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파쇄
위즈덤하우스에서 새롭게 선보이는 단편소설 시리즈 ‘위픽(WEFIC)’이 세상을 향해 그 첫발을 내딛는다. 첫 번째 주인공은 구병모 작가다. <파쇄>는 그녀의 대표작 <파과>의 외전으로, ‘조각’이라는 인물이 어떻게 킬러가 되었는지 그 시작을 그린 소설이다. 혹독한 훈련을 통해 타인을 부숴버리는 방법을 터득함으로써 결국 자신의 삶도 산산조각 나기를 선택한 조각의 탄생기가 구병모 작가의 압도적인 문장으로 생생히 되살아난다.
- GenresFiction
96 pages, Hardcover
Published March 8, 2023
About the author
Gu Byeong-mo
29 books215 followersAssociated Names:
* 구병모 (Korean)
* Gu Byeong-mo (English)
* คูบยองโม (Thai)
Gu Byeong-mo is a South Korean writer. She made her literary debut in 2009 when her novel Wizard Bakery won the 2nd Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Her 2015 short story collection Geugeosi namaneun anigireul received the Today's Writer Award and Hwang Sun-won New Writers' Award.
* 구병모 (Korean)
* Gu Byeong-mo (English)
* คูบยองโม (Thai)
Gu Byeong-mo is a South Korean writer. She made her literary debut in 2009 when her novel Wizard Bakery won the 2nd Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Her 2015 short story collection Geugeosi namaneun anigireul received the Today's Writer Award and Hwang Sun-won New Writers' Award.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 19, 2026
(3.5)
i think one of the eeriest things about the human body and mind is how quickly they can learn something that once felt completely foreign. repeat something enough, whether it is a movement, a fear, or a way of thinking, and eventually it sinks beneath conscious thought, until what once had to be forced begins to cling to the body like instinct. while reading 파쇄, i kept thinking about the point where bodily adaptation begins to feel almost like possession. when a learned response sinks so deeply into the body that it becomes difficult to tell whether we are still choosing it, or whether it has begun choosing in our place.
the way ryu trains hornclaw seems to revolve around gradually narrowing the distance between thought and action. “always think, but there must be no delay between thought and action. you have to think every second, but if you lose yourself in thought, you die.” at first it sounds like advice for survival, but it gradually becomes a rule for how hornclaw must live inside her own body. she has to become “a surface of water that does not ripple even when a pebble is thrown into it.” even if she feels fear or pain, neither can be allowed to spread to the surface.
gu byeong-mo carries this image into the language of cultivation. ryu will “prune her very existence, cultivating an orchard of death.” 전지(剪枝) literally means pruning branches. the phrase feels especially cruel because somebody has already decided what shape the plant should take and cuts away whatever is unnecessary for that form. hornclaw is made in much the same way, repeatedly stripped of hesitation, vulnerability, and anything else that might interfere with survival. this horticultural imagery also made the title ‘파과‘ feel richer. if pruning belongs to the early stages of growth, then 破果evokes the damaged, spoiled fruit waiting at the other end. the fact that 破瓜 also carries associations with female growth and the threshold of womanhood overlaps strangely with 파쇄, which returns to hornclaw while she is still young and being formed. between those meanings, her life begins to resemble the lifespan of a piece of fruit. the girl she once was is pruned, cultivated, ripened into womanhood, and eventually bruised and damaged.
when the novel later says, “the world breaks with a single gunshot, as simply as overripe fruit,” the fruit imagery already seems to contain the possibility of collapse within it. 파쇄 shows the fruit being cultivated, while 파과 shows what remains after decades of survival. from childhood, hornclaw is systematically pared down and remade so that she can survive almost exclusively inside a world of killing.
what feels most uncomfortable about ryu is how difficult it is to separate his cruelty from his care. hornclaw eventually remembers that “for all his cruelty, he had often been careful.” he is the person who pushes her body to its limits, but he is also the first to notice when something has genuinely gone wrong. the hands that create the wounds and the hands that tend to them belong to the same person. maybe that is why even his stories of mutilation and death can drift “through the music played by the wind and leaves,” settle beside hornclaw “like a lullaby,” and seep “between the pages of dreams torn apart until they have lost their original shape.” even something horrifying can begin to feel strangely comforting when it arrives through a familiar voice. repetition gives even violence the texture of familiarity.
this part also made the relationship between ryu and hornclaw feel slightly reminiscent of hornclaw and bullfight later in 파과. the circumstances are clearly different, but both relationships share the fact that the younger person continues to carry somewhere inside them an older person who has caused them pain. ryu becomes tangled up with hornclaw’s fear, comfort, and sense of survival, while later hornclaw remains deeply embedded in bullfight’s grief and resentment. affection survives where it would have made sense for it to disappear, until it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where attachment and hurt begin to separate.
young hornclaw is still somewhat fragile beneath all of this. her unspoken feelings are described as “the fluttering wings of the butterfly inside her mouth,” something alive and delicate that she is trying to keep contained. once those feelings are released, they risk becoming “words that cannot be gathered back up, scattered like torn butterfly wings,” making emotional exposure feel irreversible and almost destructive. the more ryu hardens and disciplines her body, the more fragile her inner life seems to become. that contrast also makes their relationship feel increasingly blurred: he is the person teaching her how not to be shaken, yet he becomes one of the few people capable of reaching the part of her that still can be.
explaining hornclaw’s journey as one that moves “through repeated alternations of destruction and rebirth” feels like one of the clearest ways to understand her transformation in 파쇄. at every stage of training, something remains while something else falls away. ryu’s “voice and hands” “give rhythm to her movements and alter the melody of each motion,” until hornclaw eventually “becomes one with his body by becoming his weapon.” traces of everything ryu has corrected begin to accumulate in layers within her body. outwardly, she is as still as an undisturbed surface of water, but beneath it remain repeated impact, pressure, and restraint. her body gradually learns how to reveal nothing of what has happened to it.
that accumulated destruction finally becomes visible when hornclaw, at the end of her training, kills a living creature for the first time. “the world breaks with a single gunshot, as simply as overripe fruit.” afterward, that fruit-like world disappears with “not even a seed left behind.” the destruction is described so softly and simply that it feels even more brutal. it gives the sense that something can lose its shape before there is even time to understand what has happened. with even the seed gone, the possibility of growing again disappears too.
when a flag begins to flutter inside her “like a distress signal or a declaration of surrender,” it feels as though her body has recognised an ending that her mind still cannot name. hornclaw is already looking toward “the hands that will build mountains of corpses,” while the outline of a life that has not yet happened begins closing around her far too early. that is what makes the title 파쇄 feel especially haunting. emptiness is not the only thing left after something breaks. fragments can be gathered again, trained, sharpened, and eventually arranged into the shape of a person.
as 파쇄 approaches its end, the body itself begins to feel like an archive. every movement ryu corrected, every wound, every reflex repeatedly carved into the body remains somewhere inside hornclaw. that makes the older hornclaw in 파과 feel sad in another way. a body trained for a lifetime to move with almost frightening precision is now gradually slowing down. so much of her youth was spent becoming useful, efficient, and difficult to break, yet age arrives anyway.
the author’s note makes this thought feel even heavier. gu byeong-mo recalls being asked why she chose an elderly woman as the protagonist of 파과, and answering, “women are already disadvantaged, and when they grow old, they become disadvantaged twice over.” after 파쇄, it is difficult to separate that statement from the way young hornclaw’s body is constantly judged according to what it can withstand and what it can do. decades later, 파과 shows that body’s usefulness gradually disappearing in the eyes of the world around her. because she was sharpened for so long in 파쇄, watching her become dull in 파과 feels all the more painful.
even then, ryu never completely disappears from inside hornclaw. his voice, his hands, the rhythm of movement he carved into her body remain long after she has left the mountain. some things do not stay in the place where they ended. they move quietly beneath a person’s life like aftershocks, arriving only much later: “at the very least, within the absolute silence that comes with her final breath, it will find its point of impact.”
i think one of the eeriest things about the human body and mind is how quickly they can learn something that once felt completely foreign. repeat something enough, whether it is a movement, a fear, or a way of thinking, and eventually it sinks beneath conscious thought, until what once had to be forced begins to cling to the body like instinct. while reading 파쇄, i kept thinking about the point where bodily adaptation begins to feel almost like possession. when a learned response sinks so deeply into the body that it becomes difficult to tell whether we are still choosing it, or whether it has begun choosing in our place.
the way ryu trains hornclaw seems to revolve around gradually narrowing the distance between thought and action. “always think, but there must be no delay between thought and action. you have to think every second, but if you lose yourself in thought, you die.” at first it sounds like advice for survival, but it gradually becomes a rule for how hornclaw must live inside her own body. she has to become “a surface of water that does not ripple even when a pebble is thrown into it.” even if she feels fear or pain, neither can be allowed to spread to the surface.
gu byeong-mo carries this image into the language of cultivation. ryu will “prune her very existence, cultivating an orchard of death.” 전지(剪枝) literally means pruning branches. the phrase feels especially cruel because somebody has already decided what shape the plant should take and cuts away whatever is unnecessary for that form. hornclaw is made in much the same way, repeatedly stripped of hesitation, vulnerability, and anything else that might interfere with survival. this horticultural imagery also made the title ‘파과‘ feel richer. if pruning belongs to the early stages of growth, then 破果evokes the damaged, spoiled fruit waiting at the other end. the fact that 破瓜 also carries associations with female growth and the threshold of womanhood overlaps strangely with 파쇄, which returns to hornclaw while she is still young and being formed. between those meanings, her life begins to resemble the lifespan of a piece of fruit. the girl she once was is pruned, cultivated, ripened into womanhood, and eventually bruised and damaged.
when the novel later says, “the world breaks with a single gunshot, as simply as overripe fruit,” the fruit imagery already seems to contain the possibility of collapse within it. 파쇄 shows the fruit being cultivated, while 파과 shows what remains after decades of survival. from childhood, hornclaw is systematically pared down and remade so that she can survive almost exclusively inside a world of killing.
what feels most uncomfortable about ryu is how difficult it is to separate his cruelty from his care. hornclaw eventually remembers that “for all his cruelty, he had often been careful.” he is the person who pushes her body to its limits, but he is also the first to notice when something has genuinely gone wrong. the hands that create the wounds and the hands that tend to them belong to the same person. maybe that is why even his stories of mutilation and death can drift “through the music played by the wind and leaves,” settle beside hornclaw “like a lullaby,” and seep “between the pages of dreams torn apart until they have lost their original shape.” even something horrifying can begin to feel strangely comforting when it arrives through a familiar voice. repetition gives even violence the texture of familiarity.
this part also made the relationship between ryu and hornclaw feel slightly reminiscent of hornclaw and bullfight later in 파과. the circumstances are clearly different, but both relationships share the fact that the younger person continues to carry somewhere inside them an older person who has caused them pain. ryu becomes tangled up with hornclaw’s fear, comfort, and sense of survival, while later hornclaw remains deeply embedded in bullfight’s grief and resentment. affection survives where it would have made sense for it to disappear, until it becomes increasingly difficult to tell where attachment and hurt begin to separate.
young hornclaw is still somewhat fragile beneath all of this. her unspoken feelings are described as “the fluttering wings of the butterfly inside her mouth,” something alive and delicate that she is trying to keep contained. once those feelings are released, they risk becoming “words that cannot be gathered back up, scattered like torn butterfly wings,” making emotional exposure feel irreversible and almost destructive. the more ryu hardens and disciplines her body, the more fragile her inner life seems to become. that contrast also makes their relationship feel increasingly blurred: he is the person teaching her how not to be shaken, yet he becomes one of the few people capable of reaching the part of her that still can be.
explaining hornclaw’s journey as one that moves “through repeated alternations of destruction and rebirth” feels like one of the clearest ways to understand her transformation in 파쇄. at every stage of training, something remains while something else falls away. ryu’s “voice and hands” “give rhythm to her movements and alter the melody of each motion,” until hornclaw eventually “becomes one with his body by becoming his weapon.” traces of everything ryu has corrected begin to accumulate in layers within her body. outwardly, she is as still as an undisturbed surface of water, but beneath it remain repeated impact, pressure, and restraint. her body gradually learns how to reveal nothing of what has happened to it.
that accumulated destruction finally becomes visible when hornclaw, at the end of her training, kills a living creature for the first time. “the world breaks with a single gunshot, as simply as overripe fruit.” afterward, that fruit-like world disappears with “not even a seed left behind.” the destruction is described so softly and simply that it feels even more brutal. it gives the sense that something can lose its shape before there is even time to understand what has happened. with even the seed gone, the possibility of growing again disappears too.
when a flag begins to flutter inside her “like a distress signal or a declaration of surrender,” it feels as though her body has recognised an ending that her mind still cannot name. hornclaw is already looking toward “the hands that will build mountains of corpses,” while the outline of a life that has not yet happened begins closing around her far too early. that is what makes the title 파쇄 feel especially haunting. emptiness is not the only thing left after something breaks. fragments can be gathered again, trained, sharpened, and eventually arranged into the shape of a person.
as 파쇄 approaches its end, the body itself begins to feel like an archive. every movement ryu corrected, every wound, every reflex repeatedly carved into the body remains somewhere inside hornclaw. that makes the older hornclaw in 파과 feel sad in another way. a body trained for a lifetime to move with almost frightening precision is now gradually slowing down. so much of her youth was spent becoming useful, efficient, and difficult to break, yet age arrives anyway.
the author’s note makes this thought feel even heavier. gu byeong-mo recalls being asked why she chose an elderly woman as the protagonist of 파과, and answering, “women are already disadvantaged, and when they grow old, they become disadvantaged twice over.” after 파쇄, it is difficult to separate that statement from the way young hornclaw’s body is constantly judged according to what it can withstand and what it can do. decades later, 파과 shows that body’s usefulness gradually disappearing in the eyes of the world around her. because she was sharpened for so long in 파쇄, watching her become dull in 파과 feels all the more painful.
even then, ryu never completely disappears from inside hornclaw. his voice, his hands, the rhythm of movement he carved into her body remain long after she has left the mountain. some things do not stay in the place where they ended. they move quietly beneath a person’s life like aftershocks, arriving only much later: “at the very least, within the absolute silence that comes with her final breath, it will find its point of impact.”
June 21, 2025
“그의 말이 공이가 되어 뇌관을 때리는 바람에 그녀는 끝내 통곡하고 만다. 몸 안에서 이제 막 펼쳐진 깃발이 구조 요청이나 항복 선언처럼 나부낀다. 앞으로 수많은 시체의 산을 쌓아나갈 손, 자르고 찌르고 태워버릴 불모의 손, 과녁 아닌 생명을 쏘고 나서야 약탈과 섬멸의 언어로밖에 표현할 길 없는 삶을 시작했음을 알게 되고 지나온 보통의 시간과 평생을 걸쳐 이별하게 되리라는 예감, 높은 확률로 예정된 자기 침몰의 방식, 그럼에도 불구하고 무언가를 죽임으로써 무릎 아래 깔린 사람을 살려낸 손이라는 총체적 아이러니가 콧속을 시큰하게 찔러오다 뒤흔든다.”
짧지만 『파과』에 이어, 류와 조각의 서사가 잘 그려지는 책이었다. 『파과』 이전에 그 둘이 서로 무엇을 나눴는지, 그리고 『파쇄』와 『파과』 사이 시간에 무엇을 나눴을지 어렴풋이 짐작할 수 있었다 — 그것이 감정이든, 함께한 이들과의 기억이든, 킬러로서의 동질감이든, 혹은 피할 수 없는 숙명이든… 류의 반존대에 치여 평점이 오른 건 안 비밀.
짧지만 『파과』에 이어, 류와 조각의 서사가 잘 그려지는 책이었다. 『파과』 이전에 그 둘이 서로 무엇을 나눴는지, 그리고 『파쇄』와 『파과』 사이 시간에 무엇을 나눴을지 어렴풋이 짐작할 수 있었다 — 그것이 감정이든, 함께한 이들과의 기억이든, 킬러로서의 동질감이든, 혹은 피할 수 없는 숙명이든… 류의 반존대에 치여 평점이 오른 건 안 비밀.
February 19, 2025
잔돌이 던져져도 동심원을 그릴 줄 모르는 수면
May 22, 2025
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews