The narrator: Kyung Rok

Girl: Mi Jung

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The story begins in winter 1986, with the narrator, then twenty years old, arriving by bus in a snowy Seoul for what is explicitly framed as his final emotional reunion with his ex-girlfriend, an unnamed young woman described as extraordinarily ugly. They meet wordlessly at first, overwhelmed by emotion and unspoken regrets, barely able to speak due to the intensity. She gifts him an LP record of Maurice Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte, a melancholic piano piece evoking mourning for something lost and unattainable. This scene sets a tone of inevitable loss, we know from the outset that their relationship is doomed, and this is their last encounter. The narrator reflects on it as a heart-warming yet heartbreaking moment, symbolizing the “dead princess” as the idealized, unattainable beauty or love crushed by societal norms. The narrative then jumps back one year to trace how they met, fell in love, and parted, interspersed with the narrator's present-day musings as a writer grappling with aging, regret, and the passage of time.

The narrator, at nineteen in 1986, is handsome with matinee-idol looks inherited from his father, a once-struggling actor who achieved fame in Seoul. His childhood is marked by trauma: his father, supported financially by his plain-looking mother, abandons the family after landing a movie role and running off with a prettier co-star. This betrayal leaves the mother devastated, and she collapses emotionally and returns to her rural hometown, while the narrator stays alone in Seoul, detached and disillusioned. He drops out of high school, rejecting societal expectations of education, success, and materialism. Living in isolation with a cat, he feels like an outsider, numb to the world. To combat his aimlessness and pointless questions, he takes a low-paying job as a parking attendant in the underground garage of a bustling downtown department store, symbolizing the depths of consumerist society. Here, he observes the era's hedonistic middle class: people fighting over parking spots, drowning in debt for fashions and luxuries, and judging others based on appearance, wealth, school, and status. Seoul in the mid-1980s is depicted as a frenzied, shallow metropolis flooded with Western influences, like Madonna posters, plastic surgery ads, real estate bubbles - where capitalism turns people into rats following Pied Pipers, beautiful celebrities and brands, in endless cycles of production and consumption.

The narrator is handsome but listless, representing privilege tainted by emotional dependency. He aspires to be a writer but procrastinates, often turning on his computer only to stare blankly. His attraction to ugliness is a subconscious rebellion against his father's superficiality and society's beauty fetish. He uses philosophical lenses, such as Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, to understand his life: he sees himself as a master, handsome and privileged, who needs the slave, the ugly girl, for self-recognition and illumination, likening human souls to electric filaments that light up upon connection.

Yo Han, the only named character, is the narrator’s supervisor and best friend, a brilliant, eccentric twenty-something misfit modeled after John Lennon; his name is a nod to “Yo-Han,” Korean for John. Witty, sarcastic, and erudite, Yohan provides comic relief and sharp critiques of society. He rephrases complex ideas sentimentally, such as love as mutual soul-lighting, and rails against capitalism, democracy, and beauty standards. He helps orchestrate the romance, offering advice and serving as a third wheel in their trio. Yohan eventually becomes a successful writer, symbolizing self-actualization through labor and intellect. He represents the self-affirmed slave who achieves independence.

The girl, unnamed, is a nineteen-year-old coworker in merchandise shipment, described repeatedly as the ugliest woman in the world, so strikingly unattractive that she disarms people, causing stares, rejection, and discrimination. From a poor family, she lives alone, is intelligent and cultured, sharing interests in Ravel, Dustin Hoffman films, Bob Dylan, cacti, and literature like The Little Prince, but her looks bar her from better jobs or social acceptance. Interviewers bluntly tell her she’s too ugly. She views her ugliness as an unrecognized handicap: society accommodates physical disabilities but forces her to endure cruelty without acknowledgment, treating her inner darkness as a personal failing. She avoids attempts at beautification, such as nail polish, because they invite more ridicule. Her poverty and appearance symbolize the underclass in a beauty-obsessed, capitalist society. Despite shyness and reclusiveness, she opens up about her pain, envying pretty girls’ easy lives pandered by admirers.

The three form an inseparable trio of societal freaks: the handsome dropout dating an ugly girl, with Yohan as the philosophical glue. They hang out at a rundown bar called Kentucky Chicken, a knockoff KFC with misspelled neon signs like BEAR instead of BEER, symbolizing their flawed, outcast existence, drinking beer, eating fried chicken, and discussing existential themes such as love as imagination, time’s waste, and society’s superficiality.

On his first day, the narrator is stunned by the girl’s ugliness in the office, comparing it to a disruptive force, like a yodeling Sammy Hagar interrupting pop stars on TV. With Yohan’s encouragement, he overcomes awkwardness and asks her out. Their relationship develops tentatively and slowly, like taming the Fox in The Little Prince. They bond over shared loneliness, cultural interests, listening to Schubert’s Winter Journey, discussing Maurice Ravel and Pink Floyd, and rejection of mainstream values.

The narrator falls deeply in love with her intelligence, reclusiveness, and brighter side, becoming emotionally dependent. He needs her for meaning, avenging his mother’s abandonment by choosing ugliness over beauty. Their love is portrayed as a revolt against societal norms: in a world where pretty trumps justice and everything is judged at first sight, their mismatched pair highlights inequality. However, external pressures mount as peers reject her, people suggest he deserves better, and constant judgment erodes their bond. She internalizes her pain, revealing how ugly women are mocked for trying to improve themselves, reinforcing her isolation.

The relationship crumbles under societal cruelty and internal dependencies. A serious event leads to their separation. The girl leaves the narrator, affirming her self-sufficiency, reversing his parents’ dynamic, where the ugly one walks away. Devastated, he stops attending classes, neglects writing, and wallows in regret, listening obsessively to Schubert’s Winter Journey. They spend years apart; she leaves Korea temporarily, growing less fixated on her appearance with age. The narrator continues as a writer, reflecting on lost time and what the relationship meant.

The narrative returns to the snowy reunion, their last night together, where she gives him the Ravel LP as a poignant farewell gift, evoking mourning for their dead love. The book then shifts into postmodern territory in the final thirty pages, presenting multiple alternative endings, framed as the author’s cuts, rather than a single resolution. These function as prisms of possibility, blending sadness, hope, and illusion.

One version implies a fairy-tale reconciliation where love transcends ugliness in an imperfect world.

Another suggests they survive apart, mourning wasted youth.

A darker interpretation hints that the narrator may have died, possibly by suicide or accident, explaining his ghostly, regretful tone and fixation on existential dread, making the entire story a posthumous reflection.

The novel doesn’t confirm a true ending, emphasizing ambiguity: life is full of regrets, societies crush authenticity, but love offers brief escapes through imagination.

:: The dead princess metaphorically represents the girl’s killed potential or their doomed romance, not a literal death.