Centred on a family of rail workers, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of workers and common folk, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century, rendering in elegant prose a history of modern Korea. The plot centres on three generations of rail workers and Yi Jino, a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in. Perched on the catwalk of a sixteen-storey-high factory chimney during long and bitterly cold nights, Jino talks to his ancestors and friends, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down through generations. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation's longing for a rail line that would connect North and South, and a magical realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers.