A Literary Quarterly
Vol. 26
Winter 2014
Featured Writer
Yi Mun-yol
Special Section
North Korean
Defector Literature
ISSN 2005-2790
The New _list
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Foreword
I
t takes a left wing and a right wing for a bird to fly.
Finding Freedom
on the Wings of
a Writer
Such is the profound truth of the natural world, but it may sound
entirely implausible in the realm of the human world, where completely
divergent and opposing ideologies coexist in a single place, like the
Korean peninsula. It is nearly impossible for writers on the Korean
peninsula to fly with both wings—a communist wing on the left, for
example, and a capitalist wing on the right. In the current issue of _list
we encounter writers who fly with only one wing in turn.
In his novel Our Twisted Hero (see _list Vol. 24, Summer 2014), Yi Mun-yol, the featured
author in the current issue, gave a vivid description not only of the formative process and
collapse of absolute power, but also of the petit bourgeois obedient to that absolute power,
set in the background of an elementary school in a small city. Many of the youth of those days
who dedicated themselves to fight against the military regime, found in Yi’s novel a reason
why they had to redress the social injustices fatally committed by those in absolute power.
But Yi, as paradoxical as it may seem, bore witness to the totalitarian tendencies characteristic
of those struggling against the totalitarian regime, and so tried to keep a distance and free
himself from having to choose a side. In The Poet (1991) Yi described the free, aged artist as
one who does not belong to any order or regime, but must “forever wander until the very last
moment of his life.” At last, in 2014, by completing the 12-volume epic novel The In-between
Periphery, written from 1986 and published from 1998, he seemed to have completed his
literary journey of becoming a “truly free, aged writer.” It was under the unique circumstances
of Korea, located on the periphery of “two major imperialist powers of the 20th century, the
U.S. and USSR” that the three protagonists in this epic came to their physical, mental, and
social maturity by “wandering between the ruler and the ruled, the old and the new order, and
the desires of the masses and the individual.”
Under somewhat different circumstance, there are writers who were transferred from one
side to the other, not only in the geographical sense, but also in the ideological one. In the
“Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature,” we can hear the voices of North Korean
defectors writing about their lives in the North as well as about their escape. Yi Gayeon
expresses the hope and wish that her childhood friend will not starve again in the next life
(p. 40). Do Myeong-hak informs us of the fact that even a one-eyed man is valuable in North
Korea as long as he can shoot a gun (p. 42). Shedding bitter tears of regret after phoning his
daughter whom he left behind, Lee Ji-myeong ruminates on his life as a writer in the North
and the resulting confusion about his identity in the South (p. 43). Kim Seong-min sings the
praises of freedom only after learning its true meaning, which was deprived of him from his
birth (p. 44).
What is the true meaning of freedom for these writers? If it means a spiritual wandering
without settling oneself on one point of view or in one particular place, then the writers in this
volume of _list have found it in reality and in name. True Freedom!
by Park Jangyun
Editor-in-Chief
Vol.26 Winter 2014
1
Contents
04
The 12th Korean Literature Translation Award
24
ㆍEnglish Division: Suh Ji-moon
ㆍRussian Division: Maria Kuznetsova
ㆍPortuguese Division: Im Yun Jung
ㆍArabic Division: Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar
09
Special Section
North Korean Defector Literature
ㆍEssay: Significance of North Korean Defectors in Fiction
ㆍPart 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction
ㆍPart 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
ㆍPart 3. North Korean Defector Poets
Featured Writer
Yi Mun-yol
ㆍWriter’s Profile: A Writer of Hard Truths and Keen Insight
ㆍWriter’s Insight: A Letter to My Readers Around the World
ㆍInterview: Tumultuous Era, Songs of Violent Passions
ㆍEssay: About Yi Mun-yol’s Novels
ㆍExcerpt: The Poet
ㆍTranslated Works
55
61
2
_list : Books from Korea
LTI Translation Academy
ㆍCelebrating Seven Years of Translation
ㆍGrowing Out of My “Growing Pains”
ㆍWalking the Tightrope of Translation
The Place
ㆍForest of wisdom
Vol. 26 Winter 2014
A Literary Quarterly
In Every Issue
01
46
47
64
PUBLISHER
Kim Seong-Kon
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Kwon Sehoon
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Jung Jin Kwon
EDITORIAL BOARD
Kang Gyu Han
Kim Jonghoi
Min Eun Kyung
Park Hae-hyun
OVERSEAS
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Choi Kyeonghee
Oliverio Coelho
Jean-Claude De Crescenzo
Grace E. Koh
Michael J. Pettid
Andreas Schirmer
Dafna Zur
DOMESTIC
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Brother Anthony
Steven D. Capener
Horace J. Hodges
Jean-Noël Juttet
Charles Montgomery
Andrés Felipe Solano
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Park Jangyun
EDITORS
Kim Stoker
Yi Jeong-hyeon
James Godley
MANAGING EDITOR
Park Mill
TRANSLATORS
Cho Yoonna
Choi Inyoung
Agnel Joseph
ART DIRECTOR
Kim Aram
DIGITAL MEDIA
EDITOR
Kim Eunhye
REPORTERS
Sophie Bowman
Lee Sewon
Theodora Yu
PRINTED BY
Choyang AD Com Co., Ltd.
Foreword
Poetry
Reviews
Afterword
Spotlight on Fiction
“Evening Proposal” by Pyun Hye-young
Cover image and Contents photos by
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
Date of Publication December 22, 2014
All correspondence should be addressed to
the Literature Translation Institute of Korea
112 Gil-32, Yeongdong-daero (Samseong-dong), Gangnam-gu,
Seoul, 135-873, Korea
Telephone: 82-2-6919-7714
Fax: 82-2-3448-4247
E-mail: list_korea@klti.or.kr
www.klti.or.kr
www.list.or.kr
Vol.24
Vol.26Summer
Winter 2014
3
The 12th Korean Literature Translation Award
English Division
What Korean Literature
Means to Me
L
TI Korea honors seasoned translators with the Korean Literature
Translation Award in recognition of their works that have enriched the
quality of Korean literature in translation. Four titles were chosen for the 12th
Korean Literature Translation Award this year from among 61 books published
in 15 languages in 2013. Here, the award winners share their thoughts on
Korean literature.
4
_list : Books from Korea
I
t may sound quite strange, but I grew up
with Western literature, not Korean. My first
acquaintance with the world of literature was through
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy,
followed by the same author’s A Little Princess. My
childhood spanned the 1950s, which was the decade
following the Korean War when so many necessities
were scarce or lacking, so the Children’s World Literature
series were the only books available to children hungry
for the realm of imaginative experience.
And so I became early acquainted with Western
culture and mores; the ways of life of the Western
gentry, complete with its courtship rituals and
social etiquette and dueling, were native soil to me.
By and by I picked up Korean short stories, novels
and dramas, but they seemed drab and dreary in
comparison to the colorful Western novels in which
stakes were high and codes of conduct were clear and
uncompromising.
It was when I was a graduate student studying in
America that I was seized with a thirst to know what
Korean literature was really like. This came with the
realization that not history but literature bore the
true record of a people’s life, not because history is
dishonest but because history lacks the engine to
capture an entire people’s thoughts, emotions, and
yearnings that diverse eras, regions, and events give
rise to.
So when I came back to Korea with my degree
I looked up and read Korean literature hungrily,
which was truly an eye-opener. It was really more
through literature than through real-life contact
that I met, understood, and participated in the life
of my compatriots. I understood how hard life had
been for Koreans throughout the centuries, and
what excruciating burdens and torments they bore.
And I realized that it was nothing less than a miracle
that Koreans survived the unrelenting trials of their
2014 Award-winning Translations
The House with a Sunken Courtyard
lives with their human kindness intact. And what a
discovery it was that what enabled them to survive
was their meekness! Truly, their meekness was their
greatness.
It was the realization and the admiration inspired
by it that made me want to make available to the
whole world the story of how Koreans survived,
without the loss of their humanity and with only
their meekness as their survival weapon.
This gives Korean literature a cast very different
from Western literature, which has come more and
more in modern times to deal in close analysis of
man as a helpless creature driven by irrational inner
forces. So I am conscious of a great gap between the
aim of Korean literature and that of the West. And I
have misgivings of narrowly focused Western critics
dismissing Korean literature out of hand because it
is unlike the literature they are used to. But I have
faith that true literary minds will recognize the value
and greatness of a literature reflecting the unique
sensibility and attitude of a people who have borne
the unbearable.
Korean literature has changed a great deal in
tenor since the early 1970s, as indeed it must and
ought to with the fundamental changes in the
Koreans’ condition of existence over the past several
decades. I delight and marvel in the new generation
of Korean writers’ wit and insight and their way of
grappling with the problems that confront them. But
I believe that Korean literature will always reflect, if
only in part, the historical crucible of their parents,
grandparents, and forbearers and that this will
enhance and strengthen it, to the great benefit of
readers all over the world.
by Suh Ji-moon
Kim Won-il
Translated by Suh Ji-moon
Dalkey Archive Press, 2013, 229 pp.
ISBN 9781564789136
Тайная жизнь растений
Lee Seung-U
Translated by Maria Kuznetsova
Hyperion, 2013, 189 pp.
ISBN 9785893321944
A Vegetariana
Han Kang
Translated by Im Yun Jung
Devir Livraria, 2013, 189 pp.
ISBN 9788575325726
‫لويس ىلإ ةلحر‬
Kim Kwang-Kyu
Translated by Cho Hee Sun and
Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar
Kalema, 2013, 246 pp.
ISBN 9789775322227
Vol.26 Winter 2014
5
Russian Division
The
Wonderland
of Korean
Literature
K
orean literature is my passion—the dream of
my childhood. Seriously. When I was a child,
I dreamt that my adult life would be somehow
connected with the world of literature. I was a
bookworm. I practically lived in books. Literature
was my personal Wonderland, which I found
through books, as Alice found through the looking
glass. I am rather lucky because my dream came
true. Now, as a translator, I can legally stay in my
Wonderland, tasting author’s ideas, savoring the
game of words, absorbing the development of a
plot. What is Korean literature for me? The bridge
to another culture? Yes, and much more than that.
For me, translating these books from Korea is no
less than being a part of the beauty, complexity,
and greatness created by a human mind. It is luck
and honor.
The writer Lee Seung-U grew a garden where
I could walk while translating The Private Lives of
Plants. The trees, the bushes, and the grasses all
come together, each with their own character and
destiny. People recognize themselves in the plants.
This is the garden of human feelings, passions
and sins, self-sacrifice, and true love—the garden,
where every character in the novel finds their true
selves. Life can turn into nightmare, but the one
who has passed their way in darkness will stop
looking for benefits and find peace in a sacrificial
love. Korean literature is rich with philosophical
ideas and contemplation. It teaches us how to
stop and think. However, at the same time Korean
literature does not ignore reality. The Private Lives of
6
_list : Books from Korea
Plants calmly reminds us of the historical development
of the country, as the author seems to be interested in
the influence of history on the private lives of people.
Everyday details are also in front of the reader. Here
is life in Seoul: its cafés, restaurants, libraries, motels,
squares, and parks. Here is a Korean family, gathering
at the table to eat traditional Korean food.
Books for children also deserve attention. Harry
Potter lives in England and you will scarcely meet him
in Korea. But in the novel The Secret of Flora written by
Oh Jin Won, lives Maro, a boy from a fantastic planet,
who will fight with evil and win. Later I will read this
book to my daughter hoping that she will join me in
the Wonderland of literature someday.
No matter how much is different between people
of different cultures, I know that sometimes, while
reading a Korean novel, a foreigner can be surprised
or shocked or confused, but in a couple of minutes will
think: “Ah, I know this. I’ve felt the same. This is life.”
At that moment, the reader, no matter how far from
Korea, will become much closer to the culture, which
had theretofore been unknown. Being a translator, I
feel happy to take part.
by Maria Kuznetsova
Portuguese Division
Transcreating
Language
P
aulo Leminski, the Brazilian poet who had a special
appreciation for the Korean poet Yi Sang, once said:
“Did you ever imagine the misfortune that it is to write
in Portuguese? Who knows this language on this planet
other than Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde,
and Macau? You are already born with a historical fate.
[...] Then, if somebody says that the greatest poem of
the 20th century is an incredible epic poem written in
Basque? What language? Written in Basque! Nobody
will get acquainted with the poem, this guy won’t have
a chance. He must have to write the poem in English,
Russian, Chinese, or something with a higher value
in the international market. [...] This is a work that is
the history. The artist alone, artists cannot solve it,
we are already born in a peripheral language, writing
something in Portuguese and being worldly mute is
more or less the same thing.”
Ironically though, Leminski himself was a translator,
not by choice, but out of necessity, having to translate
four books a year in order to survive. Maybe he did
not realize that, in the bigger picture, we translators—
especially translators of peripheral languages like
Korean or Portuguese—can be seen as a small army
of ants capable of operating an upheaval over this
“historical pedigree.” I wonder if by transposing line
by line, we, translators of Korean literature, may not
be carrying on a silent and slow revolution, a cultural
revolution in which the dividing line between the
center and the periphery is slowly blurred. In this
scenario, Korean literature shall be great, not because it
is “Korean,” but because it gives an international voice
to a specific vision of the world. As Andrei Tarkovsky,
the noted Russian filmmaker said, “Poetry is an
awareness of the world, a particular way of relating
to reality.” Korean literature will democratically take
part in this big show-window of the human spirit—
the reunion of all poetry—ready to be appreciated by
anyone who is willing to participate in this change.
And, to achieve this, I’ll always gratefully
remember the teachings of Haroldo de Campos,
the greatest literary translator of Brazil, for whom
“translator, traitor” was an equation outrageously
wrong. From philosophy and theory through the
methodology and praxis of translation, he left
precious translations in Portuguese of English,
French, German, Latin, Greek, Japanese, Chinese,
and Hebrew works. Through his journey, “translator,
traitor” was his new, revolutionary proposition
for the impossibility of translating poetry. Yes,
translating poetry is impossible, so let’s transcreate
it! And a lesson especially dear to me is that, to
transcreate poetry we must break the limits of the
target language by bringing the foreign language
into it. By doing this, we will be enriching the target
language through a diverse mode of expressing its
reality. My job in translating Korean poetry into
Portuguese has been pursuing what de Campos
taught: bringing a Korean mode of expressiveness
into Portuguese.
Vive la difference!
by Im Yun Jung
Vol.26 Winter 2014
7
Arabic Division
My Story with
Korean Literature
B
efore I had a chance to visit Korea, honestly
I had no interest at all about its history or
literature, but I always respected Korean people
for what they did to become one of the top 10
countries in the world. Regarding this point, I can
say that Korean literature has completely changed
my entire life and opened a new gate that I had
never imagined. How did this happen? Let me tell
you that short story.
By chance I came to Korea several years ago. And
as I always say to my friends, good opportunities
come when you do your best: “Luck comes to
the one who looks for it.” I was teaching Arabic
language and literature at Cairo University as a
lecturer, and I was also teaching Arabic language
for foreigners at Cairo University Center for
Arabic Language and Culture. I was doing my best
for over six years, and I taught many foreigners
from all over the world including Koreans. At that
time, as my Korean students were getting ready
to return to Korea, they would start talking about
me to their departments and were recommending
me to go to Korea to teach Arabic. Then a Korean
university offered me a scholarship toward my phD
in comparative literature – that was how I got my
chance to study Korean literature. Before then I
had opportunities to go to Europe or to the U.S.,
but I was not eager to do so since those places were
where my colleges usually went to get their PhDs,
while I wanted something different and new.
I have been so lucky to have had such an
opportunity to study Korean poetry and be a
pioneer in researching Korean poetry for Arab
people. And honestly, I love this country and have
felt it as my second home. And this is why I have to
tell my people about the culture and the literature
of this great nation, and because Egypt and Korea
have almost had the same struggles under colonialism
in the 20th century.
Since I believe in happy endings, I will continue
to do my best to translate Korean literature, because
it is a way of giving back to that field of studies that
has opened new doors in my career; therefore, my
next step is to complete my dream by establishing a
Korean language department at Cairo University. That
way Egyptian students can study the Korean language
and culture and earn degrees to become translators
and Korean language teachers. Also, I will continue to
translate Korean poetry into Arabic as long as I am
able.
by Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar
8
_list : Books from Korea
Featured Writer: Writer’s Profile
A Writer of
Hard Truths
and Keen Insight
Y
i Mun-yol was born in 1948. He made his debut
as a writer in 1977. Yi’s works were enriched by
the classics of East Asia that he had naturally become
familiar with during his childhood and the Western
literature that he had voraciously devoured in his
young adulthood. In The Son of Man, Yi questioned
the relationship between man and god; in A Portrait
of Youthful Days, he portrayed the struggle and
anguish of his youth. The Golden Phoenix was an
exploration of the ontological meaning of art using
calligraphy, a traditional art form in Korea. Yi also
has consistently published works that are critical
to the nature of political power. Our Twisted Hero
is an allegorical depiction of the mechanism of how
political power operates. Homo Executants portrays
the process through which political ideology
suffocates humanity. Aside from these, his works
include Hail to the Emperor, The Age of Heroes, Choice
and Immortality. The recipient of Korea’s highest
literary prizes, Yi has been published in over 20
countries including the U.S., France, Great Britain
and Germany; over 60 titles of his translated works
are available.
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
Vol.26 Winter 2014
9
Featured Writer: Writer’s Insight
A Letter to My Readers
Around the World
T
o my unknown co-inhabitants of Earth who
aren’t able to read my books in the original
language:
I am Yi Mun-yol, from South Korea, an East
Asian country. I was born in 1948 and have
devoted all of my life to writing novels. My last
name “Yi” comes from the Chinese character
李 which signifies the tree, and “Mun-yol” is a
compound Sino-Korean word of which “mun (文)”
means letters or literature and “yol (烈)” means hot
or ferocious.
However, the name given to me by my parents
and recorded in the family register was the single
character “Yol,” thus “Mun-yol” was a penname I
began using when I became a writer. The meaning
of “Mun-yol” is “writer Yol” or “hot and intense
writing” and the Romanization of my name “Yi
Mun-yol” is also my registered trademark that is
used in the international literary market.
The reason I am providing an extensive
explication of my name is that it indicates the
process by which I ended up living a life of letters.
As a son who was abandoned by a man who defected
to North Korea in search of his ideological homeland
in the midst of the Korean War, I spent a desolate
childhood in the ruins of the aftermath of war. I
had from early on adopted literature as my haven of
seclusion and soon enough was intoxicated by the
appeal of words and, after dedicating my younger days
to disciplining myself with a passion I didn’t know I
was capable of, I at long last shaped my identity as
a writer. But then the intentional direction (of the
name my father had given me) differed from that of a
person who chose to practice writing. I felt burdened
by my father’s wish inscribed in my name, therefore I
added “mun” as my penname to confine the passion to
the domain of letters.
In 1977, I began my career as a novelist after
winning a prize in a contest by a provincial South
Korean newspaper. Two years later, I made my
debut in the Korean literary establishment with the
novel, The Son of Man, which borrowed the motif of
the “wandering Jew.” Starting from then until now
as I am writing this letter, I have written about 50
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
10 _list : Books from Korea
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
short stories and novellas in six volumes, 18 novels
in 20 volumes, and two epic novels in 22 volumes. In
addition, I have written two volumes of essays, one
travelogue, and compiled and annotated a total of
20 volumes of Chinese classics, as well as 10 volumes
of short and medium-length masterpieces of world
literature.
Around the end of 1970s when I became a
novelist and began communicating with the world,
Korean literature was already recognized as part of
world literature. However, world literature was still
in the phase of a one-way reception in Korea. This
was because of the parochial nature of the Korean
language vis-à-vis the Indo-European languagedominant world literature. Then, toward the end of
the 1980s when industrialization began making its
progress in Korea, Korean literature too embarked on
a very active dialogue with world literature.
Driven by such a phenomenon, in 1989, beginning
with French, I had nearly 70 books published in 18
languages in 25 countries. Among them, Our Twisted
Hero was published in more than 15 countries and
The Poet, in over 12 countries. The Son of Man, The
Golden Phoenix, A Portrait of Youthful Days, and Hail
to the Emperor! were published in more than five
countries and I am most eager to know how many
of these books have reached the readers who are
now reading this.
Communing with one another signifies that
we are getting better acquainted with each other.
For a novelist, like myself, and you, the reader,
what it means is that we are getting to know each
other through literature. Yet, the reason why I am
presenting myself through a somewhat detailed
literary profile on our first encounter is that
without a way of communication or a medium it is
impossible to send something to others or receive
because of the differences in our languages.
Perhaps this letter might come to you before
any of my works, which have been finely translated,
have a moving encounter with you. Therefore, in
order for me to herald that day, I have prepared
a rough summary of me and my oeuvre in this
writing. I look forward to meeting all of you soon
through my books.
by Yi Mun-yol
Vol.26 Winter 2014 11
Featured Writer: Interview
Tumultuous Era,
Songs of Violent Passions
Y
i Mun-yol resides at the Buak Academy in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do Province, where the surroundings
offer mesmerizing scenery with the changing colors of the autumn foliage. The interview was
conducted in the author’s study and can be summarized into three themes: Yi Mun-yol’s views on the
role of the novel; discussion about The In-between Periphery, his epic novel which was published in the
middle of this year; and his personal thoughts on the globalization of Korean literature.
Views On the Novel
Hae Yisoo: You made your debut as a writer in 1977
and have been writing for 37 years. Has there been
a change in your view of what the role of the novel
should be?
Yi Mun-yol: When I was a reader, a novel was like
a haven where I could escape from reality. After I
became a novelist, I began to think about what role
my novels should serve. To elaborate, I thought about
a writer’s sense of mission or redemption. In those
days, I had vowed not to write about the present-day
issues. For example, I wasn’t going to be obsessed
with certain values and thought it better not to get
involved in the political debate. But, as time passed,
Visit www.list.or.kr to watch video highlights of this interview.
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
12
_list : Books from Korea
I couldn’t simply avoid the problems of reality. After
experiencing so much, this is what I believe. In short,
that too much is worse than too little. I don’t think it’s a
good literary philosophy to dedicate one’s novels to some
cause.
Hae: Your works, which have won literary and popular
acclaim, have been published in textbooks, staged, and
adapted for cinema. What do you think is the most
important aspect of writing that hasn’t changed since
you began writing?
Yi: In the past, I did have an idea but I’m not sure
anymore. Although my works have not necessarily been
failures nor have I written an insignificant number of
books, nonetheless, as time passes, they have begun to
lose their vitality and popular appeal and began to tilt
toward one side. In terms of relevance and popularity,
I need to demarcate my works into two periods, before
and after 2000.
First of all, before 2000, what I considered most
important about my writing was not to forget that I
myself was a reader. As a youth enamored with literature,
I always had high expectations of the novels I read. Thus,
I tried to affirm my identity through them and also learn
about history and culture while enjoying reading. During
this period, I didn’t forget what I, as a reader, wanted
from literature and strove to instill that in my works.
But from 2000 on, the direction of my purpose
shifted to: “What is it that the readers need?” I came
up with subject matter and themes that I thought the
readers of today need and should read about. And yet,
because I decided it unilaterally, and such an intention
was in operation, there consequently began to be a
Hae Yisoo (b. 1973) debuted with the novella “The Kangaroo in
the Desert” (2000) in the literary magazine Hyundae Munhak.
He has published the short story collections, The Kangaroo in the
Desert and Jellyfish. He is the recipient of the Sim Hoon Literary
Award (2004) and the Han Moosuk Literary Award (2010).
distance between the readers and myself.
Hae: When would you say you were happier?
Yi: It’s an altogether different issue to feel regret over it
or think I did the wrong thing. Even if I were to go back
to that period, I might have made the same decision.
However, I was happier in the former days, but because
of that, it led to the latter period.
Hae: The literary market has become greatly reduced
in size compared to the past. What do you think is
necessary to bring back readers?
Yi: Whether or not that’s possible, I can’t even guess. At
a lecture I gave recently, I was asked why I don’t engage
in SNS. I replied that I’m not sure that I’d be good at that
mode of communication, not to mention that I don’t
think too highly of it. There are two characteristics of
SNS. One, it is a form of instant reply, where a questioner
is allowed the necessary time and effort to formulate
an argument that one can agree with, whereas no such
time and space are granted to the person asked to make
an instant reply to counter-argue. Because there is not
enough time permitted to verify the legitimacy of a
question or enough space to provide a counter argument,
it’s easy to be caught in the snare of the questioner’s
predetermined rhetorical web.
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
Hae: Are you pointing out how SNS, purportedly a
form of mutual communication, is more akin to a
one-sided debate?
Yi: This method of communication is less about
sharing opinions and more about someone imposing
their prejudiced views on others. Questioners who
can take advantage of this type of communication
will usually only acknowledge those people who will
give a speedy reply of “yes” or “no.” Furthermore, he
will deem only those who quickly agree with him as
someone they can talk to, whereas those who say “no”
will be seen as people who are incapable of a dialogue.
It could be said that the number of victims from
biased SNS communication has diminished compared
to before, but in some ways it means both sides have
become accustomed to a similar method of attack
and defense. One should not overlook this aspect
before SNS can be regarded as an advanced means of
communication. Instead of a brief response from the
respondent that is induced by the questioner, there
should be a time of reflection for a questioner and
sufficient time for counter-argument.
The novel could perhaps be an alternative solution
to overcome this flawed trend, for it provides enough
time to both the writer and the reader to ponder
and contemplate. For people who are used to a quick
reading and reaction, this salutary adjustment can
Vol.26 Winter 2014 13
occur, and there can be a recovery of sufficient time
for self-reflection; and thus perhaps lost readers can
be recalled to the land of the novel.
The In-between Periphery
Hae: The In-between Periphery is an epic novel that
recounts a tumultuous period in Korean society
starting from the 1950s to 1972, when the Yushin
Revitalizing Reforms were set in motion. You began
writing it starting in 1986 and the first volume was
published in 1998, and, 16 years later, the 12-volume
set came out this year; hence, it’s a closure to a 28-year
time span. What motivated you to write this epic?
Yi: Through the story of a family, the novel depicts
the transformation of Korea, which is situated at the
edge, so to speak, of two major imperialist powers
of the 20th century, the US and the USSR. During
this time, the Korean peninsula was divided into
the North and the South and became an arena of
propaganda for the two nations, western (the U.S.)
and eastern (the USSR). While the two are mutually
at odds and are reliant on each other, North and
South Korea are subjected to a unique experience;
it is under these circumstances that the story of the
three siblings and their physical, mental, and social
maturity takes place.
Hae: You have painted a massive mural with a
comprehensive portrayal of Korean life against the
backdrop of a political, economic, social, and cultural
setting that is the outcome of the tumultuous period
of the 1960s. What was the most difficult aspect of
writing during the long period you worked on this
epic?
instead of what I had originally planned, it looks like
I’ll have to reduce the second set to eight volumes. I
am going to write about the other side, which wasn’t so
conspicuous, of the cultural and political transformation
of the 1980s. Then, broadly speaking, The Age of Heroes
published in 1984 will serve as the prologue, The Inbetween Periphery will be the main body, and what I am
currently working on will be the epilogue.
On His Works in Translation
Hae: Thus far, 65 of your works have been published in
18 languages in over 20 countries. While you’ve been
on the front line of the translation of Korean literature,
how do you assess foreign readers’ experience of reading
Korean literature?
Yi: I have received information about their response
indirectly through translation, interpretation, or
reviews in the media, but I have not had a chance to
personally hear from a reader. It is fortunate that the
younger generation of writers is actively engaged in
communication in a domain I have not had experience
in. Writers like Shin Kyung-sook, Lee Seung-U, and Kim
Young-ha appear to be writers of a different type in regard
to the subject matter or their communicative aspects. If
it was my role to open a gate to the international literary
market, then I believe these younger writers will do well
in what needs to be done next.
Hae: You must have thought about the role of the
novel for a long time; exactly what aspect of it do you
think stands the test of time and transcends national
boundaries in order to effectively move readers?
Yi: The story is a very crucial element in my novel. Some
Yi: It was most difficult to write the part having to
do with Marxism. Fortunately, around the time I
began working on this novel, the ban on socialist
theory books was being slightly loosened and I was
able to get hold of some pertinent books. But Das
Kapital by Karl Marx was a banned book until the end
of the 1980s. Therefore, I barely managed to get the
requisite permission to go read it in the library of a
government institute. The edition I read then was an
edition that was printed in Seoul in 1946.
Hae: Do you have any regrets since the publication?
Yi: My original plan was to complete a set of 12
volumes and then to work on another set of 12. But
14
_list : Books from Korea
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
Yi: Foreigners might be unfamiliar with these
places and therefore curious about them. It could
be misconstrued as an institute where writers are
fostered, but it is actually a scholarly center where one
can study and discipline oneself. The Buak Academy
operates, at present, a residence program and is used
as a writers’ space. The Gwangsan Literary Center is
where I would like to pursue scholarship on the East
Asian literary principles that have exerted a profound
influence on modern Korean literature.
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
do not consider storytelling very important but I believe
in the power of the story. There are many examples of
narrative force in the novel and the power of characters,
like in the tale of a man who knew the King’s secret and
felt compelled to disclose that the King had donkey-like
ears, if only to bamboo trees, otherwise he might have
gone mad; or the desperation of Scheherazade from The
Arabian Nights.
Hae: You have had diverse experience in the
international literary scene; what have you gleaned from
that experience and what is the task at hand for the
globalization of Korean literature?
Yi: A writer must decide to whom he ultimately
wants to tell his story. In other words, foreign readers
can understand my stories only with footnotes and
explanations. In this vein, Haruki Murakami has
succeeded with his strategy. He tells stories that are
familiar to all American, Japanese, and Korean readers.
For some of his books, if you cover the author’s name,
then it’s impossible to identify whether an American or
a Japanese wrote it.
If you tell a universal tale by passing over the stories
that are familiar to only Koreans, then it might be possible
to reach out to international readers. Once I tried writing
a novel for readers outside of Korea, without adding any
footnotes, and it took five to six months to complete it.
But the stories I wrote for English readers, for whom
footnotes were not necessary, conversely, required
footnotes for Koreans.
Hae: You have established the Buak Academy in Icheon
City and Gwangsan Literary Center in your hometown of
Seokbo. Could you tell us what these places are for?
Hae: What are you working on now?
Yi: I am preparing what could be viewed as the
epilogue to The In-between Periphery. It will cover
the 1980s, a period that is important to Koreans
in many ways. It will be possible to understand the
present only when we analyze that era properly. The
turbulence of today could have resulted from not
construing this time period in an appropriate way.
An approach to interpreting this period has become
even more complex because the 1980s are referred
to in confusing words, often on SNS, a relatively new
mode of communication. I am working on trying to
elucidate the cultural hegemony of that era.
Hae: Your novel, The Poet, has been translated into
11 languages to high acclaim. In addition to the
evaluation of critics and the publishing industry, how
is the book culturally significant to you?
Yi: I started writing this book in my mid-40s,
reflecting on my life up to then. I was able to tell in
one volume all the disparately expressed aspects of
my life in different novels. My family was subject to
much suffering for the longest time as a result of my
father’s defection to North Korea. And because of a
guilt-by-association system, we were restricted from
being part of mainstream society. Consequently, the
resulting fright led me to remain mute or compliant
to the political circumstances of the early 1980s—
that has been a big burden on me. At the same time,
as I got older and acquired a political consciousness, I
began to ask myself what was the best position for me
to take about that time period. The Poet was a book in
which I tried to resolve all these issues.
by Hae Yisoo
Vol.26 Winter 2014 15
Featured Writer: Essay
Dreaming to Be Free from the Periphery:
About Yi Mun-yol’s Novels
Y
i Mun-yol is an “author of the periphery”
who has been attracting more international
acclaim with the publication of his short story
in translation, “An Anonymous Island” in The
New Yorker. The reason why Yi is an “author of
the periphery” is that in his novel, The In-between
Periphery, he has clearly contextualized the history
of Korea in the post-liberation period within the
geopolitical boundary of the two empires, namely
the U.S. and the Soviet Union, during the Cold
War. Yi Mun-yol can also be considered a writer
of freedom; in a totalitarian society in which the
government has declared the divided country to be
in a quasi-state of war and consequently dictates
that its people need to live a prescribed life, Yi is one
of few writers who urges such a society’s members
to exercise their free will. In short, he is a “writer
who dreamt of true freedom from the periphery.”
However, Yi was not always like that from the
start. In the beginning, he was just “a free writer.”
In his early works, he presented the fundamental
issue in South Korean society as the problem of
an individual death that was triggered by the
totalitarian order. In his debut work, “Saehagok,” he
gives a detailed account of a few days in simulated
wartime training and shows how South Korean
society ceaselessly coerces the lives of its members
into a war machine, thereby alluding to the nature
of control in South Korea. And in “Pilon’s Pig,” he
delineates a group of individuals whose memories
have been subject to thought control and take on
a mob quality to collectively execute a violent act.
However, some of his earlier works also tell
stories of searching as well as adventures of
characters that long to be free from surveillance
and restriction. In The Son of Man and A Portrait of
Youthful Days, the author epitomizes the searching
and fervor of youth who reject the injustice of the
world as the peak moment of one’s life. That is
because he glimpses hope in the struggles of the
young as a gateway to a more open society.
The author’s exploration of the possibility of
16
_list : Books from Korea
the autonomous existence of the youth, relentlessly
struggling against an outdated system, goes through
another transformation. He despairs over the forces
of the democracy movement, who had rejected the
totalitarian order, only to espouse an “iron discipline.”
Declaring that there exist two types of censors—the
totalitarian government and the totalitarian forces
of the democracy movement, he wages a fight against
both.
ⓒSeo Heun-Kang
He does this in two ways. The first approach is to
criticize the superego of the two ideologies that do
not allow members of their society to live a subjective
existence; examples of these kinds of works are The Age
of Heroes, Miro Ilji, Our Twisted Hero, and Guro Arirang.
In The Age of Heroes, the author zeroes in on the life
of a man who strives to topple the existing outmoded
system. He shows how a man who started out with
good intentions to innovate an archaic order ended up
as a person who forces everyone to become an obedient
entity, and intricately delineates how good intentions
can inevitably result in the oppression of people’s
freedom. Furthermore, Our Twisted Hero presents a
persuasive description of people who are endlessly
fleeing from freedom, going back and forth between
the two censors, and how these powerful censors turn
everyone into shamelessly servile human beings.
The second approach Yi Mun-yol takes in his fight
against the two censors of South Korean society,
is his quest for a subjective existential form that
can deconstruct the double oppression. Hail to the
Emperor!, The Poet, and The Golden Phoenix exemplify
such an approach. Through the works, The Poet and
The Golden Phoenix, Yi discovers the possibility of this
subjective existence in the “portrait of an aged artist.”
In the aforementioned two novels, he ascribes great
importance to the existential ethos of the artists who
cannot but drift and wander until the very last moment
of their lives. In particular, the author majestically
describes the final moment when the souls of the artist
protagonists reach fruition. This is what Yi Mun-yol
believes: that in order to become a truly free subject,
one must not be part of any order and that one should
forever wander like a nomad and live the life of an aged
artist searching until the moment of death.
After The Golden Phoenix and The Poet, Yi evolved
once more as a writer. He finally completed The Inbetween Periphery and became a “writer who dreamt
of true freedom from the periphery.” The In-between
Periphery extensively depicts the unique circumstances
of neo-liberalism that was introduced to South Korea
(perhaps earlier than other countries) as a result of
geopolitical factors in that Korea is a peripheral country
to the two extant empires. According to The In-between
Periphery, in order to secure South Korea, which is its
crucial border, the U.S. persistently imposes Western
capitalism. The South Korean government, which is in
pursuit of absolute authority, implements American
capitalism as the sole socio-economic system. As a
result, South Korea becomes a society where the
only “freedom” allowed is the pursuit of money; and
the dreaming of a better society or individual life
is banned. Thus, various entities, which want to be
freed from this evil axiom, spring forth. However,
their good intentions are soon distorted. They turn
antagonistic toward those who do not have faith in
their good intentions, while demanding absolute
obedience from those who believe in their good
intentions.
Hence, The In-between Periphery contextualizes
South Korea where neo-liberalism, which arrived
too prematurely during the Cold War, is at odds
with the socialist forces it triggered shortly
thereafter. And it does not stop short here. The
novel is in search of a path where one can become an
authentically free self under these circumstances.
The In-between Periphery discloses a path of a
subjective existence that is the “freely-floating
intellectual,” which is found between the spaces
of neo-liberalist totalitarianism and repressive
socialism, as suggested by Karl Mannheim. The Inbetween Periphery tells one to wander between the
ruler and the ruled, the old and the new order, and
the desires of the masses and the individual. That is
how one can be free and at the same time rupture
the neo-liberalist totalitarianism. In short, The Inbetween Periphery is a work that comprehensively
re-enacted Korean history in the Cold War after
its liberation from Japan, yet remains within the
framework of world history. Moreover, at a time
when neo-liberalist totalitarianism is oppressing
the lives of South Koreans in many aspects, the
book points to a direction where “I” should stand
in the world and points to the path where one can
become a truly free person.
The writer, Yi Mun-yol, who has given Korean
readers greatly moving and ecstatic experiences, is
now going to engage in dialogue with readers from
around the world. As a reader who has been deeply
moved by his writing, I have high expectations for
such an encounter.
by Ryu Bo-seon
Literary Critic and
Professor of Korean Literature
Kunsan National University
Vol.26 Winter 2014 17
Excerpt
The Poet
Visit www.list.or.kr to
watch readings of this
work by the author.
23
N
The Poet
Yi Mun-yol
Translated by Chong-wha Chung and
Brother Anthony of Taizé
Harvill Press, 1995, 207 pp.
ISBN 1860460119
18
_list : Books from Korea
ot all nonconformists are poets. But all
poets are nonconformists. Some poets have
absolutely none of the usual characteristics of a
nonconformist. They are faithful to the normal order
of life, laughing at its joys, weeping at its sorrows.
Yet they too are nonconformists. For if a person is
a poet at all, he is bound to deviate from the norm
at least in the use of language. Language can rise
to the heavenly realms of high poetry only when it
transcends the muddy ground of practicality.
If such acts of deviation are the universal fate and
true characteristic of all poets, then he was at every
moment a poet, from the time he left home at the age
of twenty-four. Whatever the Old Drunkard meant
for him, and no matter how great the attraction of
the safe normality of daily life, in the end he did not
return to his wife and children, and to the routine
life of his time.
There is a moving story told by an eyewitness of
the moment when his act of deviation was finally
decided on. According to this story, on returning
from his first visit to the Diamond Mountains he
actually came as close to his home as its hedge. It
was an early winter evening and the first snowflakes
were beginning to fall, the light shining through
the paper windows seemed exceptionally bright
and warm. From inside he could hear three-year-old
Hak-kyun muttering in his sleep, while Ik-kyun was
crying, he had just been beginning to smile when he
left, and he heard the occasional sighs of his young
wife. Standing there, he had a vision of becoming
a nameless farmer and he was actually about to
push open the brushwood gate to go in, when he
hugged himself and emitted a long moan. Then he
shuddered, as if struck by some thought, shook his
head violently, and turned away.
Just as he was leaving the outskirts of the village,
he spat a clot of blood on to the snow, which was
already beginning to pile up white on the ground; the
villagers never knew what sad, lonely creature had
left that blood behind. There is no telling which was
the more decisive factor, his failure of nerve before
the bleak daily routine of life which had unfolded
before his eyes, or the Old Drunkard’s suggestions
which had begun to affect him; whichever it was, in
the end he did not return home.
[…]
He wandered from place to place, never settling. In
cold weather and hot, come rain come snow, he went
about in thin clothing, with a bamboo hat on his
head and a bamboo cane in his hand. From the time
he first left home until the day he died, his dress
never varied. No one knows from what moment he
became known as a wandering poet, he was all the
time writing poems. That too never varied from the
time he first left home until the day he died. Likewise
his begging. For most of the time, from the moment
he left home at twenty-four until the day he died in
some small village down in the southwestern region
of Honam, at the age of fifty-six, he begged clothing
to wear and food to eat from unfamiliar people in
unfamiliar places.
Does that mean, then, that those remaining
thirty-two years were a mere accumulation of units
of time, always with exactly the same colour and
meaning? No. Not at all. Although his attire did not
change until the day he died, the soul they wrapped
was not always exactly the same. Likewise, he
invariably wrote poems, but their meanings
varied according to the time they were written,
and though in his deviation he moved endlessly
through the world’s peripheries, the eyes with
which he viewed the world varied with time. In
other words, his life can be divided into several
distinct stages.
Certainly, there are many possible ways of
dividing his life into different stages, and as many
possible disputes as to which is right or wrong.
Some may try to divide his life according to the
different geographical areas he visited, others
may draw lines at thirty and forty and divide his
life according to the decades, while yet others
may attempt to make a classification by reference
to the various social events of the time. But
he was undeniably a poet. Seeing that poetrywriting was the most vital activity for him, it may
well be that a division of his life according to the
kinds of poetry he wrote will prove to be not too
far wrong.
24
If the different stages of his life are divided
according to the characteristics of his poetry,
the first stage will cover the seven or eight years
between the age of about twenty-five, when
his wandering really began, and the visit he
made to Dabok Village when he was thirty-two.
During this period he chiefly moved around
such places as Tongchon, Hamhung, Hongwon
and Tanchon in Hamkyong Province as well as
Vol.26 Winter 2014 19
Poetry
This novel portrays a nineteenth-century Korean poet’s life. Yi Munyol traces the course of his hero’s destiny, filled with pain and marked
by numerous deviations, from early childhood, through the various
stages of his poetic career, until he finally walks out into the night
leaving his son gazing after him. […]
-Chong-wha Chung and Brother Anthony of Taizé
neighbouring parts of Pyongan Province; regional
characteristics seem, however, to have exercised
no great influence on his poetry.
The main formal characteristic of his poetry
at this time is the classical new form based on
the solid rhetoric of the poems written for the
government service examinations. Some say that
the main pleasure obtained in reading his poems
comes from the skill with which he deviated from
the norms of classical style, but that is more a
hallmark of the poems written later.
He showed no special preference regarding
subject matter. He liked to display vigorous,
intense emotions and avoided writing on topics
that were easily prone to sentimentality or
frivolous malice.
The techniques he enjoyed using at this time
give prime place to pomp and opulence, not
unrelated to the rhetoric of the government
service examination style, on which his poetic
craft was based. Wit and humour may also be
characteristics of his poetry at this time, but
what distinguishes this from later periods is the
effort he still makes to maintain his dignity as a
high-class intellectual.
In the background to these features is his
nomadic life in those years. He had become a
wanderer but he had not been on the road very
long, so naturally for a while he had mainly to
rely on the patronage of a few old acquaintances.
When he went to visit them, nine times out of ten
they turned out to be heads of local government
sent down from Seoul, or the sons of local landed
gentry he had got to know during his time in the
20 _list : Books from Korea
capital.
Cho Un-kyong, the magistrate of Anbyon County
who took such good care of him, is a good example.
He had come to know Cho vaguely when he was once
staying as a guest of Shin Sok-wu; now he made
him welcome when he came to visit him. Thanks to
the kindness of such people he did not suffer from
poverty in the early stages of his nomadic life, and
he was able to maintain his former sentiments more
or less unscathed.
A second thing that may underlie the
characteristics of the poems of this period is the
class of the consumers for whom the poems were
destined. As we saw above in considering the shape
taken by his wandering, he chiefly frequented the
rural upper classes or people close to this class,
such as kisaeng girls*, and these formed the main
consumers of his poems. Invariably what they liked
was the culture of the capital city with its formal
clichés; the popular style of poetry that he produced
later could not have found congenial ground among
them.
The process by which he mastered the poetic craft
and also his youth offer other background factors
that underlie the characteristics of the poems of this
first period. These were precisely the kinds of poetry
that he had previously mastered, while his aesthetic
*The kisaeng were young women who entertained men of
higher class as they drank and relaxed either in special
kisaeng houses or during excursions. They had skills in
music, dance, and poetry, and might also grant the men
sexual favors. A few exceptional women achieved an
enduring reputation as poets.
sense, which had not yet fully developed, to some
extent made him readily content with merely
conventional forms of expression and techniques.
At the same time in his youthful pride he tried to
conceal his true state of beggardom under a cloak
of bluff and bluster, which was also not unrelated to
the characteristics of his poetry at the time.
Above all, one feature that cannot be omitted
from this list of background factors is the weakness
of his social consciousness. The bitter frustrations
that he had tasted had made him so politically
indifferent that he almost intentionally turned
his eyes away from the political reality and social
situations of his time, and clung instead to his own
inner world. As a result, his poems naturally sought
their themes in Nature and in subjective emotions,
for which the most effective form of expression was
bound to be magnificently opulent ornamentation
and exaggerated emotion.
It would perhaps be meaningful at this point to
look at two poems that exemplify relatively well the
main characteristics of this period.
Hermits’ ways are distant as clouds;
At nightfall a traveller’s thoughts grow darker.
Changed to a crane, the hermit flies off, no
knowing where.
News from Pongnae Mountain is faint in my
dreams.
A kisaeng in my young embrace, a fortune seems
like straw;
With a jar of wine in daylight, everything’s like
clouds.
Wild geese flying on high follow a river’s
course;
Butterflies passing green hills cannot shun
the flowers.
Both poems are written in seven-character
lines, the first is entitled “Pyoyon Pavilion in
Anbyon” and the second “On shunning flowers”.
The first was written for Cho Un-kyong, who was
the magistrate for Anbyon County; the second
was composed together with a kisaeng girl in
Tanchon, the two of them composing alternate
lines. Both feel like poems written by some
vigorous man of taste, betraying no trace of a
vagabond’s weariness.
The success he scored with this kind of poetry
in the first few years was a surprise even to
himself. In the reception rooms of the landed
gentry, local magistrates and dignitaries, or
very occasionally in the room of a culturally vain
kisaeng, his youth was consumed in a final blaze
of poetry and wine.
Sometimes he assuaged their sense of
inferiority with regard to the culture of the
capital, sometimes he frankly prostituted his
talents to their low cultural tastes, while he
spent those few years intoxicated by the cheap
admiration and applause he received from such
great luminaries, forgetting for a time his own
resentment and bitterness.
(pp. 124-130)
Vol.26 Winter 2014 21
Featured Writer: Translated works
Praise for The Poet
“A
work of broad sweep and intricate texture… Yi Mun-yol’s work evinces an
emotional charge, an impact that throws the reader off balance.”
Andre Velter, Le Monde
Ελληνικά
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22 _list : Books from Korea
Deutsch
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Vol.26 Winter 2014 23
Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature
Significance of
North Korean
Defectors in
Fiction
Part 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction
27
28
30
Jeong Do-sang, Drawing a Map of Sadness
Excerpt: Brier Rose
Cho Haejin, The Journey to Meet Lo Kiwan
Part 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN
Center
32
33
34
Introduction
24
In 1960, Choi In-hun expressed his longing for a square
that would serve as a truly open space for individuals
and groups to communicate in The Square, the story of a
character named Lee Myong-jun who gets a taste of the
two regimes during the Korean War only to become a
casualty of both. This square never actually materialized,
but it did leave an indelible mark on Korean literature.
Fifty years after The Square and 60 after the Korean
War, Lee Eung Jun’s The Private Life of a Nation (2009)
imagines a reunified Korea (the South having absorbed
the North) that has become “a ship about to sink in an
endless sea of desire.” It is true that nearly 70 years of
division bodes for a murky, chaos-ridden future when
the two Koreas are finally reunited. Nevertheless, there
is really only one option. It is impossible to discuss the
future of Korea without assuming that it will become a
unified country.
North Korea remains the most isolated country in
the world, and chances of the regime surviving into the
distant future look to be slim. The massive rise in this
past decade of North Koreans defecting to the South
supports this. But what kind of country do they find in
South Korea? Is it, as The Private Life of a Nation claims,
“a ship ridden by desire, drifting in a sea with no place to
drop anchor”? The gaze of North Korean defectors who
have experienced life in the North and have made the
drastic choice of escaping from that regime to live in the
South, therefore, may very well serve as a barometer of
the present and future of Korean society. It is from this
perspective that North Korean defector literature is such
a fascinating subject.
The Letter to North Korean Writers
A Conversation with North Korean Writers in Exile
Part 3. North Korean Defector Poets
40
42
43
44
The Future As a Unified Country
Lee Ga-yeon, “Rice Urn”
Do Myeong-hak, “One–eyed Person Passes the Test”
Lee Ji-myeong, Phone Call with My Daughter
Kim Seong-min, “Freedom”
_list : Books from Korea
Diaspora and Minority
North Korea’s economy plummeted in the 1980s,
influenced by a mixture of both internal and external
factors. Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994 marked the beginning
of a great famine that claimed countless lives. The North
Korean regime responded by launching the “Arduous
March” campaign, so-called after an apocryphal exploit
of Kim Il-sung’s. According to legend, Kim Il-sung,
braving starvation, marched for 100 days in freezing
conditions during his fight against the Japanese in the
late 1930s. By the time the new century rolled around,
however, it became clear that the campaign had failed.
North Koreans were fleeing the country for South
Korea in greater numbers than ever before, preferring
to take their chances rather than starve to death. As of
September 2013, the number of recorded North Korean
defectors in South Korea stands at 26,483, with the
majority having defected post-1990s.
This mass defection is symbolic of South Korea’s
absolute dominance in North-South relations and may
be viewed as circumstantial evidence that the North
Korean regime is crumbling. Defection has kicked
off various debates in favor of
reunification, marking a noted
decline in old, separationist
points of view. This shift of
perspective triggered by North
Korean defection is not limited
to the Korean peninsula, but
influences the power relations
of Northeast Asian politics
and beyond. In this age of
globalization, with national boundaries being redefined,
the transnational population, or diaspora, has become a
subject of lively discussion.
North Korean defection is a specific phenomenon
that allows us to posit the dissolution of the North
Korean regime within the realm of probability and
to extrapolate upon the future of a reunified Korea.
It might also be interesting from an international
perspective as an example of redefining territorial
boundaries in a globalized world. From this point of
view, it is worthy to note that North Korean defectors are
both a diaspora that have left their former country and
are in the process of being assimilated into a new one,
and a minority group that suffers from second-citizen
status in their new countries, including but not limited
to South Korea. As North Korean defectors become a
more visible presence in South Korean society, they are
increasingly depicted in more varied and sophisticated
ways in comparison to the earliest portrayals, which
were limited to their immediate plight.
Defector Fiction
North Korean defectors first appear in South Korean
literature from the mid-1990s in such short stories as
“Deer Hunting,” “You Tremble from Loneliness Even
When You Are Together,” “Three People,” and “The
Woman Who Reads Children’s Stories.” The struggles
these characters face adapting to life in South Korea
highlight the contradictions and pitfalls of South
Korean capitalism while also showing defectors as
guinea pigs of a reunified Korea. Following this initial
stage in the 2000s, North Korean defector fiction
began to diversify in terms of
characterization and setting.
Jeong Do-sang’s short story
collection Brier Rose (2008)
depicts the trials of a young
woman named Chung-sim
who is trafficked out of
North Korea and subjected
to seemingly endless abuse
as a woman and as a stateless
person. The collection is notable in that it draws
attention to the real life problems of North Koreans
being subjected to human trafficking and other
human rights abuses in the burgeoning cottage
industry known as the “North Korean defector
trade,” run by brokers and religious organizations.
Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Princess Bari (2007)
also depicts the human rights abuse inflicted upon
a North Korean defector, the eponymous Bari,
who finally finds a home with other migrants in
England. As a stateless person and a woman, Bari is
a minority twice over. In Kang Young-sook’s novel
Rina (2006), 15-year-old Rina is separated from her
family while escaping from North Korea to a country
called P. After being kidnapped, she survives rape,
forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking, drug
trafficking, the slaughterhouse, and near murder. In
Cho Haejin’s novel I Met Lo Kiwan (2011), the titular
character and his mother are escaping North Korea
The gaze of North
Korean defectors...
may very well serve
as a barometer of the
present and future of
Korean society.
Vol.25
Vol.26 Autumn
Winter 2014 25
when the mother dies. Lo Kiwan uses the money
from selling his mother’s body to go to Belgium,
where he struggles to gain refugee status.
From Minority to Owners of the Ghetto
To categorize North Korean defector fiction by
period, works from the 1990s explore North Korean
issues from a South Korean point of view, while
those from the 21st century tend to incorporate
more international experiences and points of view.
Another way of categorizing these works would be by
setting, with some concerning characters who have
escaped North Korea but are still on the run, and
others featuring characters who have settled down
in one place, usually South Korea. Brier Rose, Princess
Bari, Rina, and I Met Lo Kiwan feature characters that
have escaped North Korea but have not yet found a
permanent home. Kwon Ree’s novel Left-handed
Mr. Ri (2007), Kang Heejin’s novel Ghost (2011),
and Jeon Suchan’s novel Shame (2014) depict the
isolation of North Korean defectors who have settled
in South Korea. It is likely that this second type of
North Korean defector fiction will flourish in the
future, highlighting how North Korean defectors are
already present in South Korean society yet continue
to be marginalized.
In this light it is particularly interesting to note
the open ending adopted by some of these works. In
Princess Bari, for example, Bari ends up in a ghetto
of capitalist London, where she and other migrants
build a community of their own. In Rina the
protagonist is left in limbo, excluded from both her
country of origin and P, her hoped-for destination.
What is noteworthy is that these outcasts, living
in marginalized and impoverished enclaves, go
on to establish tightly-knit and freestanding
communities through their own power.
In conclusion, if North Korean defector
fiction focuses on the minority status of its
characters, it is not to wallow in the hopelessness
of a tragic situation. While the myriad of problems
associated with North Korean defection can only
be truly resolved through reunification, on a more
immediate note it is necessary for North Korean
defectors to shed their ghetto mentality and
feelings of inadequacy. Princess Bari ends with Bari
carving out a multicultural, deterritorialized place
for herself in an immigrant enclave of capitalist
superpower London. In Rina, the ever-marginalized
Rina is reborn through life-defining experiences
and claims ownership of a ghetto of her own.
by Park Dukkyu
Professor, Dankook University
Hardship
Lack of skills, inability
to adapt
South Korea / government facility Culture shock
Author
Park Dukkyu
Title
“Deer Hunting”
Genre
Short story
Protagonist Sex Residence
Park Dang-sam M South Korea / culinary school
Short story
Yeom Jeong-sil F
Jeong Do-sang
“You Tremble from
Loneliness Even
When You Are
Together”
Brier Rose
Chung-sim
F
Hwang Sok-yong
Princess Bari
Short story
collection
Novel
Bari
F
Kang Young-sook
Rina
Novel
Rina
F
Kwon Ree
Cho Haejin
Left-handed Mr. Ri
I Met Lo Kiwan
Novel
Novel
Mr. Ri
Lo Kiwan
M
M
Kang Heejin
Jeon Suchan
Ghost
Shame
Novel
Ha-rim
M
Novel
Won-gil
M
26 _list : Books from Korea
Northeastern China
South Korea / karaoke
Northeastern China
UK / 3rd country
3rd country (en route to country P)
South Korea / inn
Belgium /
detention center, restaurant
South Korea / Internet café
Pyeongchang, South Korea
Casualty of North
Korean defector trade
Victim of human
trafficking
Victim of human
trafficking
Inability to adapt
Statelessness
Marginalization
Bullying
Part 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction
Drawing a Map of Sadness
I
didn’t plan to write Brier Rose. At the time, all I
wanted to do was go on a long trip or an adventure.
I was waiting for something, an adventure that I could
throw myself into wholeheartedly—the kind that
would find me wading through swamps with leeches
sucking the blood from my thighs and chest, after
which I would get lost in a deserted grassland, and
when I finally threw off my soiled clothing, a few driedout leeches would fall out. I wanted to spend the winter
in Harbin or Jiandao, the temperature below minus 30
degrees Celsius cutting into my flabby body. Finally I
got my wish and found myself in Shenyang, China.
There, at a foot massage parlor, I met a small woman.
I later called her Soso in my book. Soso introduced
herself as Joseonjok (Korean ethnic minority in China).
That was a lie, however. After a while Soso told me how
she had been trafficked from her hometown in North
Korea to a remote Chinese village. I was shocked to
learn that her defection was not her choice, but that she
had been trafficked against her will.
And with this I came face to face with humanity.
Inside the people I met, I saw landscapes and scars,
hypocrisy and treachery, jealousy and madness, purity
and baseness, excess and deprivation, sadness and joy,
chaos and purpose, desire and prostitution, truth and
falsity.
With Brier Rose’s Chung-sim, I wanted to depict a
protagonist whose body mapped out the course of her
existence. However the task was not as straightforward
as I had anticipated. With each sentence I wrote, I would
take glimpses at the landscape outside the sentence and
then shake my head. I found that rather than drawing a
map of existence, I was drawing a map of sadness.
In order to visit the site of human trafficking, I took
a bus from Harbin to the Mudan River, a long, fourhour ride without any heating in the minus 40 degree
weather. I accepted the pain as part of the tension and
terror of the story.
The days I spent in Manchuria to meet trafficked
North Korean women and their traffickers were
brutal. I struggled on, looking at the dingy streets
outside my shabby hotel in Shenyang, or walking in
the dog-meat street where the red carcasses of dogs
were hanging, their fur singed off, beaten to death.
And finally Brier Rose was born inside me, of the
bones of existence, sadness, and language.
Sometimes the truth is far more destructive than
fiction. People who are outcasts or runaways tend
to build distorted, fragmented, selective narratives
of their hometown. It is not easy to survive as
an outsider otherwise. This truth should not be
wrapped up in words like freedom or human rights.
The drama of North Korean defection is always
connected to money. Those who paint themselves as
heroes smuggling North Korean defectors outside
of China are usually the most suspect. No matter
what they tell you or the media of the world, to these
professional brokers, North Korean defectors mean
money. The number of North Korean defectors
determines the size of their income. I know, because
I was there. Of course what I saw is not the whole
truth, but I know that it does exist. Brier Rose is a
testament to this outrage.
by Jeong Do-sang
Since 1987, Jeong Do-sang’s (b. 1960) works have
relentlessly explored the organizational violence
and social mechanisms that suppress free will
and the conditions of life. He won the Yosan
Literary Award and the Beautiful Writer Award in
2008 for his serial novel Brier Rose.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 27
Excerpt
Brier Rose
W
Visit www.list.or.kr to watch
readings of this work by the
author.
Brier Rose
Jeong Do-sang
Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2008, 244 pp.
ISBN 9788936433666
28 _list : Books from Korea
e had lunch at a restaurant by the river. She
was ugly, but her face held a certain charm.
Talking to her about this and that, I found out, to
my surprise, that she wasn’t a Korean Chinese, but
an overseas Chinese from North Korea. She said
that she had Chinese citizenship now and often
visited Manpo across the river.
“How is that possible?” I asked her, unable to
believe that she could go back and forth freely
between the North and China.
“It’s easy when you have a pass,” she said,
grinning. I had so many questions for her that I felt
no interest in the ruins of Goguryeo. The woman
and I went to a pub nearby. I found out that she was
thirty-eight years old. I was quite surprised, because
I had thought she was close to fifty. True, the cold
winds of Manchuria had left their marks on her face,
but when I took a closer look, I found that she didn’t
have that many wrinkles on her face. I asked her
questions, and she answered.
When she was living in Manpo across the river,
she fell in love for the first time at age fourteen with
a volleyball player who was thirteen years old. The
thirteen-year-old boy was tall and handsome, just
the way you would picture a volleyball player. They
met stealthily like stray cats, and after two years,
they made love for the first time among the reeds
of the Amnokgang River. The woman pointed to the
field of reeds, smiling awkwardly. She smiled again,
saying she hadn’t known how good a man’s body
was. Both of them were so healthy that whenever
they came out of a field or the woods or a barn, she
would be with child. They bribed doctors time and
time again to have an abortion.
After three abortions, she became pregnant
again, and they got married when she was twenty.
As her belly began to swell, the young husband of
nineteen wandered out. He began eyeing girls in the
next town, even before the baby was born, and that
was the beginning of his unending series of affairs.
He acted like a bachelor the moment he stepped
out of the house. Being a volleyball player, he was
popular with the girls.
“How do you have an affair in North Korea, when
there are no hotels or inns?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter whether there’s rain or snow
or wind, you find a way as long as you want to do it.
It’s not the place that matters, it’s the heart. There
are barns, mountains, fields—empty classrooms,
and of course, the reeds,” she said. We both laughed.
She patiently endured through his affairs, but she
couldn’t take the beatings, so in the end, she filed
for divorce. She smiled bitterly, saying that it would
have been quite difficult to get a divorce if she hadn’t
been an overseas Chinese, but that it had been easy
because she didn’t have North Korean citizenship.
She had two boys from the marriage, which had
been like hell. She smiled a hollow smile, saying
she came to Jian because it was too much for her to
live in Manpo by herself after the divorce. She was
a woman who could smile even when talking of sad
things.
“Have you been to South Korea?” I asked.
“No. I don’t want to,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Korean people are bad. The missionaries,
especially. They give you a video camera, saying
that they’ll give you money if you go to Manpo and
take videos of poor people. They also tell you that
if you tell people you’re a defector from the North,
they’ll give you money and a house, and they tell
you to take videos of defectors in Jian. They’re real
lowlifes. I’ve met a lot of people like that. They talk
about human rights, but it’s all just lip service. This
place was crawling with people like that at one point.
My mother still lives in Manpo. She’s poor, but she
likes it better there. She says Jian’s too crowded and
suffocating,” she said.
The woman told me her sole pleasure was crossing
over to Manpo and seeing her children and mother
on holidays with the money she saved up doing odd
jobs at a restaurant on the riverside. I asked her
how much her salary was, and she told me it was
about four hundred yuan a month. That would be
only a little over sixty thousand Korean won. I
pictured her going to Manpo, carrying a bundle
of clothing and food she had bought with that
money. Life seemed so dreary.
“What about your husband?”
“He’s remarried, and well.”
“Do you see him when you go to Manpo?”
“I have to, if I want to see my kids.”
“Don’t you hate him, because he’s living with
another woman?”
“Hate him? He was my first love…I don’t hate
him.”
I felt a lump rise in my throat. Suddenly, I
felt a sort of affection towards the woman. She
showed me different places in Jian, reminiscing
on the days she spent up north.
I was getting more and more absorbed in her
story, when Pak called me from Shenyang. He said
he felt terrible that I had gotten off the bus and
left so suddenly, and told me I had to come back
to Shenyang right away. I told him it was too late,
so I’d see him the following day, but he insisted
that I had to come back to Shenyang, no matter
how late, and have a drink with him, since he was
going back to Pyongyang on the early morning
train.
I wanted to spend more time with the woman,
but there was more I wanted to say to Pak. Before
he went back to Pyongyang, I wanted to tell him
things buried deep within my heart, things that
would bleed like raw liver when I pulled them
out. I had no choice but to take a taxi. The woman
cut the fare down to eight hundred yuan, with
the help of an acquaintance. When I got in the
taxi, the woman gave me a piece of paper with her
name and number written on it, saying I had to
come back sometime.
(pp. 18-21)
Vol.26 Winter 2014 29
The Journey to Meet Lo Kiwan
I
Met Lo Kiwan is my second novel. It tells the
story of three principal characters: Lo Kiwan,
who leaves North Korea for Belgium and applies
for refugee status there; South Korean writer Kim,
who goes on a wild-goose chase after Lo Kiwan
in Belgium, and later, England; and Park Yooncheol, who aids Lo Kiwan and brings Lo and Kim
together. What connects these seemingly random
characters is their pain. Each suffers from the guilt
that they owe their lives to another’s sacrifice, or
the feeling that they are somehow responsible for
another’s death. United by this shared guilt, the
three characters find ways to heal each other. At
least, that is what I hoped for when I wrote this
novel.
Lo Kiwan is a North Korean defector who
goes to Belgium by way of Yanbian. After losing
his mother in Yanbian, Lo suffers from survivor’s
guilt, only to find that he must battle again for his
survival, this time against social exclusion and the
language barrier as a foreigner. After many trials
and a lengthy wait, he finally gains refugee status
and leaves for England in hope of a better life.
Kim, the other main character, is the head writer
for a popular, human interest-based television
program that relies on viewer donations. She quits
her job one day after discovering that one of the
program’s subjects has met a terrible fate because
of her good intentions. Leafing through a weekly
magazine, Kim chances upon an interview with
Lo Kiwan. His paradoxical pain at having chosen
life after his mother’s death resonates deeply with
Kim, and she decides to go search for him to hear
now he found an answer to pain. Kim’s journey
30 _list : Books from Korea
to meet Lo Kiwan is, in this sense, a journey of selfdiscovery.
Park Yoon-cheol is a former doctor who left
South Korea for political reasons during the military
dictatorship, and acts as an interpreter for Lo Kiwan
during his refugee application process. Park also
provides vital information about Lo Kiwan to Kim
when she comes looking for Lo in Belgium. Haunted
by his wife’s secret euthanasia, Park helps Lo because
he identifies with Lo’s survivor’s guilt.
What I’ve explained above is why I do not consider
I Met Lo Kiwan as a political novel, but rather as an
attempt to answer the question of whether we can
truly understand another person’s suffering, or to
what extent solidarity is possible. I believe that there
is a Lo Kiwan in all of us in the sense of feeling like a
lonely outsider, and I wanted to highlight this human
side of Lo Kiwan. Ultimately, I wanted to explore the
possibility of forging a true connection that goes
beyond mere sympathy through the solidarity of the
three characters.
by Cho Haejin
Cho Haejin (b. 1976) debuted in 2004.
Her notable works include the short
story collection City of Angels and the
novel An Infinitely Wonderful Dream. She
won the Shin Dongyup Literary Award
in 2013 for I Met Lo Kiwan.
Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature
I Met Lo Kiwan
Cho Haejin
Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2011, 200 pp.
ISBN 9788936433857
In Search of Consolation
I
Met Lo Kiwan is the second novel by young writer
Cho Haejin, who is attracting attention with her
delicate, profound phrasing that is both sympathetic
and affectionate. This story about North Korean
refugee Lo Kiwan and the narrator who traces Lo’s
life unfolds impressively and beautifully against the
vivid backdrop of Brussels.
Every character in I Met Lo Kiwan struggles with
pain and despair. The narrator Kim brings despair
to the people around her as she tries to escape from
her reality. Lo Kiwan is excluded from any form
of protection or responsibility and stands at the
crossroads of life. From the sorrowful story shared
by the characters at different ages and occupations,
and in different circumstances, author Cho recounts
how challenging and precarious it is to try to live
humanely as independent individuals.
The characters, however, do not remain buried
beneath their misery. The narrator comes to learn
how to sympathize with others through the journal
written by Lo Kiwan even though she has never
seen him. Lo Kiwan regains the will to live from
a connection with Park. The narrative features
the persistent process of the narrator and Park
slowly healing their wounds as they reflect upon
one another.
I Met Lo Kiwan speaks of life’s fundamental
sorrow, and emphasizes the sympathy and hope
founded on intimate relationships. The process
of how the characters overcome challenges and
handle conflict is deeply inspiring.
We live in a generation in which everyone
wants heartwarming consolation. Yet how is
consolation made possible? And with what? Just
as the narrator questions the nature of sympathy
for others, we may have to reconsider the role of
literature in this generation. I Met Lo Kiwan is
a novel that approaches the reader in the same
way.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 31
Part 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
Introduction of North Korean
Writers in Exile PEN Center
T
he PEN Center for North Korean Writers
in Exile was formed in February 2012. At
the time there were already some 20,000 North
Koreans living in South Korea, a number of them
writers. The PEN Center started out as a dozen
or so of us discussing our creative plans for the
future. Our meetings mostly consisted of us
discussing literary works and how to promote
existing publications.
Only a few of our members had actually been
published in North Korea. But as word spread, the
group began to attract people who had longed to
write in the North but had never been able to as
well as those with heartbreaking stories of escape.
And so the North Korean Writers in Exile
PEN Center was formally launched on August 4,
2012, and ratified at the 78th International PEN
Congress held on September 14 that year.
Of course, not everything went smoothly in
the beginning. We had been recognized by PEN
International, but we lacked everything else. Not
many of our members had any training in writing,
and even those that had been published in North
Korea had only been exposed to socialist realism
and propaganda glorifying Kim Il-sung and Kim
Jong-il. It was a struggle to keep up with or
understand the trends of international literature
in an open society.
In the two years since then, however, our
members have overcome these limitations to an
astonishing degree, immersing themselves in the
literature of South Korea, and striving to leave
their mark upon it.
It would be amiss not to celebrate some of
32
_list : Books from Korea
their notable achievements. Already some five or six
North Korean writers in exile have been accepted as
members of the Korean Novelists Association, and
this September our member Kim Jeong-ae received
the Newcomer’s Award. As for works published by
our members during this period, Lim Il published
Kim Jong-il and Hwang Jang-yop; Chang Hae Seong
published Tumen River, and Lee Ji-myeong’s Woman
of God is slated for publication after the success of
his Where Is My Life? Last but not least, newcomer
Lee Ga-yeon has published her first collection of
poetry, Missing Dinnertime, to great acclaim.
In addition to publishing, the North Korean
Writers in Exile PEN Center has adapted a popular
North Korean radio play for a South Korean audience
and broadcast 15 episodes since this July. The radio
play, Cheon-bok and Man-gil, ran for 37 years in North
Korea before it was canceled. Our version of Cheonbok and Man-gil is currently broadcast on North
Korea Reform Radio, Radio Free Chosun, Open
Radio for North Korea, and Far East Broadcasting,
to the delight of the North Korean community.
To return to the subject of our writers, our
ranks have grown substantially since the Center’s
formation. At first, we only had a handful of
published writers, but now the number is closer to
30, with many others eager to begin writing. We have
also published the second issue of our magazine,
North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature, which
shows a vast improvement over our first issue. Works
published in this issue include many short stories,
most notably Kim Jeong-ae’s “Rice,” two poems by
Yoo Jin, namely “I Love Myself Most” and “The Last
Virgin,” and Hyun Inae’s critical essay “North Korean
The Letter to North Korean Writers
From the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
[…]
To those of you who are entirely deprived of the freedom of expression, always having to
pretend to hear and see nothing under the hereditary dictatorship of the Kim family, you
are always in our thoughts.
[…]
We, the exiled writers from North Korea, know from our own experience how painful it
is to write in praise of the dictator against your will. Now, it is we who will write for you.
We will write about what rests deep in your hearts, the words you want to share with the
world.
We, the exiled writers from North Korea who achieved freedom by escaping from the North,
still do not have much power, but on our side we have South Korean writer-colleagues and
writers from PEN International around the world. Together we will do whatever is possible
for you to have freedom of expression and for the imprisoned writers in the North.
However deep is the night, the dawn will surely come. Although the reality in North Korea
may seem dismal, a new world will one day arrive. Until that day, both you from the inside
and we from the outside, need to work together to win back the pens we have lost.
With Best Regards,
The Members of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
adapted from North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (2014 1st Issue)
Literature and Fantasy,” all of which boast a high
level of writing while relentlessly exposing North
Korean reality.
Of course, these are not the only landmarks the
PEN Center for North Korean Writers in Exile has
celebrated. Looking forward to the day that the
North and the South will be reunited, however, there
is still so much work to be done. When that day
comes, we must have something to show for the time
we have been in exile. We must be able to say that we
wrote not just for ourselves, but also for those stuck
in a living hell, weeping and beating at their chests
because they cannot write what they want.
We have many tasks ahead of us if this is to be
achieved. We must hone our creative skills and
write even more works decrying the North Korean
regime, as well as recruit and train young writers.
We must work harder on our ongoing radio play,
and also on Letters from North Korea scheduled
for next year. Of course, none of this will be easy.
Looking back upon our achievements over the
past two years, however, it is far from impossible
if all of our members work together towards this
goal.
by Chang Hae Seong
President, North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
Vol.26 Winter 2014 33
Special Section: A Conversation with North Korean Writers in Exile
Home, Where Is Home?
L
iterature on North Korean defection can be divided into two categories. The first kind is authored by professional South Korean
writers exploring North Korean defection as a phenomenon linked to reunification and changes in international relations. The
second kind is by actual North Korean defectors writing from experience about their escape and tortuous journey that finally brought
them to South Korea.
This conversation was conducted with novelist Chang Hae Seong, literary critic Hyun Inae, and novelist Lim Il, members of the
North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center who write to raise awareness on North Korean human rights. It was hosted by Professor
Park Dukkyu of Dankook University, who has written extensively on the subject of North Korean defection in South Korean literature
since the late 1990s and is a published author of short stories in the same genre.
Park Dukkyu: The number of North Korean
defectors has skyrocketed from the mid-1990s
onwards. Out of the approximately 26,000 North
Koreans in exile here in South Korea, most of them
escaped during this period. North Korean writers in
exile are now a visible presence in South Korea. How
many North Korean writers in exile are there in South
Korea and what kind of works are they writing?
Chang Hae Seong: Those of us defectors who are
writers formed the North Korean Writers in Exile
34 _list : Books from Korea
PEN Center. We have about 30 members. Not many
of our members used to write in North Korea. Most of
our members include those who wanted to be writers
but were obliged to take on different jobs for various
reasons, or those who feel strongly about sharing their
experiences of defecting or other atrocities they have
suffered.
Lim Il: I worked in construction and accounting in
North Korea. This is my 18th year in South Korea.
When I first got here I didn’t think I would write fiction.
Chang: I wrote scripts in North Korea. Since I came
here, I have published one novel and seven short story
collections. I have the impression that there are more
novelists than poets among North Korean writers in
exile. The most common genre is memoir.
Chang: The General Federation of Korean Literature
and Arts Unions oversees the Dramatists’ Union,
the Filmmakers’ Union, and the Writers’ Union.
What’s unique about the Writers’ Union is that it
has its own agency, the Korean Literary Production
Unit. All North Korean writers belong to the Korean
Literary Production Unit. Writers belonging to
this unit are called “affiliated writers” (hyeonyeok
jakga). Then there are writing studios affiliated
with Korean Central Television, the State Security
Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and
Kim Il-sung University; if you belong there, you are
called “employed writers” (hyeonjik jakga). I was an
employed writer with Korean Central Television.
Hyun Inae: I went to an exhibition of books by North
Korean writers in exile. There were over 100 memoirs,
also quite a few poetry collections. Novels were the
fewest by number. There are more memoirists because
memoirs are the easiest to write—you write about your
own experiences.
Hyun: Affiliated or employed, they are all professional
writers. They are full-time writers employed by the
government. And then there are those who work as
laborers but who also write in the field; they are called
“literary correspondents.” But if they show promise,
they are summoned to become professional writers.
Park: Could you briefly sum up the course of North
Korean literature since the division of Korea? This is
generally known to those who have studied Korean
literature, but I’d like to hear from someone who actually
studied literature in the North.
Lim: North Korean writers are paid in rations from
I wrote personal essays in the beginning. I wanted to
raise awareness about the situation in North Korea and
writing seemed to be the best way. I started writing
fiction later. I’ve had a number of books published now.
I know that many people started writing fiction because
they felt the same way—that it is their duty to raise
awareness about the realities in North Korea, how the
people are suffering.
Chang: Critical realism was the mainstay of early North
Korean literature. After the Russian army arrived, North
Korean literature turned to socialist realism and this
trend continued until the mid-1960s. In 1958, I think on
March 24, Kim Il-sung gave a speech to the 324th Army
Unit of the Korean People’s Army called “The Korean
People’s Army Is the Successor to the Anti-Japanese
Armed Struggle,” and after that everyone had to write
anti-Japanese literature. And from 1967 onwards, it
was about glorifying the two Kims. All writers had to
write literature glorifying Kim Sr. and Jr., whether they
wanted to or not.
Park: I heard that North Korean writers all belong to an
association and are assigned a certain rank. Could you
give a brief explanation of that?
Lim Il is a member of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. Lim previously
worked at the Ministry of People’s Security, the Council for the Promotion of
Foreign Trade, and a North Korean construction company in Kuwait. He defected
to South Korea in 1997 and has been writing since 2005. He is the author of the
essay collection Shall I Go Back to Pyongyang? and the novel Kim Jong-il, among
others.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 35
Hyun Inae is an Associated Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute of Unification
Studies and member of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. Hyun
defected to South Korea in 2004 and has since earned a doctorate in North
Korean studies from Ewha Womans University. She contributes to the radio
drama Cheon-bok and Man-gil.
the government, so there is no need to write anything
other than what the government tells them to. The
only acceptable subjects are the Party, the Great
Leader, and loyalty. They are not forbidden from
writing about other things, but no one would ever
acknowledge them if they did.
Park: I understand that any information on South
Korea is banned in North Korea. Did you have any
chance to read South Korean literature in North
Korea?
Chang: Writers have access to the
so-called “100-Copy Collection.”
These are books with a print run
restricted to 100 copies that are
offered to a select number of
people, such as writers. I don’t
think there were many South
Korean books in the collection.
I remember Jang Gilsan (multivolume saga by Hwang Sok-yong)
and Dongui Bogam (novel by Lee
Eun-sung). Kim Ji-ha’s “Torture
Road—1974” and “Five Bandits” were held up as
examples denouncing the depravity of the South
Korean regime.
but here in South Korea there are too many other
distractions, so I don’t read as much. I’m used to
socialist realist literature, but South Korean literature
is abstractionist. It was completely new to me and made
me wonder why people would want to write things like
that. Personally I don’t enjoy it. South Korean writers
seem to think they are promoting diverse ideas and ways
of life by writing about people in unusual situations.
North Korean writers use archetypes to contribute to
the revolution and development of the country. I don’t
think North Koreans would be interested if you showed
them South Korean books.
I cannot stop
writing because I
feel I have the duty
to represent the
comrades
I left behind,
if only on the page.
Park: What subject is most important
to you, as writers in South Korea?
Park: What do you think of South Korean literature?
Lim: At first I published three
memoirs focusing on the cultural
differences between North and South
Korea. After I turned 40, however,
my ideas and beliefs changed a great
deal, and I became more interested in
North Korean politics. Politics is what
dominates the North Korean regime,
culture, and society. Society exists because of politics.
For my novels Kim Jong-il (2011) and Hwang Jang-yop
(2013), I did a lot of research on executed defectors and
the corruption of the Kim Jong-il regime and consulted
various specialized South Korean publications. In my
books I mixed real names with made-up ones, fact with
fiction. My greatest strength is that I lived in Pyongyang
all my life and know what it feels like, so hopefully my
books will reflect that. I cannot stop writing because I
feel I have the duty to represent the comrades I left
behind, if only on the page.
Hyun: I was very fond of novels in North Korea,
Hyun: It’s about what we want to share with North
Hyun: I snuck as many copies of the “100-Copy
Collection” as I could, too. I wasn’t a professional
writer so I wasn’t supposed to have access. I only read
the American ones. I remember reading Gone With the
Wind and Stairway to Heaven.
36 _list : Books from Korea
Chang Hae Seong is President of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center and a
former reporter and writer for Korean Central TV. Chang defected to South Korea in
1996 and has since worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security
Strategy (INSS). He is the author of the novel Tumen River and numerous short stories,
and also writes for the radio drama Cheon-bok and Man-gil.
Koreans through the genre of literature—that could be
our experiences in North Korea or in South Korea. You
could say that we are more realistic than South Korean
writers in that way. If something is written by a North
Korean writer, it must be about North Korea and North
Korean defectors.
Chang: Human rights is an inevitable subject when
writing about North Korea. More than 80 percent of
North Korean writers in exile write about human rights
in North Korea, regardless of genre.
Park: The North Korean regime is not very happy about
North Korean writers publishing books in South Korea,
are they?
Lim: They’re not just unhappy, they’d have us executed
by the firing squad! I published my first novel, Kim
Jong-il, in August 2011, and Kim Jong-il died that
same December. Just before that, in November, the
North Korean government named me in a statement
saying, “Puppet Traitor Lee Myung-bak Meets Traitor
that Blasphemed the Great Leader’s Dignity through
Fabrication.” The National Intelligence Service and the
police were calling me because I received death threats.
I had to be put under protection for a while after that.
Park: Before we wrap up, is there anything you’d like
to say as a North Korean writer in exile to the South
Korean or international community?
Chang: The North Korean Writers in Exile PEN
Center is still very new, and we are a small association
without a lot of influence. But cultural and ideological
infiltration is more important than any nuclear
weapon. Literature matters, which means we have
an important task as writers. We will strive to write
books we can be proud of after the two Koreas are
reunited, so we can say that we did our part in South
Korea.
Hyun: Literature has power in South Korea. I
would like to see more works by South Korean
writers spreading awareness of North Korea and
reunification.
Lim: I went to the 80th International PEN Congress
as a representative of North Korean writers in exile.
We need more people to listen to North Korean
writers in exile. Ours is a voice that cannot be heard
in North Korea. We represent the people of North
Korea, the truth. Our voices need to be heard.
edited by Park Dukkyu
Chang: I’ve been called “human garbage” by the North
Korean regime, but I take it as a positive sign that I’ve
accomplished something here in South Korea. If I had
kept quiet, they wouldn’t have any reason to attack me.
For me, it’s a badge of honor.
Hyun: The North Korean regime denounces all defectors
by name, not just writers. But they’re making a mistake.
They’re only giving defectors more attention.
Visit www.list.or.kr to watch video highlights of this interview.
Park Dukkyu is a Professor of Creative Writing at
Dankook University. Born in 1958, Park is a poet, critic,
and novelist. He is the author of numerous short story
collections including You Tremble from Loneliness Even
When You Are Together (2012), which focuses on North
Korean defection.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 37
Part 3. North Korean Defector Poets
Poetic Expression in
North Korean Defector Culture
Significance of Defector Poets
M
ass migration prompted by the great famine
of the 1990s has transformed the status of
North Korean defectors in South Korean society
from that of a strategic tool in the ideological
wars to a social minority in need of assimilation.
The unofficial count of North Koreans crossing
the border ranges from 100,000 to 300,000, with
the number entering South Korea now well over
10,000. In these numbers, defectors have not only
lost their ideological influence as living proof of
the superiority of the Southern regime, but are
now reduced to a cultural minority whose past
existence is rarely if ever acknowledged.
This article is an attempt to examine North
Korean defector culture through examples of
North Korean defector poetry. Key examples of
this genre published to date include Jang Jinsung’s I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won
(chogabje.com, 2008), Kim Ok-ae’s Rice Porridge
Incident (Sam Woo Publishing Co., 2005), Kim Daeho’s Confessions of a Naked Poem (Living Books,
2003), and Kim Seong-min’s Why Are Songs about
Home Always Sad? (Dashi, 2004).
Multi-Layers of Defector Psychology
The two major themes in North Korean defector
poetry are defection and migration. In North
Korean defector poetry, this refers to the poet’s
thoughts on defection, the specific circumstances
that prompted the poets to defect and why they
chose to go to the South. On the surface these
thoughts fall into a clearly pro-South, anti-North
category, but the underlying thought process of
North Korean defectors appears to have changed
little from the indoctrination expected to come out
of the North Korean regime.
38 _list : Books from Korea
To take the poetry of Jang Jin-sung as an example
of pro-South, anti-North sentiment on a surface
level, it can be argued that North Korean defectors
antagonize the North and idolize the South in that
they did in fact make the dangerous escape to the
South and typically have no problem justifying this
choice to themselves. They are strongly against the
North Korean regime and for the ideals of liberty
and freedom in the South. While the practical reason
of hunger is usually their direct motivation for
coming South, the choice of South Korea implies an
affirmation of the South and a rejection of the North.
This psychology is readily observed in North Korean
defector poetry.
In a footnote to his poem “Palace,” Jang Jingsung notes: “The Kim Jong-il regime exhausted the
nation’s coffers to build Kim Il-sung’s mausoleum at
the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun while three million
people starved to death. If they had used that
money to buy rice, they could have saved hundreds
of thousands of lives.” From this we can infer that
“Palace” refers to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun
and that the poet disapproves of the political and
economic repercussions of its construction. The poet
emphasizes that North Korean starvation is directly
linked to the political choices of the party in the lines,
“Three million starved to death / To bury one dead
man.” This idea that the people of North Korea starved
for political reasons, and that most of the poems in
this collection deal with starvation, indicates that the
North Korean defector poet is strongly anti-North.
Surface declarations of absolute affirmation
towards the South, as in the poems of Kim Ok-ae,
reveal an interesting twist. Kim’s poem “I Was So
Surprised” shows the boundless enthusiasm toward
the South, which is doubtless familiar to those who
have studied North Korean literature. The poet is
infinitely grateful to the government for she is living
in “a place where a perfect life is possible” and “the
home of my dreams, like in the movies.” She said
the facilities are like a vacation home provided and
waiting for them. This idea is strikingly similar to the
underlying notion of North Korean literature that
everything the people enjoy in life is provided by the
Party and the Great Leader.
This implies that the poet is still used to the
ideological way of thinking acquired while living in the
North. On the surface level, North Korean defectors
profess to praise the South and denounce the North,
but on a deeper level they have merely switched the
South for the North in their ways of understanding
and adapting a regime’s ideology for their own use.
Migrant as Cultural Minority
The instant that North Korean defectors migrate to
South Korea they become cultural minorities. Viewed
as a group to be assimilated into South Korean
society based on ideas of ethnic nationalism and
brotherhood, they accordingly receive assistance from
the government and various religious groups and
non-profit organizations. In the process, however,
they experience othering in the form of covert
discrimination and violence by the cultural majority.
This aspect of the migrant’s reality, being othered as a
cultural minority, is well documented in North Korean
defector poetry.
Kim Dae-ho uses disrobing in his poetry as one
way of responding to discrimination and violence
against North Korean defectors. Kim Dae-ho’s
poem “Disaster,” for instance, is accompanied by a
nude photograph presumably of the poet. Nudity
is a symbolic performance. Considering that the
majority of poems in the collection refer to the pain
and hardship of living as a migrant in South Korean
society, the act of disrobing can be understood as an
intention to be seen as a naked human being, that is,
not as “the other” that needs assimilating, but as a
human being.
Another way that North Korean defector poetry
responds to discrimination is by revealing a longing
for home, a universally relatable sentiment. Kim
Seong-min’s poem “Potato Village Girl” shows that
North Korean defectors also view their ancestral
home with nostalgia, countering the cultural
majority’s gaze that persists in viewing North
Korea as a purely negative place. The hometown of
migrants is no different from the hometown of the
cultural majority in that it is a place that belongs
to their past but remains their point of reference
when explaining their background or origin.
This goes beyond nostalgia in the sense that it is
directly connected to one’s being-in-the world. The
line “Now that I’m of marrying age” from “Potato
Village Girl” is noteworthy in that the narrator
looks to his hometown to explain his desire to get
married. The poem’s narrator concludes that he
wants to get married because the “gal” from his
hometown who is “getting ready to be married”
“raising potatoes” appears in his “dream from last
night.” This is the attitude of one who connects his
motivation or reason for being with memories of
his hometown. In other words, the North Korean
hometown functions as an ontological space to
explain and understand one’s identity.
by Kang Jeong Gu
Professor
Kyung Hee University Research Institute of Humanities
This essay has been adapted from the author’s article: “Poetic Accommodation
of North Korean Immigrants: Focusing on the Conception and Characteristics of
Their Poetry.” Foreign Literature Studies 35 (2009.8): pp. 9-28.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 39
Part 3. Lee Ka-Yeon
C
ountless North Koreans died in the “Arduous
March” of the mid-1990s, truly a death march if
there ever was one. It is said that over three million
people starved to death. I saw people dying every day
in my hometown, so on a national scale it cannot be
by Lee Ka-Yeon
said that this number has been exaggerated. My poetry
translated by Jack Jung
collection, Missing Dinnertime, is my attempt to work
through this trauma I experienced in my hometown.
I believe that by doing so, I am also doing my duty in
Yeon-hee’s family next door
telling the world about the atrocious conditions of life
all starved to death.
in North Korea.
My hometown in Hwanghae Province is known
Their names were
as the breadbasket of North Korea. When I say that
buried in rice urns.
people were starving to death even in this area, you
can imagine what it must have been like in the rest of
On earth, they starved to death.
the North. The entire nation was gripped in the vice of
It worried us they may starve again.
starvation, and more and more people were dying in my
hometown every day. I had a friend who was three years
We buried them in rice urns.
older than me, the girl next door who was my playmate
from childhood. She grew thinner and thinner, and the
day I heard that she had been taken, I was too crushed
to even cry.
It was when my mother came to the funeral with two kilos of rice she had managed to borrow that I started
to cry. It hurt all the more because I thought that if Mother had come with the rice when my friend was alive, she
could have saved her life. After the funeral, we talked with my friend’s family and learned how she passed away.
She died clutching a ssaldok, a large earthenware jar used for storing rice. How hungry she must have been, to die
hugging that big jar! This is a memory I cannot put out of my mind. I will remember my friend’s ssaldok forever.
Years have passed since my friend died, but countless people continue to starve in North Korea. Every so
often I would shed a tear thinking of her, when I was eating delicious rice made in my Cuckoo-brand rice cooker.
Then one day I thought of writing my friend’s story as a poem, as a tribute to her soul. I was an ordinary woman
who was working in a factory in Haeju, South Hwanghae Province, straight out of high school. I had never learned
to write poetry nor had I ever written anything in North Korea.
As for my poem, “Rice Urn,” it would be more accurate to say that it was written by my friend’s voice guiding
me from beyond the grave. Every day in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, more girls are ending up like my next door
friend. But not many people know this. Even worse, those who do know don’t care. They speak of human rights,
but they don’t want to listen, they don’t want to see. I will continue to write poems that bring attention to the
human rights crisis in North Korea. And in my next poem they will be your next door neighbors.
Rice Urn
by Lee Ka-Yeon
40 _list : Books from Korea
Look At Us! 1 / Sunmu / oil on canvas / 2010 / 60 x 72 cm
Vol.26 Winter 2014 41
Part 3. Do Myeong-hak
One–eyed Person Passes the Test
by Do Myeong-hak
Though I’m one-eyed and unable to go to the army
my lot is better.
Classmates who used to mock me for being one-eyed
are being tortured in the army.
I do business, have love affairs, enjoy my life as it is.
Why has the party secretary called me suddenly?
They say a one-eyed guy like me can go to the army.
Hey, these are strange times.
Though I have no left eye, I can shoot all right.
If I had the right eye, I’d just pass the test!
They eyeball is like a bullet for a regular army.
One must dedicate to Kim Jong-il even the one eye left.
Now my lot is that of a dog without eyes.
adapted from North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (2014 1st Issue p. 94)
* At the beginning of 2000, North Korea could not fulfill the
needs of its armed forces so it lowered the standards for its
recruits. Those with only a right eye passed the test because
they could still shoot a gun.
42
_list : Books from Korea
Part 3. Lee Ji-myeong
Phone Call with My Daughter
I was born in North Korea and lived there for 52 years. It has now been 10 years since I left, long enough, one might
assume, to miss and pine for my native land. But I feel nothing to this effect at all. If there’s anything that I do feel,
it is hate, anger, and despair. I once had a family there, although we were poor, and 52 years’ worth of bittersweet
memories. What happened, then? Perhaps it is because now I feel that I have no identity, no soul. Maybe my
identity will return when my broken country is whole again, but now that seems very far away.
O
ne day in October last year, I spoke with my
daughter in North Korea over the phone for the
first time in years. Using my contacts, I was able to
summon her to the Chinese border from her married
home in Cholsan County in North Pyongan Province.
My daughter had never responded to any of my
attempts to reach her before, but for some reason that
day she had decided to come. The border is a maximum
security zone under constant radio surveillance,
and to speak for too long would be to endanger my
daughter’s life. So I said hello and was trying to control
my tears, knowing we had only two minutes, when I
had to catch my breath at my daughter’s next words.
“Why won’t you leave me alone? I have no father.
Don’t contact me again.”
“Daughter,” I cried out, afraid she would hang up.
Fortunately she did not.
“Is that the first thing to say to your father after
nine years? I didn’t raise you to be so cold.”
“Sure. You always said that a person should think
of their country first, and to never waver in their
loyalty to the Party and the Great Leader, no matter
how hard the conditions. That was what you wrote
in your work, too. But then you were the one who
betrayed your country first. Didn’t you even think
what would happen to your family here when you left?
I’m hanging up. I don’t even want to talk to you.”
The signal was gone. When I called the number
again, the line on the other side was turned off. I
had never felt such despair in my life as I did then.
My daughter had rejected me. My only daughter. She
was my world, the light of my life—and the first time
we spoke in nine years, she disinherited me over the
phone. My world crashed down before my eyes. I must
have looked like the unhappiest father in the world as
I staggered outside in the wind. I walked along the
Han River for a long time.
The shameful details of my life swim in front
of my eyes and drift down the flowing river. It was
the only world I knew, a life of which any sort of
ownership or claim as an individual was renounced.
And only by leaving the country did I learn what a
wretched life that was for any person to be born
into. If I had been the only person to live such a
life, I would not have had half the regrets I have
now. But unfortunately I worked hard to produce
such works as the Party demanded. When I was
glorifying the wisdom and grace of the Great
Leader with unabashed loyalty, I had no thought
to the regrets that haunt me now. Or rather, I had
no thoughts at all. That was the only way I could
have existed. Life under the state doctrine of Juche
meant to serve the Party and the Great Leader,
to bring joy and satisfaction to them. The works
I wrote under this principle were nothing but
tools to brainwash not just myself, but countless
others. I, the selfsame writer that preached total
sacrifice towards the Party and the Great Leader,
had become a traitor the day I decided to throw
everything away. I, who told my readers to live and
die for the Great Leader, had been the first to flee
the country, betraying them all. My daughter was
one of my readers. And so I have no right to mourn
over her refusal to see me again.
by Lee Ji-myeong
Writer and
Vice President of
the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center
Vol.26 Winter 2014 43
Part 3. Kim Seong-min
I
Freedom
by Kim Seong-min
Mine, essentially,
yet at the same time something we never had from birth.
Not an object,
yet something our parents took away.
Not only the sorrow of the hungry,
not the muffled sigh of those who wish for much.
Without it even alive we die, freedom, life!
Living with us, though we die, freedom!
originally published in North Korean Writers in Exile PEN
Literature (2014 1st Issue p. 91)
44 _list : Books from Korea
used to have a certain idea of freedom.
When I was living in the North, I thought that
freedom meant being loyal to the Party and the
Great Leader, and that there could be no other
freedom outside of that loyalty.
I truly believed that to live freely meant to obey
the Party in every way, doing only things I was told
to do and not doing things I was forbidden to do,
giving myself up entirely.
If freedom is defined as “the state of being
able to exercise one’s free will without any outside
constraint,” the only way to avoid such constraint
was to be loyal.
It was only after coming to South Korea that
I realized, looking back, that my brethren in the
North never knew the true meaning of freedom, or
rather, that they were born into a state without it.
This unalienable right that was denied to us by
birth—that is why I treasure my freedom all the
more today.
by Kim Seong-min
Even with Two Wings, Birds Can’t Fly / Sunmu / oil on canvas / 2009 / 91 x 116 cm
Vol.26 Winter 2014 45
Poetry
Blue Sky
by Kim Soo-young
translated by Peter H. Lee
Once a poet envied
The freedom of a lark,
Its rule of the blue sky.
The Silence of Love: Twentieth-century Korean Poetry
Edited and with an Introduction by Peter H. Lee
The University Press of Hawaii, 1980, 348 pp.
ISBN 9780824807320
One who has ever soared
For the sake of freedom
Knows
Why the lark sings
Why freedom reeks blood
Why a revolution is lonely
Why revolution
Has to be lonely.
46 _list : Books from Korea
ⓒKim A-Ram
ⓒKim Byoung Kwan
“Evening Proposal”
by Pyun Hye-young
translated by Park Youngsuk and Gloria Cosgrove Smith
K
im’s friend ordered the funeral wreath. It had been more
than ten years since Kim had seen this friend, who
now recognized his voice on the phone. Perhaps he was an
inconsiderate person, or merely acting like one, as he completely
neglected the formality of greeting Kim or inquiring about his
well-being. Without introduction, he simply described the
condition of an ill, bedridden man. Only after listening for a
few moments did Kim realize that the person on the phone
was a friend from long ago and that the ill, bedridden person
was an elderly man whom Kim had often visited during the
period when he used to correspond with this friend.
Kim paid little attention to the friend’s incessant
chattering on the phone. Instead, he wondered how the man
had obtained his new phone number, since Kim had taken
over the florist shop only quite recently. He was also struggling
to determine just how old the elderly dying man would be now.
He would have been surprised to hear that he had already died,
but hearing that he was still alive was also quite surprising.
He did not mention this to his friend, not wishing to seem
unsympathetic especially at this moment when they were
talking to each other again after such a long time. Kim could
not remember exactly, but he felt the elderly man must have
reached an age at which no one would be surprised at his
passing.
“He’s unconscious, breathing with the aid of a respirator
as unconscious people do, and exhaling slowly,” the friend
reported. “Every time he exhales, I nod my head cheering him
on, but then I look at the clock.”
Kim was unable to tell whether his friend’s voice was
expressing grief or disappointment. “The doctor said it was
unlikely that he would still be alive this afternoon.” The friend
paused for a moment. It seemed as though he was waiting
for Kim to say something, possibly to ask the location of the
hospital so he could visit, to express sympathy, or perhaps to
provide some words of comfort. But Kim said nothing. The
friend sighed.
“Please do me a favor with the wreath,” he said. Kim
agreed somewhat reluctantly, as though he had no choice. He
was thinking that doing this friend a favor quite likely meant
he would receive no payment, and it was not as if they were
really friends. Their relationship was so tenuous that they
could easily be considered to be strangers. However, it seemed
mercenary to be dickering about money when the elderly man
was dying.
Without mentioning anything about payment, the friend
then asked for Kim’s mobile number and gave him the name
of the funeral home, which was located in a town Kim was
not familiar with. Merely to continue the conversation, Kim
was about to ask why the mortuary was located in that town,
but he changed his mind. In a telephone conversation such as
this, suddenly taking place after more than ten years, there
was really only one thing Kim wanted to know: How had this
person obtained his phone number? Their only connection
was that they had worked for the same company for a short
time. It would even be difficult for them to recognize each
other in a photo that had been taken at a company event. In
any such photo, they would have been standing quite far apart,
and their relationship had definitely not changed over these
past ten years.
“You are coming to the funeral, aren’t you?” the friend
asked. Kim hesitated and before he could answer, the friend
added, “Of course, you are. In any event, who else should we
contact?” His tone of voice indicated that the matter was
not open for discussion, nor was he talking to himself. Kim
was about to explain that he was out of touch with all of
their acquaintances from ten years ago, when this friend,
not waiting for a response, and as though he was thoroughly
displeased with Kim’s reluctance, suddenly raised his voice.
“Never mind, I’ll do it!” he said. He then gave Kim the
name of the organization that was sending the wreath. It was
an organization Kim had never heard of. Feeling that it would
be rude not to inquire, Kim forced himself to ask what this
organization did. But the friend abruptly hung up on him,
saying that he had to return to the hospital. There were no
goodbyes just as there had been no greetings at the beginning
of their conversation.
Kim wondered if he was somehow responsible for this friend’s
cold and rude behavior or if it was merely his personality. He
reflected on long past events until he was eventually reminded
of some letters his friend had written. It was during the period
when Kim decided to resign from their company, which was
under legal management as a result of severe financial pressure
caused by the company’s inadequate expansion. The employees
had voluntarily accepted a wage reduction in order to stabilize
the company’s situation, when Kim was recommended for a
position in another company in another city. The person who
recommended him was the same elderly man who was now
dying, and this friend had criticized him for taking the new
position. He claimed that Kim had no sense of comradery and
accused him of being selfish and calculating.
Kim was told about this criticism by another person with
whom he’d now had no contact for a long time. Criticizing
a person for being selfish makes no sense, Kim thought.
Everyone is selfish. If his friend had been recommended for the
position, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take it. But his friend
was hurt by what he felt was Kim’s uncaring attitude. He sent
letters to Kim’s new company citing several mistakes Kim had
made. The result was that Kim was talked about behind his
back for a time, until the whole matter gradually blew over. As
a result of this experience, Kim concluded that friendship had
nothing to do with a degree of affection, but was a feeling that
was valid only when it was dedicated to, and reaped benefits
for, one of the persons involved. He calmly recalled the event
and the scars it had inflicted, but the process of remembering
did leave him sad and resentful about his long forgotten past.
He wrote the name of the funeral home on the upper part of
a memo where orders for items and their places of delivery
were haphazardly scribbled. He would have remembered these
without looking at them, but seeing them now reminded him
that he also had other orders to attend to. Not that they had to
be attended to before doing anything else, but certainly they
did have to be taken care of. Also other urgent events might
arise at any time if not today, then tomorrow, or even in the
next five minutes. It was impossible to predict. That is what
self-employment is like.
He tried to find someone who could deliver the wreath and
the condolence money that he would donate for the funeral
expense. Considering the elderly man’s age, even though Kim
didn’t know exactly what it was, his funeral could take place
at any moment. So it was appropriate to be prepared for
mourning. According to the friend, the elderly man had been
unconscious and not recognizing anyone for a long while. Even
if Kim hurried to get to the hospital, he might not be able
to arrive before the man died. Realizing this filled him with
compassion for dying humanity in general, but his feelings were
not at all personal. After transferring to the other company,
Kim had felt an obligation to the elderly man and expressed
his gratitude with greetings and gifts. One year, it was a box of
apples for the Harvest Moon holiday, and for the Lunar New
Year holiday, a basket of dry shiitake mushrooms. Another
year, he gave a box of pears of superior quality for Lunar New
Year’s and a box of Hallabong oranges for Harvest Moon. And
now, now there would be the wreath for which he would surely
not collect any remuneration. His gratitude had been great, but
not great enough to remember after all this time.
*
The funeral home was located in a town three hundred
and eighty kilometers to the south. Kim was annoyed.
“The news of someone’s death should not be sent out
to those who have been out of touch for over ten years,” he
proclaimed frowning. He tried hard to think of someone to
call, but everyone he phoned was occupied with other matters.
They had important appointments or responsibilities that
couldn’t be postponed.
“No, the news of a person’s death should be sent out
far and wide to everyone,” said the man who ran the florist
shop next door to Kim’s, “because it too often happens that
someone who has not heard of a friend’s death will come up to
you and ask about him as though he is still alive. This happens
you know. I lost my high school buddy of thirty years. He was
physically the strongest among us. Some friends still don’t
know he’s gone, and they ask after him. When I tell them he
is dead, I realize all over again that he’s gone.” He swallowed
his words as he remembered his dead friend. “I wore this to his
funeral,” he added sorrowfully as he handed the black jacket to
Kim. Kim nodded.
He did not really understand the man’s sorrow, but after
hearing this story about his having had this buddy for thirty
years, he was able to fairly precisely guess the florist’s age.
Previously he had thought of him as being much older than he
actually was because of his graying hair.
“But this jacket is too big for you and too old,” the man
said to Kim.
“It’s okay. It really doesn’t matter with this kind of jacket,”
Kim replied despite the fact that the long sleeves completely
covered the back of his hands.
“You’re right. It’s not as if you are going for an interview,”
the man said, nodding his head, but he advised Kim to fold the
sleeves back twice.
Kim was about fifteen centimeters shorter than the
average man. He recalled that he had stopped growing when
he turned fourteen. His father had passed away then, and for
some time, Kim believed that he stopped growing because of
the emotional shock of his father’s death. It wasn’t until years
later that he realized he was wrong. One day as a grown man,
he went to see a traditional doctor about unbearable pain he
had in his shoulder. In the doctor’s office, he happened to see a
poster on the wall that read: “How to Estimate the Maximum
Possible Height of One’s Growth.” The method involved using
the heights of both parents and going through several steps of
simple calculations. He used his father’s height based on his
mother’s dim memory of his being one hand-span taller than
she was. Although it wasn’t supposed to be exact, the result of
his calculation showed Kim’s maximum possible height as only
four centimeters taller than his present height. Kim smiled
sadly remembering this.
He recalled his childhood when his father’s sudden death
forced his mother to work three shifts at a nearby factory
leaving him home alone. His friends teased him about being
short, and he often got into trouble because he had too much
time to kill. He also blamed his father’s death for the disorderly
path his life had taken and mercilessly accused his father of
abandoning his family and leaving him with nothing but this
meager height. He realized now how wrong he was about all
of this.
As he started his car and was about to leave, Kim remembered
his dinner date with the woman. He could postpone the date
for one or two hours, but even then he still wouldn’t be likely
to get back on time. He had already broken this date with
her twice. He apologized to her for his carelessness, and she,
as usual, said she understood his situation. Kim sensed that
she was concealing her disappointment behind her carefully
articulated response, and this displeased him. Instead of being
angry she expressed curiosity about what he had for lunch and
how he had spent his weekend. She often wanted to talk about
incidents in her daily life and to discuss matters that required
choices.
Each time she attempted such conversations however,
Kim suddenly had a customer to take care of and would have
to immediately hang up. A few days later when she called
again, it seemed as though she had hesitated before picking up
the phone to ask how he was. Then she became embarrassed
at Kim’s unfriendly response. At a loss, she began to spew out
words that were far from courteous. When he had a customer
and needed to hang up, she hurriedly bid him goodbye in
an ambiguous tone of voice that expressed both relief and
sorrow for his having to hang up and her not having time to
make amends for what she had said. Later when he was busy
or even in his free time after hanging up like that, he would
be reminded of her face. It was expressionless, her mouth
remaining closed as she sat among a group of people on social
occasions. She was a quiet woman who would now and then
suddenly make some inane comment which elicited ridicule.
She would inappropriately tell jokes relating to topics that
people had already stopped discussing, jokes which confused
everyone and at which no one laughed. Then she would put
on a serious face, as though she had never meant them as
jokes at all. Observing all this, Kim would be initially nervous.
Then gradually he became displeased, but he felt totally
helpless. This was the behavior he often manifested when he
felt embarrassed, when he lacked confidence because of being
conscious of his short stature.
She also frequently gave him gifts. It was obvious that she
had spent considerable time carefully selecting each of
those ordinary, inexpensive items, so they would not feel
burdensome to him. There were books he had mentioned in
passing that he wanted to read, a handy suitable wallet or
some useful item for his florist shop. She carefully wrapped
each of these gifts for him. But this attention that she paid to
his needs was lost on Kim who consistently unwrapped and
received her gifts with utter indifference. He even gradually
grew to dislike her smell. It likely came from her perfume, or
shampoo or possibly the conditioner that she used. Whatever
it was, it spread like the odor of mixed flowers. The fragrance
that Kim did like could hardly be called a fragrance at all. It was
a complete lack of smell. It wasn’t until after he took over the
florist shop that he realized that even the best fragrance could
easily become an unpleasant odor when flowers mingled their
fragrances.
*
He had an easy drive traveling south for about a hundred and
twenty kilometers when he suddenly approached a congested
area where he was forced to stop. Unlike most drivers, Kim
seldom listened to traffic reports on the radio and often found
himself in situations like this. He had not heard the news flash,
but when the person ahead of him stepped out of his car to
smoke a cigarette, he informed him that the road was blocked
off for several hours because of a marathon. Absolutely nothing
was moving in the closed off area. There were no runners in
sight. It appeared that they had either already passed the
area or dropped far behind. Kim stared blankly at the road.
He remembered a sports announcer whom he’d listened to
during one of these marathons. The announcer explained
that marathoners usually breathe in twice when inhaling and
breathe out twice when exhaling. Kim consciously tried to
breathe in and out this way. The air coursed through his body
and returned to the atmosphere. He had never before taken
notice of this delicate and ordinary phenomenon that regularly
took place in his body, as though it was irrelevant.
When the road reopened, he continued driving south. After
some time, the cell phone in his pocket rang. It was an
unfamiliar number. He suspected it was the friend, who had
ordered the wreath he was delivering, and that being anxious,
he was calling to urge him to hurry. Perhaps the elderly man
had just died and the mortuary looked empty without the
wreath that had not yet arrived. Kim did not bother to answer
the phone.
Customers were forever calling to complain about
deliveries being late and insisting that their orders be delivered
more quickly. So when a customer demanded to know when
his order would arrive, Kim would respond, “It will certainly
be there in about 10 minutes.” He assumed that the customer
would understand that traffic and road conditions could
change within that time period. If the customer called again,
Kim would say he was in the vicinity and pretend he had a
wrong address. The customer would then hurriedly give him
the correct one.
Providing a wrong address for an invoice was actually a
mistake that occasionally did occur. Fortunately, however,
there were also times when a delayed delivery did not matter.
Those were times when unexpected events occurred for either
the customer or the recipient of the flowers. It might happen,
for example, that a person would receive a message from a
departing lover while waiting for the arrival of a bouquet that
was meant to accompany a marriage proposal. The opening
ceremony of a new business might suddenly be disrupted by
criminals appearing on the scene. A mother might faint after
delivering a stillborn baby. These were the fortunate occasions
when it was of no consequence if flowers arrived late.
Driving past a tollgate as he was exiting the highway, Kim was
abruptly confronted by the huge signboard of the funeral home.
Below the signboard, tossing and turning in the wind, was a
banner announcing its opening. The stark, square building
stood in the middle of a farming area. The harvest season was
over. The fields lay fallow. Kim was late, but considering the
distance he’d had to travel from another city, he considered his
arrival time quite acceptable. The mourners would not come in
flocks until late evening. As for the wreath, it was not the time
of its arrival that was important. It was the sender’s name.
Just as Kim was about to enter the funeral home’s curved
driveway, his phone rang again. Without slowing down, he
reached for it and almost hit the guardrail. His tires squealed
as he barely managed to pull onto the shoulder. His heart
pounded, and the phone continued ringing as though it were
cheering for him. It was the friend who had ordered the wreath.
“Where are you?”
“Almost there.”
“At the funeral home, you mean? Come to the hospital
first.”
“Why?”
“He’s not dead yet.”
“. . . . . .?”
“He’s still alive.”
“What do you mean he’s still alive?” he asked then
immediately realized this was an improper response. He
should have responded as if it was fortunate that the man
was still alive. However, that response would have been just as
inappropriate as the other. When confronted with death, the
wisest thing is to avoid lighthearted language and say nothing.
“I’ve asked you, you mean he’s still alive?”
It sounded as though the friend was sighing or searching
for words with which to reply. Perhaps he was restraining
himself from saying anything, because telling the truth
would make him appear to be unsympathetic. Then to Kim’s
bewilderment, his friend continued to speak as though he
was answering his own question even though it was the same
question Kim had asked.
“He is not going to last long. Let’s go to the hospital and
watch his passing together.”
But instead of going to the hospital, Kim headed
downtown. He was not hungry, but he felt the need to kill
time so he entered the first noodle shop he saw. He was
determined not to go to the hospital. He had no desire to
observe the man’s death. Similarly he had never wanted
to watch the moment of a bloody birth. As far as he was
concerned, birth was an event in his past, and death existed
only in his distant future. He wanted nothing to do with
either of them at this point in his life. When the funeral
started, he would deliver the wreath as any delivery person
would be expected to do and return to his own city. On
returning he would have to save face by compensating for
lost hours and failing to fulfill his other obligations.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was leisurely since it was not
a regular mealtime. Nevertheless, they were extremely slow
coming to take his order, bringing water, and preparing and
serving his food. He didn’t try to hurry the owner, though. It
was only forty minutes ago that he had received the call from
his friend. Time was moving so slowly. Perhaps it was also
moving slowly for the elderly patient as he awaited his death.
Kim considered those forty minutes. He had never before
waited forty minutes for someone to die. He wondered what
it meant to have one’s life prolonged by forty minutes. As
the death watch continued, his feeling of sadness lessened.
He spent most of the time blankly staring out the window.
If he had had several other deliveries to make in this general
area, as he usually did in most places, he could have gone on
to deliver those flowers and spent his time more efficiently
while waiting for the funeral to start. He might have attended
an opening ceremony of a new business delivering a standing
wreath of orchid blossoms and even been given some of their
red bean rice cake. He could have gone to a maternity ward to
deliver a basket of flowers sent by her husband’s coworkers
to a mother holding her newborn whose eyes were not yet
opened. He could have delivered a boxed bouquet of red roses
to a man who was about to propose marriage. He could have
delivered a wreath to the mortuary for someone who had died
earlier. But there was nothing else for him to do in this town
except to keep this deathwatch. He went outside after having
slowly eaten his noodles. Fifty eight minutes had passed since
receiving the call from his friend. He had still more time on his
hands as he waited for the man’s death.
He drove along through the small downtown and stopped in
front of a grocery store that reminded him of the canned fish
cakes someone had brought him from this town some time
ago. Canned noodles and canned fish cakes were the specialties
of this town. The person who had given them to Kim thought
of them as humorous gifts, and had not known that they were
in fact emergency provisions to be used in case of a disaster.
According to old records, the town was located in the
vicinity of two geological faults, and some long time ago it had
experienced a notable earthquake. This happened shortly after
Kim was born, and the residents were reminded of it every
time there was a need to warn them of any kind of danger.
Unreinforced electric lines, water pipes and gas lines had been
destroyed. There were sporadic fires. Old wooden houses were
badly shaken before completely collapsing. When the earth
trembled, buildings with more solid walls quickly collapsed.
Cars and people were crushed among piles of debris. Roads
and bridges were damaged. Following the earthquake, strict
construction regulations were enforced. All kinds of buildings
were constructed to endure a certain level of earthquake. A
quake-proof tunnel was built to protect all the pipes that went
through the town so that delivery of electricity and water could
be quickly resumed after a possible future quake. Evacuation
drills were conducted for students, and to this very day, maps
designating safe routes out of town still sold like hot cakes. A
pessimistic scientist appeared on television.
“Although we have suffered great losses, this earthquake
cannot be compared to the one yet to come. The real fear
indeed is that we cannot predict when or where the next one
will occur,” he stated. His opinion differed from that of most
scientists who believed that earthquakes could be predicted
by measuring certain features of the earth’s movement. But
this bearer of ill tidings stared directly out from the television
screen and warned, “At this very moment the earth on which
you are standing could split wide open.”
Despite this specialist’s warnings, Kim was not afraid. For
him, the possibility of an earthquake was the same as stories
of wars ceaselessly occurring in faraway places. It was like a
tsunami story that brought disaster to some other country or
the story of global warming that melted some glacier. No, for
him, the real disasters, disasters far worse than earthquakes
or tsunamis, were the occasions when the flowers in his shop
faded before he could sell them or when some miscreant threw
a stone and ran away after smashing his florist shop window.
He felt no fear of an earthquake or a tsunami that might at any
moment devastate thousands. The misfortune he feared was
the misfortune which affected only him while the rest of the
world was safe and well.
The cans of fish cake that Kim had received had eight years to go
until their expiration date. Out of curiosity he had tasted one
of them and discovered the liquid was salty and the fish cake
was swollen to the shape of a tennis ball. It tasted so awful that
one would never be tempted to eat it except in an emergency.
These days it was said that after an emergency, food could be
supplied to isolated areas within two days. So this leather-like
fish cake was what people would have to survive on for two
days.
Kim asked the owner of this grocery store for canned fish
cakes or canned noodles. The owner, whose eyes were focused
on a television program, responded briefly that he didn’t have
any such a thing in the store. Kim explained that somebody
brought him a gift of them from this town. The owner firmly
replied that he had never seen such canned goods in his sixteen
years of business. But seeing that Kim was unconvinced, the
owner told him to look through the stock in the back of the store
where several types of canned foods were kept. Kim wanted to
see what sort of canned food was sold there. He went back to
look. Passing by several shelves he came to the stock of cans, a
variety from different regions. There were cans of whelk, tuna,
jack mackerel, mackerel, chrysalis and some fruit, cans that were
commonly seen everywhere. The owner came and stood beside
him and told him that they didn’t have fish cake or noodles in
cans, but they did have a variety of fast food packages that he
could purchase. Kim did not respond. He returned to his car. On
the way to the funeral home, he stopped at a few more stores,
but no one sold the cans of emergency provisions he sought.
*
He entered the dark underground parking lot of the funeral
home and carefully parked his truck, precisely parallel to the
line drawn on the ground, exactly the way a casket would be
placed. He decided to take a nap in the driver’s seat, but then
remembered that the cargo bed was almost empty. Only the
wreath was back there now, shimmering in the dark like a
daytime moon, exuding the faint scent of chrysanthemums.
Kim climbed into the cargo bed and lay down next to the floral
tributes. The cold quickly penetrated his body, and lying there
in the dark he felt as though he was a corpse waiting to be
shrouded.
If the elderly patient’s life continued to drag on like this,
Kim would not be able to keep his date with the woman tonight
at all. The man’s death presented itself to Kim as a problem
of stagnant and prolonged time that was far removed from a
serious and sad world. He hesitated and then decided to call
the woman. Without even asking him what had happened,
she assured him that she understood. She seemed too
disappointed to talk. Kim explained that he was about four
hundred kilometers away and not yet done with his work. In a
hesitant voice she asked when he would be done.
“I wish I knew, but it is not for me to decide,” Kim
replied. The woman said nothing. She was perhaps hurt by
his curt reply, and Kim was annoyed that he always had to
be so cautious about his responses to her trivial questions.
Nevertheless, he repeated that his work was not yet finished,
and he did not know when it would be. The woman began to
talk about other matters as if she hadn’t been affected at all.
As their conversation continued, Kim became anxious about
possibly receiving a call from his friend announcing the elderly
man’s death.
“Are you listening?” the woman asked.
“Yes, I am,” he halfheartedly answered. She continued to
talk, and he started to listen. She was upset about the untidy
attire of a customer who visited the Customer Relations
Office. It seemed she had been telling this story all along.
She complained with angry sighs that the customer had
demanded a refund for underwear which had been worn
several times. She sounded fatigued. Her sighs made Kim
remember how she had helped him through difficult times,
but for whatever reason he suddenly felt he could no longer
endure this. Although he still received comfort and warmth
from her, he was convinced these feelings would not last much
longer, that they would quickly dissipate. He felt foolish for
not having acted on the decision he had already made. For
some time he had only been maintaining a distance, but now
listening to her complaints he felt edgy and wanted to be even
further removed from her. She stopped talking. Or perhaps
she had been silent all this time while Kim’s thoughts had
traveled elsewhere.
“Did you hear me?” she asked again. This time Kim honestly
answered no, he had not. She sighed again, another long sigh.
Merely wanting to end the conversation, Kim promised that
he would come to her home when he returned to the city. He
made this promise only to comfort her because she had been
left downcast on other such occasions. He knew if he hung
up on her without this promise, she would be sad once more,
hesitant and confused for some long time before phoning him
again. Delighted with his response, she asked what time he
would come. He responded that it would be about four hours
after a certain person died. Then for the first time during their
conversation she burst out laughing. Obviously she thought
this was a joke.
After concluding their phone conversation, Kim made his way
upstairs into the funeral home. There were thirteen parlors
spread out on four floors. All but one of them was empty. In
this first floor parlor the portrait of a deceased person had
been placed on a marble altar. Without a chief mourner, guest
mourners, fruits, flowers or incense, the lone portrait looked
strangely out of place. It was as though an impetuous bereaved
person had set the portrait there before the man had passed
away. The man in the portrait had neatly combed gray hair, but
even though a long time had passed, Kim could tell that this
was not the elderly man with whom he had been acquainted.
The man portrayed here had beaming, playful eyes and was
smiling slightly as if he thought it mildly interesting to be early
for his own funeral and waiting to greet the mourners even
before he passed away. This lone person in the portrait, in this
otherwise empty funeral parlor, reminded Kim of himself. Yet
he was alive, and the person in the portrait was dead or about
to die. Kim realized that he had never thought seriously about
death. He was living. He did not want to think about death.
Not yet. Not until the time came, far, far off in the future.
Darkness was slowly descending. The elderly man’s life was
slowly ebbing away. Kim stood in front of the funeral home
looking at the desolate farm field as it gradually dissolved into
the shadow of darkness. A man in a black suit approached
him and asked for a light for his cigarette. Since the funeral
home was empty, Kim guessed that this man was also dutifully
waiting for someone’s death. He didn’t know that this man
who was wearing a badly creased black suit, black tie and
a shirt spotted with red food stains, had come to the same
conclusion about him.
“My uniform got stained again. I had to work today before
coming here. They gave me spicy beef stew despite my strong
objections. You know, I have been fed that stew day after day,
over and over again,” he explained conscious of Kim’s staring
at the stains on his shirt. A slight smile appeared on Kim’s
face when he heard the word ‘uniform’ but it disappeared
as he vaguely remembered seeing a car from the Mutual Aid
Company in the parking lot.
“Where are you from?” the man asked and Kim replied
that he was from the florist. The man asked if the person was
not dead yet. Bewildered, Kim nodded his head. The man in
the black suit smiled. He understood Kim’s situation.
“I am in the same predicament,” he said. “Could it be the
same person we’re waiting for?”
Wishing to avoid any further conversation with the man from
the Mutual Aid Company, or, more to the point, wishing to
avoid any further conversation about waiting for someone
to die, Kim decided to take a walk. But he took a longer walk
than he intended and had come all the way from the funeral
home to the state highway. Still he had not received a call from
his friend. Now standing by the state highway, he looked back
toward the funeral home. Mindlessly staring at the huge, lit-up
sign board, he heard himself murmur, “It seems he hasn’t died
yet.” Surprised by his own unfeeling words, he fell silent.
At that instant his phone rang. If it had been his friend
calling just then, Kim would have felt responsible for causing
the elderly man’s death.
“You’re still not finished?” It was the woman’s voice. Kim
felt both relieved and anxious. His anxiety made him once
more realize how much distance there was between them. He
knew that from now on there would be fewer conversations.
Their times together, which were even now so infrequent,
would become more and more boring. The tone of their voices
would become less friendly, and they would find fewer and
fewer things to laugh about. As all of this happened the woman
would call more often trying to understand Kim’s negligence
and indifference. There would come a time when she would
explode with anger, and then be overwhelmed with regret
and loneliness. Soon after that she would apologize for having
been angry. After more time had passed, and she had repeated
this scenario several times, she would start to regret not
winning his heart in return. She would continue to waste her
time wallowing in resentment and hatred. Finally, she would
realize that she didn’t love Kim enough to continue any longer,
or perhaps she would decide that she hadn’t really loved him to
begin with. Then she would feel empty and relieved. Kim could
think of nothing to do except to wait for that moment. Then
at last, he might feel something like a deep affection for her.
He lowered his voice and said, “If you push me, I will have
to pray for the elderly man to die quickly.” She laughed, and
that made Kim nervous again. He feared it would take too long
for her to sense the truth in his heart. He blurted out the word,
“Enough!,” interrupting her laughter.
Not hearing this clearly, the woman asked, “What do
you mean?” Kim’s first inclination was to say, “That’s enough
joking.” But it didn’t feel right to him to say goodbye in that
dark field where the only light was coming from the sign board
of a funeral home. Besides, although he had been thinking
of it for some time, he still wasn’t sure if he was now being
impulsive and superficial. He feared he might be in his current
state of mind because he was exhausted from his long, four
hundred kilometer drive to the south and this interminable
waiting.
“What do you mean by enough?” the woman asked again.
“Us. Us being together,” he replied to her persistent pressure.
She paused for a moment. Then she said, “My team manager
is looking for me, I must go. Please drive carefully on your way
back. I will pray for the man to die quickly.” She hung up. His
heart felt suddenly heavy and not at all liberated as he had
thought it would.
The end of the state highway disappeared into the
darkness. Kim squatted there at the side of the road with a
cigarette in his mouth. A large car passed by, shaking the
surface of the earth, creating a gust of wind, and exuding black
smoke. Then the road was calm again. Having chain-smoked
three cigarettes, Kim was about to stand up, when he noticed
something in the distance. A small white dot was approaching
him and growing larger. As it drew closer it assumed the form
of white sportswear. It was a marathon runner with numbers
on his shirt. As he passed by, Kim clearly heard the sound of
his breathing. It was a ‘hu hu ha ha,’ inhaling and exhaling
in even intervals through his mouth and nose. Kim watched
as he gradually entered the hidden highway of darkness. The
shifting white dot grew smaller and smaller until it completely
vanished from sight. Ironically, its extinction brought about
an awakening in Kim’s mind. It occurred to him that the road
continued beyond the dark place where it became invisible. As
though in a trance, he moved toward the darkness that had so
completely enveloped the white dot.
Walking on a short way, he heard the low sound of a
whistle behind him. He stopped. A truck appeared out of the
darkness, the same type of truck as his own. Strangely there
was no sound of wind or wheels, no rattling of anything in the
cargo bed. He thought he might have somehow missed hearing
these sounds, but then once more he heard the passing truck
give off the clear whistle. It seemed that the driver, hidden
in the darkness, was whistling. Kim stared vacantly at the
truck. Then as though it was startled by Kim’s gaze, the truck
accelerated, turned into a curve in the road and slid along the
surface. In the next instant, it hit the guardrail and overturned.
Before he had time to react or express his shock, the truck
burst into flames that instantly enshrouded it. The driver was
nowhere to be seen. It was impossible to tell whether he had
been fortunate enough to escape or if the flames had already
devoured him. The flames engulfed the truck. They lit up the
state highway.
Kim stood there transfixed. Then he reached for his mobile
phone. But instead of calling the police, the emergency rescue
team or the emergency center of a hospital, he called the
woman. She didn’t answer. She might have been busy listening
to a customer’s complaints or perhaps she was angry. Kim
stared at the flames. He let the phone continue ringing. After
some time, the woman picked up the phone but remained
silent. The sound of her shallow breathing reached his ears. It
was a calm, rhythmic sound that calmed him. He imitated it,
inhaling and exhaling, and breathing faster than usual to keep
up with her.
Then after several attempts and still finding it difficult,
he abruptly confessed his love for her. The woman remained
silent. He feared this silence of hers, but he also feared what
she might say if she spoke. He continued talking, frantically
thinking of things to say so as not to give her a chance to
respond. He spoke of the joy he experienced when looking at
her for a long while, the strange, unreal feeling he had when
he held her hand for the first time, her soft breathing that was
so calming for him. He spoke of his fear of not winning her
love and the thrilling moment he experienced when he realized
she loved him. He was saying things to her that he had never
thought about before. He was hearing his own words, but he
felt as though they were words he had heard someone
else speak or words that he had read somewhere. They
were too conventional, too banal for him to believe they
were true, but then again that was exactly why they did
sound true.
He didn’t understand why he was talking this way.
Perhaps it was because he was standing there alone on
the state highway with only the funeral home signboard
and the flames illuminating the area around him. The
signboard was so brightly lit up it was visible from a long
distance, as though it was a sign shining in the dark for
the whole town to see. It might be because it was located
in this town where the students had regular drills in
preparation for an earthquake, and the residents kept
maps like amulets which would help them return safely
to their homes after an earthquake. It might be because
it was a town where canned noodles and fish cakes were
sold at stores unbeknownst even to store keepers who
had been running their businesses there for so long. Or
it might be because of some elderly man on the verge of
death who was not dying. If Kim had been in his home
city, with no such problems or fears, he would have
continued to treat this woman in an unfriendly manner.
If he had occasionally been warm to her, he would have
panicked in fear of her misunderstanding him.
Now the woman spoke. She asked him what had
happened. It was such an ordinary question that Kim
had no idea if his confession of love had made her happy,
excited, displeased or angry. Kim was like a stranger to
himself while speaking these words to her. Yet, because
he had these feelings, he thought his confession might
have some truth in it.
Regardless of the truth, regardless of her feelings,
Kim obviously knew that he was soon going to be
ashamed of the confession that heaven-sent fear had
forced him to make. He would be angry because nothing he had said
could now be taken back. He could not change the situation or the
feelings his confession had caused. Nor could he fathom what was
at the core of the emotions that arose inside of him. He became lost
in the midst of these thoughts and simply hung up the phone. He
thought she might call back. If she did, he wondered if he should
answer. She did not call. The truck continued to burn fiercely, and
Kim stood motionless, silently watching the brilliant conflagration
burn like a bright lantern light for the funeral parlor.
Pyun Hye-young (b.1972) debuted on the literary scene when she
won the Seoul Shinmun New Writer’s Contest in 2000 with the
short story “Shaking off the Dew.” Her major works include the
short story collections Aoi Garden, To the Kennels, Evening Proposal,
and Night Passes and novels such as They Went to the Forest in the
West and Ashes and Red. She won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award
and the Dong-in Literary Award.
Evening Proposal
Pyun Hye-young
Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2011, 257 pp.
Reviews
I Must Be the Wind, Moon Chung-hee
The Republic of Užupis, Haïlji
The Square, Choi In-hun
Le Quartier chinois, Oh Jung-Hee
El Restaurante de Sukiyaki, Bae Suah
美しさが僕をさげすむ, Eun Heekyung
卡斯提拉, Park Min-gyu
Vol.26 Winter 2014 47
Reviews
Walking Through
Fire
T
I Must Be the Wind
Moon Chung-hee
Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg
White Pine Press, 2014, 123 pp.
ISBN 9781935210630
48 _list : Books from Korea
he home of one’s memory will never
exist again in any time or space,
therefore I think of home as loss and
loneliness. “My first home, Mother’s womb
/ has become earth in Ilsan Park cemetery
/… / my high school Jinmyung by the Blue
House is now a government office, / the
Sangdo village house of my college a grand
hotel…” (“Where is My Home?”). Home, a
nonexistent notion that frays the edges of
life. Its nonexistence creates an inexplicable
undercurrent of loneliness and loss that
runs throughout all lives. When one realizes
that they can never return home again there
is a moment of utter loss and loneliness.
This moment is where Moon’s poetry exists.
This loss and loneliness spreads like an
infection so that you cannot pinpoint the
source but only know that it’s pervasive and
unrelenting: loss of identity as a woman,
as a person, as a poet. Such loss creates an
impossible and inescapable loneliness.
Moon’s wifely responsibilities leave her
lonely and absorb her identity. In “I Wish
I Had a Wife” Moon writes, “I wish I had a
wife. /… / A wife who cooks with what I’ve
earned, / cleans my home and waits for me /
while I work and drink in the wide world. / A
wife who will bring some tea quietly / while
I write poems or read papers on the sofa.”
She dreams of being husband to someone
else’s wife and to have the space to inhabit
her own identity, but no, she will always
be a wife. Similarly in “Airport Letter” she
writes, “Honey, please don’t look for me for
a year. / I’m taking a sabbatical after years
of marriage. /… / Even grim scholars / take
a sabbatical to recharge themselves. /… /
I’ll be back when I’ve found myself.” She
has dedicated years to her husband and
neglected her other identities, now she must
find herself again.
Out of this search Moon continually
returns to images of fire and rebirth, strength
and movement. The nacre of loneliness
is filled with thin layers of sex, love, and
body—all of these layers of life move towards
a tumultuous, unsettled, undefined center.
The heart is torn flesh, but not the center.
The longing for home tears the fabric of brain
cells, but it too is not the center, nor is the
womb the center of this being. The storm
is at the center, continually morphing into
a different being with time: “today I scorch
my body / in the flame.” (“Memories”). The
center is the fire, the phoenix that comes out
with little blazing wingtips ready to spark
the tindered house and the tindered heart,
to awaken the tindered flesh.
To embolden, to create and show to the
new day that inside this lonely shell—this
woman, this poet, is reborn into a new being.
She emerges out of fire but is not burned.
Even as she drowns in mud her wings are
alight: “the scent of mud is everywhere, / the
sunlight swells in every feather tip.” (“Dying
Alone”). She is alive. She is no longer flesh,
but shamanistic and reborn until engulfed in
flame or drowned in mud, only to resurface
again as a different being. However, no
matter how many times she is reborn, Moon
will never be able to escape “this loneliness
and sorrow that will last beyond my life”
(“Legacy”).
Although Moon Chung-hee leaves
me with a pervasive sense of sorrow and
loneliness, I am also on fire, my glowing
wingtips emerging triumphant from the mud.
by Kim Koga
Freelance Writer and Editor
In Search of a
Forgotten Land
W
hen The Repulic of Užupis by
Haïlji opens, Hal, a Korean
traveling to Lithuania, is explaining the
purpose of his trip to an immigration
officer. He has come to bury his
father’s ashes in his homeland—The
Republic of Užupis, an independent
state not far from Vilnius. However,
whenever he states his destination, it
draws blank faces and laughter from
immigration control, his taxi driver,
and some friendly Lithuanians he
meets in a hotel bar. The place he
speaks of does not exist.
But Hal persists.
The Republic of Užupis
Haïlji
Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
Dalkey Archive Press, 2014, 300 pp.
ISBN 9781628970654
In a number of proceeding scenes, Hal
regains his confidence when he sees the
Užupis flag or hears its national anthem
or hears people speaking Užupis. Despite
not being able to speak Užupis, he can
clearly understand it, and hears it often
around the city, including being spoken
by the mayor in a funny scene where a
Lithuanian falsely translates the mayor’s
Užupis, which she cannot understand.
Yet still, people deny the existence of this
independent state.
It is Jurgita, a woman Hal meets on
his first night in Vilnius, who confirms
the existence of the Republic. In an
intimate scene, Jurgita cooks him
traditional Užupis soup, and tells him
stories from her childhood: her lost love,
memories of her dead father the practice
of old traditions. When Hal asserts that
he will find their fatherland, Jurgita says,
“That’s exactly what my husband said. He
promised he’d take me to Užupis. But he
never came back.” Knowing the fate of so
many Užupis men—killed by their own
hand—Hal still decides to travel forth.
With the city blanketed in snow,
he takes a trip out of Vilnius, where he
meets his fate and an elderly woman
with answers to some of his questions.
Sliding into a chapter out of Kafka, the
reader is ultimately warned by Hal’s sad
fate.
The descriptions of the snow-covered
Lithuania are breathtaking, and add to
the sense that this is a land both familiar
and not. The translation by Bruce and JuChan Fulton is outstanding. This story
lingers long after the pages are closed.
by Cailin Neal
Marketing Director
Dalkey Archive Press
Vol.26 Winter 2014 49
Reviews
The Square
Choi In-hun
Translated by Kim Seong-Kon
Dalkey Archive Press, 2014, 160 pp.
ISBN 9781628970678
Finding a Home
I
n Choi In-hun’s 1960 novel, The Square,
“the square” represents a place where
“no one knows or wants to know who
you are and what you are.” Torn between
two countries, two ideologies, and two
histories, the novel’s protagonist, Lee
Myong-jun, must find in what country
his square is.
When the novel opens, Myong-jun
is a philosophy student in South Korea.
His mother died years ago and his father
defected to the North. When his father
starts to broadcast against the South on
Pyongyang radio, the police take Myongjun in to ask whether he is an accomplice
or shares the same ideology.
50 _list : Books from Korea
The interrogation and subsequent
beatings compel him to reflect: the
South was filled with greedy politicians
and selfish citizens, while he longed for
passion, revolution, and Communist
paradise in the North. Myong-jun
defects to the North, but soon finds
that in this square, he cannot live truly
as he is because it is the Party who “will
do all the thinking, judging, feeling, and
breathing for us while we are merely
asked to repeat and follow.”
In the North, we quickly see that
Myong-jun does not fit in: at his post
as a journalist, he must falsely report in
order to keep an equilibrium. He resists
at first, but learns to keep quiet and to
monotonously recite his loyalties to the
Party. He finds love and comfort in a
woman, but that love is often tested by
her loyalty to the Party.
When the North attacks the South
in 1950, Myong-jun fights for the
People’s Army, but is taken prisoner
in the battle of Nakdong. Three years
later, the POWs can choose to either
go back to the north, the south, or to
a neutral country. Myong-jun wants to
go to a neutral country: “I just want to
be an ordinary man . . . Give me a small
Square and a friend, that’s all I need.”
The Square is an up close and
personal recounting of the time. For
a time period and a war that seem so
far from my own home, this book puts
history into perspective, giving me a lot
to think about, and go back and learn.
by Cailin Neal
Marketing Director
Dalkey Archive Press
Fantastic Grace
A
t first it is a special type of music,
subtle and heady all at once, that
seeps into all your pores and sweeps you
into the mysterious and profound depths
of the not easily captivated human soul.
And then, on a second reading, you
discover other strata, other paths, other
movements, other notes which cannot be
perceived in a single encounter—just like
when you need to get acquainted with
someone to know them better, to love
them better.
Likewise we find ourselves in Oh
Jung-Hee’s precious and raw universe,
whereby behind a sentence—through a
soothsayer or a doll, through a very old
grandmother or a violent and stubborn
teenager—we discover a very realistic
Le Quartier chinois
Oh Jung-Hee
Translated by Jeong Eun-Jin and
Jacques Batilliot
Serge Safran Éditeur, 2014, 215 pp.
ISBN 9791090175242
depiction of human behavior, of the
relationships humans cultivate more
or less against their will, and we are
sometimes led into a dimension that
borders on fantasy.
Oh Jung-Hee eases with excruciating
softness and extreme lucidity into the
daily lives of the characters she portrays
living in a port city, a working class
neighborhood, or a house—often set in
a difficult period following or somehow
related to the Korean War. In so doing,
she borrows the initially innocent eyes of
a little girl or boy growing up in makeshift
or blended families, battered by exile,
marginalization, and poverty.
In “Chinatown (Le Quartier chinois),”
the short story from which the collection
derives its title, a nine-year-old girl from a
very large family goes to a partly decrepit
industrial port, where she discovers
prostitution, “Yankee whores” fostered
by the presence of the US military. With
Ch’i-ok, her friend and accomplice, she
takes on the challenges of life, having
to steal to survive while taking refuge in
reading romance novels.
In “The Courtyard of Childhood” (La
Cour de l‘enfance), a girl, this time six
years old, must bear life with brothers
and a sister while their absent mother,
a waitress working evening shifts at a
restaurant, is sleeping out or coming home
drunk. The elder brother, responsible for
standing in for the father who is off at
war, manifests unusual cruelty; at the
same time she strives to learn English
in the illusory hope of immigrating
someday to the United States. And in a
neighboring house, with a persimmon
tree growing in the front yard, the young
Pu-ne, sequestered by her father, is
found dead. The return of the girl’s father
does not necessarily guarantee that her
stability will be restored.
Finally, “The Fireworks (Le Feu
d’artifice)” interweaves the stories
of three characters on a single day
that will end with a celebration. The
father Kwanhi, the mother Inja, and
their son Yŏngjo lead three lonely,
independent lives punctuated by
encounters and conversations in
their present day lives and their
past. The day ends with the old
family rooster being sacrificed as
fireworks are set off.
With great modesty and
sensitivity, Oh Jung-Hee takes us
into the picturesque world of little
people without ever slipping into
pathos or pessimism. She shows
us the hardships of the have-nots
in the face of violence, debauchery,
or misunderstanding. A people
who seem unable to communicate
or love, who suffer in silence, get
through life by hook or by crook,
without ever figuring a way out. A
lesson in courage, of a somewhat
universal scope, which can also be
called by a different name: grace.
by Serge Safran
Director, Serge Safran Éditeur
Contemporary
Love
J
ust when it seemed as though
20th century literature had
exhausted the possibilities of
choral narrative, along comes
Bae Suah. In El Restaurante de
Sukiyaki (The Sukiyaki Restaurant),
the author, born in 1965, has
invented a narrative machine that
El Restaurante de Sukiyaki
Bae Suah
Translated by Kwon Eunhee and
Seong Cho-lim
Bajo la luna, 2014, 256 pp.
ISBN 9789871803637
interweaves parallel stories in which
the characters, their living conditions
and economic difficulties in a hypercompetitive society, are relayed in a
firm, objective, straightforward voice
that sustains the novel.
All the stories, under the gaze
of the same narrator, focus on the
clash between the institution of
the family—parents and children
or husbands and wives—and the
materialism of society. Often these
relationships are under siege from
the alienation generated by the acute
demands of a consumer society. Bae
Suah’s characters wander human
and emotional wastelands where
geographic and social marginalization
takes a very human toll.
Vol.26 Winter 2014 51
Reviews
Early on, something about the
characters’ poverty, unfortunate lives
lived with grotesque coldness, are
reminiscent of Italian neo-realism.
Ma and Dong Kiongsuk are an old
couple: he’s unemployed, hungry,
and bedridden with depression,
still fighting with his ex-wife, Park
Jeyon, and his son. She is a dominant
character, unhappy with the man
she is forced to support. The same
matriarchal pattern is repeated in
the story of Pyo Jyongchong and Bu
Jerin but here the man of the house is
absent and mother and daughter live
a relationship of submission, guilt,
duty, and denial.
In other stories, almost all of them
related by the common element of
the sukiyaki restaurant lurking in the
background, love becomes a source of
conflict. For example, Bek Duoin and
Um Myunge, schoolmates of Ma’s,
provide a means for exploring the
nature of contemporary relationships,
which are very different from
traditional Korean courtship and
perhaps have more in common with
the love affairs of the West. In turn,
each of these characters splits the
narrative further: Ukyun, a man
dumped by Um Myunge, crosses paths
with Sewon, who is in love with Bu
Jerin.
Yinyu and Songdo, another
modern couple, start another branch
of the narrative. Here, the author
isn’t exploring the collateral effects
of divorce, as was the case with Ma
and Park Jeyon, but the possibility
of not getting married at all in a
deeply hierarchical society. In this
case, issues of commitment and social
imperative join the general sense of
52
_list : Books from Korea
economic suffocation. Once more,
the story splits and follows the
path of a friend of Yinyu’s, Be Iuun
and her husband Kim Iojuan, who
prototypically embody a marriage in
crisis.
It’s not necessary to describe
here the later stories that spring up
from those that went before. The
important point is that Bae Suah
has an incomparable gift for using
apparently discrete pieces to build
a mural of contemporary life. Such
a sociological project requires a
clinical eye to identify the shifting
grounds of power in contemporary
Korea: matriarchal forces winning a
place in a patriarchal society, work as
a productive force whose drawback
is alienation and conformity,
marriages seen as dangerous unions
in a materialistic society.
At the end of the day, Bae Suah
seems, superbly, to be telling us
that love and art are the territory
of freedom and caprice; they are
difficult to tame but nonetheless
present in every one of us and for
that we must stay aware of whatever
twists life has in store.
and published in Japan for the first time.
The collection delineates the absurdity of
our lives in the modern age through the
protagonists such as a 34-year-old man
who embarks on a diet regimen, and a
keenly self-conscious girl.
The uncertain and perilous nature
of our existence, our collective sense of
loss, and the violence inherent in our
daily lives are recurring motifs in Eun’s
stories. However, unlike the dark themes,
her writing is buoyant and humorous.
If you were to catch her in an interview
on television or radio, you would be
surprised how closely her voice, gestures,
and expressions resemble the sentences
and writing style in her stories.
Eun Heekyung debuted at the age
of 35. “The social novels of the 1980s
by Oliverio Coelho
Writer and Literary Critic
Inner
Reflections
E
un Heekyung, born in 1959, is,
along with Shin Kyung-sook and
Gong Ji-Young, one of the leading
female writers in South Korea.
Her short story collection, Beauty
Despises Me, was recently translated
美しさが僕をさげすむ
Eun Heekyung
Translated by Oh Yeong-ah
CUON, 2013, 301 pp.
ISBN 9784904855195
were not to my liking. I only started
writing in the 1990s when novels with
themes centered on the individual came
into vogue” she said. In interviews, Eun
always stresses her literary worldview
that lays emphasis on the individual:
“I frequently apply the technique of
depicting the workings of the human
mind through social problems or events. I
don’t externalize the problems or events;
rather, I internalize the individual’s
problems through them. I think the
role of literature is to reflect the unique
nature of each individual.”
From Japanese readers:
“This was the first Korean book I
bought. I was drawn to the title and cover
that reminded me of Yoshino Sakumi’s
manga. I cannot forget this feeling of
being lifted a few inches above reality.
This cheerfulness that is not easily visible
among Japanese writers is truly urban
and stylish. But at the heart of Eun’s
writing lies a solemn philosophy. It’s the
kind of philosophy that can only be felt,
not understood.”
“The title piece of this collection is
the story of a man who starts dieting.
The writing is crisp and concise. The
writer contemplates the dilemma
between humanity’s instinct for selfpreservation and modern man’s desires
through the theme of dieting. The lack
of emotional expression also seems to be
a characteristic of this writer. Without
rejecting modernity, she portrays our
mindsets as we reflect on our lives in the
modern age.”
Korean readers have enjoyed easy
access to the 16 books published by
the author during her 20-year career.
However, in all these years only one
of her books has been translated into
Japanese. Despite this, how has
reader reaction to Eun’s work in
both countries been so similar? Is it
because the Japanese are discerning
readers? Or is this, perhaps, a sign
of the author’s brilliance?
by Kim Seung-bok
CEO, CUON
卡斯提拉
Park Min-gyu
Translated by Park Jeong Weon and
Fang Xiao Xia
Huazhong University of Science and
Technology Press, 2014, 250 pp.
ISBN 9787560997926
The Soul
of the World
through a faint sense of pantheistic
existence. In Castella, Park Min-gyu
portrays his version of metamorphosis
and pantheism. Simply put, it is
the hope of finding miracles in this
plain world, a belief that there is
always some force that transcends
our present life, that will arrive from
out of the blue to save us from the
insipidness of everyday existence.
Park Min-gyu’s fridge is empowered
with humanity. Everything in the
world can be put into this container
and turned overnight into some warm,
flat and soft castella sponge cake,
which is able to forgive and embrace
all. With the help of the author’s
imagination, we find that the world
and the soul become interchangeable.
The world is the soul’s projection and
the soul becomes a self-dependent
world that encompasses all things.
In the stories in Castella, we
see, in silhouette, a child’s desolate
loneliness, refusing to accept the
world as it is and deciding, resolutely,
to see and to create with the soul’s
eyes. He roams among the mundane
and the divine throughout this
miraculous adventure. Just like the
castella itself—we live on it, and yet it
contains the world.
by Luo Yaqin
Editor
Huazhong University of Science and
Technology Press
F
ranz Kafka searched for his
connection with the world
through
metamorphosis
and
Murakami Haruki looked for his
orientation in this busy world
Vol.26 Winter 2014 53
20th Century Korean Literature
Now Available in E-book Format
Featuring works of short fiction by prominent Korean writers
such as Kim Yu-jeong, Kim Dong-in, Ch’ae Man-Sik, and many others.
In the second installment of its modern Korean literature series of downloadable e-books, the Literature
Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) introduces 30 short stories by 18 prominent Korean writers. Thirty
short stories spanning from the Japanese colonial era to the beginning of the Korean War are now available
for free download from the Apple iTunes App Store, “20th Century Korean Literature,” or by visiting the LTI
Korea website: ebook.klti.or.kr.
LTI Korea has carried on the e-book project since 2013 in order to provide a wide-ranging selection of
Korean literature for e-book readers around the world. Twenty works by 13 writers were published last year
and more works by the same authors, including nine additional ones such as Kye Yong-muk, Yi Ik-sang, and
Choi Seo-hae are included in this more diverse selection of titles.
LTI Korea strives to continue to bring Korean literature to the rest of the world.
54 _list : Books from Korea
LTI Translation Academy
Celebrating Seven
Years of Translation
O
n October 18th, the Literature Translation Institute
of Korea held a gathering for all former and current
students at the Translation Academy called the “Next
Generation of Translators Translation Training Camp.”
The event took place at the Literature House Seoul,
a charming venue nestled in the quiet foothills of Mt.
Namsan. As LTI Korea President Kim Seong-Kon said in
his opening speech, the event was a “homecoming” to
unite past and present students and reflect upon how far
the Translation Academy has come since its first group
of students back in 2008. The teachers in attendance,
with bright purple and white flowers pinned to their
chests, were introduced to great applause and their hard
work and dedication to the academy was praised.
To quantify the success that the Academy’s pupils
have had over the past seven years, a powerpoint
presentation was shown boasting of the 85 graduates
that had earned translation grants, along with the
impressive number of former students that had received
the Korean Literature Translation Award for New
Career Translators in their respective language category.
Following this presentation, six of the teachers received
awards for their contributions to the Academy’s success.
President Kim presented them with plaques and large
bouquets of green, white, and purple flowers.
Once the awards were given, the event took a more
festive mood as wine was uncorked and attendees went
out into the garden patio area to fill their plates at the
buffet. After the guests had made their way through
their first plate or two, the afternoon’s entertainment
started. Literary critic Heo Hui took over as emcee
and introduced current and former students from the
Academy to give speeches, present their talents, and
share personal photos from literature-related trips
with the Academy.
Of the graduates who talked about their
memorable and funny moments while attending the
Translation Academy, Sora Kim-Russell and Agnel
Joseph have now continued their association with
LTI Korea. Kim-Russell, an active translator with
several well-known titles under her belt, is currently
an academic adviser at the Translation Academy and
Agnel Joseph has taken up a post at the Institute.
Highlights of the talent portion were the
masterful Taekwondo display by Kim Jin Ah and a
piano performance of Chopin by Park Jihyun. The
festivities were rounded off with a Korean Literature
Quiz, with questions provided by the current teacher
of the Translation Academy’s “Understanding
Korean Literature” course, Ryu Boseon, and a raffle
that saw five lucky guests receiving prizes. As the
event ended with students new and old trading
contact information, it seems that the Translation
Academy “Homecoming” was having the desired
effect; to loosely quote what Sora Kim-Russell said
in her speech, “The point of the Academy is not only
to teach translation, but to create a community of
translators so that translation no longer remains a
solitary profession, but one that has a network of
trusted peers to rely on.”
by Victoria Caudle
Graduate Student
Department of Korean Language and Literature
Seoul National University
Vol.26 Winter 2014 55
LTI Translation Academy
Growing Out of My
“Growing Pains”
W
hile I was working in Seoul as an intern in 2012,
one evening I decided I needed to have a think
about the future, and so it seemed like a good idea to
walk all the way home from my office—around three
hours of urban hiking. When I was about halfway, the
LTI Translation Academy course came to mind. I had
seen posters for it in the Korean section corridor at my
university back in London, but had never imagined
then that I would ever have the Korean language skills
to give it a go. I looked up all the details on my phone
and found that applications for the next session would
be closing in a couple of weeks. When I reached the
junction where I would have to make a turn to head
up to my neighborhood, I decided to carry straight on,
right into the large bookstore in Gwanghwamun, to
buy the book from which applicants had to complete a
sample translation.
With book in hand, I hurried home and set about
trying to read the story. I’m not sure when I fell asleep
but it couldn’t have been long afterwards; even so, I
had highlighted about a hundred words that I didn’t
know with yellow pencil—it was going to be a long
shot.
The two semesters I spent at the Translation
Academy were hard. I often felt stressed and nervous
and even had nightmares about suddenly being unable
to speak Korean in my classes. It felt like I was reliving
56 _list : Books from Korea
the growing pains of adolescence, and with hindsight,
“growing pain” seems a fairly accurate description. That
year of study transformed me from novice of the Korean
language to translator of Korean literature, and I will be
forever grateful for it.
The support offered to students at LTI Korea is
second to none.We had an eclectic group of teachers, but
they were all great translators and when they taught us
they spoke from experience. They were caring and always
happy to think things over with us, helping us make our
ideas work. The role of the other students was important
too; we became fellow travelers, navigating the wide
space between two languages, vying to find the best
way to write a certain sentence, and taking pride in each
other’s successes.
Our main translation exercises were done working in
pairs. Each pair would produce a translation of the same
pages of a short story every week and submit them to our
professor who would give suggestions and comments;
then we would compare them all in our weekly classes.
After the class we would consider the corrections,
suggestions, and comments that had come up in
discussion, and revise our translations, which meant that
by the end of the term each pair had a translated version
of the same story, all finished to a high standard.
At the end of the first term I sent the short story we
had worked on in class, “Arpan” by Park Hyoung Su, to my
parents. The next morning I had a reply from my father
saying that he could not remember the last time a work
of fiction had touched him so deeply. For me, the very
moment I read those words was like an epiphany—this
is what it’s all about—I now understood why translating
literature was worth all the time and effort.
After starting out tentatively as a translator in my
own right, I began to realize the significance of our
translation exercises. Being edited, having people pick
your work apart, having to admit something could be
improved, and defending words and phrases that you
want to keep are all things that translators need to be
practiced in. When my first professional translation came
back from the editor and I began to read through it, my
heart sank: Where did my translation go? As I began to look
more closely, I was able to see that it was not a question
of my work being smeared with red pen: the translation
had been polished, the traces of me as translator had
been smoothed out, and the essence of the work was now
shining through. I was fortunate to have met the very
best kind of editor.
In one class we compared different translated versions
of the same text, identifying strategies and solutions, and
referred back to the Korean. In another class our teacher
introduced us to some of the greatest challenges we would
face when trying to translate Korean culture and history
for English readers—things like spatial description,
familial terms of address, and comedy. Knowing that
these challenges exist and that there is always more than
one way to translate something, has been a great source
of confidence for me in my work since.
The dynamic between the international students
in our language group was quite amusing. There were
four of us: one American, one Indian, and two Britons.
Funnily enough the other British student and I were
both Londoners, and had grown up just a couple of miles
apart, yet we disagreed on the nuances of English words,
and more often than not agreed more with our fellow
students from different countries.
There were also a few times when my Korean
language skills slipped me up. Like someone who is lost
and refuses to turn back, when I read something wrongly
I would go to great pains to make my interpretation
plausible. I once thought I was translating something
very poetic when a narrator talked of her dream to
become “weightless in a long, faded skirt.” I realized
in the class however that the English word, written
as it sounds in Korean, was in fact “waitress” and my
imagination had taken me along a very strange path
indeed. Such mistakes became a simple yet important
lesson: If the sentence seems totally out there, read it
again.
Thinking about the significance of my time at
the Translation Academy, it’s hard to express what a
formative experience it was. Not only did the training
I receive equip me with a skill that I can live by—
Google Translate isn’t there yet!—but spending a
year in the company of other budding translators and
surrounded by the staff of LTI Korea meant that I
became part of a very unique community.
When I was working on the sample translation
for my application to the course, looking up words in
the small hours of the morning, and trying to make
a picture out of the puzzle, I began to feel how lonely
the act of translation could be. While studying at the
Translation Academy, the times when I struggled
were the times when I lost sight of the fact that I was
surrounded by kindred spirits and people that could
help. Now I know that while the practice of translation
may be solitary work, being a translator is something
very social—enabling communication, negotiating
between languages and cultures, and bringing people
together.
Holding my first translated book in my hands and
thinking about all the people that were part of its
journey from Korean to English—and all the people
that I want to share it with—I wonder whether it
might have been more than a coincidence that LTI
Korea suddenly came to mind during my night time
walk across the city all those years ago.
by Sophie Bowman
Translator
Vol.26 Winter 2014 57
LTI Translation Academy
Walking the Tightrope
of Translation
T
here are two translation classes offered in the
Intensive Course Program at the LTI Korea
Translation Academy: Translation Practice of Literary
Texts and Practice on Translation Styles. The class I
have been teaching for the past four years is Practice
on Translation Styles, which is offered in the program
for all five languages in the Intensive Course. With
an aim for students not only to improve their
translation skills but also to discover their own voice
and translation style, the curriculum for the class is
designed as a translation practice class as well as a
translation studies course in part. Unlike the class of
Translation Practice of Literary Texts where students
are required to translate short stories that have
never been translated, students in the Translation
Styles class are asked to translate literary texts that
have been previously translated and compare their
translation with the existing translations.
The stories not only have important literary value
in Korean literature from the 1930s to the 1970s
but they are also important stories in understanding
Korean society and culture during that time. Students
are required to read the works in the original Korean
first, then produce their own translation and
compare it to the existing ones. In class students
share their views and interpretations of the stories,
the difficulties they had in translating them, and the
differences they found in other translations compared
to the published ones. Students are encouraged to try
and experiment with different word choices and see
the effects on characterization and the overall themes
of the stories.
In the spring semester, the emphasis is on
recognizing the responsibilities of a translator and
coming up with different translation strategies
depending on the literary genre. For example, in
translating a classical text, the important issues
are how to translate Chinese characters as well as
how to emulate the tone of 17th or 18th century
58 _list : Books from Korea
Korean. By translating television dramas, students are
asked to think about the question of readability and
performability of their translations, the difficulty of
translating dialects often used in dramas and films,
and the possible substitutions for the loss of dialects
in the translation, the slang and idiomatic expressions
and jokes in Korean—most of which are based on the
phonetic usage of Korean words, and the difficulty in
controlling the tone of profanities to match the tone in
the original Korean.
The challenges and difficulties in translating a Korean
literary text can vary given whether one is an inbound
translator, a translator who needs to improve his or
her understanding of the source text, or an outbound
translator, a translator who needs to improve his or her
understanding of the target language. In the class, which
usually has a good balance of inbound and outbound
translators, they share their knowledge of Korean and
English in order to find solutions to difficulties that
students often encounter while translating Korean
literary texts into English. Students may confront
problems involving postpositions in Korean, the difficulty
of translating onomatopoeic expressions from Korean to
English without lowering the general tone of the text, the
sudden switch of verb tense, which is prevalent in Korean
literary works, and the ambiguity that is embedded
in the Korean texts due to the unspoken subjects in
sentences. By comparing their translations to published
translations, students can learn from translators as well
as from fellow students.
Designed as a seminar class, students are also
encouraged to share their understanding of words in
order to discover and become more aware of their own
idiolect of the English language and to become more
sensitive to slight differences in the nuance of words
in the original Korean as well as in the language of our
translation, English. Because students in the class often
come from different English speaking countries such as
India, the UK, Canada, and the U.S., they find out how
even simple words can have different connotations or
usages depending on where the language is spoken.
Although the class focuses on teaching, learning,
and sharing of translation skills needed to transfer
and rebuild a literary work from Korean into English,
the underlying emphasis is to contemplate the unique
problems involved in translating the literary quality of
Korean short stories, novels, or dramas into English.
Translating any literary text into a different language
begins with the goal of wanting to share the work with
more readers, which always demands translators to do
the impossible task of walking on a tightrope by finding
the balance between being faithful to the original text
while rendering a perfectly readable translation. While
finding one’s balance on that tightrope is a task for every
translator, students in the Translation Academy are
asked to ponder their contribution to the translations
of Korean literary works not only as an expansion of
Korean literature among international readers but also
as a contribution of re-conceptualizing what constitutes
a literary work and literary language. Edith Grossman
states in her book, Why Translation Matters, that “the
influence of translated literature has a revivifying and
expansive effect on . . . the ‘target language,’ the language
into which the text is translated.” Translations expand
the boundary of literature not only in the source language
but also in the target language, and breathe new life into
the target language and its literature, for translations
present readers with different evocative potential in
their own language. Therefore, the act of writing and
the act of translating is to contribute a line or, as Walt
Whitman said, to “contribute a verse” to what we know as
literature, and the Translation Academy of LTI of Korea
has its door wide open for anyone who is willing to learn
the joy of walking on the tightrope of literary translation
so that they, too, may “contribute a verse.”
Fall Semester
Author
Hwang Sun-Won
Yi Sang
Kim Seungok
Lee Hyoseok
Kim Dongin
Yi Chong- Jun
Park Wansuh
Translator(s)
Peter H. Lee, Kevin O’Rourke
Kim Se-yong
Walter K. Lew and Youngju Ryu
Wings
Peter H. Lee
Journey to Mujin Kevin O’Rourke
Shin Dong-wook
When Buckwheat Kim Chong-in and Bruce Fulton
Peter H. Lee
Flowers Bloom
Hong Myong-hee
Kevin O’Rourke
Potato
Peter H. Lee
The Snowy Road Hyun-jae Yee Sallee
Julie Pickering
Hyun-jae Yee Sallee
Winter Outing
Marshall R. Pihl
Title
Cranes
Spring Semester
Author
Kim Young-ha
Shin Kyung-sook
Lady Hyegyong
Lee Kiho
Hwang Sok-yong
Title
I Have the Right to Destroy
Myself
Please Look After Mom
The Memoirs of Lady
Hyegyong
At Least We Can Apologize
The Old Garden
The Guest
Park Geun-hyeong In Praise of Youth
Burning Mountain
Cha Beom-seok
Translator(s)
Chi-young Kim
Chi-young Kim
JaHyun Kim Haboush
Christopher Dykas
Jay Oh
Kyung-ja Chun and
Maya West
Lee Hye-kyoung
Janet Poole
by Alyssa Kim
Translator
Vol.26 Winter 2014 59
The Place
60 _list : Books from Korea
Forest of Wisdom
J
Area: 2,446m2
Total Bookshelf Length: 3.1 km
Number of Seats: about 300
Number of Books: about 200,000
ust a few kilometers from the demilitarized
zone that separates North and South Korea,
Paju is a somewhat surprising location for what
has become the center of publishing and book
culture in Korea.
Paju Book City is a city dedicated to books—
their printing, publication, and promotion. It aims
to become the “book-hub of Asia.” In this book city
nestled among publishing offices, online bookstore
warehouses, and printing presses sits the “Forest
of Wisdom,” a huge concrete building with three
massive sections. Forest of Wisdom is currently
home to over 200,000 books and before too long
it will accommodate another 100,000. The books
are mostly donations from publishing companies
and some of them gave copies of every book they
had ever published. Organizations and notable
individuals have contributed as well. Traditionally,
buildings that house such a large number of books
have either been libraries or bookshops, but Forest
of Wisdom is neither. The books there are not for
sale, they cannot be loaned out, and they are not
catalogued. Forest of Wisdom is something else
entirely.
In the last few years there has been a book
café craze throughout Korea, where the walls of
a coffee shop are filled with bookshelves laden
with interesting books. Some book cafés are
operated by well-known publishing companies
like Munhakdongne or Changbi Publishers, Inc.,
who use them as a space to display and sell their
books. Others are simply decorated with books
that create an atmosphere where customers can
sit with their coffee, relax, and spend some time
with a book that catches their eye. With a coffee
Vol.26 Winter 2014 61
shop in its central hall, on first impression Forest
of Wisdom seems like it must be the biggest book
café in Korea, perhaps even the world—but in fact
it is more akin to a vast interactive artwork.
Explaining the rationale behind this forest of
books, Kim Eounho, the chairman of Bookcity
Culture Foundation, begins by talking about the
beauty of books as artifacts, and how that beauty
has a cumulative power, so that when books are
displayed together they create the harmony
of a choir, and an indescribable fragrance that
transforms a space. Thus when lectures are held
in these halls the content sounds more inspiring,
and when musicians perform among the books the
melodies are more beautiful. Over 100 events have
already been held in Forest of Wisdom this year
alone, including a performance by the Russian
Philharmonic Orchestra as well as evening classes
and programs as part of the Book City’s Open
University. The Paju Book Sori Festival, a meeting
point for publishers, editors, and authors from
all over Asia, is also held among the books in the
Forest of Wisdom, creating the perfect hub for
learning and exchange.
Kim Eounho says that rather than being a
mere library, Forest of Wisdom is a book utopia,
creating a new way of approaching and enjoying
books. We go to libraries to track down specific
books, looking them up in a database and hunting
them down in the stacks, ignoring all the books
62 _list : Books from Korea
around them. In Forest of Wisdom you cannot help
but explore, browse the spines of books from shelf
to shelf—reading titles, experiencing colors and
textures, and taking out and opening up the ones
that pull at your imagination. In this book utopia all
books are equal before the reader, and on every shelf
a myriad of worlds sit ready to inspire, just waiting
to be opened.
In all three halls books line the walls from floor to
lofty ceiling. Even on a weekday there are plenty of
people around, some browsing books, some studying
or working at one of the many desks while others chat
with friends over a cup of tea. On weekends the place
is filled with families, as children and their parents
line the stairs to the second floor, reading books and
sharing new stories.
The first hall is filled with books donated by
different scholars. The idea is that visitors can find
out more about these great minds by browsing
through their book collections, thus they are kept
together and each section is labeled with the name
of the person who donated them along with their
area of study. Looking through these personal
collections, amassed over the course of the donor’s
career, it is easy to see that successful scholars do not
stick to just one kind of book. Among the volumes
donated by a professor of English literature you can
find books on philosophy, geography, music, and
translation. As Kim Eounho says, children who read
books are our hope for the future. This does not
mean children who just “study hard” as the Korean
saying goes, but for children who read widely and
enthusiastically; because while school textbooks
teach us that everything relating to a subject can be
found in one place, the book collections of talented
scholars demonstrate that those who have a wide
understanding and interest in many fields are the
ones who create new wisdom and advance the
knowledge of humanity.
Books, things themselves that have been created,
are the start of other forms of creation. They are the
greatest inheritance left to humankind. In Forest of
Wisdom they have been brought together to be read,
to be enjoyed, and to make their presence felt in a
space which creates a new way of interacting with
books and is sure to inspire generations of readers,
writers, and thinkers.
Kim Eounho:
Kim founded Hangilsa Publishing in 1976 and Hangil Art
Publishing in 1998. He is also head organizer of Paju Booksori,
director of Hangil Book Museum, and chairman of Bookcity
Culture Foundation.
Chairman Kim Eounho
Vol.26 Winter 2014 63
Afterword
Reflections
from SIWF
2014
L
ook, I’ll be perfectly honest. The thought that stuck in
my mind the first morning of the writers’ festival, as I
joined two dozen other novelists and poets milling about
in front of the bus that would take us to lunch and then
to Olle Market in downtown Seogwipo, was a line from a
short story by the American author Ben Marcus: “Writers
in the sun. Just asking to get shot.”
I don’t mean to sound jaded, much less creepy, though it’s probably a little late for that. What
I mean is that I have a vague baseline distrust for large gatherings of writers, who tend not to
have become writers because they thought literature would afford them more opportunities to
display their sophisticated social graces. En masse, I told myself on the way to Jeju Island, writers
can be tedious company: obnoxious, preening, needy. Which wasn’t anything against any of the
writers themselves, surely—just a blanket indictment of us as a species.
Imagine my grateful surprise, then, when I discovered, only a few hours later, that I was
actually enjoying myself. (Okay: 85 percent grateful, 15 percent disappointed.) Imagine my relief
to report, two months hence, that the 2014 Seoul International Writers’ Festival was a lively,
engaging, thoroughly rewarding and generally lovely experience. And frankly I’m still not really
sure how they did it.
Though I am certain no effort was spared in order to do it. The organizers—the aides and guides
and translators and interpreters and directors and performers—must have worked tirelessly for
months. I find it astonishing, for instance, to think of the trouble taken to translate a short story
of mine into Korean, adapt the translation into a play, cast it and stage it and compose music for
it and rehearse it for a month, and then perform it once. (Brilliantly, I suspect: my interpreter
assured me it was “very faithful.”) And if that’s astonishing, then it’s utterly baffling to think that
the team did the same, in one medium or another, for 27 other texts by 27 other authors with
very different styles.
And yes, of course, among those 27 other authors I found virtually no tedious company.
More importantly, though, this didn’t feel like a lucky coincidence. There was a care built into the
festival that made such risks irrelevant—a camaraderie that, over the week we spent talking and
listening and eating and drinking together, came to feel inevitable. By design—I have to assume
so, given how little overall was left to chance—the festival made it impossible for us to remain
estranged from one another, by language or age or politics or aesthetic allegiances. By design,
that is, it turned us from a group of writers into a group of people, whose ideas about literature
and language, about poetry and music and love and food and geopolitics, had no choice but to
cross-pollinate freely.
To wit, one memory that will likely stay with me forever is that of an evening spent in our
hotel’s courtyard with a Brazilian and a Mongolian, drinking makgeolli from a can—I do not
recommend this—casually discussing the world and everything in it. What I will hold onto is
how it both made me feel small, in a sublime way, and made the world feel enormous.
by Daniel Levin Becker
Writer, Translator, and Critic
64 _list : Books from Korea
279002
ISSN 2005-2790
9 772005
_list: Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine
published by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
44
Copyright © 2014 by Literature Translation Institute of Korea