “Dead Mask,” explores the concept of “existence” within the interplay of fiction and reality, and the real and the fake. It suggests that “fiction or reality” and “real or fake” are not intrinsic distinctions but are defined by the circumstances surrounding the subject. Good-bye, Lee Sang delves into the meaning of fictionality in literature based on the relationship between fiction and reality. Reality conceals its fictional nature by erasing its own source of existence and excluding other fictions. When this fictional basis is revealed, nihilism emerges. However, fiction overcomes this nihilism and makes life bearable. In other words, nihilism encountered when realizing that reality is fiction can be overcome by another form of fiction—the fiction of literature. In this way, literature reveals the deeper truth of fiction.