In the early hours of a September night in 2015, South Korean diver Soon Buhm Kwon woke to an intense heat inside his accommodation at a dive resort in Indonesia. Flames were already spreading through the wooden buildings, and within minutes, the holiday he had been enjoying with his girlfriend had turned into a fight to escape.
The couple fled with little more than their passports and wallets. Kwon briefly considered returning for his laptop, but his girlfriend stopped him. Shortly afterwards, the building where they had been sleeping collapsed.
More than a decade later, that experience has become one of the inspirations behind ALOR: A Man Who Found a Different Life at Sea, a novel about diving, loss, resilience and the possibility of beginning again.
For Kwon, who writes under the pen name Iruda, the book represents something considerably more personal than a fictional adventure. It brings together the ocean, the woman who became his wife, the kindness of strangers and a diving journey that eventually led him back underwater with his eldest son.
A Chance Encounter With Diving
Kwon’s relationship with scuba diving began almost accidentally in 2011.
Working in South Korea’s gaming industry, he visited a swimming facility to learn how to swim and noticed a scuba diving pool. Curiosity led him to try diving, and he quickly discovered an activity that would become a defining part of his life.
What captivated him was the freedom of being underwater, the sense of becoming absorbed in the present and the extraordinary variety of marine life.
He encouraged his girlfriend, Suah, to learn alongside him. Together, they travelled extensively through Indonesia and other destinations across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, including the Philippines, Palau, Malaysia and Thailand.
Their enthusiasm eventually led both to qualify as NAUI scuba diving instructors, although their certifications are no longer active.
They completed their instructor training at Team Max Dive Resort in Mactan, Cebu, under the guidance of Max Lee.
But one journey to Indonesia would change how Kwon thought about life beyond diving.
The Night Derawan Dive Lodge Burned
In September 2015, Kwon and Suah were staying at Derawan Dive Lodge on Derawan Island, East Kalimantan.
They had completed their scheduled diving and were looking forward to an excursion in search of whale sharks before returning home.
Kwon recalls that the resort was in a festive mood around the time of Eid al-Adha. He believes the fire occurred close to 24 September, although he cannot confirm the exact date.
Sometime around one or two in the morning, he woke to find flames already burning only a few metres away.
The resort’s largely wooden construction meant the fire spread rapidly. The roof was burning, and the couple had almost no time to collect their belongings.
They escaped outside, but Kwon suddenly remembered his laptop, which contained material he needed for his work in Korea.
He considered going back.
Suah stopped him.
The building subsequently collapsed.
Kwon still reflects on how differently the night might have ended had he returned inside.
He recalls being told afterwards that the fire may have originated in the kitchen, although The Scuba News has not independently established its cause.
By morning, much of the resort had been destroyed.
The couple had survived, but almost everything they had brought with them was gone.
The Kindness That Stayed With Him
What Kwon remembers most strongly is not simply the destruction, but the response of the people living on Derawan.
Local residents helped the couple when they had almost nothing left. They provided basic footwear and collected money to assist them with their onward journey.
Their generosity helped the pair reach Jakarta, where they waited for their return flight to South Korea.
For Kwon, those acts of kindness became inseparable from his memories of the fire.
The experience also changed how he approached everyday life.
He became more conscious of how suddenly circumstances could change, and how much of what people take for granted depends on moments that might easily have turned out differently.
The couple subsequently married and had four sons.
Looking back, Kwon recognises that everything they have experienced as a family might never have happened had they failed to escape that night.
His perspective can be expressed in a simple phrase that would later become central to his novel: Every day is a gift.
Returning to the Place They Almost Lost Their Lives
The story of Derawan Dive Lodge did not end with the fire.
The resort was rebuilt, and Kwon says guests who had experienced the incident were invited to return.
He and Suah accepted.
Returning to the island and diving its waters again was an emotional experience, reconnecting them with a destination associated with both fear and extraordinary generosity.
It also reinforced a lesson that would eventually become important to Kwon’s writing: losing something does not necessarily mean the end of its story.
Another Fire, Another Diving Memory
Another influence on ALOR came from Kwon’s first liveaboard experience aboard the Indonesian diving vessel WAOW.
Until then, much of his diving had been resort-based. Life aboard a vessel travelling between remote islands introduced him to a different possibility.
He began imagining a life in which work, travel and diving could coexist.
The idea stayed with him.
The original WAOW was subsequently lost following a fire in Biak in 2018. Kwon was not aboard at the time, but the loss affected him because of the memories associated with his first liveaboard journey.
He has followed plans for a successor vessel, WAOW 2, with particular interest.
The parallels between these experiences and the themes of rebuilding after loss would eventually become part of the emotional foundation of his fiction.
A Father and Son Dive That Brought Everything Together
In 2026, Kwon and his family spent approximately six months in Bali.
During a visit to the Gili Islands, his eldest son experienced his first scuba dive, with Kwon alongside him.
For the father of four, it was a moment that brought together fifteen years of memories.
He thought about discovering diving in 2011, the adventures he had shared with Suah, their narrow escape at Derawan and the family they had subsequently built.
Now he was sharing the underwater world with the next generation.
The experience persuaded him that the time had finally come to write the novel he had been considering for years.
From Real Experiences to ALOR
Published in 2026, ALOR: A Man Who Found a Different Life at Sea follows Jin Taehoon, a Korean corporate manager whose introduction to scuba diving gradually transforms his understanding of freedom and happiness.
He leaves his corporate career and pursues a different life through a dive resort in Indonesia’s Gili Islands.
Then a devastating fire destroys what he has built.
As Taehoon confronts loss and becomes drawn into a mystery, his journey takes him through Indonesian maritime landscapes and encounters with people who challenge his understanding of success and resilience.
Kwon is careful to distinguish the novel from his own life.
The real fire happened at Derawan Dive Lodge, where he was a guest. In the novel, the fire occurs at a fictional resort in the Gili Islands owned by the protagonist.
The characters, financial losses and mystery are fictional, although many of the emotions and settings draw on Kwon’s experiences.
His travels to Alor and Lamalera also informed the novel’s depiction of Indonesia.
For Kwon, the intention was never simply to write about diving or a dramatic escape.
It was to explore what makes life meaningful, how people respond when something important disappears and how kindness can help them move forward.
A Story for People Who Love the Ocean
Kwon hopes ALOR will appeal to divers looking for something to read after a day underwater, whether relaxing at a resort or spending an evening aboard a liveaboard.
But he also hopes readers will recognise something of their own experiences in its pages.
For some, diving becomes a lifelong passion. For others, it introduces friendships, relationships, careers or opportunities that would never otherwise have existed.
For Kwon, it brought all of those things into his life, along with an experience that could have ended it.
Eleven years after escaping a burning resort, he has transformed those memories into a story about finding the courage to begin again.
And perhaps the most meaningful chapter is not the novel itself, but the life he has been able to share with his wife and children since that night.
Has scuba diving ever changed the direction of your life?
Kwon would love to hear the experiences of other divers whose lives have been shaped by the underwater world.
ALOR: A Man Who Found a Different Life at Sea, by Soon Buhm Kwon (Iruda), is available in English, Japanese, German and Korean.
Editor’s note: This feature is based on Kwon’s firsthand written account and correspondence with The Scuba News. The precise date and cause of the 2015 fire have not been independently confirmed.
