2025 Sejong Writing Competition
Winning Entries :: Essays :: Adult second place
Title: Eye Measure: From Solidarity to Withdrawal in “O. cuniculi”
“O. cuniculi” showcases a society that compels individualism without sparing any space for individuality. And yet, that individualism is a false one. “The man”—our nameless protagonist—has no family, no friends, not even close coworkers; his life lacks any features of the collectivist culture Korea is lauded for even today. Yet, there is nothing that sets him apart either. Through her story, Pyun Hye-young presents the human struggle to understand what we offer to an inhumane world. Like many of her works, “O. cuniculi” stands on themes of monotony and isolation, constructing a world that is not so far from our own, yet reeks of hopelessness and lost identity.
The most striking feature of Pyun’s story is the stark lack of color. In fact, the only color mentioned besides black and white is red—the color of the rabbit’s eyes. It’s this color in the rabbit’s eyes that distinguishes it from other animals, for “he wouldn’t have known it was a rabbit if not for the eyes” (5), and gives the protagonist a sense of camaraderie with the animal, “as he gazed into them, relief at the thought that he was not the only one in this world with eyes red from exhaustion washed over him” (5). Conversely, the human characters offer nothing particularly unique or relatable to the story, or the man’s life. Everyone dresses in the same white shirt and black jacket, they act in unison performing the same job in the same way every day, they live in the same apartments adorned with identical “white, featureless wallpaper” (14). They are not even worthy of names, referred to only as “his superior” or “the section leader.” And as such, they are entirely replaceable, nothing more than faceless gears in a machine that just keeps turning. No more distinguishable than the baduk pieces he compares them to.
From the moment the man finds and takes the rabbit on that first night, the distinct loneliness of his life is palpable. He desperately yearns for connection, while simultaneously building himself into a cage of isolation with bricks of paranoia and repetition. Consider his relationship with the rabbit. He takes in the rabbit out of pity and perhaps a small sense of solidarity after it had been thrown away by its previous owner, but only while under the condition that the relationship was temporary, as “the only reason he’d brought it home at all was the length of his stay. If he were living there permanently, he would never have picked it up” (13). But even with an approaching deadline, his quickly shortening fuse towards the rabbit for its distinct uselessness parallels his own withdrawal from society.
He criticizes the rabbit’s futile monotony, offering nothing in terms of interest or affection, going as far as to say that rabbits “were not so much pets as freeloaders” (6). However, through the story, we see that the man himself is not so different from the rabbit in the cage. “Doing the same work everyday. Looking up the same information, and writing the same reports felt like filling page after page with fake apologies” (7). There was also a great deal of face-saving in his workplace. Because his workload was so little, “he worked as slowly as possible and hurried around the office to try to look busier than he really was” (9). This need to fit into the pace and atmosphere of the office is perfectly captured in the paradoxical employment of nunchi in the workplace, something closely tied to the collectivist culture mentioned earlier. Nunchi, literally translating to “eye measure,” encapsulates one’s ability to read the room and succeed in social situations. While this is not, in itself, a bad thing, this presence of nunchi in an office setting creates an implicit pressure to maintain a reputation, most often accomplished by working long past the set business hours. It is nunchi that keeps the man from asking his superior too many questions that would help him succeed in his job, as he knew “that his superior hated being asked questions” (8), but it is also nunchi that creates the facade that he fully understands his job and is working very hard on it. Yet, despite his social awareness, he still does not gain a social circle to benefit from, nor a sense of personal fulfillment to anchor himself to. In this way, nunchi is weaponized to benefit an economic machine without providing any of the support or harmony of “groupism,” imagined or not.
At this point, the only thing that sets the man apart from any of the other human characters in this story is the color of his eyes—red from exhaustion. The red in his eyes is the only aspect of his life that is true, uninhibited by social hierarchies and expectations. His clothes fit the norm, his words and actions abide by the implicit pressure of social awareness. Faced with the anxiety that he, just like everyone else in his life, is replaceable, the man secludes himself into what he can control, leaving us not only with an image of the consequence of monotonous working life, but also the shared existentialism of not contributing to the society that we are forced to participate in. And then finally, in a critical moment of resignation, the rabbit’s red eyes—the color which drew him in from the beginning—instead “made him uncomfortable, so he covered the cage with a black cloth” (18). This movement, simple as it is, marks a complete shut-off of his previous desire for connection, a turning away from empathy, and an utter acceptance of his desolate role within a desolate world.
Through this story, Pyun creates a setting that asks us, the audience, where is the black cover in our lives? What humanity are we suppressing to blend, to contribute, to survive? And if we throw it back, can we, as ourselves, ever thrive in this society?