When the company where he's worked for thirty years threatens layoffs, a mid-level IT manager faces financial ruin. Tasked with selling internet services in the countryside, he confronts the harsh realities of corporate life and must choose between staying in a broken system or dismantling it.
Employee No. 9, a middle-aged middle manager, is in trouble. His son is off to college, his wife has taken double shifts at a local grocery store, and now the company where he's worked for more than three decades pressures him to retire. When he refuses, a series of demotions and humiliations follow. A lifelong deskman now reduced to selling internet service door-to-door in the remote countryside, he fails to meet his quota and is tasked with constructing a high-voltage electric tower in a protected wildlife area. As struggles ensue, he has no choice but to ask himself where his loyalties ultimately lie.
Autorentext
Kim Hye-jin is an award-winning author from Daegu, South Korea. She won the 2023 Kim Yujeong Literary Award, the JoongAng Literature Award in 2013 for Central Station, the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 for Concerning My Daughter, and the Daesan Literary Award in 2020 for Employee No. 9. She was also the Special Award Laureate of the 4th Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace in 2020.