Chung Sarang entered the literary world with her work Dream, Dream, Dream.
She arrived as a science fiction writer, and in many ways, she has never left that territory. Not because she escapes reality, but because she knows how to build another world beside it—a parallel space where women can breathe, experiment, hesitate, and begin again.
In her stories, girls run away from lives designed to drain them. Women become monsters, vampires, healers, ghosts—not to frighten others, but to survive themselves. Her writing does not deny difficulty. It looks straight at social pressure, gendered expectations, and invisible violence. And still, it remains quietly optimistic.
At OSUGA, we recognize this instinct immediately. We believe that pleasure, safety, and freedom often begin with one brave act: choosing yourself. Chung Sarang’s work reminds us that leaving—leaving a role, a space, a demand—is sometimes the most honest way to stay alive.
Building Other Worlds When This One Feels Too Narrow
Chung Sarang has always been good at leaving.
Her fiction is filled with departures—not dramatic exits, but necessary ones. She writes characters who step out of prescribed lives, not knowing exactly where they will land, only knowing they cannot stay where they are.
One of her most well-known characters, Hyojin (also translated as Hyo-geun), is a woman raised to believe her entire life must be devoted to her parents. She does everything right. And then, slowly, she begins to ask questions that change everything: Is this really my responsibility? Do I know how to protect myself?
Escape, in Chung Sarang’s world, is never easy. It comes with guilt, fear, and uncertainty. But it also comes with breath.
She once said that women climbing uphill—that moment when you are exhausted, when you want to stop, yet still take one more step—that is what women truly look like.
Maybe freedom is just one more step ahead.
When the Ground Suddenly Disappears
Like many East Asian women of her generation, Chung Sarang grew up believing in education as a promise. She was encouraged to study, to develop her potential, to move forward.
And then, abruptly, the ground ended.
Entering the workforce, she encountered a wall she hadn’t known existed. Interviews where women were visibly outnumbered. Opportunities that quietly vanished. Later, after marriage, another shift: voices appeared from nowhere, telling her how to spend her time, how to behave, when to give birth, how many children to have.
Questions that should have been private were suddenly treated as public property.
She began to wonder:
Are women ever really choosing freely?
Can we even tell the difference between desire and pressure?
And are we allowed to?
These questions never left her. Instead, they became the quiet engine of her writing.
Leaving Is Not a Failure
Before becoming known primarily as a novelist, Chung Sarang worked as an editor. In the late 2000s, literary social spaces—especially late-night gatherings—were often dangerous places. Harassment, humiliation, abuse disguised as tradition. One day, she realized that staying would poison her body. So she left.
At the time, she doubted herself. Was she irresponsible? Had she failed to endure? But looking back, she understands that leaving saved her. Escape, she insists, is not shameful. It is not permanent surrender. It is a pause. A breath. A way to protect oneself before deciding what comes next.
This belief runs through her fiction. She writes women who leave without apology, who do not look back, who learn—sometimes late, sometimes painfully—how to build rules of survival that belong to them.
Names, Bodies, and the Right to Belong to Yourself
Names matter deeply to Chung Sarang.
She noticed that many women around her shared the same name—common names given to daughters of a certain generation. Some lived obediently within those names. Others resisted them. Some changed them entirely.
In Korea, she notes, there was once a belief that giving a daughter a boy’s name might help produce a son next time. Even naming, she suggests, can carry quiet ownership.
That is why she loves watching women rename themselves later in life—sometimes in their fifties or sixties—claiming a name that finally fits. The paperwork is tedious. The meaning is profound.
This attention to naming extends to the body, to desire, to sensation. Chung Sarang wants to write stories where women experience pleasure not as objects, but as subjects—curious, active, alive. She is drawn to joy, surprise, bodily awareness, and the deep connection between mind and flesh.
Desire, in her work, is not something to be tamed. It is something to be understood.
Writing as a Way to Create Cracks
Chung Sarang believes that writing is an act of noticing cracks.
When one person sees a crack, it may seem small. But when many people do, those cracks eventually meet. And even structures that appear solid can break.
She does not see herself as carrying a heavy responsibility alone. She walks alongside other women writers—past and present—drawing courage from them, trusting their direction, moving forward together.
She has witnessed the power of connection firsthand: young female journalists exposing digital sexual violence; writers supporting one another; women finding language for experiences once considered unspeakable.
These moments are not accidents. They are part of a longer relay.
Passing the Relay Forward
She often reflects on this thought: The life we live now is the life women fifty or a hundred years ago dreamed of.
Education. Choice. Work. Love.
And the life we imagine today—one with more safety, more pleasure, more freedom—may soon belong to future women.
“We have to pass the baton,” she says.
Through her stories, Chung Sarang does exactly that. She hands forward the permission to leave, to question, to feel, to desire, to imagine another world—and then, maybe, to build it.
At OSUGA, we are honored to walk alongside voices like hers. Voices that remind us that sometimes the bravest thing a woman can do is step away—and listen carefully to herself.
Chung Sarang's Representative works:
Jeong Sera made her debut as a writer in 2010. She published works such as Starting from Siseon and Filial Piety. She is good at integrating fantasy and science fiction elements into daily narratives to explore social issues such as gender oppression and workplace culture.
