Series

먼 제비 (Meon Jebi)

Distant Swallow

Yun Jaesung is a researcher tracking Korean cultural heritage scattered abroad — colonial-era seizures, wartime looting, fraudulent sales. Original investigative fiction written in Korean, running from B1 to C1.

About this series

Yun Jaesung spent nine years in London teaching museums how to prove they owned what they had. At thirty-five, back in Seoul less than a year, he's using the same skills for the opposite purpose — working cases for 문화재환수연대, built out of Korea's last major recovery, chasing the hundreds of smaller cases nobody else has time for.

A painting. A box of ethnographic photographs. A scholar's scattered papers. Grave goods from a joint excavation, six decades cold. A collection that was never supposed to be found at all. Five books, five cases — each one sitting in paperwork that looks complete, each one missing decades nobody can quite account for. The deeper the case, the deeper the Korean.

One name keeps showing up where it shouldn't. It follows him from Seoul to Busan, Gwangju to Gyeongju, and by the time he's back where he started, the case he's building isn't about a museum anymore.

Korean

남의 둥지, 낯선 알 (Namui Dungji, Natseon Al)
먼 제비 · 제1권

Seoul

Yun Jaesung has been back in Seoul barely two months when a small Paris museum's quietest painting lands on his desk — a mountain-and-moon ink wash by a nearly forgotten Korean painter, its ownership blank for thirty years. The case takes him from a dust-choked government archive to an old man's living room, where the tea goes cold and almost nothing gets said. Every document insists the story is simple. No one in that room believes it.

Coming Sep 9
Korean

낮은 가지의 지저귐 (Najeun Gajiui Jijeogwim)
먼 제비 · 제2권

Busan

In Busan, a shoebox of colonial-era photographs surfaces in a German museum's archive — faces with no names, a port city frozen mid-century. Jaesung follows the trail through crumbling harbor tenements and church record rooms older than the buildings around them, chasing down families who don't always want to be found. One photograph keeps turning up in places it shouldn't.

In development — no release date yet
Korean

길 잃은 새, 풀리지 않은 매듭 (Gil Ireun Sae, Pullriji Anheun Maedeup)
먼 제비 · 제3권

Gwangju

A scholar's entire library vanished the year Gwangju burned — sold off in pieces, scattered across two continents, half-forgotten by everyone but his granddaughter. Jaesung tracks the fragments through a rare-books trade that runs from a Hong Kong back alley to a quiet reading room in the Netherlands, piecing together a life from what survived the fire and what didn't. Someone in that chain kept more than they should have.

In development — no release date yet
Korean

흩어진 무리, 새겨진 무늬 (Heuteojin Muri, Saegyeojin Muneui)
먼 제비 · 제4권

Gyeongju

A 1962 excavation outside Gyeongju pulled grave goods from the earth under full government sanction — and somewhere between the dig site and a Swedish museum's storage vault, the paper trail grew a little too convenient. Jaesung retraces sixty-year-old permits against the memories of an archaeology institute that never quite let the case go, closing in on the handful of men who signed off on everything. Most of them are surprisingly hard to reach.

In development — no release date yet
Korean

물어온 것, 갚지 못한 몫 (Mureoon Geot, Gapji Mothan Mok)
먼 제비 · 제5권

Seoul

Back in Seoul, Jaesung finally turns to the case he's avoided for years — his own grandmother's celadon, and the question of where a family heirloom stops being just that. An old mentor offers to help him trace it properly this time, the kind of quiet generosity Jaesung has leaned on through four cities and five years. But some doors, once opened, don't lead where you expect.

In development — no release date yet