Korea`s Apartment Buildings

Transcription

Foreword
The Present and Future
of Korean Style Apartment
Buildings
Most Koreans live in apartments, a fact which has significantly affected their lives.
Korea’s apartment buildings are usually five to 20 stories high, and several apartment
buildings form one residential complex. A residential complex includes amenities
such as roads, schools, a hospital, and a shopping complex.
When we decided that the Special Section for the fall issue was to be “Korea’s
Apartment Buildings,” my first concern was that the contributors might focus on
introducing only the negative characteristics of Korean style apartments. In fact,
Korean style apartments have many positive characteristics as well. The apartment
culture contributed to a high level of public safety and provided a convenient form
of accommodation needed for everyday life. Energy efficient air conditioning and
heating, as well as the economic advantages of the apartment complexes themselves,
have made Korea's apartments a housing model for countries rushing to urbanize.
It should also be noted that it was an inevitable choice for Koreans. Korea’s
population density ranked 20th in the world in 2011, but it comes in second
following Bangladesh after excluding city or island nations such as Hong Kong
and Singapore. Moreover, 65 percent of Korea is mountainous, which means that
habitable land is limited. It may sound like an excuse, but the practical option for
Koreans seems to be apartments. Eighty percent of city dwellers in Korea live in
apartments, which is the highest percentage in the world. The rate of apartment
buildings compared to other types of available housing in Korea has already exceeded
50 percent.
At any rate, Korea’s apartments form a type of langue, defining the life of Korean
people according to a structuralist perspective. Koreans create their own "parole" in
the langue called the apartment. In other words, Korea’s apartments are places and
at the same time, a metaphor explaining the life of Koreans. In this edition, four
contributors wrote essays on Korea’s apartment buildings. These essays examine
both positive and negative characteristics of the apartment as well, while accurately
portraying how desperately Koreans desire the “post-apartment” life.
Contemporary city planners hoped for apartments to be towers in a park.
Modern man inevitably asked to be confined in a tower to secure the pleasant park
area; however, the park was not offered to him, and the tower only evolved in the
direction of rising higher and becoming more isolated. I am reminded of the fairytale
"Rapunzel." The witch locked up Rapunzel in a high tower and watched over her. We
think of Rapunzel's overseer as a witch in the sense that she confines Rapunzel, but a
psychoanalytical reading also reveals her to be a mother who is overprotective of her
daughter. Regardless, Rapunzel grows up safely within the protection of her motherwitch. In the end, however, Rapunzel lets her golden hair down from the tower
and escapes. Psychoanalysts often interpret her golden hair as “sexual maturity.”
Her mother, who does not accept Rapunzel’s maturity and tries to overprotect her,
is somewhat closer to being a witch. Koreans hear the “witch” whisper that the
apartment is a happy place. However, we’ll never know when Rapunzel might make
her escape from the high tower.
by Kim Mansu
list_ Books from Korea
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
1
Contents
Autumn 2013 Vol. 21
Reviews
42 Fiction
Untold Nights and a Day
The French Laundry
Four Days
Women and Their Evolving Enemies
Who Is Dr. Kim?
The Death of Robespierre
The Impossible Fairytale
60 Nonfiction
10
01
04
05
06
08
Two Stars, Two Maps: The Rivalry of Dasan and Yeonam
The Secret of Greek Tragedy: Twelve Most Famous Tragedies
Monsters in Art: The Human Fascination
with the Sensual and Fantastic
The Montage of Memory
Brain, Medicine, Mouth, and Body
The Google God Knows Everything
Apartment
Samsung Way
Stethoscope for the Heart
On Impulse: Chuncheon, Jeonju, Gyeongju
Adult Park
Foreword
Trade Report
News from LTI Korea
Bestsellers
Publishing Trends
Special Section
Korea’s Apartment Buildings
10
13
16
19
68 Children’s Books
Restaurant Sal
The Lily Star and The Little Star:
The Complete Works of Ma Hae-song
Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!
Candidate No.3 An Seok-bbong
Setting the Table
The Tiger’s Eyebrow
Blue Bicycle
Confessions of a Knock-off Apartment Kid from the 1980s
It's the Apartment, Stupid!
The Apartment: Mirage of the Middle Class
Imagined Spaces: The Apartment in Literature
Interviews
22 Literary Critic Lee O-young
28 Novelist Cheon Un-yeong
Excerpts
26 In This Earth and In That Wind by Lee O-young
32 Ginger by Cheon Un-yeong
The Place
34 Gwangjang Market:
Where History Breathes
Theme Lounge
38 Dating Culture
2 list_ Books from Korea
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Spotlight on Fiction
45
“My Sister’s Menopause” by Kim Hoon
Steady Sellers
59 The Complete Works of Kim Su-young, Vol.1 (Poems)
by Kim Su-young
73 Man-hee’s House by Kwon Yun-duck
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers
28
22
PUBLISHER
Kim Seong-Kon
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Kim Yoon-jin
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Jung Jin Kwon
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bok Dohoon Literary Critic
Kang Yu-jung Critic
Kim Ji-eun Children's Book Critic
Kim Mansu Professor, Inha University
Pyo Jeonghun Book Columnist
OVERSEAS
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Choi Kyeonghee University of Chicago
Bruce Fulton University of British Columbia
Christopher P. Hanscom UCLA
Theodore Hughes Columbia University
Kim Yung-hee University of Hawai'i
David McCann Harvard University
Michael J. Pettid SUNY-Binghamton University
Janet Poole University of Toronto
Dafna Zur Stanford University
DOMESTIC
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Brother Anthony Sogang University
Steven D. Capener Seoul Women's University
Horace J. Hodges Ewha Womans University
Charles Montgomery Dongguk University
Emanuel Pastreich Kyung Hee University
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Kim Sun-hye
MANAGING EDITORS
Cha Youngju
Lee Chae Eun
EDITORS
Krys Lee
Kim Stoker
ART DIRECTOR
Choi Woonglim
DESIGNERS
Jang Hyeju
Kim Mijin
PHOTOGRAPHER
Lee Kwa-yong
PRINTED BY
NAMSANPNP
59
Poetry
67 “Ha… No Shadows” by Kim Su-young
Overseas Angle
74 A New Opportunity for Korean Literature in Poland
75 Reflections on the 12th LTI Korea International Workshop
76 Expanding the Overseas Appeal of Korean Literature
in Translation
77 A Fateful Meeting with Modern Korean Poetry
New Books
79 Recommended by Publishers
Meet the Publishers
84 Sallim Publishing Company
Afterword
86 Messy Business: Translating Ambiguity
87 Contributors
88 Featured Authors
91 Index
Date of Publication August 27, 2013
list_ Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine
published by the Literature Translation
Institute of Korea.
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: [email protected]
www.klti.or.kr
www.list.or.kr
Cover Art © Park Sang-hyeok
Alone But Never Alone
120x167.4cm, pigment print, 2006
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
3
Trade Report
Educational Cartoons Open
a New Chapter in Infotainment
The Ultimate Baseball King (5 vols.)
Little Hippo; Illustrator: Kim Kang-ho, Mirae-N (I-seum)
2012, 204p, ISBN 9788937883859 (Vol.1)
The Ultimate Baseball King, a recent
hit series of educational cartoons for
lower-grade elementary school students
in Korea, has been sold to Sun Color
Culture Publishing Co., Ltd., a publishing
group in Taiwan. Reportedly, Sun Color
Culture Publishing Co., Ltd., has very
h ig h e x pec t at ion s for The Ultimate
Baseball King series because other Korean
educational cartoons series they have
previously published such as Survival and
Treasure Hunting, were huge hits.
The Ultimate Baseball King series
features elementary school students who,
while having fun playing baseball, learn
about a variety of scientific principles
hidden in sports and life. They try to win
by applying strategies based on wisdom
from the classics to the game of baseball.
With professional baseball wildly popular
in Korea, this cartoon series adds to the
joy that children derive from the game.
The popularity of Korean educational
cartoons is spreading around the world,
including China, Taiwan, and Japan. For
example, the Why? series, a household
name for Korean educational cartoons,
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
by Richard Hong
1
Korean Books Signed on
by Major Overseas Publishers
The Vegetarian by Han K ang f ina lly
sold its rights to Portobello Books, an
imprint of the British publisher Granta
Publications. This is Han's first novel
sold to the English-speaking world. A few
weeks later, Dutch rights were also sold
to the Dutch publisher Nijgh and Van
Ditmar. All told, The Vegetarian has been
sold to nine countries: France, Poland,
Brazil, Argentina, China, Japan, Vietnam,
and recently the U.K. and the Netherlands.
Thus, Han's literary world will reach both
Eastern and Western readers around the
world.
The Investigation, a novel by L ee
Jungmyung, the author of The DeepRooted Tree and The Painter of Wind, was
sold to the Italian publisher Sellerio. The
highly anticipated English edition of this
novel, whose rights were sold last year to
Pan Macmillan of the U.K., is scheduled
to be released in time for the 2014 London
and the Who? series, which won the
Grand Prize in the Education category
at the 2013 National Brand Awards of
Korea, were recognized worldwide for
their excellent content with sales of their
rights to eight countries, including Japan,
Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.
Gimmyoung Publishers is committed
to promoting their bestselling cartoon
series Far Countries, Neighboring Countries
in the global market. Their first step is
working on translating Far Countries,
Neighboring Countries: Korea into French
for publication. A household name for
Korean educational cartoons, the Far
Countries, Neighboring Countries series has
sold over 17 million copies in Korea alone.
Korean educational cartoons have
unique strengths that set them apart
from manga and comics. They combine
entertainment with information about a
variety of subjects, opening a new chapter
in infotainment.
Book Fair. Film rights were also recently
sold, which will boost the sales of the
novel’s translation rights overseas. There
are six countries in total, including the
U.K., Italy, and France, where this novel
has been sold.
As for nonfiction, The Greatest Leaders
in Economics Who Managed the World
published by SERI (Samsung Economic
Research Institute) sold its rights to China
immediately after publication in Korea.
This book offers a useful overview of the
history of economic policies worldwide
through the glories and failures of 18
economic polic y ma kers t hat shaped
world history, including Jacques Necker,
Alexander Hamilton, Winston Churchill,
Zhu Rongji, and Gerhard Schröder.
by Joseph Lee
3
2
1. The Vegetarian
Han Kang, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2007, 247p, ISBN 9788936433598
2. The Investigator (2 vols.)
Lee Jungmyung, EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.
2012, 289p, ISBN 9788956606187 (Vol.1)
3. The Greatest Leaders in Economics
Who Managed the World
Yoo Jae-soo, Samsung Economic Research Institute
2013, 504p, ISBN 9788976334534
News from LTI Korea
1. Karatani Kojin and Kim Uchang:
"Universality of East Asian Civilizations"
2. Oh Jung-hee, Han Kang, and Nakagami
Nori: "Women's Self Image and Literature"
3. Kim Yeon-su, Kim Ae-ran, and Kawakami
Mieko: "Communication in Literature”
4. a night of Korean literature
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2
3
4
LTI Korea Holds Literary Events
at the 2013 Tokyo Book Fair
LTI Korea participated in the 2013
To k y o I n t e r n a t i o n a l B o o k F a i r
(TIBF) from July 3 through July 6
and organized “Korean Literature Is
Now,” a set of large-scale literary events
celebrating Korea, the guest of honor
country. Ten Korean writers joined the
events: Kim Uchang, Oh Jung-hee,
Choi Seung-ho, Lee Seung-u, Ku Hyoseo, Han Kang, Park Seong-won, Kim
Yeon-su, An Heon-mi, and Kim Ae-ran.
The Japanese writers were: Karatani
Kojin, Nakazawa Kei, Nakagami Nori,
Sagawa Aki, Nakamura Fuminori, and
1
Kawakami Mieko.
Kim Uchang, professor at Ewha
Womans University, and philosopher
Karatani Kojin opened the events,
sharing views on various topics as
well-known intellectuals from both
cou nt rie s. Novelist s L ee Seu ng-u
and Nakazawa Kei held a seminar
introducing Kore a n literat ure on
the second day. In another session,
writers Oh Jung-hee, Han Kang, and
Nakagami Nori discussed the image of
women and literature.
K or e a n p o e t s C hoi S e u n g-ho
and An Heon-mi, and Japanese poet
Sagawa Aki explored life and poetry.
Korean novelists Ku Hyo-seo and Park
Seong-won, and Japan’s prize-winning
author Nakamura Fuminori exchanged
views on the city and communal life,
drawing keen attention from festival
participants. Kim Yeon-su, Kim Aeran, and Kawakami Mieko—young
a nd prom ising w riters f rom bot h
countries—met and discussed each
other’s literary world.
Joint book readings by Oh Junghee, Choi Seung-ho, and Lee Seung-u
during “A Night of Korean Literature,”
an event introducing Korean writers
to visitors, were held on the final day,
successfully wrapping up the four-day
literary program.
This year’s Korean literary program
at TIBF generated enthusiastic responses,
with some attendees unable to find seats
at the crowded events. The program
also offered a rare chance for Japanese
readers to meet leading Korean writers in
person. With the exchange of knowledge
between the two literary circles comes
the expectation of broading the cultural
horizons in each country.
2
3
LTI Korea Hosts the 12th International Workshop
LTI Korea held the 12th International
Workshop for the Translation and
Publication of Korean Literature at the
COEX Conference Center on June 21.
For the past 11 years, the international
workshop has served as a key venue
in which experts from various sectors
discuss major issues facing Korean
l it e r a t u r e . Pa s t t he me s i nc lu d e d
the ways to improve the quality of
tra nslation, strategies to promote
overseas publication of Korean literary
works, e-publishing, and the exploration
of new overseas markets.
The theme this year was “New
St r ate g ie s for Promot i n g K ore a n
Literature Worldwide.” Part 1, titled
“Concentration: Publication Strategies,”
covered possible strategies and plans
to nurture a stable and systematic
publishing environment for Korean
literature by forming partnerships
with major foreign publishers. In Part
2, titled “Evolution: Introduction
Strategies,” participants discussed ways
to adapt to rapidly evolving publishing
conditions.
Toward the end of the workshop,
the LTI Korea Distinguished Service
Awards Ceremony was held to honor
three panelists who have made great
c ont r ibut ion s i n pr omot i n g a nd
marketing Korean literature in their
respective countries. The recipients were
Marzena Stefanska, publisher of Kwiaty
Orientu; Dennis Maloney, editor and
publisher of White Pine Press; and
Claude Mouchard, associate editor of
Po&sie.
1. “Concentration: Publication Strategies”
2. “Evolution: Introduction Strategies”
3. the recipients of the LTI Korea Distinguished
Service Awards and LTI Korea President
Kim Seong-Kon
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
5
Bestsellers
What We’re Reading
Salt
Secretly, Greatly
Fiction
Moonlight Tales
Shin Kyung-sook, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 212p, ISBN 9788954620666
The newest book by Shin Kyung-sook, the
internationally renowned author of Please Look After
Mom, Moonlight Tales is a collection of 26 witty and
surreal short stories that leave long lingering feelings
like the gentle shine of the moon.
Goguryeo V: King Gogugwon
of the People
Kim Jin-myung, Saeum Publishing Co.
2013, 359p, ISBN 9788993964585
Bestselling author Kim Jin-myung freely crosses the
border between fiction and nonfiction. His Goguryeo
series tells of people with the most outgoing spirit in
Korean history. Goguryeo V remakes the unfortunate
King Gogugwon as a man with genuine love for his
subjects.
Salt
Park Bumshin, Hankyoreh Publishing Company
2013, 368p, ISBN 9788984316904
Park Bumshin’s 40th novel Salt is a sad portrait of
Korean fathers who struggle for their families in a
brutal capitalist society. This novel poses fundamental
questions about fathers, the salt of the household,
through the narration of one man’s abandonment of
his responsibilities and his family.
Toe Ma Rok: The Records of Exorcism
- Sidequel
Lee Woo-hyouk, Elixir
2013, 304p, ISBN 9788954620888
Lee Woo-hyouk is Korea’s leading fantasy writer and
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
The Quotes of My Life
Nonfiction
author of the bestselling Toe Ma Rok series, which
has sold more than 10 million copies. The story
collection Toe Ma Rok celebrates the 20th anniversary
of the series by shedding light on the guardians’ past
and present lives, relationships, and the tales behind
the main story.
Secretly, Greatly
Hun, Hye-gyung, Gulliver
2013, 380p, ISBN 9788996675457
Originally a webtoon serialized on the Korean search
engine DAUM, Secretly, Greatly was released as a
movie in 2013. The famous quote “I was born a wild
dog and raised a monster,” comes from this book.
North Korean spy Won Ryu-hwan who, under cover
as the village idiot, makes human connections with
his South Korean neighbors.
Faith (Vol.2)
Song Jina, Viche Korea Books
2013, 408p, ISBN 9788994343891
Popular dramatist Song Jina’s romance transcends
time and space. This novel depicts the love between
Goryeo warrior Choi Yung and the modern doctor
Yu Eunsu. A historical romance that blends action,
fantasy, and love, it was also made into a TV drama
of the same name.
28
Jeong You-jeong, EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.
2013, 496p, ISBN 9788956607030
Jeong You-jeong is the most exciting Korean writer
today. Her strengths are an intricate plot, a sleek
writing style, and cool aplomb. 28 is an extreme
disaster novel based on a zoonosis outbreak. It asks
about the dignity of life as humans and animals
communicate, diverge, and fight.
Jeong Ho-seung, Viche Korea Books
2013, 484p, ISBN 9788994343921
One of the most celebrated poets in Korea, Jeong
Ho-seung introduces the words that comforted him
through his life. Quotations from famous writers,
religious leaders, ordinary people, and his mother
are featured, such as, “Nobody can gaze at the stars
without welcoming the night. Nobody can encounter
the morning without passing the night.”
The Art of Reading
Jung Min, Gimm-Yeong Publishers, Inc.
2013, 408p, ISBN 9788934962847
What is reading? How do we read? This book
introduces the reading styles of nine prominent
Joseon era scholars. One scholar, Yang Eung-su
(1700-1767), said that, “Reading is like looking at a
house. A glimpse at the exterior is useless. One must
walk through it, study each room, and examine each
window.”
Life
Choi In-ho, Yeobaek Media Co., Ltd.
2013, 288p, ISBN 9788958661993
One of Korea’s contemporary literary pillars, Choi
In-ho is also a cancer survivor. This is a book of
essays wrought during the five years that he fought
cancer. It depicts his discovery of God’s providence as
well as his personal views on life. The writer describes
his fight against cancer as “a carnival of pain” and
shares profound discoveries that he made along the
way.
These totals are based on sales records from eight major bookstores
and three online bookstores from April to June 2013,
provided by the Korean Publishers Association.
The books are introduced in no particular order.
The Art of Reading
An Upside-down World
My Name Is Venus Flytrap
Children's Books
The Return of Hope
Norbert Dong-yeob Cha, Wiz & Viz
2013, 316p, ISBN 9788992825726
A Catholic priest and bestselling self-help writer, Cha
delivers a message of hope to those who are plagued
by anxiety and despair. “Look behind you. Hope is
hidden there. Look ahead. You will glimpse hope.
Look around. Hope will be revealed to you. Look
inside. Hope is stirring there.”
Ahn Sung-hoon; Illustrator: Heo Goo
Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd., 2013
119p, ISBN 9788901156576
In An Upside-down World, people lose their
intellectual capacity as they grow older, and it is the
children who are superior to adults. Children are free
to do as they choose but they also bear the burden
of protecting adults and worrying about the future.
This fantasy book won the 6th Woongjin Junior
Literature Award.
Lee Ji-yoo; Illustrator: Kim E-rang
Haegreem, 2013, 78p, ISBN 9788901155234
See Your Own Big Picture
Jun Og-pyo, The Business Books and Co., Ltd.
2013, 296p, ISBN 9788997575138
Jun is a bestselling writer in the self-improvement
genre. By studying numerous interviews and cases,
the author finds what successful people have in
common. Successful people draw the big picture and
work hard to achieve it. They truly are the masters of
their lives.
They Cry Silently
Song Ho-keun, Lee & Woo Press
2013, 236p, ISBN 9788998933005
This book is an essay tribute to Korean baby
boomers that are now in their 50s. The baby
boomer generation led Korea through the years of
industrialization and democratization, but is now
troubled by a sense of loss and the uncertainty of
retirement. Song presents a collective self-portrait of
the generation.
It’s OK
Choi Sook-hee, Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd.
2009, 28p, ISBN 9788901052922
A steady bestseller in the children’s illustrated book
category, this story boosts self-confidence through
the message that everyone has something he or she
is good at. Vivid and lovely illustrations keep young
readers enthused.
World’s 100 Greatest Masterpieces
More Exciting than the Louvre
Museum
Park Hyun-cheol, Samsung Publishing
2011, 200p, ISBN 9788915080515
This book features masterpieces from around the
world. Inventive images and interesting stories make
artists like da Vinci and Picasso easily accessible to
young readers.
A science teacher and bestselling author of
children’s astronomy and geology books, Lee Ji-yoo
presents this plant book for children. Through the
entertaining conversation between a Venus flytrap
and a Swiss cheese plant, the author teaches plant
ecology.
Jiwon and Byeong-gwan Series
Ko Dae-young; Illustrator: Kim Young-jin
Gilbut Children Publishing Co., Ltd.
2006, 32p (Vol.1), ISBN 9788955820942 (set)
This illustrated book series about Jiwon and Byeonggwan humorously shows daily events like taking the
subway, getting an allowance, learning to ride a bike,
and not biting your fingernails. This eight-volume
series has sold more than 400,000 copies. Every
scene has a picture puzzle for readers to solve.
Blue Child
Gong Sun-ok et al., Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 208p, ISBN 9788936456504
Blue Child is a collection of short stories written by
well-known Korean young adult writers like Gong
Sun-ok, Gu Byeong-mo, Kim Ryeo-ryeong, Bae
Myung-hoon, Lee Hyun, Jun Sung-tae, and Choi
Namee. This book presents exciting contemporary
young adult literature and new writing styles.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
7
Publishing Trends
through the power of the story itself. Authors can justly take
pride in their prose style, but critics have pointed out that the
balance between story and style or perhaps ideas and form has
suffered with an over-emphasis on form. Maybe Jeong can find
this balance in 28. Hopefully literature written from this new
perspective will also find a loyal readership abroad.
by Uh Soo-woong
Nonfiction
28
Jeong You-jeong
EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.
2013, 496p, ISBN 9788956607030
Fiction
Dynamic Storytelling
Boosts Slump
Since the start of 2013, Korean literature has been in a slump. To
be precise, the market has been in a slump. Many attractive books
appealing to diverse tastes have been published, but the public
hasn’t paid much attention to them. A few novels were in the
spotlight after being adapted into movies or television dramas, but
outside of these, very few works of fiction have become bestsellers.
In the second quarter, though, there was an exception. Jeong
You-jeong’s novel 28 was released in June. After her previous work,
Seven Years of Darkness, was published two years ago and became
a bestseller with sales approaching 30,000 copies, fans have been
awaiting her next book. In its first week of release, it topped the
sales charts of Internet book retailer Aladdin, and in the second
week it reached #2 in sales at Yes24 and Kyobo Bookstore.
To summarize the contents of this 500-page novel in a few
lines: the story unfolds over a 28-day period in Hwayang, a
suburb of Seoul which has been quarantined due to the outbreak
of a mysterious disease called “red eye.” Red eye is a cross-species
virus that can be transmitted from dogs to humans and vice
versa. It is deadly, with an infection rate on par with measles
(98 percent) and a fatality rate similar to that of Ebola (50 to 90
percent). A distinguishing feature of the disease is that after it is
first contracted, the area around the eyes turns blood red.
A popular novel intended for momentary comfort or pleasure
would focus on the story of a hero who identifies and tracks down
the hidden powers responsible for propagating the disease, and
finds a vaccine. The writer, however, resists this conventional
formula and asks questions that have long been pushed into our
subconscious. Is human survival always more important than the
life of individuals? How can we overcome guilt and repay debts if
our lives are contingent on the sacrifices of others? In other words,
she is asking the fundamental questions concerning salvation and
hope, and of the moral grounds of life.
Jeong You-jeong has been credited with bringing a new
perspective to the literary scene. The dominant trend is for authors
to focus on introspection and interior monologue, prioritizing
structure and style. Instead, Jeong intends to connect with readers
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Reflections on the
Happiness Craze
For the past several years, the bestseller lists have been filled
with essay collections about spiritual healing and the pursuit of
happiness. In as much as these books are popular, it proves that
large numbers of people are suffering from sadness and mental
fatigue. But we cannot simply welcome all of the attention given
them. Books seem to comfort troubled readers, but in many
cases they can’t really provide them with solutions, or they limit
happiness to the personal sphere, and ask readers to just change
their attitudes.
Books such as Pressure To Be Happy and Elbow Society focus
critical attention on the wave of literature promising readers
greater happiness. In Pressure To Be Happy, philosopher Tak Seoksan claims that people are missing the larger perspective if they
put personal happiness above all else. “Happiness springs from
individuals, communities, and society all playing their proper
role. If you understand that the self, neighbors, and society all
contribute to happiness, then you are not far from the path to a
good life.”
Tak explains that happiness was once understood to be
determined by God, but with the emergence of utilitarianism
it became its own kind of religion. Other societal forces have
reinforced the myth of personal happiness: democracy and its
emphasis on equality, capitalism and the commodification of
labor, and individualism, which puts the “I” before the “we.”
According to experts and writers of self-help books, it is possible
to achieve happiness just by making a list and following it. Tak,
however, denies this possibility, stating that in the midst of social
contradiction, it is impossible for people to pursue happiness on
an individual basis and achieve it.
In Elbow Society, Professor Kang Su-dol locates the root of
Koreans’ unhappiness in their competitive, winner-takes-all social
structure. In Kang’s book, an “elbow society” refers to a society
that functions as a competition that must be won at all costs. Even
though it is in violation of the rules, people elbow each other to
get ahead and become victors. People in this environment have
internalized competition over cooperation, and division over
harmony, and they accept the struggle for survival imposed by
capitalism as the logic of their lives. In this twisted environment,
people view others’ sorrow as their happiness. According to Kang,
an individual’s life and social relations should be restructured
using solidarity and cooperation as the foundation. His critique
would likely apply to other cultures as well as Korea’s.
by Kim Beomsoo
with high intelligence and perfect judgment, and as they grow
older their faculties degenerate. But the upside-down world is
not a utopia for children. The children have to work, and just as
children have to worry about tests in our contemporary reality, in
the upside-down world they have to worry about world politics
and the future existence of the planet. Children are equally
exhausted in both places.
The recent wave of children’s books makes the case for
children’s right to happiness. Children should be able to run free
and learn from their own mistakes. The fact that they are instead
tightly constrained is critiqued from a variety of perspectives. We
should pay attention to the warnings contained in these books
and think about the solutions that are proposed.
by Shin Soojin
1
2
1. Elbow Society
Kang Su-dol, Galapagos Pubilshing Co.
2013, 256p, ISBN 9788990809490
2. Pressure To Be Happy
Tak Seok-san, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 248p, ISBN 9788936472283
Children's Books
1
A Wave of Awardwinning Children’s
Books
The major publishers of children’s books sponsor prizes for
children’s literature; through this system many new writers have
been discovered. The date that prize winners are announced varies
slightly according to the publisher, but before they are announced,
readers are filled with anticipation, imagining how brilliant and
original the new books will be.
The award-winning books released in the first half of 2013 are
notable for tackling diverse topics. The clash between traditional
values and modern economic realities forms the backdrop for
Candidate No.3 An Seok-bbong, the winner of Changbi’s “Good
Books for Children” competition. When a modern megastore
opens next to a traditional market, the tension and change in
the neighborhood are seen through a child’s eyes. In a refreshing
new work entitled Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!, winner of the Golden
Dokkaebi Award, the protagonist, teased for being fat, finds
dignity in his new identity as a weightlifter.
Other books critique modern life and satirize it through
the lens of fantasy. The heroine of Time Shop, winner of the
Munhakdongne Children’s Book Award, feels pressure to be first
place at all costs. She is always pressed for time, but one day, by
chance, she discovers a time store where she purchases 10 minutes
of extra time every day. In order to do this, she has to sell her
happiest memories one by one. The Woongjin Junior Award
winner An Upside-down World shows us an imaginary world in
which children and adults swap roles. Newborn babies are born
2
3
1. Time Shop
Lee Na-young; Illustrator: Yoon Jeoung-joo
Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 204p, ISBN 9788954620260
4
2. An Upside-down World
Ahn Sung-hoon; Illustrator: Heo Goo
Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd.
2013, 119p, ISBN 9788901156576
3. Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!
Cheon Hyeon-jeong; Illustrator: Bak Jeong-seop
BIR Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 200p, ISBN 9788949121482
4. Candidate No.3 An Seok-bbong
Jin Hyeong-min; Illustrator: Han Ji-sun, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 152p, ISBN 9788936442712
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
9
Special Section
Korea’s Apartment Buildings
Confessions of a Knock-off
apartment Kid from
the 1980s
In this personal essay, writer Jeong Yi-hyun reflects
on her childhood fascination with modern apartment living.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
I am not a “natural born apartment kid.” It would, rather, be
more appropriate to say that I spent my childhood hankering
for the life of an apartment kid.
My first memory of the space called an apartment starts in
the early 1980s. Around that time my maternal grandparents
moved to the ninth floor of the newly-built Samho Apartment
in Bangbae-dong. It was when the real estate development
boom in Gangnam had just begun. Any information on which
course my grandparents took to sell their traditional style
house in Pilwoon-dong, Jongno-gu, and start their life in the
apartment, has not stayed with me. There is a better chance
that I never had such a memory. For there exists no adult who
lets a child, not yet age 10, in on those details – neither then,
nor now.
My memory of visiting my grandparents’ new place, led by
my mother, is still vivid. We stepped into a small square box.
It was an elevator. The elevator was slowly rising up in the air.
And then, it abruptly stopped under my feet. I felt vertigo. It
was a different feeling from dizziness. I realized even before I
stepped into my grandparents’ entrance door that I would be
fascinated by this new space, and I would not be able explain
why. So is the fundamental nature of enchantment.
Inside, the apartment was almost a perfect square. The
living room, kitchen, and bedrooms were partitioned in squares
like blocks of tofu. The faint smell of fresh starch-based glue
from the new wallpaper faintly wafted in. I went out to the
veranda. I squatted down there and looked out. I could see
the world. It was my first time seeing the world from such an
angle. There were several cars and the tops of a few heads on
the streets. They all looked like miniatures. I thought of myself
as Gulliver who had arrived at Lilliput.
At my grandparents’ place, I did not eat or go near the
TV that I liked so much. I was endlessly hanging out at the
windows. I imagined the direction of each car moving at its
own speed, the steps of pedestrians walking by at their own
pace, and the destinations that they were trying to reach by
their slow or deliberate steps at the moment, and their dreams
about which I would never know.
I came to have a wish. I wanted to live in an apartment.
My parents had a different idea. I was not sure about my
mother, but my father was decisive because they had recently
bought a house for the first time. They put everything they
had into the house so they could own it. My father began his
own family in 1971 when he was 35 years old. He married
relatively late compared to the norm at the time. He, who
was born a second son to a single mother with little economic
means, walked through his life with diligence, working his
way through college and becoming a self-made man. After
marriage, when he owned his first house, after renting several
dwellings, he was in his early 40s. It should be easy to guess
how much special affection he had for his first house.
Our house was built in a new residential area on the
outskirts of Gwanak Mountain. That’s right. They did not buy
a house. The house was clearly newly built. To build his first
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
11
Special Section
house for his family, my father purchased the land first, leveled
the ground, and laid a cornerstone. In the sizable backyard,
young grass with a grandiose name, Korean grass, grew wild.
As my mother wished, we planted boxwood trees, rose bushes,
sour cherry trees, and persimmon trees. Therefore, to imagine
my parents leaving the house and moving to an apartment that
looked like a matchbox was an impossible wish.
As everything has its light and shadow, my father fell into
considerable debt to build that white-painted house. The basic
members of the household were my parents, younger brother,
me, and my paternal grandmother, who went back and forth
to her oldest son’s house and her daughter’s house in turns,
and was a kind of guest member. The time I spent there might
sometimes have been beautiful, but mostly it was boring, just
like anyone else’s childhood. My brother and I invented various
games to endure the extremely tedious time, such as playing
“what if” and became Hansel and Gretel, Annika and Tommy
in Pipi Longstocking; were born during the Joseon era; became
comedians, and lived in an apartment. I can’t speak for my
brother, but the last one was the only imagined scenario that
shook me to the core.
I carefully thought about the fastest way to be able to
live in an apartment. It was my parents’ divorce. I had been
inspired by reading a young adult book called My Mother,
Father, and I during that time. The female protagonist in the
novel moved into a small apartment, following her mother who
had separated from her father. It was not important how sad
she was about losing her family or how she tried to help her
parents reconcile. If my parents divorced, my mother, whose
life was more conducive to apartment-style living in many ways
than my father, would definitely move to an apartment:
Number 1: "Do you want to live with your mother?"
Number 2: "Do you want to live with your father?"
At that crucial moment, I would choose number one
without hesitation. Surely, if there was a third question, which
contained the choice of an “apartment,” my answer would have
been different. When I was in the upper levels of elementary
school, I used to secretly whisper into my mother’s ear as she
huffed after fighting with my father, “Mom, get a divorce!”
What was my mother’s face like after she heard my
whispering? I am sure that she should have slapped me on the
back several times.
Why did I want to live in an apartment by doing all that?
Why did I long for apartment living? Come to think of it now,
it was probably because the apartment looked modern to me.
I still do not have a clear idea of what modern meant then or
now, but at any rate, I clearly understood that at least, it meant
living in a different way than now.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
About five years had passed since I fell in love with the
idea of an apartment when my family suddenly moved to one.
It was neither because my parents divorced nor because my
father’s financial situation turned as bad as to put his precious
house up for a rushed sale. It was because a ghostly presence
named School District 8* provoked my mother’s anxiety. It
was too late to help her daughter who already an eighth grader,
but she could also not give up the idea of her son entering the
coveted School District 8.
More unforgettable than my first night at the apartment
was the last night at the two-story house in which I had spent
my entire childhood. I stayed up all night in a small room
on the second floor, shedding tears. Only when I faced the
moment I had to leave my home, I realized that my dream
called the apartment, of which I had desperately pined for, was
a different name for fatal attraction about my future that in
reality, I could not reach even if I stretched out my hands. That
attraction necessarily meant something only when it was just
out of reach. When I actually lived in the apartment, my long
fascination disappeared like a lie.
Although I moved many times after that, I never escaped
the apartment. It was the same when I left my family and
started a family of my own. At first, it was comfortable, and
later, I was afraid. In the sense that I still live in my childhood
dream, am I a true winner?
1986-2013-?
At which point will the chronicle of my apartment life end
with a period instead of a question mark? Could it even be
possible?
by Jeong Yi-hyun
* translator's note : affluent Gangnam school district known for sending students to renowned colleges
Special Section
Korea's Apartment Buildings
It's the Apartment, Stupid!
From the apartment speculation boom that
started in the 1980s until the recent real estate
bubble that burst in the early 2000s, Koreans’
changing attitudes towards where they live and
how they save and spend might all be rooted
in the apartment.
A Summer Night's Grumbling, 2013
On a summer night in the middle of a heat wave, members of the
women's association of an apartment building are sitting around a
table outside and chatting. At first, cookies, fruit, and drinks are
laid out. Soon instant cup noodles appear. It will not be a short
session.
"The government seemed pretty determined on April 1st. But,
even their measure to boost apartment prices isn't doing anything.
They are saying it looked like the prices were budging a little, and
the market was becoming more active. But pretty soon everything
sank back to before."
"You're right. I guess what people are saying is right; apartments
aren't going to be good investments anymore."
"What am I going to do? I made my children drop two afterschool classes because I have to make the interest repayment..."
"Selling at a bargain price now is not an option. We can only sit
back and hope that the prices will go up again."
There is more grumbling. Someone continues.
"Forget it. There's no hope any more. The prices for jeonse are
skyrocketing but no one's buying or selling. It's because buyers are
sending a clear message that they will wait until prices drop more."1
"I think we have done all we can. A ll members of the
association agreed not to sell the apartments below a certain price.
We've even chased the real estate agent out from the neighborhood
who opposed us and tried to make deals at lower prices."
"I remember. I still clearly remember all the criticism in the
media. Everything went down the drain."
Another woman who had been quiet says, "Well, whatever
they say, an apartment is an apartment. We have to hold on no
matter what and not sell at low prices for whatever reason. I'm sure
one day that will do us good for sure. In a country like this, the
amount of land is so limited and there are so many people. How
can apartment prices not go up? It's those who are getting out and
selling at bargain prices that are public enemies."
"Who would've wanted to sell for less? They were probably
stuck in a tight situation."
"Who's right and who's wrong here? Has it not been, indeed,
the well-chosen investment in apartments in the right areas that
have yielded a profit many times over the annual salary of any
decent employment?”
For about the last 40 years, apartments have been considered a
sure cash cow in multiplying assets, the so-called wealth effect in
economics. With the prices of apartments skyrocketing, the size
of ordinary people's spending grew. "Let me put that on my credit
card. I can pay back the loan all at once when I sell my apartment
later."
The discontent with the relative deprivation on the renters’
side grew even deeper. At long last, they also opened their wallets.
It was a spending out of despair.
The national economy was going fine. A national spending
spree. Not only the haves, but also the have-nots, all stepped
forward as agents of consumption. The warning from a minority,
that this kind of "spending on the brink" can jeopardize the
future of the country, was buried in silence. Even after the
terrible experience of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, we remained
ambivalent.
The indifferent passing of time brings us to that night during
the summer of 2013. The people of the women's association of the
apartment building gathered and lamented. What should they
do? They can talk on all night long until they are blue in the face,
but they cannot come up with an answer. The current selling
price is 20 to 30 percent less than what it was at its highest. They
wondered, then will the price go up if I just hold on to it?
Only the wind would know the answer; it is more frustrating
on a windless day like today. It is late into the night. The women
get up off their seats and head home. Who was it that said that
apartment buildings are concrete cabinets that isolate people from
the outside? Of course, no matter what happens inside, no one
from the outside will know.
Rather, apartment buildings became more attractive because
1. translator’s note: Jeonse, a rental-on-security-deposit, is a rental system particular to South Korea. The
renter gives a large sum of money, at times close to the value of the property, to the owner who returns the
same amount to the renter at the end of the lease. A more detailed explanation comes later in the article.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
13
Special Section
they are a closed space. The desire and intention was to be offlimits to the nearby villages and other apartment complexes.
Therefore, apartment buildings were referred to as gated
communities bolted shut. Although, generally speaking, a human
being ought to live in a space open to the outside world, such was
the state of our apartment buildings.
After the women leave, the crumbs and the ripped bags from
cookies and instant cup noodles half-filled with leftover broth are
left lying around. Late into the night, the old security guard on his
last round picks up the garbage, dragging his body already tired
with all the running-around he had to do during the day for all
sorts of requests from the residents. Unlike before, nowadays is it
not true that just dealing with package deliveries—receiving them,
recording them, and calling each apartment to have people come
and pick them up—puts him in a state of mental exhaustion?
The Myth of the Eternal Winning Streak
of Apartments Is Over
Nothing but apartment buildings. Even looking around in every
direction, it is impossible to find scenery devoid of the towers
of apartment buildings. South Korea has become a republic of
apartment buildings. The assessment that the country was pulled
up off the ground by apartments and is suffering because of them
is probably not a great exaggeration.
Let us leave the buildings constructed in the center of Seoul
during the period of Japanese occupation: Toyota Apartments
and Naeja Apartments. The first apartment complex constructed
by our own hands was the Jongam Apartments of 1959. Later, in
1964, the Mapo Apartments, a luxury building by the standard of
that time, was constructed. However, people considered apartment
buildings housing for the poor and shied away from them.
People live above people; people live below as well. Apartments
were a thing of mystery for the traditional way of thinking. People
were afraid of carbon monoxide poisoning—understandable given
the method of heating with coal briguettes at the time.
At the time, Seoul was more than a full house with people
moving in from the countryside without any plans. They just built
illegal plywood shacks high up on the hillside, finding unoccupied
spaces. In the order of arrival, they went higher and higher up
toward the top, and the new appearance of Seoul became one that
didn’t befit a nation's capital. Out of desperation, public housing
project apartments were created. They were constructed recklessly,
and in the early spring of 1970, even resulted in the collapse of a
building. In the concrete piles of the crumbled Wau apartments,
the lives of 33 residents were lost.
As real estate development in the Gangnam area of Seoul
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
made progress, the construction of apartment buildings sped up.
However, apartment buildings were still unpopular. Construction
companies were busy covering costs by selling apartments at
low prices; the ones with better cash f low waited for further
opportunities while using their buildings as workers’ dormitories.
However, the apartments were silently changing our lifestyle.
A revolution in modus vivendi. Our mothers and sisters whose
backs were hunched over in traditional kitchens worked standing
upright in modern kitchens. The central heating system prompted
the complete removal of coal briquette heaters. The skin on the
hands and faces of children as well as adults started showing the
color of a better life.
More and more, the number of people rushing to sell their
houses to move to apartment buildings increased. Of course the
people on the other side belittled such behavior as vulgar.
Then came the explosion in the 80s. The big bang of the
universe of apartments opened up. Crowds of onlookers flocked
to show houses and a sea of people flooded the allotment offices
when new apartments became available for purchase. The prices
of apartments went up overnight, and people became ecstatic
with dreams of making a fortune. It was not at all uncommon
for some people to move into an apartment and live only for a
short period of time without even unpacking, until they bought
a new apartment to move into. The so-called era of apartment
speculation frenzy began.
This phenomenon continued for well over 25 years, and
similar scenes were replayed until the mid-2000s. Banks issued
loans without question as long as it was for an apartment purchase.
Here we are talking about none other than financial institutions,
the very definition of fussiness. This was an apartment mortgage
loan, and it was difficult for banks to find a more secure business.
At this point, regardless of what anyone might have said, Korea
was precisely a republic of apartments.
This is the point when jeonse, the rental-on-security-deposit
system particular to South Korea, takes the stage. Foreigners that
returned to their home countries after living in Korea at the time
murmured to themselves as they were returned the entire security
deposit, having paid no rental fee at all, "I just cannot understand.
What is this jeonse, system of South Korea that enabled us to rent
on practically nothing?"
Landlords said, "No" when they were asked to rent their places
for a monthly fee. Instead, landlords wanted tenants who would
take the rental-on-security-deposit that would let them control
over a lump sum of money. Those who are sharp may already have
understood the logic. Landlords added a little more money to the
received lump sum and bought more smaller apartments. Without
exception, the price of those apartments skyrocketed. When the
contract ended and the owners were to return the deposit, the
landlords sold the newly acquired apartment in order to make the
amount of the deposit. Even then, handsome profits were made.
It was an archetypal win-win game. The renter is fully content
that he rented on nothing as the entire amount of the deposit is
returned to him; the problem was that the rich got richer and the
poor got poorer. Some even went so far as to say that the country
was going to collapse because of apartments.
President Roh Moo-hyun's administration ambitiously made
this its battle. From the beginning of his term, countless policies
were issued with the intention of easing the suffering of the lower
income class. However the outcome was always the opposite. It
became so bad that at one point the government coined the term
"seven bubbles." They had to expand the special zone subjected to
the governmental monitoring of rising apartment prices.
One day towards the end of his five-year term, President
Roh Moo-hyun said the following: "Aside from apartments, I
have done all right." His self-assessment was that although his
administration put forth more effort in stabilizing the apartment
prices than any previous administration, he suffered a failure in
this area. Thus, apartments continued their myth of the eternal
winning streak, never resulting in any losses.
Why Does the Image of Occupy Wall Street Resonate?
A significant number of countries in the world are suffering
because of apartments (or other real estate properties such as
single family homes). The economy, which had been doing
fairly well, was now cornered between the cycle of skyrocketing
and plummeting apartments prices. Borrowing from President
Clinton's winning slogan in 1992, "It's the economy, stupid," I
hear myself uttering, "It's the apartment, stupid!"
The root of the current economic difficulty is the U.S.
subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. For four or five preceding years,
investment banks had started focusing on lending to individuals
and corporations for the purpose of real estate acquisition. When
this led to a decent profit, the financial sector was quick to extend
its focus to lending to lower income classes with less than prime
credit histories, with apartments and houses as collateral.
Starting from 2007, there were signs of falling real estate
prices. Quickly, many had problems with loan repayments.
This, in turn, caused prices to fall even faster. Many ended up
defaulting on their loans; all fell into a downward spiral that
became a crisis. This is the core of the subprime mortgage loan
crisis.
In essence this was not very different from the economic crises
of Spain and Italy that affected the entire world economy during
2011-2012. Moreover, Japan entered another tunnel of recession,
as their apartment bubble had collapsed long before. The lost
decade of Japan that began in 1991 has seen no end in sight even
after over 20 years.
In China as well, there have been waves of real estate
investments on speculation centered around Shanghai, Beijing,
and Tianjin during the past 20 years. What is different in this case
is the learning effect. With every given opportunity, the Chinese
government has expressed its determination not to repeat the
mistakes of countries such as the U.S. and Japan, and has followed
up with regulatory policies.
Currently, what is attracting most attention is Likonomics,
which contains the direction of the economic policy of China in
recent years. This is significant in that it is the economic policy of
Premier Li Keqiang and that at its core, it entertains the possibility
of lowering the bottom line of the rate of growth if need be while
focusing on economic reformation and restructuring instead of
stimulus. As a result, the probability of a real estate bubble seems
to be decreasing.
What about South Korea? South Korea seems to be facing a
time of considerable tribulation, having been unable to avoid what
economists calls path dependency. People who overextended their
investments through loans on collateral are the house poor, in no
better position than a beggar with a house. They saw the process
of an overheating market and the formation of a bubble, and were
able to clearly foresee the eventuality but could not choose another
path.
Originally, a house is one's living space. Insofar as apartments
are concerned, we need to return to this basic. We must turn
it back around from a means of increasing assets to a space for
living. We are faced with the situation where the bubble must be
removed and restructuring is the only option.
I cannot forget the image of Occupy Wall Street that
started in Zucotti Park on Wall Street, the financial district in
Manhattan, New York. It was a criticism and revolt against the
losing game that highly trained financial experts played on real
estate assets. The greed of the one percent can force the global
community into another crisis again any time. The time has come
for all those who would like to create wealth from apartments
to listen carefully to the wishes and warnings of the "occupy"
protesters.
by Huh Eui-do
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
15
Special Section
The Apartment: Mirage
of the Middle Class
Once the dream of the middle class, apartment ownership now symbolizes success
and the beginnings of a consumer-oriented society. But behind the rows of identical
exteriors and predictable interiors lie the shadows of monochromatic architecture and
modernity. As the new millennium progresses and economic uncertainty prevails, so
begins the dawn of the post-apartment era.
Military Style Construction
The myth of the growing middle class was one of the key factors
that sustained Korean society during the latter half of the 20th
century. The family photo with four brightly smiling faces with
the backdrop of a decent job, a thousand square foot apartment,
and a mid-size sedan was a picture-perfect representation of
the reality of the material affluence created by rapid economic
growth. However, at the end of the last century, with the onset
of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, cracks started appearing in this
image of perfection. On the surface, it did not seem like the crisis
would last. A variety of emergency policy measures were issued by
the government, and the middle and the lower classes were ready
to march on to overcome the national crisis. Subsequently, the real
estate market started trending upwards, and it seemed that the
middle class myth was restored to its former self.
However, all became clear when the 2008 global financial
crisis, originating in the U.S., hit the world. A significant number
of the middle class was carrying on as if everything was normal
up until that point. At the sudden news from across the Pacific,
they started staggering as if they had been dealt a fatal blow. As
a result, the internal differentiation of the middle class rapidly
commenced, and the apartment, once the defining symbol of the
middle class, was demoted to becoming a mere nuisance.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Why did this happen?
First, let us turn our eyes towards the Gangnam area of the
mid to late 1970s when a concentration of massive apartment
complexes was constructed. A gaze from afar in a helicopter
looking over a construction site would be perfect. Looking at these
Gangnam apartments of the period from such a bird's-eye view,
it is difficult not to see its resemblance to a massive military base.
Of course, this sentiment is not new.
The observation that the overarching view of apartment
complexes resembled military bases was valid because they were
both constructed in a similar fashion. Both shared characteristics
that were apparent in the construction process; in the 70s and
80s, during the military regime, the construction of much of
these large complexes was conducted as if they were military
operations. Within this context, apartment units were approached
as standardized blueprints in terms of square footage, construction
materials, the complex layout, and their construction schedules.
The occupants were just statistics.
If apartments, indeed, were built in a manner comparable
to a military operation, what would be the ultimate goal of
maintaining such a militant perspective from conception to
completion? Could it have been the development of a particular
housing model that could then be duplicated on a massive scale in
new sections of Seoul and its satellite cities as the economy grew?
nowhere to hide. Therefore, a gaze exercises omnipotence, and
the space where that power is expressed at its maximum is the
living room. The objects in the living room are disarmed meekly,
without resistance, by the gaze of the person walking in through
the front door, and play the part of a picture that exists as lines on
a plane.
Korea Land & Housing Corporation apartment complex
under construction, 1976 (National Archives of Korea)
Could it, moreover, have been the development of a new order in
the daily life of the occupants of that model?
One of the phrases that the military regime used frequently
during the industrialization period, which led to the construction
of these apa r tments, wa s "huma n reform." Contra r y to
popular belief, the object of this reform was not limited to
industrial workers and agricultural producers. Of course, an
industrial worker was subjected to realizing the most optimized
consumption of physical energy by fusing himself to the machines
of the assembly line; an agricultural producer was to be reborn
as the pillar of the New Community Movement by equipping
himself with an earnest, diligent spirit. However, the middle class
that emerged along with the nation’s economic growth, was also
a subject of reform. The apartment was where this middle class
was reformed into city dwellers with contemporary sensibilities,
as if conducting experiments on the new order. As is well-known,
this experiment took place through the building of apartment
complexes in Gangnam for more than a decade, stretching from
the mid-1970s to the late 80s.
Inside the Frame
Now, let us open the front door and take a peek inside the
apartment itself. The living room plays a central role in the
resident's acquisition of a contemporary sensibility by allowing the
experience of a new day-to-day. The living room positions itself
as the space where the lives of family members (who have their
own rooms) intersect, and as a space where emotional bonds are
formed. In the midst of this process, the living room emerged as
the central axis of the interior space. Literary critic Kim Hyeon
says the following about the interior space of the 1,000 square feet
apartment he lived in during the early 80s:
"In an apartment, an object loses its volume and becomes
like a picture that exists as lines on a plane. Everything is laid
out on a plane. So, everything falls within sight at a glance. In
an apartment, all people as well as objects have no place to hide
themselves. Everything is out in the open. However that openness
is only superficial; it is not of depth."
According to Kim Hyeon, objects cannot find any place
suitable for hiding themselves in the interior space of an
apartment. They cannot help but be exposed since there is
view of the living room of an apartment in Gwacheon, 1991
(Saemikipunmul)
What plays an important role here is the window that is open
to the balcony, which takes up an entire wall of the living room.
This window, instead of displaying a view, is devoted to fulfilling
the functions of lighting and ventilation. Of course, it is not
difficult to look outside standing at the edge of the balcony while
leaning on the railing. However, it is of no use. The surrounding
view is far from an open scene; rather, the view is completely
blocked off. Other apartment buildings surround it on all sides.
Instead, the balcony window becomes a cause of concern for the
resident. It is the perfect passage for the anonymous gaze to peek
in, in secrecy, from the building on the other side. Tall fences were
commonly raised around single family houses. In contrast, in
apartments, the role of the fence was relegated to curtains on the
balcony window.
The interior space of this cube is sealed air-tight so as to block
out the outside gaze. The right to look into this space is given only
to those who have rung the bell and entered through the front
door. Upon entering, one’s gaze automatically falls on the balcony
window in the living room. At this moment, the balcony window
functions as a kind of a reference plane that renders the living
room in a single glance. Straight lines project out from the four
vertices of the reference plane and travel along the edges of the
inside corners, partitioning the visual field according to the rules
governing a perspective drawing. Subsequently, the gaze over the
living room is guided by these straight lines. In other words, as
the balcony window produces a sense of depth, the gaze charges
toward it.
Though the landscape of the living room was fixed by
the frame of perspective, it could not suppress the desire for
consumption by the middle class which had just completed
"acquiring my own castle." Some tried to decorate the living
room with expensive antiques and ornate furniture to show their
aristocratic taste; some, unable to withstand the inhuman texture
of such artificial materials as concrete and metal, tried to dress
their interior space and objects in frills, following trends in interior
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
17
Special Section
design; yet others, lamenting that they must live in a gardenless
house, created an artificial garden with a variety of plants and
ornamental trees in the living room and on the balcony.
Because the beginning of the apartment building age was
marked by all manners of trends in interior design that swept
through living rooms, some called the situation inside apartments
the warehouse of the kitsch. Yet this new middle class had only
just acquired their own apartments, and they could not pay
attention to such criticisms. The majority of them were entrusted,
without much preparation, with the duty of filling the empty
frame, and they had yet to acquire the modern sensibility befitting
the interior space of the apartments.
In the meantime, the television as object played the role of
subduing the chaos in the living room. The television, whose
place in a single-family home was originally in the main bedroom,
moved out to the living room and achieved a visual balance of
the interior space. First of all, by capitalizing on the eye-catching
quality of the screen, the television provided the basic frame
for composition in the placement of objects. It is the layout of a
theater. On one side of the living room was the television, and on
the opposite side was the couch.
Next, the television intervened in the logic behind the interior
design of individual objects. The new design element of the
television, which became widely available with the introduction
of color broadcasting in the beginning of the 1980s, played an
important role at this stage. The television, once produced in a
style resembling wooden furniture, became a black plastic box
with a modern look. It reigned over the living room space along
with the home stereo system and the videotape player.
In step with such changes, other objects placed in the living
room also started changing in relation to the television. Now, the
objects obeyed the approach of modern design, form following
function, and started finding their places in the interior of the
living room frame.
Satellite Cities
As the massive apartment complexes constructed in Gangnam
during the 1970s and 80s became established as the model
residential arrangement of the middle class, apartment buildings
very rapidly began occupying the new urban center of Seoul as
well as the new satellite cities in the surrounding area. These
Soviet-style concrete buildings were constructed in the areas of
Mokdong, Sanggye, Junggye, and Gwacheon during the 80s; they
were built in five new satellite cities during the 90s: Bundang,
Ilsan, Pyeongcheon, Jungdong, and Sanbon. These buildings
were claimed as their shares by some of those belonging to the
generation born in the 1940s and 60s; this group was raising
families and "acquiring my own castle" as opportunities arose.
In the 1980s, in the new urban centers of Seoul, the majority of
these individuals were able to purchase apartments at the price
of $1,300 per 35 square feet; in the new satellite cities, the price
was $2,000 per 35 square feet during the 90s. These prices were
relatively low, a result of a government housing supply policy built
on the village industry policy inspired by Henry Ford.
Some bought their apartments with the money they earned
as workers on construction sites in Middle Eastern deserts; some
purchased theirs with lump sums saved after years of work; some
had theirs bought for them by their parents. A significant number
of these buyers were members of the white collar work force before
moving into apartments; after their move, they started planning
the life of middle class consumers.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Two economic bubbles caused the steep rise in the prices of
apartment buildings. One in the mid to late 70s was due to the
success of an export-centered economic policy, and the other in
the mid to late 80s was due to the three lows—low oil prices, low
interest rates, and low dollar-to-yen exchange rate—which gave
Korean products a more competitive edge in the world market. In
turn, the middle class that owned these apartments enjoyed that
much more economic power. It was this economic prosperity that
enabled new apartment dwellers to experience the new order in
their daily lives and acquire a modern taste and sensibility.
From this perspective, prior to the government-instated
regulation policies in the first decade of the new millennium,
apartments were a social system that distributed material wealth
in favor of the middle class. The sources of this energy—what
powered this system that virtually became a substitute for a social
welfare system—were the 10-year cycles of high economic growth.
However, the situation changed after the financial crisis of
1997, otherwise known as the IMF Crisis due to the subsequent
IMF bailout. The economy staggered; government regulations on
real estate grew weaker or were lifted altogether. One thing that
did not change, however, was the desire for asset income, a desire
that had become familiar to residents after 20 years of apartment
ownership. The skyrocketing apartment prices in the first half
of the first decade of the new millennium was the result of this
desire’s having inflated its own volume using bank loans. Signs
that signaled the entry into a low-growth society were all over the
economy, but the middle class did not even blink.
Now after 10 years, the era of slow economic growth is
unfolding before our very eyes. The bleakest social problems are
household debt and the low birth rate. Before the year 2000, the
household debt equaled about 10 billion dollars. Before anyone
noticed, it crept up to 100 billion. The annual birth rate, which
was once 600,000 to 700,000 babies a year, is barely hanging
on at 400,000 a year since 2002. The time is coming in which
a middle class life, once symbolized by the apartment, can no
longer be sustained. Then, will we be able to design a daily life
that will be compatible with the era of slow economic growth
while we avoid inviting in a bubble economy? It is in this vein that
a post-apartment-era housing model must be considered first, even
before preparing for the future of a slow growth society. It will not
be easy, but overcoming the temptation of pursuing asset income
and material affluence will be the first hurdle to overcome.
by Park Hae-cheon
Special Section
Imagined Spaces:
The Apartment in Literature
While apartments filled the physical
landscape of the city, the lives of those living
in these identical, stifling boxes ignited the
imaginations of writers.
1.
Is it heaven or hell? Koreans cannot ask this of the apartment
because the apartment in Korea is already a permanent reality.
A lthough the apartment is one of the by-products of the
architectural nightmare that was conceived of by modern man,
it was the best choice for Korea. Korea is a country that, like a
mirage, was built on the ruins of the Korean War. What sustained
this country was the power of urbanization and centralization.
People who aimlessly moved to Seoul, a Korean megalopolis,
provided cheap labor, and their residences were usually traditional
houses or shacks. Residential space was always scarce. Also,
the city structure, which was a collaboration of every type of
residency, was impoverished. As a result of rapid modernization,
traditional villages and residential space became saturated. Under
those circumstances, the apartment became a middle class dream.
Of course, the apartment could not have been originally
considered a normal residential space. In Jo Jung-rae’s novel The
Sloping Shade, written in 1973, the main character Bok-cheon, an
old man, learns that “people live in layers on different floors of tall
five or six story buildings, not just one or two story buildings,”
and finds it strange that “people light fires above someone else’s
head, and that someone else lights fires above another; people use
the toilet and someone eats meals below them; meanwhile, people
bear and raise children; people are laid over other people, and they
make a home and live a life over one another.”
Soon, however, the advantages of the apartment emerged. The
apartment is a housing style that nakedly reflects the speed of
modernization specific to Korea. It is simply a product of historical
amnesia. The square, vertical city is built where nature, wetlands,
1
2
3
1. The Flower at the Equator
Choi In-ho
2. A Stranger’s Room
Choi In-ho, Minumsa Publishing Group.
2005, 426p, ISBN 9788937420092
3. The Sloping Shade
Jo Jung-rae, Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd.
2011, 300p, ISBN 9788965740049
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
19
Special Section
villages, and roads have disappeared without a trace. The residents
moving into an apartment building are homogeneous, anonymous
beings. Anyone who knows how individuals were destroyed
by the impact of a foreign government system, and about the
interference of community in Korean modern history, could
easily assume what a relief it must have been to hide behind the
anonymous space of an apartment. Once the entrance door is
closed, they could protect their family with the minimum level
of peace allowed to them. Moreover, as their properties became
easily quantified, even their lives became abstract and nomadic.
Government housing policy was always structured around the
apartment, which could have a large effect in a short period of
time. In doing so, Korea has become a republic of apartments.
Natura lly, numerous Korea n litera r y work s f ind t he
apartments as their only habitat. The most representative work
among all of these is Choi In-ho’s The Flower at the Equator (1982).
The protagonist of the novel is a man called by his initial, M. He
starts peeking in secrecy at every move of a young woman who
just moved into the apartment across from him. For more effective
observation, he purchases a telescope and starts photographing her
with his camera. He thinks, “If I could peek into that apartment
through my telescope, I would be able to see every detail of her
beautiful face and her sometimes angry or tired expressions, as if I
were a pathologist, observing the multiplication of bacteria using a
microscope.”
Life in the apartment is visualized in this way, and the
residents of the apartment unconsciously suffer from voyeurism.
The relationship between “the one who sees” and “the one who
is seen” finally makes M entertain a fantasy of power. He intends
to intervene and control her life. Therefore, he comes to think,
“If I could make her into a plaster sculpture, if I could have her,
a living being turned into an object of taxidermy, and if I could
stuff her, decorate the surrounding with all kinds of f lowers
and colorful leaves of the trees, and lay her down around me.”
What enables such voyeurism is his solitude, isolated without his
family. In the short story "A Stranger's Room" by the same writer,
even when a couple lives together, the ghostliness of being does
not disappear. In this story, the husband who came back from a
business trip slowly turns into an object while reading his wife’s
letter that reveals she is having an affair.
2.
Let us now turn to a brief overview of novels by women, the
genuine inhabitants of apartments. The images of these women
were portrayed in Choi In-ho’s The Flower at the Equator: “What
remains are only rooms of the same standard, the spaces of the
same size, the partitions of the same structure as anywhere else,
and any home in the apartment. Therefore, a woman’s everyday
life in this space, laughing, crying, eating, being in love, talking,
making love, loathing, and wailing, is merely an apparition, such
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
as a shadow play featured on a screen.”
Park Wansuh’s short stor y "The Resemblant Rooms,"
published in 1974, is probably the first fiction that dealt with the
space of the apartment and women’s lives. This residential space
that was sought out of an expectation of a convenient life is soon
regarded as an object of disgust. In the story, life is compared
to that of a “prisoner serving a life sentence.” One night, the
protagonist in the story goes to the apartment next to hers while
the woman next door is away, visiting her parents. She then has
sex with the man next door, who was asleep. However, because
everything there is just like her own place, it does not even occur
to her that she is committing adultery.
Since 1990, the apartment in novels has spread its roots
deeper in women’s lives and started to take a bleaker tone. In Jeon
Gyeong-rin ’s novel The Woman Herding Goats, the protagonist
keeps calling to ask about the price of a house by the river.
However, she and her friends are not able to escape the apartment.
The apartment has just become a bright prison cell for these
women. It is a nightmarish life, which can be summed up in these
words: “On a quiet afternoon when I look at the chicken cooplike households partitioned only by walls, I get caught up with
a feeling more absurd than when I hear the most bizarre story
in the world; a mature woman is in each partition; each of them
cooks, cleans for a man; when their men come back at night, they
fulfill their sexual duties; they go to their men’s house to hold a
memorial ceremony for his ancestors… And they gave birth to a
child or two; men complain that they can’t even die because of
their family; in that chicken coop a normal woman spends five
to 10 years raising children by herself… And then, one day, she
wakes up at dawn, and her feet have stiffened and become hard.
She finds herself unable to walk out and leave forever.” Therefore,
a goat forcibly left behind by a certain man could represent
the desire of a woman who wants to escape a space, such as the
apartment.
In the novel The Fruit of My Woman, the writer Han Kang
contemplates this sort of life in the apartment, extending her view
to the entire city. A mysterious bruise has spread over the body
of the protagonist’s wife, which seems to be a disease caused by
living in the apartment: “I feel like I am slowly drying up towards
death here, where, supposedly, seven hundred thousand people
are gathered and living. I hate the several hundred or thousand
people in the same building, the same kitchen in each partition,
the same ceiling, the same toilet, bathtub, and even elevator. I
hate it all: the park, the playground, the shopping center, and the
crosswalk.” Unlike the narrator who desires the average life of
a city dweller, the apartment is nothing but a barren space that
cannot bear any kind of life for her. In this space, she dreams
that she has transformed into a giant plant, “breaking the ceiling
of the veranda, passing through the upstairs’ veranda, going up
through the 15th, 16th floor, breaking cement and steel bars, and
stretching all the way up to the rooftop.” This becomes reality.
In the novel A Wife’s Box by Eun Hee-kyung, the wife falls
into a deep sleep instead of turning into a plant. In Insects, by
Oh Soo-yeon, the insects swarming the apartments are the
problem. “All kinds of insects that should belong to the jungles
keep rushing into the apartments. How could we have so many
of these various and countless insects in a new satellite city next
to Seoul, where all is covered by cement and asphalt?” No one
knows. Nevertheless, all the people who live there quietly endure
because they have to pay for apartments they can barely afford.
Apartments are paid for with retirement benefits from working all
their lives, or mortgages that take entire lifetimes to pay back. The
protagonist goes to see a dermatologist and only wants to have her
skin problem treated. However, at the end of her fight against the
insects, she also turns into a giant insect.
3.
So far, the novels mentioned have shown, in fact, how deeply eager
Koreans are for a life after apartments. Apartments have continued
to evolve, ref lecting this desire. But life in the apartment is
fundamentally a life in which everything is quantified and
abstracted. Even giving birth and raising a child are calculated by
the expense, not out of joy and appreciation. Apartment residents
want reasonable and convenient lives. Nonetheless, from an
unseen place, such as deep inside our subconscious or in a space
unknown to us, screams rise up, and resistance begins. People
become sick and turn into objects, and the insects swarm.
Of course, here, a dilemma exits. Many people feel that life in
an apartment is unbearable. But at the same time, most of these
people show reluctance towards an inconvenient, non-apartment
living environment. It may be true that poets and writers are
particularly negative about apartments. Because if literature is
to continuously pursue the fundamental contemplation of life,
the space of the apartment, with its homogeneous, abstract,
and one-dimensional characteristics is, in many ways, the space
of anti-literature. The apartment is not suitable to dreams. In
apartment buildings, human beings merely transform into noise,
a bothersome nuisance, between floors, and naturally, poetry
emerges even there:
Pleasant Noise
by Ko Young-min
If someone downstairs drives a nail into the wall
The whole building vibrates.
To make
A crack in a huge building
The whole building gives up its own seat.
If a mirror gets hung in the crack, over a nail,
Look, if we yield little by little, just little by little,
It's not a problem at all
For a person to enter.
The noise in the middle of night,
I smile and endure.
Korean poets are bound to ask, “What do the poets of today’s
apartments write?” One can dream of escaping the apartment, but
the reality makes it difficult. Therefore, Ko gazes into the space of
the apartment and wants to find hope there. As a being nailed into
the square, concrete walls, this pained, citizenry-minded creature's
slow yielding in order to accept the other is desperate, and at the
same time, beautiful.
The ethics of the apartment building is integrated into the
noise between f loors. Despite the desperate wish for a postapartment world, our reality remains in re-building or remodeling the preexisting apartments. Thus, the city dweller in
that world must should endure the noise between f loors and
minimize one’s own noise for others.
by Son Jong-up
4
8
7
4. A Long Day
Park Wansuh, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2012, 290p, ISBN 9788954617383
5. The Woman Herding Goats
Jeon Gyeong-rin, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
1996, 326p, ISBN 8985712993
6. The Empty House
Oh Soo-yeon, Kang Publishing
1997, 292p, ISBN 9788982180149
5
7. A Wife’s Box (1996 Yi Sang Literary Award
Anthology)
Eun Hee-kyung et al., Munhaksasang Co., Ltd.
1998, 430p, ISBN 9788970122847
8. The Fruit of My Woman
Han Kang, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2000, 328p, ISBN 9788936436575
6
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
21
Interview
A Miner of Language:
Literary Critic Lee O-young
An exceptionally eminent scholar, writer, and critic, Lee O-young has lived
through Korea’s tumultuous changes throughout his 80 years.
Lee takes a look at his career and the cultural contributions he has made
to understanding Korea and her neighboring countries, China and Japan.
1
Kim Do-eon: You have devoted your life to varied creative pursuits,
starting with your career as a literary critic, then novelist, poet,
playwright, contemporary literature scholar, semiologist, Japanese
culture scholar, opening and closing ceremonies director for the 1988
Seoul Olympics, as well as the first Minister of Culture, instrumental in
implementing cultural policies. But your starting point was literature.
I find this to be very meaningful. How did it come to be that literature
was your introduction to your creative career?
Lee O-Young: Literature is an art form that has language as its
medium. I’ve worked in many different fields, but they all required
imaginative work with language as their foundation. Also, I was in
elementary school during the Japanese occupation when the Korean
language was banned from schools, on top of which we had to change
our names into Japanese ones. I lost the Korean I learned from my
mother as a three-year-old. I think this encouraged a strong awareness of
my native language. It wasn’t until middle school that I learned to read
and write Korean. There are many writers in the world, but you’ll rarely
come across writers like me who are writing in the native language they
lost and then managed to learn again at the age of 13.
Others may take it for granted, but even now, I believe the ability to
write freely in Korean has been the greatest blessing of my life, and I am
grateful for it. People think that I’ve had many jobs in many fields, but
that is a misunderstanding. I’ve had only one occupation: as a miner of
language.
2
3
Kim: In This Earth and In That Wind is your most well-known
work. It’s one of very few books in the history of Korean publishing that
has never gone out of print in the 50 years since it was first published,
and it has sold over 2.5 million copies. What was your intention
in writing this book, and what do you believe is the reason for its
widespread popularity?
Lee: In This Earth and In That Wind is a steady seller, and amongst
my works it has also been translated into the greatest number of foreign
languages. It’s been translated into English, Japanese, Chinese, and
Russian. I believe there was a great interest in this book because it dealt
with Korean culture. Considering the publishing climate in 1960s
Korea, when getting a book published was itself a challenge, it was
almost miraculous that my book was published in so many languages. I
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
1. The Semiotics of Space
Lee O-young, Minumsa Publishing Group
2000, 508p, ISBN 8937411423
2. In This Earth and In That Wind
Lee O-young, Munaksasang Co., Ltd.
2008, 290p, ISBN 9788970128201
3. Smaller Is Better: Japan’s Mastery
of the Miniature
Lee O-young, Munhaksasang Co., Ltd.
2008, 437p, ISBN 9788970128252
Interview
"To me, language was
a bamboo arrow in the
beginning, but later
turned into a brush."
literary critic Lee O-young and novelist Kim Do-eon
was surprised. This was a time when even educated foreigners
couldn’t have given you a confident answer if you’d asked them
whether the Korean language had its own alphabet.
It was first translated and published as a volume in the
Royal Asiatic Society series, but after that, commercial
publishers took an interest and picked it up. I think the book
owes its domestic and foreign success to its frank portrayal
of Korean culture. Generally speaking, when a Korean
writes a book about Korea, they tend to take a patriotic or
masochistically self-critical angle. But my depiction of Korea in
this book is as frank and true to life as looking into a shaving
mirror.
There was actually an incident that inspired this book.
We were driving through the countryside in a jeep when the
driver urgently honked at an old couple on the dirt road ahead
of us. The startled old couple grabbed each other’s hands and
ran straight ahead like chicken or ducks. They had never come
across a jeep in their lives, and did not know how to make way
for one on a dirt road where they’d only ever seen carriages.
That image was burned into my memory. So I thought I
should write about the surprised expression, the way Koreans
are chased ahead like animals, and how desperately they cling
to each other’s hands.
Kim: Your other well-known work Smaller Is Better: Japan’s
Mastery of the Miniature, is critically acclaimed as a masterpiece
in the field of Japanese culture theory. I’ve read articles written
by many Japanese readers including critics such as Karatani
Kojin, who revisited this book nearly 30 years later. Your
interest in Japan and China has encouraged you to establish
the Korea-China-Japan Comparative Culture Research Center.
Was it the geographical proximity, or were there other aspects
that drew you to this field?
Lee: I wrote that book in Japanese and the manuscript
was published by a Japanese publisher. It’s not a translation,
so the down-to-earth voice comes alive in the text. As I have
mentioned earlier, I’d learned Japanese before Korean, and so
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
this ability is also a scar that history left on me. The upside,
however, was that I was able to look at Japanese culture from
an unbiased, childlike point of view, much like the child
from the fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans
Christian Anderson.
For instance, we had a folk painting at home depicting
munbangsau (writing materials such as paper, brushes, and
inkstone), but at my Japanese friend’s house, I would see
Japanese swords in the tokonoma (alcove where objects of
value are displayed). When my mother saw a kitchen knife
around the house in any room other than the kitchen, she
would quickly remove it, saying it was bulsangjimul, or an
“inauspicious object.” This is a pretty significant cultural
difference. Of course, in the West, people eat holding knives.
It is the same with China. When we were young, we
referred to the Chinese as “silk merchants.” The Korean
word for merchant, sangin, comes from the Chinese
word, shangren, which means “person from the Shang
dynasty.” In the eyes of Koreans who scorned merchant
activities, all Chinese immigrants must have seemed like
merchants. Perhaps because I had this firsthand experience
with the Chinese as a child, I was able to be free from the
preconceived notion of China as an inherently Confucian
culture. The Japanese and Chinese inside me helped me
define the identity of Korean culture and also instinctively
distinguish between Western and East Asian culture. This
later led me to cultural theory and, further, 21st century
civilization theory.
Kim: In your literary criticism, you have worked through
1950s existentialism and then moved on to semiotics and
structuralism. How did you first become interested in
structuralism? You also wrote The Semiotics of Space, a
seminal work, as your focus shifted to littérature engagée,
phenomenology, semiotics, and structuralism. Could you tell
us a little bit about this book?
Lee: The culture of man tends to evolve, and I have
always had a propensity for self-renewal. Until the April
Revolution of 1960, my language was the language of
engagement. To use an analogy, it was like an arrow shot at
a target. Bamboo is used to make arrows, one of the most
primitive weapons. But bamboo is also used to make brushes,
the writing utensil of the East. To me, in the beginning,
language was a bamboo arrow but later it turned into a
brush. Language evolved from a tool to language for the sake
of language. And in that transition, I became interested in
semiotics. Mikhail Bakhtin, in his analysis of Dostoevsky,
claimed that drama always happens on the threshold, and
Roland Barthes also attempted to analyze Racine by utilizing
the concept of space.
The Semiotics of Space was my analysis of the Korean poet
Yu Chi-hwan’s works based on the idea that they are composed
of architectural spaces. For instance, when I analyzed “Flag,” a
poem by Yu Chi-hwan, I did not see it as an ideological symbol
but saw it from a spatial point of view. It doesn’t embody the
idea of rising up to the sky or plummeting to the ground. It
is simply suspended, fluttering in between. And that is how
the poetics of the flag as a space between the sky and earth,
inside and outside, was born. I discovered that the language of
literature carries new symbolic meaning depending on its spatial
location.
Actually, semiotics and structuralism are at the heart of
the school of Yin-Yang and the Five Elements or I Ching. This
becomes self-evident when we see people influenced by these
philosophical concepts choose sites for houses or graves based on
geomancy and have specific places for specific food when setting
the table for memorial rites. In Korea, even wailing is based
on semiotics. When a person dies, the cries of the bereaved are
different from other mourners. I believe that analyzing Korean
things through its traditional symbols is a valid approach. In the
end, this is connected to the act of finding the Korean identity.
terms like gyeongseo or wiseo to refer to books. Gyeongseo and
wiseo mean “warp” and “weft” respectively, as in weaving. Books
are the weft, and readers use the warp to weave fabric. This
fabric is the text. Texts and books are phenomena that occur
in the interface between writers and readers. Also, all texts are
interwoven. Strictly speaking, all texts borrow from other texts.
This is called the hypertext. The crisis we face today has less
to do with medium and more to do with textuality. Whether
books are made of paper is not the main issue. We must ponder
on what we would share and how to fight against the decay of
time. These days, non-linguistic signifiers, such as emoticons,
have a greater ring than linguistic ones. I believe these things
should be taken into consideration in discussing text-based
books.
Kim: You are 80 this year, and yet you don’t seem old. You
don’t feel old, do you?
Lee: I don’t. If you look at the number 8 sideways, it
becomes the sign or infinity or the Möbius Strip. “8” disappears
from “80” and becomes two zeros. In other words, “80” is three
empty circles. In the end, whether you’re old or young is entirely
up to your imagination.
by Kim Do-eon
Kim: You played a key role in founding Munhaksasang,
a leading Korean literary magazine. You actively introduced
internationally renowned literary figures such as Alain RobbeGrillet, Eugène Ionesco, and Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu
through special features. What did you hope to accomplish by
introducing them to Korean readers?
Lee: I introduced these writers to Korea specifically because
of their ideological standpoints, not just because they were
popular and well-respected. They were handpicked in the spirit
of overcoming the obstacles of modernity through intellectual
solidarity among writers with a critical eye on contemporary
material civilization. The East and West have great potential to
benefit from one another through interaction. Japan developed
the technology to mass produce the video player invented in
the West, and Nam June Paik, a Korean artist, used it as his
medium of artistic expression.
Kim: I understand you were invited to give a talk at the
Tokyo International Book Fair opening event. What do you
plan to discuss?
Lee: The key topic these days is whether books will
continue to exist in the future. But I wonder if books are indeed
predicated upon certain morphological conditions. Is a book
text on paper? I don’t believe so. In Eastern tradition, we use
In This Earth and In That Wind
and its translated versions
Lee O-young is a literary critic born in 1934, although this title alone
is not enough to describe his illustrious career. An essayist who produced
many bestselling books, he also writes novels and plays as well as reviews.
He also founded the monthly Munhaksasang in 1972 and developed it into a
leading magazine of Korean literature. Lee is a professor renowned at home
and abroad and a researcher of Korean classical literature. He was the culture
planner who organized the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1988 Seoul
Olympics. When the Korean government launched the Ministry of Culture,
he was appointed the first minister. But it is literary criticism that is at the
core of his literary career. His works include: Digilog; In This Earth and
In That Wind; Smaller Is Better: Japan’s Mastery of the Miniature; and The
Semiotics of Space.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
25
Excerpt
In This Earth
and In That Wind
by Lee O-young
Introduction
1. Behind the Landscape
It was a county road not even on maps; a road which can be seen in
any rural part of Korea if you go a little off any national highway;
loess, gravel, and here and there white plantains were in bloom. The
road that winds along the base of the mountain extended, tracing a
lonely curve without a human sign. Country people usually call it a
“cart track.”
We drove along that road in a jeep. Through the windshield,
a little more than two spans, I was looking at my homeland;
my village, the same as ever, common, constrained, solitary and
impoverished; a landscape buried as it has been for many years in
the blankness of oblivion. It was a still and simple landscape of
broken thatch roofs, stone walls, broken stone tablets along a stream
lined by poplars, the Confucian study hall, abandoned graves with
their grass plots, acacia, and barley fields.
There was a stillness like the beating of an egret’s wings, a ripple
in a pool, a withered leaf falling, a shadowed valley. But it was akin
to the stillness around a ruin, a stillness neither to be understood
nor wholly explained simply as nostalgia. A lazy sorrow and drowsy
stagnation gaped like a void or a deep wound, a sort of pain rather
than beauty. Without looking into that void or wound, you cannot
truly understand the weak-colored landscape stretching out there.
You cannot feel this without seeing the swollen stomachs of the
village children, without smelling the sweat of the rural wives with
their gaunt cheekbones, and without hearing their songs and their
way of speaking nonchalantly to one another.
As the jeep turned a corner on an eroded hill and began to go
down I saw all these things. Although it happens too often and is
too trifling to be called an incident, it made a strong impression in
on me.
In front walked an old couple. Although they were frightened
by the sound of the horn and rushed to try to escape, they seemed
to be too frightened. They suddenly grasped each other’s hands and
awkwardly ran in front of the car without stopping; and then, as their
rubber shoes had fallen off, they stumbled backward to pick them
up. The car almost ran them over. This is the whole story of what
happened then. It was in sight only for tens of seconds and the car
again sped on, leaving them behind as if nothing had happened.
The driver first laughed at their folly and then got angry, but
that also was over in a moment. He drove on expressionless, but
I remembered everything exactly, and the image did not easily
dissipate.
Their faces, suntanned and full of blistered freckles, the fearful
and upset expressions, and the contour of their backs as they fled
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
like staggering animals; two withered hands tightly clasping each
other without wanting to let go even in that emergency, one hand
holding a bag with dried haddock sticking out, one hand intending
to pick up a pair of rubber shoes… trembling hands….
I have seen Koreans, I have encountered the image of my
ancestors who have lived that way for a thousand years; the image
of the chased! That image was not as refined as that of a foreigner
who leisurely escapes from a car on an asphalt road. Like the driver’s
meaningless laughter, their fleeting images reminded me of a flock
of ducks and chickens on the roadside as they run away, with the
flapping of wings, in front of a speeding car.
W hen misfortune, povert y, a nd t yra nny, a nd so ma ny
unexpected disasters assailed them without warning, did they have
to be chased away with the gestures of animals? Did they have to
escape with such an expression and such trembling hands?
Our secret and our hearts are in this atmosphere; in this earth
and in that wind which is so like the color of our skin.
2. On Crying
With cries and moans
The birds fly overhead.
Tremendous sorrow nests in me
And cries and moans after I wake.1
Like these lines from the Goryeo dynasty’s “Song of Green
Mountain,” there are those who, whenever they wake up, spend the
day crying and in tears. In sorrow they cry, in hunger they cry, and
in grievance they cry. Even when they are merry they cry because
they are happy. Although the Native American Sioux Indians are
known to be a people who cry easily, they can never equal our
Korean people.
One cannot speak of Korea without mentioning crying and tears.
Not only do we cry but we hear everything as crying. It all begins
with the word “to cry.” When we hear any sound, we automatically
call it “crying.” We translate the English “birds sing” as “birds cry.”
Although “sing” means to sing a song, we express it as crying because
even the same bird sounds which Westerners hear as a merry song, we
hear as sad crying. Even the Chinese, another Asian people, strictly
distinguish between the word 勈(a bird call), ୐(to twitter or chirp)
and ⊷(to weep silent tears). But we even say that the sound of bells
is crying and that the sound of rice paper rustling in the wind on the
edge of a Korean-style sliding door is also crying.
In the following poem it is written, “In the bedroom the lighted
candle burns. From whom is it separated that it cries on the outside
and burns within?” Burning candles are described as crying. And
the Joseon dynasty official Wang Bang-yon (⥟䙺㸡), in the line
“Last night the crying stream shed tears,” heard the sound of a
brook flowing as loud crying. Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who has been
called the greatest Korean naval hero, in his “Diary in Wartime”
shed tears, saying, “Crying, crying, waiting only for death.” As in
the Silla dynasty song “Epitaph Dedicated to Chuk-ji”(ᜩネᮼ䚲
℠), “Everything weeps longing for the past spring.” There are tears
in every tree and in the grass, in the endless reverberations of a bell,
and in the sound of a stream. Perhaps we have heard everything in
this way because we are a people of many sorrows.
There is a proverb “The hand spinning-wheel eats up the cotton
while its sounds are like crying.” How many tears have welled up
in the hearts of spinning girls as they turned wheels under the dim
lamp? So the girls heard the sound of the click-clack of the spinning
wheel as the sound of sobbing, and saw their own fate in the features
of the wheel as it devoured the cotton. Thus what they must do
helplessly in tears is termed “crying while eating up cotton.”
A certain scholar of Korean literature indicated that “The custom
of our people is that everything begins and ends with crying.” When
a person dies, he continues, “the first and the 15th days of the month
are traditionally set aside as days of crying” and “one should mourn
from the day of death until the coffin leaves the house. The day
after the burial one mourns. Afterwards on each first and 15th of
the month one must offer sacrifices to one’s ancestors with crying.”
They don’t mourn simply, but according to a very “musical manner,”
a formalized ritual of weeping. Even when it is not a memorial day,
when we hear rural women complain and sob, we marvel afresh at the
rural women complain and sob, we marvel afresh at their wonderfully
delicate compositions with varied tempos, like the Yukjabagi folk
songs and the sinawi rhythms. A son is dutiful when he cries, as is a
loyal subject and a faithful widow. Perhaps this has given rise to the
hypothesis that “if you don’t cry, you are not Korean.”
In my country, where there were no dance parties, even love was
expressed with tears, Most of the old love stories begin in this fashion:
“One dim moonlit night a frail woman sobs in an isolated house. A
stranger hears the sound of this crying and asks the woman why she is
so sad…” In this way love begins to blossom with a lonely widow. Are
tears a harmonizing pill which will solve the relations between the
sexes? As in the proverb “Tears fill the vale,” so tears cover our land.
This is evident in the most trifling movie or in radio soap operas
where no other country can equal our crying. The crying is such
that any actor can do it wonderfully. This is because what we have
inherited from our ancestors is this ability for crying and tears.
Why on earth do we have to cry this way? And why do we
glamorize our crying and bring our tears into our daily lives, and
how in these tears did we forge our morals? Can we say that our arts
and culture sprang forth and grew in the tears as clear as crystal?
3. The Shrimp in the East Sea
It’s strange. Unlike other peoples, we have been especially
conscious of the geographical shape of our country. The shape of
the peninsula, which is often compared to a rabbit,2 is used in the
design of newspaper mastheads, as a trademark on rubber shoes,
and everywhere else. On the wall of the bedroom of a dilapidated
thatched hut we sometimes find the shape of the Korean peninsula
embroidered with the rose of Sharon and leaf designs. Although
the embroidery is clumsy and the flyspecked frame so very poor, it
somehow contains the desires of the people and touches our hearts.
Of course the French have loved the Seine, and the Germans
have the myth of the Rhine. But these are only a part of their
territory. To carve the country’s shape like an emblem or to praise it
as “three thousand li of magnificent landscape”3 is rare indeed.
Even in the Japan of the past when chauvinism ran wild, they
used as emblems their wooden clogs, the geta, or the peak of Mount
Fuji or the cherry blossoms; but the geographical configuration of
the country was not emphasized.
Actually there is a sad reason why we have behaved like this:
granted that the geographical shape is beautiful and unique,
it is chief ly because we have worried keenly about the possible
disappearance of our land.
China is a vast land 50 times larger than ours; there are also
the wide plains of the north where powerful nomadic tribesmen
rose and fell—how could we not be concerned about the fate of our
country, a people living on a small peninsula stretching out from a
corner of Asia?
Our obsession with aggression has existed since the beginning of
our history. We do not talk about 3,000 li because our country is so
big or so small. This is neither pride nor a lament; it is assurance and
a kind of reaffirmation.
When our land was taken by the Japanese, and now that our
country is divided, the shape of the rabbit which is carved in our
gears and this clump of earth called “three thousand li” is indelible.
When we hear children loudly singing the anthem “The
peninsula of three thousand li,” it is like an appeal to the people of
the world that, “This land is ours, please keep your hands off it.”
When we open the map of Asia and study it, it reminds us why
we have lived all our lives in suffering. Our geographical position is
a fateful one. We know that this has given rise to the proverb, “When
whales fight, the shrimp suffers.”
As we may know from the position of the Great Wall of China,
which divided the Asian continent into north and south, wars are
waged continuously. In the north were the empires of the wild
nomadic tribes, the Mongols and the Hsiungnu; in the south was
the great agricultural empire, China. They continuously fought for
power. Unfortunately, since this peninsula was placed on the eastern
border of the north-south powers, it had to be in the position of a
sad shrimp.
That is the way it is. Our nation was not a rabbit, but a shrimp.
If the shrimp wants to survive, she must quickly weigh the two
powers and attach herself to the stronger one. People castigate this
approach as toadyism, but without it the lonely shrimp in the East
Sea would have had no future for a single moment.
The Goryeo dynasty survived by attaching itself to the Chinese
Song dynasty in the south, and when the Liao in the north became
strong, it had to ally with them. When the Yüan became powerful,
Goryeo then had to change again.
The fate of this country which had to serve the master of the
continent, whether we liked it or not, swung back and forth time
after time like a pendulum to the master nation—from the Yuan to
the Ming, and from Ming to the Ch’ing in the north-south.4
Although we had our own nation, we couldn’t even use official
titles for our own kings.
While living by our wits, we still had to suffer from aggression
and oppression, and each time the bud of our culture was nipped. In
recent centuries our relationships, caught between Japan and Russia,
have become even more complicated.
We have a country, but we are really a wandering group. Now
there are no north and south groups; instead the shrimp is caught in
the eastern and western whales’ struggles. Our people have not been
able to say “We are masters of this land.” The “wanderers in their
own fatherland” can only affirm that this is their land by uttering
“three thousand li” or by looking at the shape of the country drawn
in newspapers or on the bottom of rubber shoes.
These have been the tears of our people, sobbing from hunger…
the tears of political struggle like playing yut, and crying from not
being able to call our fatherland “my fatherland.” Our tears were
shed over all our earth and in all our wind.
translated by David I. Steinberg
1. Anthology of Korean Poetry, compiled and translated by Peter H. Lee (New York: John Day Co., 1964).
2. The map of Korea looks like a rabbit facing west with its large ears to the north. It is a common symbol
for Korea.
3. A li is approximately one-third of a mile. “Three thousand li” is a common expression used in describing
Korea.
4. Goryeo (918-1392) was a Korean kingdom, while the others mentioned were Chinese or became
sinicized empires; the Liao (907-1168), the Song (960-1279), the Yüan (1280-1368), Ming (1368-1644)
and Ch’ing (1644-1911).
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
27
Interview
The Most Grotesque
Is the Most Realistic
With Novelist Cheon Un-yeong
Shin Hyoung-cheol: “The Needle,” (2000) your debut work, is
still talked about today and cited as your major work. Is it because
of the intensity of the first encounter, or is it because it's your best
work in reality?
1
Cheon Un-yeong: It could mean that “The Needle” really is a
good piece of writing, or it could mean that in the 10 years since
I wrote it, I haven’t been able to write anything that surpasses it.
Either way, it’s like a fetter to me. What had built up inside me for
30 years came forth for the first time in the form of a story, so it
must’ve had that much impact. And it naturally must have made
a strong impression because it deals with a subject matter and
theme rarely found in Korean literature. There has been enormous
pressure from both inside and out to write something even more
intense and original, but I’ve freed myself from that pressure. The
intensity of the first encounter can never be relived. But you can
show evolution and change over a period of time. My best work is
nothing other than my best efforts to write what’s built up inside
me.
2
Shin: Since the publication of “The Needle,” there have been
imitations of your work, and critics have focused their attention
on that. Perhaps “The Needle” has been able to meet the demands
of the times. Did you write it with an awareness of what was
lacking in Korean literature, or with an innate need to write?
3
Cheon: I didn’t, of course, write it with a strategic decision
regarding the current state of Korean literature. I’ve always
thought that writing a novel means writing something my body
has to do. It’s possible, though, that a thirst for what I didn’t see
in Korean literature had built up inside my body.
Shin: Are there writers who had a decisive effect on you
building up your “body as a writer?”
Cheon: I liked Song Sok-ze and Kim So-jin, probably because
they had completely different “bodies” from mine. Oh Junghee, the novelist, and Choi Seung-ja, the poet, were writers who
entered my body and had a direct impact on me.
1. As You Know, Mother
Cheon Un-yeong, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 278p, ISBN 9788932024158
2. The Needle
Cheon Un-yeong, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2001, 258p, ISBN 9788936436612
3. Ginger
2011, 282p, ISBN 9788936433819
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
29
Interview
"I realized that I was in
the world, and the world
was in me."
novelist Cheon Un-yeong and literary critic Shin Hyoung-cheol
Shin: Your most recent work is the novel Ginger. It’s a
novel that delves into the essence of evil, based on the true-life
figure of Yi Geun-an, a notorious torturer during the 1980s
when Korea was in the heat of the democratization movement.
The subject matter must have provoked a great response.
Cheon: A middle-aged man expressed violent repulsion
towards this novel at a gathering with readers. His point
was that a novel dealing with historical facts must assume
responsibility, but this novel was irresponsible because it didn’t
punish the wicked. I could only say to him that a novel isn’t
a pamphlet. And then a girl raised her hand and said that she
didn’t know very much about historical facts but cried while
reading the book because she felt sorry for the daughter of the
torturer. What she said was very encouraging for me. One of
my aims in writing this novel was to see what kind of an effect
the evils of an age has on the next generation, and I felt that
my goal had been realized.
There was also a reader who contacted me after reading an
interview with Yi Geun-an that was conducted after the novel
was published. The reader didn’t know whether or not Yi had
read the novel, but the logic with which Yi defended his act
was very similar to the logic described in the novel. Writing
the novel was a painful process for me; I felt as if I myself had
become a torturer. But I believe that my efforts to analyze the
mechanism of self-justification of evil haven’t been in vain.
Shin: If Ginger is a story about a father, the stories in your
fourth collection of short stories, As You Know, Mother, are
about mothers. Was “mother” a keyword you had in mind
from the beginning, or did you notice it while putting the
collection together?
Cheon: Something I personally gained from writing
Ginger was that I could put an end to my agony over my
father. I could stop resenting him. I came to realize again that
writing a novel helps the writer understand who she is. As You
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Know, Mother, is a collection of short stories I wrote while
getting ready to write Ginger, and ones I wrote after writing it.
It shows how my interest has moved on from father to mother.
Watching those around me, I’ve come to the conclusion that
someone with a bad father can overcome the condition, but
someone with a bad mother will have difficulty doing so. I
believe that a good mother is a source of strength that enables
us to deal with the many problems we encounter in life. But I
don’t want to call that source maternal instinct, since that term
is tainted with too much ideology. I had bad mothers appear
in this collection in order to allow reflection, paradoxically, on
the power of a good mother.
Shin: They could be read as stories that inspire you to
go beyond either romanticizing or dismantling the idea of
maternal instinct and seek a third path. The collection has a
lot more to say aside from the subject of mothers. There are a
number of passages in the book that appear to be the fruit of
a crisis the author herself experienced, physical or existential;
a crisis a woman writer has felt, passing through the age of
40. As noted aptly by Cho Yeon-jung, the critic who wrote
the commentary on this book, the author’s will to take a
transparent look into herself can be felt in the stories.
Cheon: You could see it in the same context as the pressure
I felt to write a story that surpassed “The Needle,” and the
sense of crisis I felt, thinking that I couldn’t. My body was
no longer young, but I pretended it was, dreaming of a young
body. I wanted to insist that my body was still fresh. There
are too many walls a woman writer faces in Korean society,
living alone at age 40. That’s how I came to a crisis point.
Looking back on my stories, I found the root of my crisis.
The author and her work always go together. They’re one,
like Siamese twins. To write something good, I had to know
my inner self. I looked at myself until I became transparent. I
was ashamed but thought I shouldn’t hide anything. Standing
naked without deceit, that’s what was required of me in order
to obtain a new body.
without fear and mingle well, and draw out their stories.
Shin: I can’t prove it here in detail, but you seem to have
started out by dissecting humans that seem to be agents of
desire and impulse, then began to have an interest in others
around you; now you seem to have taken on the literary
challenge of becoming aware of yourself. The target has
changed from humankind to others to self. What’s interesting
is that this seems to go against the general flow. Don’t most
people start out by being interested in themselves, then others,
and then humans in general?
Shin: To add to that, I think one of your strongest points is
your ability to push ahead with artificial, unnatural situations
in your novels, and make readers accept them in the end.
Cheon: I’m not sure why. I can’t tell you the exact reason,
but I myself have sensed such a process of change. If I must
put my finger on a reason, I think it has something to do with
how my attitude regarding novels, or in other words, what I
believe novels can accomplish, has changed.
Shin: Let me put it in a different way, then. How has your
attitude about novels changed in the 10 or so years that you’ve
been writing? Do you have a different answer now to the
question of what a novel is?
Cheon: It could be that my attitude about life has changed.
I used to think that I was distinct from the world surrounding
me. I believed that the world was swarming with desire, that it
was aggressive and dangerous and that’s why I was wounded,
that my wounds would heal only if the world changed, that
my novels could change the world. But gradually, my thoughts
changed. I realized that I was in the world, and the world
was in me. I came to think that I was a little cell making up
the world, so if I knew myself, I’d know the world, and if I
changed, the world, too, would change, and that in my novels
“my thoughts changed” would make this happen. My earlier
attitude was much more selfish, self-centered, full of self-love.
If my earlier works were a means of self defense, my recent
works are a means of embracing others. So the substance of
my novels has moved from the outside to the inside, and my
attitude about novels has moved from the inside to the outside.
Shin: Of all the gifts writing requires, what is it that you
have, and what is it that you want to take from other writers?
Cheon: I think my attitude regarding novels is somewhat
rigid. You could say that I’m obsessed with cutting things
down as much as possible to make a novel as exquisite as
possible. So I envy those who are relaxed enough to play
around with their novels. I write only what I know. I can’t
write what I don’t know. So it takes me a long time to collect
material in order to learn something. I think one of the gifts
I do have is that I can open myself up to people when I’m
writing or preparing to write. People often ask me how I’m so
good at gathering materials, and I tell them I just do what I’ve
always done. I’ve always had a strong desire to go up to those
who are different from me and to understand and identify
with them. I’ve always hung around working class men ever
since I was little, so that may have helped me approach others
Cheon: Paradoxically, reality is more artificial and
unnatural than fiction. There’s a story in this collection about
two little girls, sisters, who pull out the eyeball of the woman
next door. It’s a true story. Novels reveal how certain things
that happen in the world, which seem artificial and unnatural,
move with a certain internal logic. I’m not saying that what
has internal logic is necessarily logical. Some people say that
my novels are grotesque, but grotesque doesn’t just mean
strange or bizarre. The most grotesque is the most realistic.
Let’s just say that I aim for the most realistic through the most
grotesque, equipped with internal logic.
Shin: Who are some of the contemporary foreign authors
you’re interested in? From your answer, readers abroad may be
able to guess what kind of an author you are.
Cheon: Can I answer that by talking about a recent film I
saw? It was Jacques Audiard’s “Rust and Bone.” The question
of the body has long been my interest. This film succeeded in
talking about the question of the body through the body. It
shows how a body in excess and a body in deficiency become
aware of each other and adjust themselves to become complete.
What results is a family. I think it’s a great film. Truman
Capote and James Salter are among the authors I’m interested
in.
Shin: You’ve published four collections of short stories.
If you had to choose just five stories to be published abroad,
which would they be?
Cheon: First, “The Needle.” It’s my debut piece, and
considered one of my most significant works. “The Corner”
is something I wrote to meet the request for a biographical
novel, so I think it can help readers understand me better as
an author. “I’ll Take You,” “Myoungrang,” and “As You Know,
Mother,” are stories that depict the maternal instinct in the
most Korean sense, but at the same time, deal with universal
human emotions, so I think readers abroad can also identify
with them.
by Shin Hyoung-cheol
translated by David I. Steinberg
Cheon Un-yeong is a novelist. Born in 1971, she made her debut in
2000 when her short story “The Needle” won the Dong-A Ilbo New Writers
Contest. She is the author of the short story collections The Needle; How She
Uses Her Tears; Myoungrang; As You Know, Mother; and the novels Farewell to
the Circus and Ginger. She received the Arts Award of the Year.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
31
Excerpt
Ginger
by Cheon Un-yeong
Beauty is what it takes. Victory always belongs to beauty. Perfect
skill is truly beautiful. Beautiful skill. Complete surrender. Perfect
victory.
Don’t get so flustered. Each and every movement must be made
with economy, with utmost care. No gesture or look must be left
to chance. Everything must be carried out for one purpose. One
purpose only. Fear. Surrender can be obtained only by extracting
the root of fear. Violence without skill breeds nothing more than
hatred and resistance. Drawing out fear involves a process, and
principles. Once in possession of a perfect skill, you can bring them
to surrender with a pen, not an iron bar.
Let me explain what beautiful skill is.
First, take off his clothes. Don’t touch him. Let him take them
off himself. Till he’s stark naked. When all his clothes have come
off, leave him like that for a while. Make him endure the shame of
being naked. Make him see that he has nowhere to turn. Leave him
like that till his flushed face turns pale, till his hunched shoulders
start shaking, till his drooping balls shrivel.
Then shed a light on him. Flash it on his face and make him
close his eyes, then let it spread all over his body. Make him feel its
intensity not with his eyes but with his skin. Make sure that his skin
reacts, the veins turning a deeper blue, and the pores expanding.
Don’t let it drag too long. Shut off the light before the pricking rays
turn into a warm caress. No warmth should be allowed. Eliminate
any warmth there is.
There’s nothing like cold water to eliminate warmth. Blast water
at him. Make him feel the sting of water that’s as cold as ice. He’ll
come to know the fear that lacerates the flesh. The water will spread
like a flame. Its light will be darker than darkness itself. A state in
which you can’t tell if water is water, flame, light, or darkness, a
state in which there’s nowhere for you to turn and nothing makes
sense. That’s the beginning of fear. Only a rugged body that has
undergone the awakening of fear is ready for subjection to true skill.
Now leave him alone for half a day. After that, time will take
care of things. Half a day is enough. He could give you a viewing
of his entire life in half a day. In that time, he could think of all the
crimes he’s committed, even ones he hasn’t yet committed. He could
call to his mind the happiness he’s experienced, and the hope he’d
wished for. And his last meal will be digested and gone in that time.
He has nothing to throw up, so nothing will block his airways.
So he won’t go and die on you.
Everything’s ready, so you can flaunt your skill now. Now’s the
moment to lay him down on the death bed. What’s a death bed? It’s
the sky you carry on your back on your last journey. The sky where
the North Star shines in serenity. Beautiful, isn’t it? I made it myself
with a board from a birch tree.
Lay him down on the death bed. Make him comfortable, with
his ankles strapped and his neck propped up. Cover his pathetic
body with a blanket. It’ll keep his skin from scarring. Leave no
traces of assault, only bruises on the inside of his bones. Fasten him
with four straps, and let him revel in the honor of being one with my
beautiful death bed.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Isn’t he lovely? Lying on the death bed, he’s as mild as a newborn
baby swaddled in a blanket. So lovely that you want to put him to
the breast. You should put him to the sweet breast, then. But first,
cover his face with wet gauze so that the air won’t block his airways.
Pour the water. Slowly, in a small stream. It must enter the
throat and the nose at the same time. Don’t cut off the stream
of water until it’s filled his throat. It’s no use for him to close his
mouth, and he can hold his breath for only so long. The mouth
opens, the water goes in. The more he resists, the more he suffers.
Do you hear him gasping for breath? Do you see his chest swelling?
Pour more water. There’s more that leaks than goes in, but no
matter. Keep pouring until the water comes out of his eyes. Don’t
stop till his mouth stops twitching.
Is his mouth still? Now it’s time for the North Star to move
toward heaven. Flip over the death bed. Flip it over, and make him
throw up water with the North Star at his back. He’ll come to his
senses after that. When he does, flip over the death bed again. And
pour water. Simple, isn’t it? What a beautiful device. You don’t need
to exert yourself, thrusting his head into the tub; you don’t need to
make an effort to lift up his limp body. You just need to flip over
the death bed. The water comes pouring out with no effort on your
part.
He’ll be drenched all over. All sorts of liquids will come oozing
out of every pore in his body. He’ll have pissed himself. And shit
himself wet. Spit, sweat, piss. Make them all come pouring out of
him. The more that comes out, the more that goes in. Pour water.
And some red pepper powder. Raise the death bed. Pour water.
Don’t hesitate. You can’t turn back. Don’t think of him as a
human being. He’s a rock. A tree, grass, a donkey gone mad, a dog,
a goat. Nothing more than a rock. Wring out tears from the rock.
Don’t lose control. Don’t betray your emotions. Stay cool. Don’t lose
your head. Put on a mask of ice. Let your boiling blood cool. Try
not to breathe, even. Keep yourself from sweating. And groaning.
It’s a war. A struggle for your life. Subdue the enemy, or the
enemy attacks you. What we’re fighting is the force of evil. Minions
of evil who indulge in lies, intrigue, injustice. A mob of evil that
dreams of violence, fight, overthrow. We are the good warriors
fighting the force of evil.
Let him down. Undo the straps, and lift the blanket. Handle
him with care. He’s fully prepared to take in every sensation in
existence. His beautiful body will shiver at the tiniest breath of air,
and quiver at the gentlest touch. Static will seem to him a flash of
lightning. Stars will shine and the sun will rise on his body. Waves
will crash, tidal waves will strike. Flowers will blossom and birds
will sing. His body will experience a marvelous new act of creation.
Are you awake? Let me see. What a mess you are. Did you
cry? Did you wet yourself? No need to worry. Soon I’ll wipe away
all the little drops. What makes you sad, what makes you bitter?
Blame yourself for taking part in the works of darkness. Do you
wish to confess your sins? It’s not time yet. It won’t be too late, after
you’ve had a taste of the essence of my perfect skill. Are you in pain?
Heaven is near. I’ll reveal heaven to you. You’ll hear the song of
angels. When it’s over, you’ll revere me.
Feed him some salt. The electrolytes need replenishing. Keep
him from dehydrating, and adjust the salt concentration in his body.
Hook up his little toes, the right to negative, the left to positive.
That’s the way of heaven and earth. Now turn on the power. And
listen. Listen to the bray of a mad donkey. Watch his tongue roll
up, watch his throat swell. Cover his mouth. Gag the mad donkey.
See his red lips turn purple, and the whites of his eyes turn red.
Turn up the current. Watch the power of electricity instantly drying
everything up. When the moisture is gone, pour water on him
again. Pour salt water for easy transmission. Check for residual salt
on his dry, naked body. Witness the profound moment when white
goose bumps give way to soft, downy hair.
Look at the electrified hair. See the beauty of the hair, all
standing in one direction. Isn’t it breathtaking? That is true beauty.
The perfect proof of the perfect skill. Soft downy hair charged with
electricity.
“Sir!”
Who is it? Who dares get in my way at this beautiful moment?
This thrilling moment of complete surrender, this moment of
perfect victory. Who?
“Sir!”
“What!”
“I think you should stop. There’s been a problem.”
“What problem?”
“A casualty.”
“Where?”
“Room 201.”
“Team 3?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Damned rookies...What now?”
“We’ve been ordered to stop all interrogations.”
“Stop?”
I turn my head to get a look at him. His mouth is slack, his
neck bent back. His dry white lips are twitching. The lips that were
ready to confess. It was nearly finished. All I had to do was get an
affidavit. I clench my fist. The back of my hand trembles.
*
The king was beheaded, and a world of dogs has dawned. In this
new world, dogs that had kept their tails hidden have begun to bare
their teeth. Fawning dogs with wagging tails and the dogs behind
bars have joined in. Packs of mad dogs are running amuck.
It’s all because of the damned mad dogs. What they need is a
stick. We should’ve wiped them out before they started going mad.
That’s what we should’ve done. I should’ve gagged that son of a
bitch.
I’m stuck in this absurd situation all because of that son of a
bitch. That son of a bitch who wanted to be the leader of the dog
gang. That bastard, who pleaded for his life, weeping like a girl, and
licked the floor and shit like a dog, has gone and done it. He got my
picture in the morning paper for the dogs, and blabbed about my
beautiful skill.
No, it’s because of the rookies. If not for the way they did things,
no one would’ve died; without that useless death, the dogs in hiding
wouldn’t have gone mad; and if the dogs hadn’t gone mad, the king
wouldn’t have been beheaded. If the king hadn’t been beheaded, that
bastard I threw into prison wouldn’t have been released on special
pardon, and if he hadn’t been released, my face wouldn’t have been
disclosed to the whole world. Rookies. It’s always sloppiness that
causes problems.
No, it’s all because of the eyes. They should’ve read the eyes.
They should’ve forced the eyelids open and taken a look at the eyes.
They should’ve noticed the faint light lingering in the pupils. And
they should’ve stopped. They should’ve put brakes on their hands,
propelled by inertia. They should’ve distinguished between the faint
light at the moment of sleep, and the faint light at the moment of
death. And they should’ve stopped. Damned rookies.
You have to read the eyes. Reading the eyes is a skill of
identifying boundaries. It’s a skill of finding the point between
continuing and stopping. It’s a skill of grasping the moment of
parting. A skill of seizing the climax, the moment when resistance
gives way to surrender, the moment when they let go and break free
from all oppression, the moment when anxiety and relief switch
places, the moment when the eyes, full of hostility, become full of
respect.
You must not cross boundaries. There are moments when
capillaries break, like a taut string, in the white of the eye that’s
fraught with tension. There are moments when everything is bright
and clear, then become obscure, like fluorescent lights that brighten
and darken in a flash before going completely out. In moments like
that, the cornea dries out and becomes enveloped in smoke. The gap
between the moments when moisture leaves and smoke enters, the
gap between the moments when expansion and contraction hold
hands then let go—that gap is the apex of life and death. You must
stop before you reach that point. True skill is knowing when to stop.
Yes, everything is because of the eyes. The eyes reveal the
truth. By reading the eyes, you read everything about the person.
Everything is determined by the eyes. No other part of the body
can be relied upon. The tongue indulges in lies, and the body likes
to exaggerate. The eyes are honest. The eyes cannot lie. The eyes
couldn’t deceive, even if they wanted to. By reading the eyes, you
come nearer to the truth. You must read the eyes.
I take out my gun from its case. It’s a Smith & Wesson .38
caliber revolver. This classic gun has the beauty of simplicity and
conciseness to it. The best thing about it is the feeling of anticipation
you get when you load ammunition into the revolving cylinder, and
the refreshing feeling you get when you’re done shooting and you
remove the empty cartridges all at once. The gridded grip is a bit too
small for my hands, but I like how I can wrap my hand around it
completely.
My .38 caliber revolver is loaded with ammunition. I rotate
the cylinder and remove the blank ammunition. I pull the hammer
back. The sound of the cylinder rotating is pleasing to the ear. I
pull the trigger. I hear the sound of the lever being pulled, kicking
back the spring. Again, hammer, cylinder, and trigger. And again,
hammer, cylinder, trigger. I aim the muzzle at the wall facing me,
and pull the trigger. I aim for the incandescent lamp and pull the
trigger. And one shot at my temple. Bang. The hollow ringing of the
hammer reaches my temple. I stay still as if dead. I feel as if a hot,
thick liquid is running down my cheek. I put the gun down. I put
the blanks back in the cylinder. I raise the gun. I point the gun at
the stain on the wall. What I need to aim at is not my temple, but
the dogs’ heads. I cock the gun. I’ll fight the crazy sons of bitches
whenever it’s necessary. I close one eye and pretend to pull the
trigger. Bang.
translated by Jung Yewon
Ginger
2011, 282p, ISBN 9788936433819
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
33
The Place
Gwangjang Market:
Where History Breathes
There are three famous gwangjang (squares) in South
Korea: Choi In-hoon’s monumental novel, The Square;
the Seoul Gwangjang in front of City Hall, the place
of candlelight protests; and the Gwangjang traditional
market that boasts a hundred year history.
Origina lly, Gwa ngja ng Ma rket wa s a na me
exclusive to a 3,000 pyeong shopping establishment that
was privately owned by the Gwangjang Corporation,
and located in the center of the market. It now refers
to some 60 commercial buildings that are clustered
around the Gwangjang Shopping Center.
The market has a 300-year history if one looks at
it from a historical perspective, and at least a 108-year
history if one considers its establishment from 1905
when the Gwangjang Corporation was founded.
In the latter part of the Joseon era, there were three
large open markets in Seoul: The I-hyeon Market, open
from early dawn to morning located near Dongdaemun;
the Chil-pae Market, around what is now Namdaemun;
and the Jongno Market, which opened in the evening.
Among the three, I-hyeon Market was more renowned
for its morning Baeogae Market.
Baeogae was a hill that connected the areas of
Jongmyo, Dongdaemun, and Cheonggyecheon. There
are many stories regarding the genealogy of its name:
that there were many pear trees (bae means pear); that
it was the last point where a large boat crossing the
Han River could reach through to Cheonggye Stream
(bae also means boat); and that because of the frequent
appearance of tigers, a hundred people had to gather
together in order to go up the hill. Baeogae was a
morning market that developed around this region.
In 1910, the Joseon empire was annexed by Japan.
But even before that, Korea had been hopelessly subject
to all kinds of invasions by Japan. The circumstances of
the markets were also bleak. The merchants, who had
a strong sense of nationalism, united and established
the Gwangjang Corporation on July 5, 1905. Despite
much interference, Dongdaemun Market, Korea’s first
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
privately owned market, came about at last.
Before the annexation, the Japanese merchants who
had developed the Jingogae (Myeongdong) area into a
busy commercial center, opened five department stores
after 1920. The Hwashin Department Store was built
in Jongno. A very small number of people were able to
go to Japan and engage in a luxurious shopping spree or
shop at the Hwashin Department Store in Jongno. The
market for the majority of the people during the Joseon
era was Dongdaemun Market. Just as life would have
been impossible for most Joseon people if the five-day
market had not been maintained, everyday living would
not have been possible had there not been a traditional
market such as Dongdaemun during the Japanese
colonial period. That is the reason why Dongdaemun
Market could neither be expanded nor demolished.
Dongdaemun Market was like a fortress. When the
sun rose, the four gates on the east, west, south, and
north opened and all kinds of items from the entire
country started to pour in. Dried fish from the East
Coast, coal from mines throughout the peninsula,
as well as an assortment of paraphernalia from Japan
and the West arrived. But it was agricultural products
that were sold in the largest quantity. Fresh vegetables,
seasonal fruit, and five grains were transported by
horses and cows. Dongdaemun Market was known to
have the largest number of agro-fishery products in all
of Korea.
The shops were categorized into three tiers. Tier
one shops were located in tile roof houses and were
wealthy enough to be able to place advertisements
in newspapers. Tier two shops were all under tin
roofs, and offered mostly agro-fishery products. The
tier three shops were vendors who sold things on a
mat under a somewhat shabby plank roof; they sold
mostly miscellaneous household objects. Around 200
merchants owned the tier one and two shops, and
the tier three sellers changed constantly. On average,
around 2,000 customers visited daily.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
35
The Place
Dongdaemun Market was completely destroyed during
the Korean War. Only the site of the building remained, but
after the war the market became more vibrant. Survivors had
to continue to live and the market was a necessity in order
for people to go on living. The people who arrived in Seoul
in great numbers from all parts of the country settled in
the Cheonggyecheon area and as a result, the market region
became completely packed with people.
After the recovery of Seoul, there was a presidential order
from Rhee Syngman to reconstruct Dongdaemun Market.
President Rhee ordered three international-sized markets
to be built in Seoul. The construction of the Gwangjang
Shopping Center took place swiftly. From 1957 to 1959 a
massive construction project commenced and finally in 1959,
it was completed as the building it is today. In other words,
the three-story concrete Gwangjang Shopping Center was
newly constructed and maintained for 50 years until now in its
present form. At that time, most of the buildings around the
Cheonggyecheon area were traditional Korean style houses and
as these buildings were mostly destroyed during the Korean
War, the newly built Gwangjang Shopping Center was the
most modern structure between Jongno and Dongdaemun.
The Gwangjang Shopping Center was the tallest building
around at the time, and the watchtower mounted on the roof
must have made people feel as if they were looking down from
a mountaintop. Seoul was the most popular overnight school
trip destination for students from the provinces. Gwangjang
Market was always included on the itinerary. Students climbed
to the top of the watchtower of the Gwangjang Shopping
Center building and looked out at the Dongdaemun area.
They took pride in the fact that there was such a big market in
Korea, and bought gifts to bring back for their parents from
the Gwangjang Shopping Center.
In January 2011 the novelist Park Wansuh passed away.
She was an integral part of the history of Gwangjang Market.
Her novel His House, published in 2004, records in detail the
sights of the Gwangjang Market during the 1950s. It delineates
the period from after the Korean War when there were hardly
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
any buildings intact up to the post-War construction of the
department store era.
O n e c a n n o t f i n d a m or e d e t a i l e d d e pi c t i on o f
Dongdaemun Market than in His House. Park’s novel provides
a very thorough description of the market as it was then, and
the commerce that revolved around it. What is astounding is
that things remain pretty much the same to this day.
“It was called a department store or a dry-goods store but
in actuality, it was simply a long pathway like an alley; and on
both sides the merchants were allotted a single pyeong where
they put up a stall without a partition or divider. In the back
they hung loose fabric and piled up folded or rolls of fabric
by the pathway, and the owner did the business, standing on
top of the stall. It looked like an enormous dry-goods store
when one just walked into the department store but it was
a fierce arena of competition for many one-pyeong business
proprietors.”
Of course, the present day Gwangjang Shopping Center
is no longer a “fierce arena of competition.” The stores are at
least four to five pyeong in size. There are some that are over
10 pyeong. But the absence of partitions or boundaries remains
the same, and fabric still hangs loose on the rear wall with the
rolled up fabric piled up in a display case by the pathway.
On November 13, 1971 a 22-year-old young man by the
name of Chun Tae-il set himself ablaze in the Peace Market
across from the Gwangjang Market, shouting “Obey the Labor
Law!” “Let my death not be in vain!” The Gwangjang Market
has a deep relationship with Chun Tae-il. The prodigious
personal records he left behind was compiled by Cho Youngrae, and published into a book, A Single Spark: The Biography
of Chun Tae-il. The following is a passage from the book:
“The young Tae-il, who had to take on the responsibility
of taking care of his family of six, took his younger brother,
Tae-sam to the Dongdaemun Market to sell kitchen objects.
They got things like trivets, brushes, strainers, brooms, and
1
1. His House
Park Wansuh, Segyesa Publishing Co., Ltd.
2012, 308p, ISBN 9788933801956
2. A Single Spark: The Biography of Chun Tae-il
Cho Young-rae, Chun Tae-il Memorial Foundation
2009, 340p, ISBN 9788996187424
2
grills from a consignment store, paid back the price of the
items, and then kept the profit. The trivet was relatively easy to
make and therefore the two brothers bought the material from
Dongdaemun and made them themselves on the rice paddy of
Yongdudong where they lived.”
Tae-il was only 13-years old then. It wasn’t just Tae-il and
his family who were destitute, because in those days there were
many children who had to work to support their families.
The Biography of Chun Tae-il is filled with heartrending
stories of his youth and the young girl factory workers he met
in the Peace Market. Chun Tae-il was born in 1948, the year
the Republic of Korea was founded. Most of the people from
that generation underwent as much hardship as Chun Tae-il.
The older merchants of the Gwangjang Shopping Center
experienced as difficult a childhood and youth as Chun.
What they remember the most are those difficult years—
horrific childhoods because of poverty and war, when they
were inhumanely treated while working in factories and
marketplaces. A Single Spark: The Biography of Chun Tae-il is
not only a story of one person but about the entire generation
that lived during a very difficult period.
“Lament” is a short story by Choi Il-nam that was
published in the monthly magazine, Hyundae Munhak, in
1976. The protagonists, a married couple who sell fish in the
market, have a dream. “When the couple somehow managed
to survive while running a small shop in a market that was
on the outskirts of the city, the wife talked about moving
to Dongdaemun Market after several years of hard work.
The husband yelled at his wife for being a piker, instead of
dreaming big and closing down their small store for a much
bigger and more reputable business. Then his wife replied that
it was her wish to make a fortune in the grandest market with
the same business that they began.” Hence, the Dongdaemun
Market before 1976 was grand enough to be the subject of one
woman’s life’s dream.
The elder merchants remember the 1970s as the heyday of
Dongdaemun Market. “There were so many customers that we
didn’t have enough time to count our money. In those days,
we could provide for our children until after college from our
one to two-pyeong store. There was such a stream of customers
from dawn to late night that our doorsteps got worn out. We
were so busy that we sometimes forgot to eat.”
The comedian, Kang Ho-dong, came to Gwangjang
Market only once, but it gained the place new renown. The
Mayor of Seoul, National Assemblymen, Cabinet Ministers,
and the presidents of banks and companies have all paid visits
to Gwangjang Market as well. Yet even if the president came
wearing a hanbok along with the first lady at the bequest of
merchants on festive occasions, these visits didn’t have nearly
the effect of Kang’s visit. When Kang Ho-dong carried out his
assignment of “Eat 10 Different Kinds of Food and Show 10
Different Reactions” for a TV program, Gwangjang Market
instantly became known as the mecca of food.
The attitude of the media’s coverage of the Gwangjang
Market has changed according to the times. During the
Japanese colonial period, it was known as the “greatest agrofishery market in Joseon.” From 1960 to 1980, it became the
largest fabric market in Korea, and then during the 1990s, silk,
satin, linen, and cotton were popular items. Since the Asian
financial crisis in 1998 to the early 2000s, secondhand stores
and custom-tailored clothes were common. Recently, it has
become known as a place to stop off for inexpensive food after
taking a walk around nearby Cheonggye Stream.
The majority of the stores in the Gwangjang Market still
do business in fabrics and dry goods. However, fabric sales
have plummeted in the poor economy and the silk and satin
stores that now specialize mostly in hanbok are not doing very
well. Even though the hanbok shops are empty most of the
time, the secondhand stores are always crowded. There have
always been many stalls and eateries in the small alleys that
surround the market, but after the restoration of Cheonggye
Stream, the dining business in the surrounding area suddenly
revived. This is a rather unwelcome phenomenon from the
perspective of Gwangjang Market.
In the first half of the 1960s when the construction of the
Gwangjang Shopping Center was completed, it was the most
modern market in Korea. But now, it has become the biggest
and the most famous traditional market. Embracing the most
energetic and passion-filled years of millions of humble people,
the place has aged along with the people. While everyone
is caught up in the most cutting-edge, massive-scale, and
luxurious styles available, renovating their shops to make them
bigger, trendier, and more distinctive, Gwangjang Market is a
place that tries to change with the times even as it is known as
an embodiment of the past.
by Kim Chong-khwang
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
37
Theme Lounge
Dating
Culture
Dates and Dating: Unexplored Emotional Territory
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Copyright © Choi Yeon-ju
In the English vernacular, the word “to date” means “to go out with
someone with whom one is romantically interested.” But the word
deiteu (date) in Korean has a slightly different meaning: “two people
meeting with the intention of pursuing a romantic relationship.” In
other words, “dating” in Korean has more long-term overtones. Dating
is the step before a relationship becomes serious, the stage full of tension
and curiosity.
It is notable that Koreans have opted to stick with this borrowed
term to describe romantic relationships rather than finding a Korean
equivalent. When the term was first incorporated into the
Korean vernacular, the romantic nature of a relationship
was emphasized by using deiteu, as opposed to “seeing
someone” or “being together.” The foreignness of
the word also made the word fashionable and less
sexually charged. It became a more sophisticated
alternative to traditional taboos concerning
courtship.
For instance, dating in Korean literature was depicted in Lee Kwang-soo’s
Heartlessness (1917) as such: “Hyeong-sik and Seon-hyeong, after being engaged
for a long time, finally confirm their love for one another.” There are very few
scenes that qualify as date scenes in Lee's novel. A date is a romantic meeting of
two people at a specific time and place, but for Hyeong-sik and Seon-hyeong,
dates were not important. In fact, the very idea of love is so foreign that Seonhyeong has difficulty distinguishing between love in the Christian sense and
the love that Hyeong-sik professes. It was probably impossible for these two
characters to wrap their minds around the concept of a date or even courtship.
On the other hand, writer Lee Hyo-seok’s very modern and sophisticated
lifestyle has led to detailed scenes of real dates. Most of us know Lee Hyo-seok
as the nature-loving author of “When the Buckwheat Flowers Bloom.” Close
examination of his short story, however, will reveal that he was cultivating an
image that was anything but rustic. Lee preferred a breakfast that included
coffee and cheese, and liked to shop at department stores. In his short story,
“Heart’s Design,” a date scene reflects the lifestyle he preferred. Yura and the
first person narrator make coffee by “pouring mocha powder in the percolator”
and go to concerts. They hop on a train to go see the sea in autumn. They
listen to jazz at a shop selling instruments, and pick out ties at a department
store.
In the early 1900s, deiteu and reobeu (love) were embarrassing cultural
concepts that could only be mentioned using the original foreign term. In
expressions such as “Y reobeu me” (“Fainthearted” by Kim Tongin) or “expressed
reobeu for a distant cousin but was rejected” (“Suicide Note” by Kim Tongin)
we sense the hesitation of expressing love or romantic relationships through
the intimacy of the native language because naming these feelings and
relationships in Korean would make them much more sensual and specific.
Between Deiteu and Dating
It was a long time before dating was depicted in Korean literature as a
meeting between two equals. For example, Kim Sung-ok’s novels from the
1960s consider dates a threat to women’s “pre-marital purity” and spiritual
cleanliness. A dating scene between two college students in Kim Sung-ok’s
Fantasy Notebook is one such example: Seonae and the narrator are on a date “one
evening in May, on the Mapo embankment at dusk.” Seonae is all smiles and in
3
1. Winter Wanderer (2 vols.)
Choi In-ho, Yolimwon Publishing Co.
2005, 402p, ISBN 8970634800 (Vol.1)
1
2. Fantasy Notebook
Kim Sung-ok
2004, 398p, ISBN 8982818685
3. Talking to Strangers
Eun Hee-kyung
1996, 360p, ISBN 8982810242
2
4. Sweetfish Correspondence
Yun Dae-nyeong
2010, 428p, ISBN 9788954610612
4
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
39
Theme Lounge
a good mood while the narrator cannot get a word out as he holds
Seonae’s hand and sobs. Before long, the tables turn. Seonae sobs,
saying, “I started my cycle, so I’m not pregnant." From today’s
perspective the scene may seem ridiculous, but in 1962 when this
story was written, sexual relationships were depicted as absolutely
dangerous for women. In Fantasy Notebook, the narrator goes so
far as to “hand over” his girlfriend to another friend in order to
shirk responsibility. In the larger context of the story, dating is
just another urban contrast to the idyllic rural hometown, but
it is notable that city lovers represent broken relationships. The
term deiteu is devoid of faith in genuine human relationships. In
the end, Seonae takes her own life and the story about her suicide
is printed in the papers under the headline, “Pessimistic College
Girl Commits Suicide.”
Only in the 1980s was dating recognized in Korean literature
as a gateway to a romantic relationship. The innocent date
depicted in “Winter Wanderer” by Choi In-ho was considered
the ideal romantic relationship among young people back then.
Still, date scenes in literature functioned as no more than minor
stepping stones to innocent love rather than as major, pivotal
scenes. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that date scenes came into
their own in literature. Date scenes narrated from a woman’s
perspective first started to appear at this time.
Until the 1980s, dates were considered grossly personal
luxuries for college students and young lovers. It is difficult to
understand from today’s perspective, but the absolute priority
of the times, especially for college students, was the democracy
movement, and dates were considered shameful secrets. The
greatest difference between the 1980s and 90s in terms of date
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
scenes in literature was this: a large number of writers who were in
their 20s in the 1980s began reminiscing about the private desires
and lives that were sacrificed for the sake of the grand narrative of
the times. Yun Dae-nyeong, Kim Young-ha, and Eun Hee-kyung,
writers who were in their 30s in the 1990s, portrayed free, casual
romantic relationships. “Cool” and “sophisticated” sum up the
romantic relationships of 1990s Korean literature.
Dates in Yun Dae-nyeong’s novels can come off as dry and
snappy for this reason. A short story collection that epitomizes
the sensibilities of Korea in the 1990s, Sweetfish Correspondence,
includes surreal dates with women who’ve just come of age
or superficial dates that involve no emotional connection
whatsoever. The title story, “Sweetfish Correspondence” is about
a couple who have impulsive sex on their first date, and then later
meet in Myeongdong for a movie, “pork cutlet or ‘beef steak’ for
dinner, beer, and then, at a loss as to what to do next, get a room
at an inn where they focus on dry sex.” They “quietly come out of
the movie theatre, walk past Eujiro-3-ga, past Paik Hospital, and
cross the pedestrian overpass to Myeongdong, and slowly, slowly
walk up the street past Myeongdong Cathedral” without purpose.
Lovers in novels from the 1990s experience the irony of
growing close quickly but never attain true emotional intimacy.
Things progress faster and relationships are lighter, but
individuals become lonely and as isolated as islands. Eun Heekyung first introduced female narrators in such relationships who
are direct and to the point about their preferences. This new trend
began with Eun’s first short story collection, Talking to Strangers,
which illustrated a new 1990s sensibility towards romance.
“A Special, Exceptional Couple,” a story from the collection,
shows us a relationship from beginning to end—from the first
date to the end where all passion is gone—through an objective,
controlled gaze. This gaze is particularly effective in a date scene
using an objective point of view:
“What kind of tea do you want?” asked the man when the
young owner of the café walked over to their table to take their
order.
“You still don’t know what I like?”
“Coffee, right?”
“What kind of coffee? If you have any interest in me, you
should know that much.”
Evidently, the conversation reveals that the couple has lost
passion for one another. This scene also show how dates in the
1990s usually took place in coffee shops characteristic of the era
where servers took orders at tables, which is different from most
large franchise coffee shops more common today.
Dates, Perhaps Far Too Common
In this way, dating culture has changed through the course of
time. Another example of this is: “I’ll be holding a rolled-up
copy of The Hankyoreh in front of Winner’s Burger near the K
University gate.” This is not a secret code among spies but a way
of spotting your blind date. These kinds of dates might sound
unusual, and surprising to find out that such blind dates were
very common at a time when online chatting often led to real
life meetings. At least in the 2000s, when the novel Marriage Is
a Crazy Thing (2000) was published, online chatting and blind
dates were considered a sophisticated way of meeting new people
and thus were very popular.
The two people in Marriage Is a Crazy Thing meet through a
friend and make a pact to keep their relationship strictly sexual.
They first meet for tea and then move their date to Gangnam
for drinks, and their innocent date turns into a hedonistic romp.
As soon as the woman says, “It doesn’t matter if we grab a cab or
get a room,” this date with the possibility of marriage in mind
quickly turns into a friends-with-benefits arrangement. The dates
of the 1960s where men “handed over” their women to friends in
fear of an unwanted pregnancy, evolved into dates of the 2000s
where couples have sex on their first dates. In Korean literature
today, dates no longer imply serious meetings with marriage or
purity in mind.
The fact that drinking is always a part of dating in Korean
literature speaks to the levity of romantic encounters. What
characters do on dates can also function as status symbols:
The posh “slowly read the wine list” and order wine from
the “sommelier” (“Romantic Love and Society,” 2002) while
impoverished young couples split a coffee bought at a convenience
store. Today, “Shall we go get another drink somewhere?” (My
Wife Got Married, 2006) is a code for “Let’s keep this date going
a little longer.” These days, the term date is no longer one of
confusion and innuendo.
by Kang Yu-jung
7
5
5. Romantic Love and Society
ety
Jeong Yi-hyun, Moonji Publishing
lishing Co., Ltd.
2014487
2003, 252p, ISBN 9788932014487
6
6. Marriage Is a Crazy Thing
g
Lee Man-gyo, Minumsa Publishing
blishing Group
3455
2000, 284p, ISBN 8937403455
7. My Wife Got Married
Park Hyun-wook, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 384p, ISBN 9788954620239
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
41
Reviews
Fiction
Reviews Fiction
Listening to Unknown Voices
Bae Suah, Jaeum & Moeum Publishing Co.
2013, 216p, ISBN 9788957077214
Bae Sua h is a Korean novelist and
t r a n sl ator w ho h a s publ i s he d si x
collections of short stories, 14 novels,
a nd nu me r ou s t r a n s l a t ion s s i nc e
1993. On paper this may not look
so different from the careers of other
respected Korean novelists; however,
Bae stands out as one of the most risktaking, experimental writers active in
Korea today. Her work from the 2000s
onwards has leaned towards the novelessay, or experimentation with what
Milan Kundera dubbed “the possibilities
of the novel as essay.”
Bae Suah’s experimentation is not
to pass off essays under the name of
fiction, but to extend the horizons of the
novel through experiments of thought.
The novel is different from philosophy
or an essay. Thanks to its omnivorous
nature, however, the novel is in a unique
position to draw inspiration from and
rewrite philosophica l thought a nd
introspective essays. Bae is one of the
few Korean writers to navigate this terra
incognita of thought and introspection.
In her latest work, Untold Nights and a
Day, she takes a visit to the mysterious
theater of dreams.
The story is set in Seoul, but as is
customary in her novels, the setting of
Untold Nights and a Day intentionally
resembles a strange, dream-like city.
“The name of the city was ‘secret.’ It
was a city where all the windows were
dark, all the windows were silent, all
the windows were opaque, and all the
windows were lost in introspection.”
The protagonist Ayami, a former actress
who now works as part of the staff at
Audio Theater, is Korean. She appears,
however, to be more like a foreigner who
is new to the city of Seoul.
Character and setting are explicit yet
dreamlike in Bae’s novels. The action
of her novels is written the same way.
Untold Nights and a Day opens with
the flatly descriptive sentence, “Former
actress Ayami was sitting on the second
step of Audio Theater, holding a guest
book i n her h a nd.” Howe ver t h i s
sentence is merely an oblique entrance
pointing towards the theater of dreams.
A series of mysterious events transpire
and we are introduced to a number of
eccentric characters that are unrelated
to e a c h ot he r but w ho s e a c t i on s
share symmetry not unlike that of a
pantomime.
The narrator relies on the auditory
and tactile rather than the visual when
describing characters and objects, a
cross-sensory alchemy that works to form
the novel’s dreamlike yet beautiful style.
“I am the product of your imagination”
is probably this novel’s equivalent to
Freud’s “dream’s navel.” The familiar
and unfamiliar, native and foreign
tongues, and reality and dreams are
juxtaposed with meticulous precision,
calling for the world inside and outside
the text to dream of and mate with each
other. And so a text that one imagines
might only exist inside a dream walks
out into reality.
Untold Nights and a Day is full of
minute presences emitting signals “like
unknown voices.” A whispering voice
urges you, the reader, to read this novel
out loud instead of to yourself, to listen
rather than to read. One actually feels
compelled to do so when reading the
novel. And so the novel performs the
theater of chasing voices from within
and without, all in pursuit of the secret
of being.
by Bok Dohoon
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
43
Reviews Fiction
Unspeakable Moments of Truth
The French Laundry
Jung Mi-kyung, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 284p, ISBN 9788936437251
There are times when a writer succeeds
at accurately describing the seemingly
impenetrable solidity of everyday life and
the destructive forces that nibble at the
cracks of this solidity, threatening to blow
the whole thing away.
Jung Mi-kyung has proven herself to
be precisely such a writer in many of her
previous works. Few writers have depicted
the world of stark truth that is unmasked
when the motions of everyday life are
stripped away. The French Laundry is
another masterful collection from Jung that
explores beneath the surface of everyday life.
Stories like “The Life of Others,”
for example, capture the instant when a
perfectly ordinary life suddenly becomes
an extraordinary one, not just to others
but to the person in question. A 30-yearold man who has been leading a life of
conventional success as a thoracic surgeon
suddenly declares his intention to become a
monk right before his wedding. His stunned
fiancée learns that he has also been battling
morphine addiction for many years. Even
these reasons, however, do not seem enough
for her to understand his drastic decision.
Trying to maintain her calm, the woman
asks why he wants to become a monk, to
which the man replies, “Sometimes in life,
people make decisions they can’t explain. It’s
not that they don’t have a reason, but that
they don’t have the words to explain that
reason.”
Perhaps it is at this moment in life, when
the idea that we have perfect control over
our lives is but a fiction sinks in, that we
truly begin to understand ourselves. To take
this character’s idea further, it is even more
remarkable that Jung Mi-kyung’s work gives
us an accurate portrayal of such moments in
life that supposedly cannot be described in
words.
Personal Secrets, Public History
Four Days
Lee Hyun-soo, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 344p, ISBN 9788954621144
Lee Hyun-soo’s Four Days is a novel
inspired by the No Gun Ri Massacre that
occurred during the Korean War in 1950
from July 26 to 29. A reported 135 Korean
civilians were killed by U.S. army troops.
The total number of dead and wounded is
estimated to be around 400.
The author, who was born in No Gun
Ri after the war, investigates the tragedy
through the alter ego of documentary
director K im Jin-k y ung. W hen Jinkyung’s production company decides to
do a documentary on the No Gun Ri
Massacre, Jin-kyung visits her hometown
for the first time in years. Jin-kyung and
her family were ostracized in the village
for being the descendants of an eunuch,
and she has no positive memories of
the place. When her boss finally bullies
her into visiting the village, Jin-kyung
discovers that her mother’s death was
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
related to the massacre and not because of
childbirth, as she had always been told.
The story is told from Jin-kyung’s and
her grandfather Tae-hyuk’s point of view
in alternating chapters, with a testimony
by actual Korean War veteran Buddy
Wenzel sandwiched in between. While
Jin-kyung’s investigation into her mother’s
death goes back in time from the present
to the No Gun Ri Massacre, Tae-hyuk’s
story is told chronologically from the
Donghak Pheasant Revolution, through
Japanese occupation, to the Korean War.
The No Gun Ri Massacre is where these
two narratives meet to reveal a tragic
family secret, after which Jin-kyung moves
on and completes the progress of filming
what has turned out to be both a historical
and personal project.
by Choi Jae-bong
by Cho Yeon-jung
Spotlight on Fiction
My Sister’s Menopause
Ḻ
by Kim Hoon
translated by Jaewon E. Chung
The 5th Hwang Sun-won Literary Award Anthology
Kim Hoon et al., JoongAng Ilbo
2005, 379p, ISBN 895924919X
*a short story excerpt from The 5th Hwang Sun-won Literary Award Anthology, JoongAng Ilbo, 2005
My Sister’s Menopause
On the days she visited my apartment, my older sister would pass the
evening seated at the table in front of the balcony window. Around
dusk she would grow more chatty. Well, not exactly chatty. She was
just barely managing to get her mouth open. I read in a special issue
of a women’s magazine that menopausal women get anxious for no
reason around dusk. Maybe my sister’s chattiness had something to
do with that. The things she talked about in the evenings were mostly
gibberish. Like the wind or the dusk's red glow, her words were vague
and elusive, as if spoken from far away. Maybe it's not so accurate to
say I heard her words; they seemed to just brush by me. I never knew
how to respond to her.
She would say,
—Hey, the plane looks just like a fish. Just look at those fins.
She 'd be looking out the balcony window over Gangwha Island,
at the plane being absorbed into the reddening sky. She continued
gazing at the plane, which had taken off from Gimpo Airport,
appearing massive, like a shark, over the mouth of the river, until it
eventually shrank to the size of a carp, receding into the dusk’s thick
glow.
—Hey, it looks just like a minnow. Look at the head shimmer.
Like it’s got a lamp on its tail? Come look.
Though she called out to me, she was staring out the window
with her back towards me. She passed the time at the window while I
prepared dinner by the kitchen sink.
—Hey, how can it disappear like that? Like it's melting into the
sky?
The mouth of the Han River was widening to an unfathomable
breadth, and flocks of birds had gathered in the mudflat laid bare by
the evening ebb. Shadows of the mountain ranges receding towards
the West Sea seemed to flicker in the darkening dusk. On a cloudless
night, the evening glow would fill up the empty sky completely, so
that the glow seemed like its own emptiness, a void drawing me in
indefinitely. The slowly shrinking planes vanished into that thick
glow, and the inbound planes, each a single speck, dripped out of it,
emerged towards Gimpo. Just as my sister liked to say, the sky beyond
the balcony window did sometimes resemble an aquarium, with
various fishes flying in it.
—Hey, are there really people in the plane?
My sister continued to gaze at the sky until dusk had burnt itself
out, and across the river, the town of Gimpo became illuminated. I
usually brought over wine or heated milk to her table. She would lick
daintily around the glass’s lip.
As she got older, my sister became increasingly fussy about what
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
she ate. Even from an early age, she’d found the smoke from cooking
meat revolting, and now that she was going through menopause, she
refused kimchi stew that had even a single morsel of pork in it. Even
when I'd removed the meat before serving her, a sniff of the broth
was all it took for her to catch on. She could hardly eat any meat or
fish, or anything for that matter now that she had gotten older. In the
spring, she would mince wild chives and shepherd's pouch together
and mix them over white rice with soy sauce and sesame salt. In the
summer, she would dump her rice in water and eat it with individual
servings of pickled shrimp or seasoned green laver. Another summer
favorite was pickled cucumber slices dipped in hot pepper paste. The
side dishes she could enjoy without raising a fuss were dried anchovies
broiled in soy sauce with kkwari peppers, white kimchi topped with
minced parsley, and pan-fried lotus root.
Before his death two years ago, my sister’s husband had been
an executive at a steel manufacturing firm located in the free trade
zone in the South Seas. He'd spent his whole life buried in work. As
the head of his team, and later, his department, he'd been in charge
of export operations for the company's steel products as well as
importing raw materials. Once promoted to the post of managing
director, he oversaw the labor disputes and personnel management of
over ten thousand employees involved in production. My brother-inlaw always wore a necktie emblazoned with his company logo, along
with the company badge on his jacket lapel. He spent most of his
life working in the South Seas; only on the weekends would he visit
Seoul. Every time he was back in town, he brought home parsley or
sea produce like dried anchovies, sea lettuce, and seaweed. Afterwards
my sister would send me white kimchi with parsley and leaf mustard,
as well as dried anchovies simmered in soy sauce. Her white kimchi
juice was a shade of pale purple. The parsley was soft, tenderized in
salt, and its chlorophyll, redolent of soil and sunlight. Living alone, I
couldn't finish all the food my sister sent me, so I would have some of
it delivered to our uncle's.
My brother-in-law's company always paid for his f lights to
Seoul. He was killed in a plane crash two years ago, on his way back
to work after spending Chuseok in Seoul. My sister had gotten her
driver's license when she was young, but she rarely drove, using the
car only to chauffeur her husband to and from the airport. On the
night he died, she had driven him to Gimpo Airport and seen him
off. The plane, which had taken off from Gimpo, never arrived at its
destination, colliding into a hill nearby. The crash happened a mere
fifty minutes after take-off. One hundred thirty out of 150 passengers
were killed. I helped my incapacitated sister into the car and drove
her to the crash site. The rescue workers were loading on to stretchers
dismembered limbs and body parts scattered over the mountain and
carrying them down. My brother-in-law's body was relatively intact
and his identity was soon confirmed through the company logo on
his necktie. According to the passenger list handed out by the airport
employee, his seat was A-6. All six passengers who had been sitting
in Row A had been killed. But the passengers of B-4, B-5, and B-6—
the row behind them—had survived. B-6 was seated just behind my
brother-in-law. After going through the process of identifying bodies
and confirming family relations, we brought his body back to Seoul
in a refrigerated ambulance. We took off around evening and drove
through the night. The ambulance led the way and I followed in my
car with my sister sitting next to me. Employees of my brother-inlaw’s company followed, forming a long motorcade. My sister would
not cry, or eat or drink anything. From time to time, she blew her
nose as quietly as she could. The sniffling sounded like weeping to
me. My sister spoke as we passed the Jukjeon rest stop.
—Why does A-6 die when B-6 gets to live?
I couldn’t answer, but my sister persisted.
—Why does it have to be like that?
Her question wasn’t actually asking anything, and her voice,
buried by the sniffling at the end of her question, wasn’t waiting for
an answer. I could never figure out how to respond to what my sister
said. Then right there in the car, she began menstruating. She blushed
as she pressed her groin with her hands.
—Oh no! Why now, all of a sudden...?
—What is it, Unni?
—It’s hot. It’s gushing out.
I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. It was past
midnight. Since my time of the month wasn't far away, I happened
to have a few pads ready in my purse. I turned on the ceiling light
and tore one out of its package. My sister unzipped her pants and
lifted her hips. I helped her pull down her pants past her thighs. Her
underwear was wet and smelled fishy. A lot seemed to have rushed
out all at once. Blood had seeped out around her underwear and
gotten on her thighs. I pulled out the tiny knife in the nail clippers
and cut through the fabric around the groin, where the front joined
with the back. Once I'd cut through the sides too, I could remove
them without my sister having to lift her legs. Her underwear must
have been on tight, because its elastic band had left marks on her
lower belly. She opened her legs wider as I wiped her inner thigh with
the pad. I disposed of the underwear and the used pad in a plastic
bag and threw it in the backseat. Neither of us had spare underwear
handy, so I took out a thick overnight pad and lined the inside of her
pants. She lifted her hips again. I pulled up her pants past her thighs
and buttoned them up. The pad inside her pants probably wouldn't
stay in place.
—Hang on, Unni. We’re almost there. The pad's pretty thick, so
I think you'll be all right.
—I’m sorry...
My sister buried her face in her hands and began crying. She
hadn't cried when her husband's body was carried down on a
stretcher, still wearing the necktie with the company logo. She hadn't
approached the stretcher, and had kept her distance, blowing her nose.
Once the mess from her sudden menstruation was taken care of, she
cried for a long time. Was taking off your blood-soaked underwear
really something to cry over? Or was she crying over the difference
between A-6 and B-6? I'd read once in a women's magazine that if
you were nearing menopause, the slightest psychological shock could
make you start bleeding. But it was hard to imagine that my brotherin-law's unexpected death could trigger my sister's reproductive
organs to so suddenly ovulate and bleed. In my heart I could imagine
the tiny fingerlings waking from their eggs—these finny tribes of
fish, which repeatedly left inland waters of the East Sea towards the
Alaskan sea, squirming in schools like a needle's sharp end, huffing
and puffing to the ocean, leaving behind them a long trail of their
dead. Maybe that's why my sister's damp underwear smelled so fishy.
Her sobs were quiet and low, as if seeping out of her. I couldn't see
what lay beneath her tears, but I could feel my body absorbing them
through some kind of powerful osmosis.
—Don’t cry, Unni. This isn’t anything to cry over.
I hugged my sister. Her shoulders trembled in my embrace, and
I could smell olives in her thick hair. We'd stopped by the side of the
road and we didn't start moving until she stopped crying. The cars
sped down the night highway, their headlights brushing by us, one
after another, without a break. My sister seemed to finally regain her
composure and spoke, looking at the trash bag in the backseat.
—Let’s throw that out before we go. It stinks.
—It’s okay, Unni. I tied it pretty well. I’ll throw it out at the next
rest stop.
—I can't stand it. Let's just leave it here.
—You can’t, Unni. There aren't any bins around.
—You should wash your hands at the rest stop.
—Okay, Unni. Now try to get some sleep.
I restarted the car and pulled into the road. My sister sat curled
up small, hugging herself. It wasn't cold but I turned on the heater
anyway. That night, she returned to Seoul without wearing any
underwear. She’d been menopausal for some time, but that’s the night
the symptoms began. My sister asked me as we crossed the tollgate
into Seoul,
—Why do things like that come out of the body?
I had no answer.
[઎઎઎઎]
On the fifteenth of the first lunar month, my sister stayed
overnight. The moon soared over the mountain across the river, its
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
47
brightness reaching all the way to the back of the multi-purpose area.
There was nothing between the moon and the window, so the room
felt like the moon's interior, and the moonlight looked cold against
my sister's calico sheet. In that moonlight, various objects in the room
like the dressing table, calendar, floor lamp, and TV set appeared far
away from one another, and it seemed I would need some unknown
kind of ruler to truly measure the distances between them. When
the curtains were drawn, the moonlight was so bright that my sister
didn't feel uneasy even when the lamp was off. She lay by my side.
The moon looked close enough to brush our foreheads, and I could
even look into the shadowy blots on its surface.
Around dawn, my sister began menstruating again. I woke up
from the sound of her rustling to find that she was trying to clean
up, pulling aside the sheets ever so carefully as not to wake me. Her
naked thighs and buttocks glowed bluish under the moonlight.
—I’m sorry.
She curled her naked body like a shrimp and exhaled. I gathered
the damp sheet and put it in the washer. I stood her up and pushed
her into the bathroom. I turned up the boiler, brought a pair of
underwear with an overnight pad in place and placed it in the
bathroom. Once she had everything under control, she returned to
her spot on the mat and lay down.
—Let's close the curtains. I think it happened because of the
moon.
I closed the curtains and turned on the small lamp. I took out a
quilt and laid it over my sister, while she muttered to herself like she
was talking nonsense.
—I woke up and suddenly saw the moon before my eyes. I
thought I was in the underworld. Where am I? I asked... I tried
calling someone's name, but I couldn't figure out who it was. And
I couldn't get any sound out of my mouth. Then my body grew hot
like a ball of flames and it all came out gushing.
—Okay, Unni. That’s enough now.
She reached out and stroked my hair.
—Do you feel ill, Unni?
—It feels like my insides have spilled out.
Her flushed face suddenly blanched. She wheezed at the end of
every breath.
—Now whenever it happens, it feels like a fireball is shooting
through my body. Like a little spark gets bigger as it comes closer
until I feel the whole thing bursting out from under. How about you?
Me? Sorrow and darkness that I can’t control or explain seep out
like mist from my insides, fattening my body’s capillaries. They ooze
from my body, just barely, like drips from a saturated sponge or the
foam that forms around the eyes of a crab. When I feel like this, I
draw the curtain, even in the middle of the day, and lie alone in the
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
dark room all day long.
I couldn’t explain how my body felt to my sister and I couldn’t
make sense of what she meant, when she said it felt like a fireball
gushing out of her. When she had fallen asleep, I felt around under
the sleeping mat. The floor was warm.
Mom,
I found out through Dad’s letter (which arrived yesterday) that
you and Dad are living apart with the plan of getting divorced. Since
it's been over ten months, I guess you two have been living apart
since I left for the United States. Mom, I hate you for not telling me
anything about it when I was calling you for the past ten months. I
found out your new address from Big Aunt. I broke into tears when I
was writing the new address on the envelope.
It was depressing watching you and Dad live together without
love, just from force of habit. And I wasn't particularly thrilled that
fate had made me the daughter of you two. You should know that I
am also a victim here. But I'm wondering what difference it would
make now for the two of you to go your separate ways. Do you really
think this will fill your lives with happiness? This might sound
insolent coming from your young daughter, but it might serve you
well to think about the link between what you’re gaining and what
you're losing, what you can gain and what you can't.
It’s only been a year since I’ve come here to study abroad and
I still have a long way to go before my degree, but I can hardly
concentrate on my studies after hearing that you and Dad have
separated back in Korea. Dad says that when the divorce becomes
official, out assets will be divided 7 : 3 between Dad and you, that
I should get seventy percent of my tuition from him and thirty
from you. How do you expect me to do well in school when I'm so
embarrassed about getting money separately from you two? You know
very well, Mom, that I don't have the constitution to study while
working a job in the evenings. Mom, please give it another thought
and try to find a solution within our current pattern of life. I sent
Dad a similar letter. I hoped that my letter can be a small seed that
will bring your two lives together again. I love you, Mom.
—Your daughter, Yeon-ju
[઎઎઎઎]
—Sorry...
That's how my husband told me that he wanted a divorce. His
tone was casual, as if he was saying,
“...Is it already time for another haircut?”
“...These pants are too tight for my bulging stomach.”
“...I'll be away on a business trip starting next week.”
“...Shipping is behind schedule because of the strike. My boss is
getting annoyed. It's the business manager who's in charge of labor
management disputes, so I don't know why he's on my case so much.”
When my husband returned from a business trip, I would find
a strand of woman's hair on his undershirt. It was on his summer
and winter undershirt. I could tell from the hair's texture that it had
come from the same person. It was long enough to come down to
the shoulder. It wasn't dyed and the strand was shiny and plump. It
looked well-nourished and full of life to the tip. It was straight in the
summer and wavy in the winter. When I removed the strand with my
fingernail from the fabric of his winter undershirt, the hair appeared
to wiggle on the floor, made elastic by the warmth. An image of
a young, healthy woman's naked body sprang to mind. It wasn't a
particular woman, a woman with a name. Rather, she was a distant
ancestor of the race called 'woman' or a collective woman standing
for all unknown, anonymous women of the world. It was as if the
woman had leapt out from a fossil into this world, writhing before me
as a single strand of hair. The illusion soon went away. In the space
where the illusion had been, I felt no anger or sorrow; there was only
the desolation in the emptiness left by all the years that had snuck
away from me. I picked up the two strands by stamping them with a
strip of Scotch tape. A shiver went down the nape of my neck when I
tossed the tape in the trash.
While my husband was busy bringing home long and lustrous
strands of hair on his undershirt, while that hair was switching its
style from straight to wavy, I was making visits to my husband's
hometown during his family's hyangsa, the memorial rites for his
grandfather and his father, the wedding ceremonies of his cousins
and cousin-in-laws, as well as during Chuseok and New Years, for
which I dressed up in a hanbok. He'd grown up in a small town
in Gyeongsang Province, on the inland side of the mountains.
My brother-in-law, who was the eldest son, was taking care of his
mother, who had been widowed early, and had been taking care of
the ancestral rites going back three generations. He had carved up
the inherited farmland and woodland, preserving the dignity of an
elder by selling them off. He knew all about the family's sons-inlaw, the nephews, the grandchildren various degrees removed from
him like the back of his hand—for example, about who among them
had become a government secretary, commissioner, a director, or an
executive director of a company. I remember my brother-in-law telling
me one year during one of the ancestral rites, how the second son
among the three boys of a female cousin, eight degrees removed, who
had married the county's new magistrate (who, by the way, happened
to be his high school alum), ended up going to the same high school
with my brother-in-law's oldest son.
Every time he went to his hometown, my husband borrowed the
black company car with an eight-cylinder engine, reserved specially
for VIP clients. He would call out an employee of the company to act
as chauffeur, and I would sit quietly in the backseat by my husband's
side and make the trip to his hometown.
—You look better in a hanbok now that you're getting older.
Maybe you're just too pretty to bear a son...
The year before last, during the annual ancestral rite for my
husband's grandfather, this was what my mother-in-law had said to
me, taking hold of my hand as I entered the front yard of my in-law's
house. I threaded a wrinkled tie around the waist of my skirt, cinched
it tight and began roasting some fish patties, hot pepper patties,
and liver patties in perilla oil. In the main hall, the male in-laws sat
in a circle, telling stories and laughing in an exaggerated manner
about the past antics of their nephews, who were now grown up and
successful, or arguing about the county’s policy for irrigation system
improvement. The flour batter must have been too coarse, because
every time I placed a patty on the frying pan, oil spurted everywhere.
I turned my head to avoid it.
—Why don't you stir the batter more. First turn down the flame
a little...
My mother-in-law told me, sitting on the stoop from the next
room.
The family had an ongoing tradition of wrapping up assorted
dishes from the offering table for the elders returning home, as a
parting gift. The elders receiving the parting gift would give the
head family's daughters-in-law envelopes of about fifty to hundred
thousand won, to help out with the cost of holding the ancestral rites,
and also to give thanks to the effort and behind-the-scenes labor by
the women. This is why, at the in-law's house, more food had to be
prepared than what would actually fit on the offering table.
On that day, I was in the front yard of the in-law's house until
the day grew dark, frying up patties in perilla oil. The patties piled
up high enough to fill two bamboo baskets. If an older in-law came
in while I was by the butane cooking stove, I would stand up to
greet them properly. One of them—whose degree of kinship to me I
couldn't recall—greeted me.
—How's it that you never seem to age at all? Would it kill you to
look a little older?
Another distant relative came in to greet me, helped up by a
young man.
—So you're Yun-shik's wife? I heard Yun-shik's a managing
director of a chaebol. They're right to call you pretty. You've fried up a
good amount here, haven't you? We were blessed with a lot of sun this
year, so the oil's got a ton of flavor.
The flame must have been too strong when the perilla seeds had
been roasted, because the oil gave off a burnt odor. The oil became so
sticky that when I dunked a piece of raw fish in the flour batter and
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put it on the pan, the edges of the patty would start burning, creating
smoke before the middle could be properly cooked. In the steam
rising from the oil, I could smell rice straws drying in the sun. In the
smoke I could smell what seemed like particles of sunlight being fried
up. The smell of oil permeated my hair and body, but I couldn't grasp
the nature of that smell—what it was exactly or how I was supposed
to react to it. It would draw out a few words only to block me from
speaking them when I'd just barely opened my mouth. Surrounded
by this smell, I was reminded of a spring day when I was carrying
Yeon-ju, how, after having lost my appetite from morning sickness,
I'd had the sudden urge to feast on the dirt dry and swollen under the
hot sun. I saw a vision of the naked woman who had appeared in my
head when I watched a strand of hair on my husband's undershirt,
how it had turned on the warm floor, the vision of the woman, who
had resembled some distant ancestor of womankind, or a woman
trapped in fossil. These visions appeared in the smell of perilla oil
and disappeared shortly after. When I looked into the oil sizzling on
the frying pan, I became nervous that time would pass, get erased or
spill out before I could even say anything, so that my groin tingled
and tightened as though I was about to wet myself. Was it a kind
of premonition? If it wasn't, I didn't know if there was a word for it
when you realized something after it was already too late. My motherin-law used her crutches to come down into the front yard and said,
—Why don't you tie your hair. Or your hair's gonna smell like
oil.
—It's okay, Mother. I'm going to have to wash it anyway.
—Just tie it back like I tell you. Your hair's going to be a mess if
you don't.
I gathered the strands falling over my face and tied them back
with a rubber band.
My mother-in-law had been suffering from arthritis and
osteoporosis for a long time. In the final years of her life, she was
diagnosed with bronchitis and glaucoma. She passed away in her
sleep in the middle of the night. There would be no difference in
her mind, between sleep and death. My in-laws seemed to accept the
old woman's death peacefully, as if she had chosen to pass into the
next world on a balmy spring day when the ground had completely
thawed, as if her death had been a sleep within sleep. Her shrouded
corpse, tied tightly in hemp fabric, was no larger than a child. When
her body was brought into the coffin, there was so much empty space
that the mortician had to fill it up by placing scrolls of mulberry
paper around the head and feet.
After the corpse of my mother-in-law was bathed and dressed,
I kept weeping as I watched them put floral-printed paper shoes on
her feet, considering the lightness of that death and recalling the
odor of perilla oil from when we'd held the ancestral rites for my
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late grandfather-in-law. The relatives, who had come together for
my mother-in-law's funeral commended me, remarking that I had
mourned more genuinely than her own daughters. On the harvest
moon festival before she passed, as though aware of her imminent
end, she gave my eldest sister-in-law and me each a jade hairpin,
and even my daughter Yeon-ju a set of rings. My mother-in-law
used to attend Buddhist service at the temple in the town across the
river, provoking the disapproval of her in-laws. When I married my
husband, who was her second son, she visited the Nahan shrine and
the small temple for the mountain god every day for three days to
make offerings. After her death, her daughters tried to give her a
Buddhist funeral, which entails seven ceremonies over seven weeks,
but the family elders would not allow it.
A month after the funeral, Yeon-ju left for the United States.
The night after her departure my husband said, “I'm sorry....” and
brought up the subject of divorce. His timing seemed appropriate. It
had been my husband's opinion that we would lessen the pain felt by
our family by separating only after both his parents had passed on
and while our child was away. Since I couldn't tell him myself why we
had to stay together, I couldn't ask him why we had to separate. The
word “why” felt so impotent that I hesitated to let it out. Separating,
having your life just flow away, felt like clouds turning to rain, that
rainy day darkening into dusk, and night rain falling. “I'm sorry...”
Those three syllables my husband had used to bring up the subject of
divorce seemed like a suitable opening. I wanted to tell him too that
I understood, that I was sorry, but I couldn't form the words. I never
brought up the long lustrous strand of hair stuck on my husband's
undershirt; it was probably wise to leave things that way, for the sake
of decorum. Divorce proceedings would not be brought to court,
and would be settled by mutual agreement. Separation was to begin
immediately until everything was settled. He and I would take
care of the remainder of Yeon-ju's academic career and her wedding
together, maintaining the proper dignity of parents. Until the divorce
was finalized, I was not to let my husband's company or my in-laws
suspect our separation. During the period of separation, I would
receive a stipend of two million won per month from my husband,
and the division of assets would be negotiated later but always under
the guiding principle of mutual agreement. These were my husband's
requests and I agreed to them all.
My older sister found me my new place. It was in one of the
apartment complexes along the mouth of the Han River. My sister
lived across the river in an apartment in Gimpo. We faced each other
with the river between us, and my new place was easily accessible
by taxi or bus for my sister, who didn't drive. Luckily, one of the
thirteen pyeong units was still available for sale; though there was no
premium, it still cost hundred twenty million won. I secured seventy
million won by closing out my installment savings account and my
sister helped me out with the remaining fifty million won. After my
brother-in-law's death, she'd received reparations from the airline
company; a retirement grant from the company where he'd worked
tirelessly for thirty years; compensation payment recognizing his
death in the line of duty; from my brother-in-law's life insurance; and
condolence money from visitors at the funeral, all of which added
up to over twenty billion won. My sister gave the bulk of the money
away to her two fully-grown sons who were married and the men in
her husband's family. It might be more accurate to say that the money
was snatched away from her. She'd never been good at confronting
people, and she was incapable of squabbling over money. Her sons
demanded their share as their right, and her husband's parents took
the money, driving out their newly widowed daughter-in-law like
a stranger. I learned later that during the funeral, members of her
husband's family had come by to take all the envelopes enclosed
with condolatory money, while her sons had been occupied with the
duties of chief mourners, receiving guests who had come to pay their
respects.
During the descent from the mountain after samujae was over,
my sister’s two sons grabbed their cousins and grappled with them,
demanding half of the condolatory money, but my sister wouldn't
even glance at them. She was at the tail end of the group on the
way down, and I was holding a parasol over her head. Once a fight
broke out at the front, she turned around and gazed blankly at her
husband’s naked grave, not yet covered in grass. She never wore
any color makeup except foundation. The exposed age lines on her
face were almost frightening. Her countenance as she looked upon
her husband's grave looked so vulnerable, she seemed hardly able to
endure the gaze of those around her. Then, as I removed stray pollen
from the hem of her funeral garb, I became nervous that she might
get her period again. Even distant relatives joined in and the spat only
escalated. I took the roundabout path and helped my sister down the
mountain.
The fifty million won my sister put into my new apartment came
from what remained of the money after most of it had been snatched
away. When I moved in, the mini-fridge and air conditioner, the
dining table set and dresser suitable for the cramped apartment
cost six million won altogether, which was also taken care of by
my sister. She had visited the store and paid in full, so that the new
furnishings could be delivered on the day I moved in. She picked out
linen curtains trimmed with vine lace and hung them on the balcony
window. She also brought two bottles of soy sauce for broiling dried
anchovies with kkwari peppers. The apron she brought over on the
day of the move-in was made of soft cotton that flowed gently over
her body. It had no pockets in the front and the neckline was cut low
and round so that it looked more like a nightgown or a slip than an
apron for doing dishes.
—Unni, are you sure this is an apron?
—Why? You don't like it?
—It looks just like a slip.
—Then feel free to wear it like one.
My sister had been on all fours wiping the floor with a rag when
she looked up to see me standing in that apron by the sink and
laughed. The sound of her laughter just barely scratched the surface
of real laughter before subsiding. The laughter trailed off in such a
lonesome way that my arms went weak even as I roasted the peppers.
By evening, when we had finished organizing my things, my
sister and I sat facing each other at the table in front of the balcony,
with a glass of wine set before us.
—Are we on the eighth floor? And this is fifteen pyeong, right?
—No, it's the ninth floor, Unni. And thirteen pyeong.
—The river's so wide that the apartment feels like it's about three
hundred pyeong.
She swirled the glass gently in a circle. Smelling the aroma, she
licked the thick liquid from the rim of the glass.
—It tastes a little jumpy. Try some.
I took my glass, wet my lips and sucked the roof of my mouth.
The aroma of wine spread. Sour and uneven, the wine was young and
needed aging.
—Doesn't it squeak in your mouth? It's too skinny. Thin and flat.
Kind of slippery at the end too.
That's when I first felt my sister growing too chatty around
evening time. Her words weren't meant for anyone. They were
understandable and valid only to herself. So it was as though
she wasn't speaking at all. I couldn't figure out a way to join the
conversation.
The river made a huge turn around the edge of its mouth, veering
westward. Though the ocean wasn't visible, the strength of the sea
was felt in such a way that when it pushed, the water would flow
back to the city and down towards the sea during low tide. During
high tide, when the flow was reversed, there would be a collision
between the river trying to flow downstream and the sea trying to
push upstream, stirring up the river with white foam. In the evening,
during low tide, we would hear the water from the river bottom
getting sucked out all at once. Once the water had all drained, the
wet shore on both sides of the river would be exposed, the river would
become tranquil and just the bare bones of the winding river would
remain. From a distance, where the river's curve wasn't visible, the
tide would start coming in again, little by little.
Around evening, when the tide was at its lowest, the river would
expand to its maximum width. The mountains on the other side
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would grow more distant as the sunset seeped through the hazy
hours. Far away by the river's curve, the sunset would be darkening
and the plane coming into Gimpo would emerge from the glow.
Whether the planes were leaving—turning into dots and vanishing
into the glow—or coming—emerging as dots on their way to
Gimpo—each plane resembled an embryo, or some organic trace
prior to conception, so that they looked identical.
—See, they all look like fish. Look at those fins. They even have
fins on their tails. How can they disappear like that? Like the sky's
absorbing them. Are there really people in there?
Yes, my sister was definitely becoming talkative around evening.
I wonder if I ever did send him home with my angora fur on
his undershirt. When his wife removed the strands of fur, did they
squirm on the heated floor of his house?
Simply calling the man “him” makes me feel like I'm referring to
nothing and nobody, no more substantial than the distant memory
of my morning sickness. Calling the man “him” makes it sound like
he's just anyone, like it makes no difference whether he's this man or
that man. But it's too soon to address him informally and it doesn't
match the man in flesh, who is living and breathing before me. So I
will stick with “him.” Something tells me that would be more honest.
I guess it can't be helped.
But when I think I've settled on “him,” I am angered by how that
sounds, like what’s happened between us is completely insignificant,
as if he’s some alien thing that has nothing to do with me. I can’t take
it anymore, so I have no choice. I decide to refer to him as “lover.”
Now that I've made my decision, I can feel my anger subsiding. It
can't be helped, because it can't be helped.
I met my lover the day after I moved into my new apartment. He
showed up when I was dealing with the aftermath of Yeon-ju leaving
for the United States and my separation from my husband. He
appeared in my life and came towards me but I'm not sure how close
I feel to him.
A few days before I moved, Yeon-ju finalized her decision on
which college she would attend. She said she needed an affidavit of
support to register. She asked me to send via express mail her father's
certificate of employment in English and the income tax receipts
for the past two years. Yeon-ju's voice reached me across the ocean
by phone. It was filled with excitement over her new school and the
seduction of the strange and magical future it represented.
—Mom, this is an Ivy League school, a prestigious university in
the Northeast. All of the buildings are made of old-fashioned marble,
and the Western kids are so cool. You should come visit next year.
—Honey, I know all about the Ivy League. And didn't a professor
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from your school win the Nobel Prize in chemistry? Or was it
medicine? The one who did his research on the essence of smell?
According to the newspaper article I read once, the professor had
concluded that smell is something imprinted inside the subconscious
that could bring out distant memories.
—It's called medical chemistry, Mom. His major's the same as
mine. They say I can take classes from him if I go to graduate school.
—You're majoring in smell too? It sounds like a difficult subject.
—No. Smell's way too hard, Mom, but I don't have to decide yet.
—You're right. You should take your time deciding. By the way,
aren't the desks and the chairs at the school too high for you? Can
you reach the apartment sink okay? Since you're a little short?
—Mom, are you serious? Like that's even an issue? Can you hurry
with the documents? They have to be originals, they don't accept
faxes. You can send it through express mail.
—Alright. Does the income tax receipt have to be in English?
—We just need accurate numbers, payment dates, the official seal
of the tax office superintendent. Dad's been paying so much in taxes,
so there shouldn't be a problem getting the papers through. How's
Dad doing?
—Fine. We're all fine here. Your dad's going to be happy to hear
about you starting school. Your uncle and the other adults out in the
country will be happy too. They'll want to fry up some food and have
a party again. As for the documents, I will send them.
My husband's office would have to provide me with a copy of
the proof of employment. And I would have to get the receipt for the
income tax payments from the company and go to the government
tax office for the notary stamp. I hadn't been able to decide, when I
called the office, whether I should ask my husband or ask one of his
staff members. His secretary answered the phone. She was an astute,
quick-witted woman, and she recalled my voice from having run
errands between my husband and me for a long time.
—Oh, Mrs. Han? Everyone missed you at the company-wide
directors' wives party. I've been holding on to your present from the
chairman’s wife.
I waited for the secretary to say something like “I’ll put the
director on the line” or “the director is out of the office.”
—I heard that your daughter has gone to study abroad. You
should just pretend she got married. You must be feeling lonesome
since the director is abroad on a business trip as well. A fax came
yesterday, saying that the director might be returning a few days later.
My husband was abroad on a business trip. Luckily, I hadn't
asked her to put him on the phone. My husband had requested that
I don’t let the staff at the office catch on that we had separated. The
request suited me fine too. I had to use some cunning.
—Since my husband's out of town, I’m afraid I’m going to have
to bother you…
I prefaced my request with this casual excuse and asked the
secretary for the documents.
—I’ll have them ready by tomorrow. There’s also the gift from
the chairman’s wife, so I’ll have the driver deliver the documents with
the present to your house.
By house, she meant my husband’s house where I used to live.
—It’s okay. I have to go into town tomorrow anyway, so I’ll come
by the office and pick them up.
I managed to avert that crisis.
— Oh, really? The documents are to be prepared by the
personnel department, so call Mr. Kim when you come into town. I’ll
let him know what you need. You do know Mr. Kim, right?
—Yes, I might have met him once quite a long time ago...
—It’s Mr. K im Sun-k il. He’s the head of the personnel
department.
Kim Sun-kil. That's the name of my lover. It started like this,
when the separation was almost complete. That day, we were
swarmed by Chinese yellow dust. Below the balcony, the far end
of the river seemed to unravel into the hazy sky and the mountains
flickered amidst all that dust. The space was thick yet empty, empty
yet thick. I stood before a mirror wearing my white scarf and gray
trench coat, and I looked like a middle-aged monk. I replaced the
white scarf with a purple one and drove to the front of my husband's
company. My lover was already there, sitting in a dimly lit café by
the window. He was very thin and his limbs, neck, and fingers were
so long that he reminded me of those birds that stand on one leg.
His gaze seemed to be turned inward. He gave off a feeling of being
on the brink of extinction. I had read in a book once that birds that
straggle from the flock during winter migration can't return to Siberia
even when spring arrives; they spend the rest of their lives settled
among unfamiliar species.
He placed the documents I'd requested on the table. The
fingers pushing the files across were marked by dark spots. I opened
the documents to take a look. The official seal of the tax office
superintendent was already stamped on the income tax receipt.
—I can’t believe your daughter's grown up so fast. I held her at
her first birthday party but you don't seem to remember.
At the time of Yeon-ju's first birthday, we were living in a rented
house in Jangwi-dong. My husband's young colleagues had come to
our house for some drinks, but I couldn't remember his face from
twenty five years ago. A vague and feeble smile played about his lips
and he spoke again.
—I joined the company in the same year as Director Han. We
were the first group to be publicly employed. Though I work under
Director Han...
—I see.
—It happened like that... …by itself.
I wondered what smell would draw him to me from twenty five
years ago. I couldn't remember him from twenty five years ago, but I
did remember him from two years ago. He had run up to my husband
with some documents when I accompanied him to his promotion
ceremony, when he was being named director. My husband who'd
been sitting on the hall platform screwed up his face and said, “There
will be time for this later,” and returned the documents without even
taking a look. I had appeared before him as his boss's wife.
—If you write me your daughter’s address in the U.S., I can send
the documents along with the company documents by messenger
service to our New York branch. That's part of my job as the head of
personnel.
—No, you don’t need to. I’ve got other things I need to enclose.
Barely managing to keep his awkward, piteous face under control,
my lover tried tending to the needs of his boss's wife. It was written
all over his face: why he'd fallen behind while my husband, who had
entered the company in the same recruitment cycle, was promoted to
director. My lover said,
—Your daughter must be very bright and able, if she takes after
her father.
His voice sounded feeble, as if he hardly believed that his small
talk had been well-intentioned. The faint smile at the end of his words
again called to mind fear from being on the brink of extinction. I
offered him a sharp reply, as if I was cross.
—No, actually she takes after me in being timid and narrowminded. She's always falling behind her peers.
My lover's face crumbled, as if on the verge of tears. What's wrong
with me, I thought. My heart was sore from a guilty conscience.
—This is from the secretary, he said and set two shopping bags
on the table. There I found a Gucci handbag from the company
chairman’s wife, two complimentary tickets for a Russian ballet
performance addressed to my husband’s office, and ten department
store gift certificates. In another shopping bag was Ulleong Island
beef ribs sent by the head of a subcontracting company. Since I was
no longer the wife of Mr. Han Yun-shik, the Executive Director of
Haeyang Group, I knew none of these things belonged to me, but
I couldn't return them either. I became very embarrassed. My lover
said, addressing my embarrassment,
—Ma'am, if it's too much trouble to carry all this home, I could
send them by the company driver.
—No, I brought my car.
A waitress brought a kettle of green tea. My lover poured the
tea into my teacup. His fingers were long and thin. Holding the
knob of the kettle in his right hand with his left hand supporting its
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base, he poured the tea slowly, little by little, along the teacup's rim.
Reminiscent of an ancient priest from a forgotten era presiding over a
religious ritual, his act of pouring the tea had a focused tranquility. It
was the tranquility of a person who had quietly accepted time's winds
and waves as they blew and crashed against him through his life. Old
staff members would all be dismissed during company restructuring,
and it suddenly occurred to me that since he was still just director
after entering the company at the same time as my husband, his days
at the company had to be numbered. Maybe it was the tranquility
of his hands that made me think that. I was about to ask him if his
wife was employed and how many kids they had, but then changed
my mind. I thought I’d seen the wife at a company family picnic or
sporting day or a commendation ceremony for long-term service,
but her face didn't come to mind. I drank the green tea my lover had
poured me. A faintly fishy odor passed through my body. The odor
wandered inside me, reaching far and low. I felt him appear before
me like a spot in the evening glow, seeping out from it like a plane
making an evening flight. Before he could come any closer, I stood
up. I gave a nod of recognition towards his disarmed gaze.
—Thank you for the documents.
—If you ever need assistance when Mr. Han's not here, please
don't hesitate to call. I take special care to serve him properly, since
we were in the same recruitment cycle.
He didn’t seem to be saying these things purely out of etiquette.
Yet he seemed to be having a hard time getting these words out. He
carried the two shopping bags up to my car. When I started the car
and began moving, he bowed his head to his superior's wife. Seeing
his long torso bend, the image of a bird came to me, standing on one
leg, licking under its wing with its lowered beak.
The yellow dust in the air was growing thicker as I drove along
the riverside highway. The rear lights of the cars floated like fireflies
in a fog of yellow dust. The traffic station reported that airplanes had
been suspended from taking off or landing and that wireless phone
communication was experiencing technical problems. The flow of
traffic was slow, practically bumper-to-bumper, the cars lined up like
a procession of the blind.
Words floated up in my heart, targetless and seething, “Longlegged bird. Don’t come this way and fly back to Siberia. Don’t stand
there up on one leg. That’s not where you’re meant to be…”
Siberia or Alaska, whichever it was, the place wasn’t important.
Wherever it was, whether the place existed or not, it made me sad and
uneasy that my lover had to stand on one leg before returning to that
unknown place. My sadness hadn’t been fated. It had come into being
out of the blue, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. On
the riverside highway hazy from the yellow dust, I felt the sadness
gather around my ankles; the anxiousness made me press down on
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the accelerator.
That’s how it began. It came out of the chasm I was in when my
husband and I were separating, and we were sending our daughter
away. It wasn't destiny, or even a coincidence. It just couldn't be
helped. Even when my lover's body filled me up inside, swelling, lost,
disengaged, I always felt that he was a bird on one leg.
[઎઎઎઎]
The last bus for Gyeongju was available. It’s where my sister’s
eldest son was living. My sister had come down to visit because
he was having the first birthday party for his firstborn, and I had
arranged to meet her there. The eldest son of my sister was technically
my nephew, but his personality made it hard for me to comfortably
call him that. He’d graduated from college and was unemployed.
He drove imported cars and burned through money, but my sister
couldn’t get him to change his ways. After my brother-in-law’s death
from the plane crash, his company, as a gesture of honoring the
company’s founding member and employee who had died on duty,
passed on the right to run the company refectory to my nephew who
is the eldest son. He ended up settling in Gyeongju, which wasn’t far
from Pohang, where the factory was located. My nephew who had
no experience in operating dining halls, hired a manager, leaving
him in charge of operations, and simply collected the profit. The
dining hall for five thousand factory workers must have brought in
a sizable amount of earnings. The nephew claimed to be fascinated
by Gyeongju's historical relics and Buddhist cultural treasures, and
roamed around with his camera in his Landrover. He even had a
darkroom set up in his house. When he was on leave in the middle of
his military duties, he said he'd dropped his rifle in the river and had
to pay the army back and took five million won from my sister. Scared
that he might be punished for losing the gun, my sister obediently
handed over the money. Later, I heard from a schoolmate's son that
soldiers who lose their military supplies are punished by being sent to
military prison, but there are no rules in the books about repayment.
Most of the compensation money and retirement pension given to
my sister after my brother-in-law's death was taken by my nephew.
He fought with the in-laws and managed to get back half of the
condolence money that they had taken for themselves. I heard that he
called his mother on the day he got the money back and said, “That's
why women can't be trusted to take care of family business.”
—This would probably look better on a taller person. You should
take it.
My sister gave her Gucci handbag as a present to her young
daughter-in-law at the first year birthday party held at the nephew's
house. It was the bag that my lover had delivered to me, telling me
it was a gift from the wife of the company president. I had somehow
felt the bag wasn’t meant for me, so I had given it to my sister, telling
her it had been a present from a friend who came back from travels
overseas. It was an enamel-coated handbag for summer use.
—It’s Jackie O's style!
My sister’s young daughter-in-law hung the bag over her shoulder
and looked at herself in the mirror from various angles. The contours
were round and the straps were long—a style Jacqueline Kennedy had
made famous during her First Lady years, when she wore it to social
gatherings. Seeing the nephew’s wife stand before the mirror, I felt
that the Gucci handbag had finally found a home.
The baby was a boy. He'd developed pretty fast, so he was already
tottering along, a few steps at a time, and a stream of babbling flowed
from his mouth. At the dining room table, my sister and I listened to
the nephew go on about the significance of Hwangryong Temple and
its establishment, Seokgat Pagoda's proportional and symmetrical
grace, the beauty of the embossed carving of Apsara on Emile Bell,
and the place Kamun Temple's Three Storied Stone Pagoda holds in
the history of Korean stone pagodas. Everywhere on the walls of the
kitchen and the living room, photographs the nephew had taken of
Gyeongju's cultural relics were hanging on panels.
Then at the dinner table, the baby began choking on a scallop
he’d picked up and put in his mouth. The suffocating child flailed
about on the f loor, his face growing f lushed, unable to even cry
because of the choking. Not knowing what to do, the young mother
went on shrieking. The nephew picked up the phone to dial the
emergency number. My sister took the child in her arms and spread
the child's mouth open and stuck her finger inside. The baby couldn’t
throw up the morsel and the child’s limbs writhed. My sister held
him upside down, gathering his feet in one hand, and struck his back
with her palm. I wondered about all the agility and strength that
had been stored away inside her all this time. She struck the baby's
back again, and he threw up the morsel with some half-digested
breast milk, staining my sister's skirt. The baby burst out crying. The
nephew called the emergency number again to cancel the ambulance
request. The boy let out a long, robust cry. My sister hugged the
baby and cooed into his ear and looked into the mouth of the crying
baby. Three front teeth had sprouted like grains of hulled millet,
penetrating the pink membranous gums. The teeth were white and
small. My sister put her fingers into the baby's mouth and pressed
down firmly on the teeth, and as if captivated by them all over again,
looked inside the mouth.
—Hey, look at these teeth. Don't they look like grains of rice?
She had a faraway look in her eyes as she gazed into the baby’s
mouth, as if quietly contemplating something. She seemed to be
on the verge of smiling, but then her expression turned into one of
inexpressible sorrow. It was the saddest expression I’d ever seen my
sister make.
—See how they’ve come up? Like little shoots of grass?
Before going back up to Seoul, I took my sister to the mountain
south of Gyeongju. Because of the wind and the chilly air when
we started climbing the mountain trail around Samleong, we were
unable to climb all way to the top and had to turn back midway. The
information post standing at Samleong said it was the site of royal
tombs, where three emperors with the last name of Park, the eighth
king Adala of Silla, the fifty-third king Sindeok, and the fifty-fourth
king Gyeong-myeong were buried. Seven hundred years had come
and gone between the eighth and the fifty-fourth king, but the tombs
all looked exactly the same, not to mention the autumn light falling
over them. The area around the royal tombs was shaded and cool
from the pine trees curving up into the sky, and light soaked through
the space between the pine branches. I said to her,
—These are the famous pine trees of Gyeongju.
The older sister gazed at the autumn light falling between pine
trees with the same faraway look in her eyes I'd seen before. I had my
sister stand between two trees on the light-soaked grass and took a
photograph. In the view finder, the autumn light seemed to simmer
over my sister's head and shoulders—the same autumn light that had
soaked through the pine branches back in the days of the eighth King
Adala of Silla.
—Unni. Try smiling a little.
My sister appeared to force a smile. I clicked on the shutter before
the trace of mirth could f leet from her face. After about fifteen
minutes of hiking up the mountain trail, we began seeing images
of Buddha, lacquered in light, in every clearing we came upon. The
Buddhas were engravings in sheets of rock, so they looked more like
pictures than statues. The hem of Buddha's robe and the corners of
his smiles didn't look like engravings; they looked more like they
had emerged naturally from inside of the rock, as if leaked through
tiny pores in the surface. The autumn sun came down concentrated
around these lines on the rock, and light seemed to be burrowing into
it. As though muttering to herself, my sister spoke, standing in front
of the Buddha who held his open palm facing out at the world below
the mountain.
—Look at that face. Look at that palm. Doesn't it look like the
lines are just oozing out of the rock?
At that moment, I was afraid that my sister might start
hemorrhaging again, but nothing like that happened.
In the souvenir shop at the entrance to the hiking trail, my sister
bought a small guidebook. It had been put together by a museum in
Gyeongju to provide background information on the city's historical
sites. It introduced palaces and Buddhist temples, as well as old tales
about the land that made for good stories. My sister, who had been
flipping through the book, thrust it towards me, saying,
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
55
—L ook at this. It tells you about the world that exists
underground, according to what Buddhists say.
I looked at the page before me.
When the Buddhist monk Wonhyo was still alive, a cripple by
the name of Sabok lived in a poor mountain village in the outskirts
of Gyeongju. When his mother passed away, he called upon Wonhyo
to hold a funeral service, and said to him, “The old cow in our house
that had been carrying the Buddhist scripture on her back has passed
on.” Bearing the funeral bier on their shoulders, the two men climbed
up the mountain. When Sabok pulled a blade of grass by the roots,
a pure and peaceful world opened up below. Sabok went into the
opening, bearing the funeral bier on his shoulder, and performed the
funeral rites.
The book included a story like this. When I read the words “The
old cow in our house that had been carrying the Buddhist scripture
on her back,” I burst out laughing. The thought of a cow with a
Buddhist scripture on its back was just too much.
It suddenly occurred to me to ask,
—You know the Chinese characters for menstruation—wolgyeong—why is it that we use the gyeong that means Buddhist
scripture?
She answered:
—What kind of question is that?
The sun was setting at the base of the mountain and a plane that
had taken off around Pohang was being immersed in the evening
glow. My sister looked off for a long time where the plane appeared to
be melting into the sky.
—Let's go down. I'm getting cold.
—Do you want my scarf?
—It's okay. Do you wear that cashmere sweater I got you?
—I do. I'm actually wearing it under this right now.
We came down the mountain and went to the Gyeongju train
station. While waiting for the express train back to Seoul, I got a call
from Yeon-ju on my cell phone. She sounded giddy about something.
—Mom, I got a call from Seoul. It was my high school teacher.
He said they have my name hanging on a banner over the school
entrance because I got into an Ivy League university. It has your name
and Dad's name written on it. You should go there and check it out.
You have to take pictures.
—I'll make sure to go see it. I'll take some pictures.
I thought about how far the river had flowed from the base of my
apartment. I thought about the pitch black darkness before you open
the door and flick on the lights. Before getting on the train, I stopped
by a pharmacy and got some pads for my sister and put them in my
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
purse. I snuck into the restroom without my sister's knowing and
gave my lover a call.
—I'm in Gyeongju right now. It will be midnight by the time
I get back to Seoul. Can you still come?
He answered briskly, as though he had been waiting for me to
ask.
—I'll be there.
The day began to darken when we passed Daegu. In the fields
where night was falling, lights from the lamps streamed past us,
and when the train crossed over a river, Through the car window,
I saw the figure of a tall bird standing on one foot by the water's
edge. Next to me, my sister was fast asleep.
About the Author
Kim Hoon was born in 1948. His extensive journalism career
started in 1973 at The Hankook Ilbo and stretched through the
years at The Sisa Press, The Kookmin Ilbo, and The Hankyoreh.
He made his literary debut well past the age of 40, but has
received numerous awards since: the Dongin Literary Award
in 2001 for his novel Song of the Sword; the Yi Sang Literary
Award in 2004 for his short story “Cremation”; the Hwang
Sun-won Literary Award in 2005 for his short story “My
Sister’s Menopause”; and the Daesan Literary Award in 2007
for his novel Fortress on Mt. Namhan.
Reviews Fiction
The Price of Sacrifice
Women and Their Evolving Enemies
Kim Soom, Hyundae Munhak Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 320p, ISBN 9788972756590
What is the first thing that comes to
mind when hearing the word mother?
Unconditional love, sacrifice, and maternal
instinct are some of the words we are
conditioned to automatically think of.
Kim Soom’s Women and Their Evolving
Enemies takes a bold look at the inherent
cruelty behind this image of the selfsacrificing mother.
The author paints a damning portrait
of the modern generation that takes for
granted the sacrifice of their mothers, all
in the name of living a better life than
their mothers’ generation. A telemarketer
for a home shopping channel decides
to live with her mother-in-law so her
child “might have the chance to live in a
good apartment.” Once they start living
together she feels no guilt at treating her
mother-in-law like the hired help. One day
the mother-in-law realizes that she feels
“like a living fossil.” The daughter-in-law
also begins to feel insecure in her role as a
so-called fabulous mom after she gets fired
from her job. She treats her mother-in-
law with increasing coldness and grows to
resent her entire life.
At f irst the two were enthusiastic
about what they believed would be an
efficient and mutually beneficial living
arrangement, but as time passes they
suffer from a sense that their identities
cease to matter. After being fired without
notice, the daughter-in-law takes out her
anger on her mother-in-law. She thinks
nothing of sacrificing another mother so
that she can be a good mom to her own
son. Both women, however, share a similar
fate in that they are mothers that sacrifice
themselves for their sons. Unfortunately
this is a vicious cycle that will be repeated
as long as the modern generation expects
their mothers to yield to their own selfish
desires.
by Jung Yeo-ul
Unrecorded Moments
Who Is Dr. Kim?
Lee Gi-ho, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 404p, ISBN 9788932023939
Who Is Dr. Kim? is Lee Gi-ho’s third
collection of short stories. The author has
proven to be a talented storyteller in two
previous collections, Earnie (2004) and
Having Been at a Loss, I Knew It Went
That Way (2006). This latest collection
introduces us to eight new stories in
which the author raises two fundamental
questions: Is it possible to write about life
itself in fiction? What is the new frontier
of fiction? In other words, this collection is
the writer’s musings on the limitations and
new possibilities of the genre.
In the short story "Pushing Closer
Again, "the narrator notes, "There is a
blank spot in everyone’s story, which
everyone tries to fill by making up more
stories, which is where all the stories of this
world come from, which I did not know
back then."
The short stor y is about the
protagonist’s uncle who keeps a record
of every mile he has driven with his car.
The uncle’s car does not go in reverse, so
he has to push it backwards himself. The
interesting thing is that the most profound
moment in the uncle’s life comes when
he is pushing his car backwards, yet the
distance the car has backed up is not
recorded in his driving log. According
to the writer, this is precisely the sort of
profound blankness that goes unrecorded.
The profound blankness in one’s life is
not written or spoken about; it can only
be alluded to. These unrecorded moments
in life form the boundaries as well as the
beginning of fiction. Lee Gi-ho discovers
another possible origin of fiction in this
meeting of things untold.
by Kim Dongshik
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
57
Reviews Fiction
Reenacting a Revolutionary
Seo Joon-hwan, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 495p, ISBN 9788932024103
Young writer Seo Joon-hwan combines
the conventions of science fiction and the
detective story in a style reminiscent of the
French nouveau roman or Samuel Beckett’s
experimental novels, yet unmistakably
makes the work his own.
The Death of Robespierre is a strange
novel. In form it resembles a three-act
puppet show, in which Guignol and
other marionettes play historical figures.
It is also a novel, however, in which the
audience of the puppet show is present
in the novel as a protagonist (Napoleon),
and the protagonist has his own narrative
inside and outside the show. Thematically
this is also an interesting work. The
one question I kept asking myself while
reading this novel was, why Robespierre,
and why now?
To Koreans that know of Maximilian
Robespierre, he is usually the “bloodthirsty
dictator” who destroyed the spirit of the
French Revolution, or at best as “a wise
citizen-comrade and staunch Roman
senator.” T he aut hor doe s not stop
there, however, and presents us with a
painstakingly researched and vividly
Stranger than Fiction
Han Yujoo, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 303p, ISBN 9788932024097
The Impossible Fairytale is told in two
parts. The first part largely deals with
an abused child’s diary. The second part
is presented as the diary of the writer of
this book. In the first part, Choi Mi-ah is
killed by a classmate (in Korean, “mi-ah”
means “lost child”). In the second part, the
child who is presumed to be Mi-ah’s killer
comes to the writer and asks, “Who am I?”
The only answer the writer gives is, “The
child killed Mi-ah. Mi-ah’s death was
planned—that is, it was there in my notes
from the beginning. An unnamable sense
of guilt haunted me while I was writing
the scene where Mi-ah is murdered.”
T his g u ilt is a n expression of
impossibility, as guilt is the ultimate,
invisible burden that can never be shaken
off. The novel operates on three levels
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
of impossibility. First, it is impossible to
have a fairytale where the exchange of
violence is mutual. This is an expression
of the author’s guilt about the violence
of t he out side world. Second ly, t he
border of fiction and reality is breached
in the second part of the novel, which
demonstrates the limitations of the genre
itself. The child ’s questioning of the
novelist, the creator of this character, is as
unlikely an encounter as that of man and
God. Thirdly, the novelist’s involvement
in the novel is so meta that a descent into
the abstract is inevitable, regardless of
the writer’s intentions. All that is left is
a sentence like: “Nothing is precise. Or
imprecise, for that matter.”
The Impossible Fairytale is stranger
than the fairytale or novel that the author
is parodying. This fragile balance relies
on wordplay, or using the limitations of
language to overcome the limitations
of objects. Wordplay, by definition, is
reenacted version of the final three days
of t he revolutiona r y’s life before the
Thermidorian Reaction of 1794. This
sets the stage for some truly magnificent
and heated debates on revolution and
dictatorship, democracy and rebellion,
freedom and equality, virtue and terror, and
loyalty and betrayal.
The Death of Robespierre provides
few metaphors that could be applied to
Korean society. Why Robespierre, then?
The f ictional Napoleon says, “This is
clearly to watch history being made.” Korea
today is torn between the dictatorship of
materialism and a revolutionary democracy.
Surely this is reason enough for a fictional
attempt at resurrecting Robespierre.
by Bok Dohoon
an attempt to resurrect meaning from
non-meaning, and herein rests the last
impossibility. The lunacy of such wordplay
like sangcheo (hurt), cheongsa (an official
building), sacheong (a short break after
a long day of rain), chaseong (the second
brightest star) is unfortunately lost in
translation.
by Yang Yun-eui
Steady Sellers
Poet Kim Su-young,
Still Controversial
The Complete Works of Kim Su-young, Vol.1 (Poems)
Kim Su-young, Minumsa Publishing Group
2003, 394p, ISBN 9788937407147
Count less poets bega n writing poetr y
after the liberation of Korea from Japan.
But it is difficult to find another poet who
aroused as much interest and stirred as much
controversy as Kim Su-young. He died at
the relatively young age of 48 in 1968, but
his poetry has become a symbol of freedom
and revolution during the democratization of
Korea, embodying literature that represents
social concerns while being an example
of modern, avant-garde poetry. Moreover,
his life and work have elicited praise and
criticism as well as a debate on imitation
versus ref lection by liberals, socialists,
anti-Communists, and diverse types of
intellectuals.
T h e C o m p l e t e Wo r k s o f K i m S u young, Vol.1 published posthumously by
Minumsa Publishing Company in 1981,
is a compilation of The Big Root (1974); a
selection of essays Spit, Poetry (1975); and the
popular Even If the Moon's Path Is Trodden,
(1976). This collection of poems can be
viewed as an outcome of the heightened
interest in his work since the 1970s. As the
first edition of the book has undergone
27 printings and the second edition, 19
printings, it goes to show that the great
interest in Kim’s poetry is not temporary.
T he u nd e rly i n g b a si s of how t he
Minumsa Publishing Group’s version of
The Complete Works of Kim Su-young, Vol.1
became a steady seller is the undying appeal
of his poetry and the passionate debate it
still triggers from readers. What continues
to inspire young readers are the issues of
freedom, revolution, conscience, and love, as
well as the fiery spirit with which the poet
engaged in his poetry.
Kim Su-young was born, lived, and
died in Seoul. He was an urbanite who
lived in the capital, a place that rapidly
metamorphosed into a modern city and was
therefore free from the traditionalism and
conventions of rural life. The reason why
Kim actively pursued the themes of change
and revolution, new forms, and abstruse
styles of expression is not unrelated to the
changes he experienced in his everyday life
in Seoul.
Born in 1921, he died in 1968. The 48
years during which he lived was a period
of great turbulence for the Korean people
who experienced Japanese colonialism,
national independence on August 15, 1945,
the division of the Korean peninsula and
the Korean War, the dictatorship of Rhee
Syngman, and the student revolution on
April 19, 1961.
It was not simply Kim himself but the
historical time period in which he lived that
made him leave to study in Japan during
the colonial era, become mesmerized by
the proletariat poet Lim Wha after the
liberation of Korea, be incarcerated in the
Geojedo Prisoners’ Camp during the Korean
War, and become actively involved in the
socio-political movement after the April
19 Student Revolution. In other words, his
direct confrontation with the critical events
and issues of his time, led Kim to actively
ref lect on the meaning of the individual,
family, and society in a poetic context.
When Kim's collected works of poetry
was first published, it was around the time
when the literary establishment in Korea was
distinctively split into what the hegemonic
literary sect called the establishment group
and the critical group. The latter group
founded quarterlies like Changbi Quarterly
and Literature and Intelligence, as well as
organizations like The Council of Writers for
Freedom and Practice, which fought against
the authoritarian government.
Consequently, the meaning and the
value of Kim’s poetry also showed a great
range of differing opinions, depending on
the viewpoint of the literary figures and their
political beliefs. On one hand, the nature
of civilianism, proletarianism, realism, and
honesty inherent in his poems were viewed
in a positive light, whereas on the other
hand, some criticized them for being esoteric,
bourgeois in nature, and self-contradictory.
For ex a mple, t he popu list gra ss root s
movement interpreted the phrases from
Kim’s most well-known poem, “Grass,” such
as “lying down faster than the wind” and
“rising faster than the wind,” as signifying
the tenacious vitality of the masses. Those
who were critical about populism claimed
such a reading renders the masses as being
opportunists who give into conditions of the
present state, thereby igniting a debate about
its meaning.
After democracy was achieved in Korea
in the 1990s, many of the works by countless
anti-government literary figures have lost
their meaning. The Complete Works of Kim
Su-young, which has stirred debate on the
excesses and deficiencies of modernity, has
continued to survive the times.
by Hong Jung-sun
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
59
Reviews
Nonfiction
Reviews Nonfiction
An Intellectual Rivalry?
Two Stars, Two Maps: The Rivalry of Dasan and Yeonam
Go Mi-Sook, Bookdramang Publishing Company
2013, 432p, ISBN 9788997969234
Two Stars, Two Maps explores the alleged
rivalry between Dasan Jeong Yak-yong
(1762~1836) and Yeonam Park Ji-won
(1737~1805), two great thinkers of the
late Joseon period.
The two men were born 25 years
apart, but they both lived in the Jeongjo
era (1776~1800) and were recognized for
their talent by the king. Dasan belonged
to the Namin faction, and Yeonam to
the Noron Byeokpa faction. As such,
this served as a dramatic setting to their
rivalry.
But author Go Mi-Sook attempts to
draw attention to this inaccurate view
of history. Although regarded as rivals,
the two men had never met even though
they shared the same friends. They must
have been aware of each other, yet there
is no record of them ever exchanging a
letter. In fact, Yeonam did not mention
Dasan in his books, while Dasan only
briefly mentioned Yeonam’s work in the
form of a footnote.
Rivals who have never come face to
face? Against this peculiar backdrop, the
book explores the intellectual history of
late Joseon.
In Korea’s intel lectua l histor y,
Dasan and Yeonam are classified under
Silhak (practical learning). Perhaps
because the country had collapsed on the
threshold of modernism, the influence of
Silhak in the late Joseon period is often
overestimated. This can be attributed
to the compulsive search for the seed
of independent modernism during that
time.
This book analyzes the beliefs of
Dasan and Yeonam, and captures the
essence of their lives. For this reason, it
was titled “Two Stars.” Humans group
stars into constellations, but the stars
are too profound to be approached
from such a two-dimensional level.
Constellations are merely the result of
a mythical imagination, and the stars
themselves each shine in a vast darkness.
Similarly, it was the postmodernist
imagination that led to the grouping
of Dasan and Yeonam as Silhak rivals,
but the scholars themselves exceled
independently.
Instead of adhering to a
postmodernist tendency, this book
focuses on the different paths taken by
Yeonam and Dasan, and reveals where
they intersect. Yeonam supported the
doctrines of Wang Yangming while
goi ng a g a i n st ne o - C on f ucia n i sm,
and Dasan was a baptized believer
influenced by Western learning. At that
time, neo-Confucian rule was enforced
in the pursuit of a Confucian utopia, so
Western learning and the teachings of
Wang Yangming were regarded as heresy.
Of course, Yeonam and Dasan were
neither advocates of Wang Yangming
nor missionaries of Western learning.
But with the ensuing power struggle
linked to modern neo-Confucianism,
the two had to live in seclusion (Yeonam)
and exile (Dasan).
Two Stars, Two Maps successfully
integrates the postmodern values of
Yeonam, an independent thinker who
went against dominant thought, and
the modern values of Dasan, a scholar
who reorganized neo-Confucianism in
a systematic and practical manner based
on Western learning, into the intellectual
topography of the late Joseon period.
by Bae No-pil
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
61
Reviews Nonfiction
Understanding the Classics
The Secret of Greek Tragedy:
Twelve Most Famous Tragedies
Kang Dae-jin, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 398p, ISBN 9788954621403
Classics are books that have survived
through the ages. When a work is referred
to as a “modern classic,” it ref lects the
hope that future generations will continue
to read and enjoy the work for many years
to come. In other words, classics withstand
the test of time. Yet this brings up the
issue of how readers can deal with the gap
between the present and the distant past
whenever they try to read the classics,
works that are often written using archaic
language that modern readers struggle to
understand.
Author Kang Dae-jin uses his golden
pen to help readers deal with these issues
when reading the classics. His book The
Secret of Greek Tragedy introduces readers
to the 12 works written by the immortal
Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides. Kang’s detailed explanation
of the original ancient texts helps readers
attain a deeper understanding of Greek
tragedy by providing the historical context
of the era in which these works were
Monsters Inside Us
Monsters in Art : The Human Fascination with the Sensual and Fantastic
Lee Yeon-sik, EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.
2013, 263p, ISBN 9788956606941
Humans are captivated by beauty. Our
hearts stir and our pulses quicken when we
lay eyes on ideal ratios and curves. When
we were children, however, monsters
inhabiting the darkness captured our
imagination instead, terrifying us with
their hideous forms and violent natures.
An examination of humanity's cultural
history reveals that our artistic imagination
has been piqued more by the monstrous
serpent in the Garden of Eden than by
Eve's flawless beauty. Author Lee Yeon-sik
unearths all manner of monsters from the
annals of Western art, categorizing them
through their appearance and other traits,
which makes for interesting reading.
The beautiful prose and fantastic
illustrations transform terrible monsters
into exceptional neighbors from whom
we can learn how to maintain mystery
in modern life through “the other.” It
is through the realization that humans
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
are not human that we can truly accept
ourselves as people. Monsters are the
ultimate “other” for humanity, but through
their monstrous inf luence, humans are
reborn. Monsters in Art is concerned with
this process of rebirth.
by Kim Su-yeong
created. Even some of the best-known
masterpieces of Greek tragedy appear in
a different light once readers learn from
Kang's thorough literary analysis.
T h e b o o k 's t a s t e f u l l y s e l e c t e d
illustrations and photographs, in addition
to the meticulously footnoted manuscript
and list of books for further reading, are
testaments to both the publisher's and the
author's care in creating a quality work.
The Secret of Greek Tragedy represents the
standard to which other commentaries on
the classics should aspire.
by Kim Su-yeong
Reviews Nonfiction
History Revisited
Rieu Dong-min, Hankyoreh Publishing Company
2013, 212p, ISBN 9788984317086
The Montage of Memory by Rieu Dongmin, an economist, reads like a memoir,
or humanist essay, if not a novel. The
author himself describes the book as a
“philosophical essay.” In other words, it is
a record of philosophical introspection on
experience, memory, history, recreation,
and stories.
The first part of the book is set against
the backdrop of Seoul and takes place in
the summer of 1988. This part of the book
unravels the story of a protagonist who
partakes in the project of proofreading the
complete translation of Karl Marx’s Das
Kapital. One can readily infer that the
protagonist is the author himself.
Until the end of 1980s, Das Kapital
was banned in Korea. One could get
arrested for simply having it in one’s
possession. The watershed years in modern
Korean history were 1987 and 1988 when
the democratic movement reached its
peak and the authoritarian government
had to more or less surrender. But a true
democracy was not attained. In the midst
of change, many progressive or leftistinclined publishing companies started
to become more active. The author, who
was a graduate student during that time,
depicts the relationship of an individual
to a society and an individual to the given
era through episodes having to do with the
translation of Das Kapital.
The second part of the book provides
an analysis of the first part by the author
himself. W hen memory is reenacted,
and experiences are rehashed, some kind
of editing or distortion is inevitable.
The author analyzes the conscious or
subconscious editing and distortion that
may have been added to the first part of
the book. In this way, the second part
becomes a book about the philosophy of
storytelling or the philosophy of history.
by Pyo Jeonghun
All About the Body
Brain, Medicine, Mouth, and Body
Park Tai-hyun et al., East Asia
2013, 304p, ISBN 9788962620702
This book comprises the lectures held at
Seoul National University's Bio-MA X
Institute. As these lectures aim at making
biotechnolog y more accessible to the
general public, even young people will find
them easy to understand. The authors,
that is, the lecturers, come from the fields
of pharmacology, medicine, veterinary
science, molecular biology, dentistry, and
agriculture.
How does the brain remember and
how can we keep our brain healthy? What
does the mouth have to do with the health
of our mind and body? Why do we get fat
and what can we do to prevent it? What
are the new possibilities in the field of
pharmacology? The authors answer these
important questions.
T he er a of “c u s tom-t a i lore d
pharmacology” has begun in
pharmacology. Medicine is prescribed
in accordance with patients’ genetic
dif ferences such as their weight and
biological clock. The optimum quantity
is injected at the best time via the best
method, thus maximizing the effectiveness
of the drug and minimizing side effects.
The content about obesity is also
interesting. Fat cells that have already been
made do not disappear. This is the reason
why obesity in childhood and adolescence
is more serious than adult obesity; the
number of fat cells we will have for life is
decided during childhood and adolescence.
The weight loss in adults due to a decrease
in adipose tissue does not mean that fat
cells have disappeared. It just means they
have temporarily decreased in size.
This book will help us broaden our
scientific knowledge of the human body
and health as well as gain the common
knowledge we need in order to maintain a
healthy life.
by Pyo Jeonghun
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
63
Reviews Nonfiction
Big Brains,
Big Ideas
The Google God Knows Everything
Jeong Ha-woong et al., ScienceBooks
2013, 400p, ISBN 9788983718822
K A IST (Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology) is Korea’s leading
educ at iona l institution specia lizing
in science, technology education, and
research. It holds a similar status as the
California Institute of Technology or the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in the United States. This book contains
lectures by three scientists whose fields of
research are complex system networks and
data science, bioinformatics, and quantum
information theory.
According to Professor Kim Dongsup, one of the authors, seen from an
informatics perspective, all the information
that makes up life is embedded in DNA.
A living organism deciphers information
written on DNA and executes the orders
given. In other words, a living organism is
a system which, like a computer, processes
and executes information.
Another author, Professor Lee Haiwoong, points out t hat t he ex isting
information processing methods are based
on Newtonian physics and how using
quantum mechanics can create methods
t hat have been u n i ma g inable u sing
previous processing methods. That is to
say, a computer, which only spends three
minutes solving an equation that requires
a thousand years using existing methods,
can become a possibility.
Professor Jeong Ha-woong says that
analyzing complex system networks will
reveal the structure of the network through
which information flows. He predicts that
the era of the “big plan” where a complex
system is controlled at will by combining
big data with networks is coming.
It is rare to find a book that makes
advanced science and technology so easy
to read and understand. Conversations
between the authors at the end of the book
is also interesting.
The Economics of the Apartment
Apartment
Park Cheol-soo, MATI
2013, 320p, ISBN 9788992053761
T he majorit y of Kore a ns live in a n
apa r t ment bec ause Korea is a sma l l
country with a large population. But an
apartment in Korea is more than a living
space. An apartment is a way to increase
one’s assets and show off one’s social status.
Author Park Cheol-soo, a scholar of
architecture, says spatial understanding
v a r i e s a c c o r d i n g t o o n e ’s l i v i n g
arrangement. While the responsibility for
the neighborhood of a private homeowner
falls collectively on the neighbors, it is
strictly individual for the people who live
in an apartment. For example, when snow
falls, apartment residents do not engage
in shoveling snow. The apartments in
Korea are far removed from the pursuit of
public good or public comity. In short, an
apartment is the epitome of one’s attempt
to increase personal profit.
Park is critical of the governmental
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
policy that leans heavily toward economic
efficiency and distribution of housing.
He says that construction companies and
residents are also only interested in profit.
The author regards apartment complexes
critically primarily because the facilities
that should be built with public funds
have to be taken care of through private
resources.
For example, the resident of a private
house does not have to spend money to fix
the broken light on the street in front of
their house; it is taken care of by the city.
In contrast, apartment residents have to
shoulder all the expenses for an apartment
complex. This kind of privatization,
a key to neo-liberalism, has long been
taking place in apartment complexes. The
apartment is like a magnifying glass that
helps one to view Korean society in the
most accurate way.
by Pyo Jeonghun
by Pyo Jeonghun
Reviews Nonfiction
Revolutionizing Management
Samsung Way
Song Jae-yong, Lee Kyung-mook, Book21 Publishing Group
2013, 408p, ISBN 9788950949723
Samsung is without doubt one of the
world's best known brands, perhaps better
known to the world than Korea itself.
Samsung Way delves into the leadership
of Chairman Lee Kun-hee who made
Samsung the global company that it is
today, as well as the secrets behind its
innovation.
In 1993, Sa msung unveiled what
i t c a l l e d “ N e w M a n a g e m e n t ,” a n
ambitious plan to become one of the top
global companies in the 21st century
by improving the quality of its products
and services to a world-class level. Under
t he slog a n “Cha nge e ver y t hing you
can except for your wife and children,”
Samsung sought sweeping change across
the conglomerate. Twenty years later, the
Samsung way is accepted as the global
standard for creativity and innovation,
surpassing Toyota or GE.
In the 20 years since the declaration
of Ne w M a n a g e m e nt , t w o l e a d i n g
business experts in Korea take an in-
depth analysis of the secrets of Samsung's
success. According to their book, the key
is “paradox management.” For a large
organization, Samsung has maintained
speed and efficiency. For a conglomerate
w it h a ver t ic a l st r uc t u re, Sa m su n g
has ensured that each of its affiliates
is specialized. By pursuing seemingly
incompatible elements together, such
a s m i x i n g Ja p a n e s e a n d A m e r i c a n
ma na gement st yle s, Sa msu ng ha s
established a competence that has set it
apart from others and made it outperform
its competitors in the rapidly changing
world market.
There is a reason behind every success.
While many academics and CEOs have
been eager to uncover the secrets of
Samsung's success, there has yet to be a
book available for such a purpose, until
now.
by Richard Hong
Outgrowing Your Problems
Mun Yo-han, Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 296p, ISBN 9788965743774
Many people are suffering from mental
starvation. Even though their bodies are
much healthier and their wallets much
fatter than before, their minds have never
been more ill and poor. Why is that? The
author, a psychiatrist, proceeds to explain
in this book. For eight years, Mun Yo-han
sent out a series of healing e-mail messages
with the subject heading “Energy Plus, a
Voice Awakening Life” that reached out
and touched the hearts of people tired with
life. This book features the 94 compelling
messages that resonated most with his
readers.
In l i fe, e ver yone fac e s su f feri ng
and hardship at one time or another.
Overcoming obstacles isn’t easy without
help from others. Heartwarming support
and encouragement is most helpful in
developing resilience. This book points out
that we all have within us the instinct for
growth and healing, which, if awakened,
will enable us to overcome any hardship.
The short essays and illustrations featured
in this book awaken the power of life
within us, just as a gentle spring breeze
shakes seeds to life.
"The koi, a species of carp, is known
to grow to different sizes depending
on where it is. In a small fishbowl, for
example, it grows to no larger than five
to eight centimeters, limited by the size
of the bowl. In a large aquarium or pond,
on the other hand, it grows from 15 to 25
centimeters. If released in a river, it grows
even larger, up to 90 to 120 centimeters."
What about the place of our growth? Some
of us may be trapped in a small fishbowl,
afraid of venturing out to a bigger world
and getting hurt. Grow big, and your
problems will get smaller. Grow small, and
your problems will get bigger.
by Richard Hong
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
65
Reviews Nonfiction
In Search of Hidden Beauty
On Impulse: Chuncheon, Jeonju, Gyeongju
Lee Ji-ye, Joe Anbin, Booknomad
2013, 306p, ISBN 9788997835287
All of a sudden, one might feel like packing
up and taking off somewhere. For South
Koreans who cannot go somewhere exotic,
Chuncheon, Jeonju, and Gyeongju offer a
refreshing alternative. Chuncheon is a city
of romance and leisure. Jeonju is known
for its elegance and taste. Gyeongju, the
ancient capital of the Silla dynasty, is the
very symbol of history and culture.
On Impulse is a detailed travel guide
for the three cities that are generally well
known and familiar to South Koreans.
The two authors were born and raised
in Jeonju and Gyeongju, respectively, so
the book is structured in a way that they
introduce their own hometowns.
T he aut hor s c u r rent ly l i ve i n a
large city where intimacy is rare; their
hometowns are like old friends, always
welcoming their visits with warmth. The
authors introduce these cherished places
in a kind yet cautious way. Instead of
squeezing travel information into the
book, they allow the readers to appreciate
the three cities comfortably with the help
Encountering a Robot
Adult Park
Oh Yeong-jin, Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 275p, ISBN 9788936472290
In the mid-1990s there was a revolt by
young graphic novelists in Korea against
what appea red to be a uniform a nd
monotonous world depicted in mainstream
graphic novels. Independent magazines
such as Nemorami, Spring in Animation
Experiment, and Hwakkeun opened up
an entirely new art world of graphic
novels through experimentation and
unconventional storylines. The prominent
artists during that period have since moved
into various fields including newspaper
comic series, webtoons, and pop art, except
for one that remains constant: Oh Yeongjin.
In Oh’s new graphic novel Adult Park,
Mr. Park, deputy department head of a
battery company, leads a hard life. At work
he is about to be let go. One day he goes to
see a friend that has opened up a restaurant
and finds out that the friend obtained
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
funds for his business by selling one of his
kidneys. Frustrated and feeling depressed,
Mr. Park takes his wife on vacation to
Mokpo after he happens upon a coupon
for a hotel stay. Because of torrential
rain, however, they give up on the idea of
ferrying to the nearby islands and end up
visiting the adult park nearby.
To Mr. Park’s surprise, the park is not
a sex-themed sculpture park. It is a place
where you can have a conversation with a
beautiful female robot. The park’s target
customers are middle-aged men worn
down by life and unable to talk about their
problems with anyone. Mr. Park meets a
robot that knows his former colleague, Seo
Jun-ho. He discovers that the memories of
Seo Jun-ho’s wife have been implanted into
this robot.
Adult Park is a science fiction graphic
novel that slightly strays from reality with
of evocative photographs.
T he book fe at u re s C hu nc he on’s
f a mou s c h ic ken ba rbe que, Je onju’s
kongnamul gukbap (bean sprout soup with
rice), and Gyeongju’s Hwangnam bread.
In addition, the beautiful nature and
traditional culture that are featured in the
book include Nami Island in Chuncheon,
Hanok Village in Jeonju, and Bulguk
Temple in Gyeongju. This travel guide will
be an excellent companion for those who
want to travel in search of Korea’s hidden
beauty.
by Richard Hong
its story told in stark black and white. The
dark, depressing world in the book is like
a mirror of our modern world. People who
have lost the ability to communicate and
robots with the ability to talk but cannot
make facial expressions, discover themselves
by looking into each other.
by Yi Myung-suk
Poetry
Ha… No Shadows
by Kim Su-young
Our enemies are nothing to look at.
Our enemies do not look fierce like Kirk Douglas
or Richard Widmark.
They are not in the least fierce villains,
they are even virtuous.
They disguise themselves as democrats,
they term themselves good citizens,
they term themselves the people’s choice,
they term themselves company employees,
they ride in trams, they ride in cars,
they go into restaurants,
they drink, they laugh, they gossip,
their faces express sympathy, sincerity,
they do their work quickly, say they’re busy,
write texts, keep accounts,
they’re in the countryside, by the seaside,
in Seoul, they take walks,
go to movies,
have charm.
Which means to say that they’re right beside us.
as we set our watches to the siren, as we are shining our
shoes…
our combat knows no rest.
Our combat fills all the space between heaven and earth.
Since it’s democracy’s battle, it has to be fought democratically.
As there are no shadows in the heavens, democracy’s battles
likewise know no shadows.
Ha… no shadows.
Ha… just so…
Ha… and yet…
why, just so indeed… that’s how it is. …
Uhuh… uh… what?
Ah, I see… I see, I see.
translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé
Our battle line is invisible to the eye.
Which makes our combat all that more difficult.
Our battle line is not at Dunkerque, or Normandy, or Yŉnhši Hill.
Our battle line cannot be found in any atlas.
Sometimes it lies in our homes.
Sometimes it lies in our workplaces.
Sometimes it lies in our neighborhoods but
it is invisible.
In appearance our combat is not as active as burnt-earth strategy,
or “Battle at Gun Hill,” neither is it nice to see.
Yet we are all the time fighting.
Morning, noon, and night, as we eat,
as we walk down the street, as we enjoy a chat,
as we do business, as we engage in engineering works,
as we go on journeys, as we weep and as we laugh,
as we eat spring greens,
as we go to the market and sniff the smell of fish,
fully fed, and thirsty,
making love, dozing off, in dreams,
waking up, and waking up, and waking up…
as we sit in class, as we go home
Kim Su-young (1921~1968) is
undisputedly one of the best poets in the
history of modern Korean poetry. The Moon’s
Mischief is the only collection of his poems
published while he was alive. His other works
posthumously published include the poetry
collections The Big Root and Even If the Moon’s
Path Is Trodden; the essay collections Spit,
Poetry and A Portrait of the Puritan, and The
Complete Works of Kim Su-young (Poems, Vol.
1 and Essays, Vol. 2)
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
67
Reviews
Children's
Books
Where Food Lives
Restaurant Sal
So Yunkyoung, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 48p, ISBN 9788954620987
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
In the picture book, Restaurant Sal, which
depicts the relationship between food and
people, both the fabulous and the cruel
exist side by side. The story starts off with
a polite invitation sent out by Restaurant
Sal. With the introduction, “For your
enjoyment and happiness, the cook and
the staff at Restaurant Sal do not stop
working even for a moment.” It continues
by emphasizing the art of cooking, the
hygienic conditions, and the freshness
of the food that is served daily at the
restaurant.
However, the illustrations contradict
this. On the front cover, one can see the
Restaurant Sal sign hanging precariously
by a thick chain and threatening sharp
hooks. The legs of the tables, and the
chairs for patrons, are pointy and look on
the verge of collapse if anyone sits on them.
"The Pain of Salvation" is written on a
big bowl, which is engraved upside down
like a code. This phrase that foreshadows
the theme of the whole book is also the
name of a progressive heavy metal band
in Sweden. In one of their songs, “Where
It Hurts,” the lyrics begin: “Tell me
where you hurt. So that I can get to your
suffering.”
At Re st au ra nt Sa l, t he su f fering
signifies the pain of the animals that we
eat. In the ensuing pictures, the author
paints true to life images of the cruelty of
the slaughtering process and the breeding
business behind cooking.
W hen the customers come to the
elegant restaurant and happily look over
the menu, resting their chin in their hands,
dozens of people are mechanically cooking
food, like laborers around a conveyor belt
in the rear kitchen. The child protagonist,
who came to Restaurant Sal with her
mother, discovers in the bathroom the
tail of an animal sticking out of the wall
and tries to save it. But instead, together
with the animal, she gets sucked into a
hidden industrial livestock processing
machine, and witnesses how animals
get bred and then butchered for optimal
taste. The little girl presses the exit button
so the imprisoned animals are given a
chance to escape. However, the security at
Restaurant Sal is top-notch, so she and the
animals fail in their attempt to escape and
collapse in exhaustion.
T he w riter a nd il lu strator So
Yunkyoung is known for her acerbic
parody of the rampant materialism and
the heartless attitude toward living things
in today’s age. Restaurant Sal delineates
the theme of animal rights and the value
of life that the author is greatly interested
in. “Sal” is the etymology of salt, which
is the basic ingredient of food, but in
Chinese it also means, “to kill.” The book
conveys that the tasty food that is served
to us, which is obtained from slaying
something, ultimately annihilates the
essence of our existence. For grown-ups
who are concerned about the problems
of human greed and ecological issues,
Restaurant Sal will also be a philosophical
and meaningful reading experience.
by Kim Ji-eun
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
69
Reviews Children's Books
Where Korean Fairytales Are Born
The Lily Star and The Little Star:
The Complete Works of Ma Hae-song, Vol.1
Ma Hae-song, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 356p, ISBN 9788932024134
Have you ever wondered what Korea was
like in the first half of the 20th century?
Are you curious about what kind of life
children led back then? Or about the
literature from that period? If that is the
case, then you should read the collected
works of Ma Hae-song.
Ma Hae-song is one of t he most
important figures in Korean fairytales
and literature of the early 20th century.
He, along with other famous pioneers
in the field, wanted to protect the rights
of children a nd wa s a proponent of
enlightenment. Ma was also active in the
cultural movements of the time and left
behind many beautiful children’s stories.
In particular, his story “The Lily Star and
The Little Star” is known as Korea’s first
fantasy children’s book. The love story
between a completely isolated lily flower
and an utterly repressed little star can be
analyzed in various ways. One possibility
is that the story is a metaphor for Korea’s
colonized state by Japan. Even though it
was a story created for children, it could
What Fat Means
Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!
Cheon Hyeon-jeong; Illustrator: Bak Jeong-seop
BIR Publishing Co., Ltd., 2013
200p, ISBN 9788949121482
Go Eun-chan has such a big appetite
that people refer to him as the boy who
can eat for 10. Consequently, he’s a very
big boy who has amazing strength. His
mother wants him to lose weight even if
that means sending him to a special class
for overweight children. But then during
a tug-of-war contest, a coach from the
weightlifting department sees Eun-chan
and asks him to join the department.
This is where Eun-chan begins to feel
conflicted. The choice he has to make is
played out humorously in the book.
What makes Go-Go-Go, Fat Club! so
appealing is that the book is full of humor
as well as elements that draw emotional
responses from the reader. Even though
Eun-chan’s mother tries to do everything
to keep her son from gaining weight, she
does the opposite herself. The job she
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
keeps to support her family is as an obese
model on a home shopping network. In
order for her to keep her weight up, she
forces herself to eat, which makes her
vomit at night. As Eun-chan witnesses this
scene, the readers also feel what Eun-chan
feels.
The story of a stylish grandmother
who hides her illness from her daughter
so that she doesn't feel burdened, and the
story of Eun-chan’s girlfriend Ye-seul, a
former track and field athlete, who ends
up with a disability from a leg injury, all
break the readers’ hearts. And the most
heartbreaking of all are the memories of
Eun-chan’s father, a boxer, who died of
injuries from a boxing match.
This is a book that touches on the
social problems of obesity and lookism by
showing complex dimensions of people’s
lives with humor and warmth.
by Kim Kyung-yun
not have been too far removed from
what was happening at the time, and the
story could have been a form of social
commentary.
“The Lily Star and The Little Star”
could also have been about the author’s
own sad coming of age love story. Ma
may have used literature as a medium
for self-expression rather than writing to
enlighten.
The publishing town in Paju, a unique
place, has only one memorial for a writer,
which is devoted to Ma Hae-song. One
longstanding publishing company even
gives an award in his honor. And now, the
first collection of Ma Hae-song’s literary
works is being published. The 40 works
in the book are comprised of different
genres, including realism, fantasy, and folk
stories. If you want to understand Korean
children’s books then you should know
about the author Ma Hae-song, and, for
that, reading this book is essential.
by Kim Inae
Kids Step It Up
Candidate No. 3 An Seok-bbong
Jin Hyeong-min; Illustrator: Han Ji-sun
Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2013
152p, ISBN 9788936442712
Candidate No. 3 An Seok-bbong won
first prize in the upper-grade-level school
children’s books category awarded by
the Changbi “Good Books for Children”
Competition, which is one of the most
prestigious competitions in Korea. It
weaves various episodes involving an
election campaign for school president by
An Seok-bbong, son of a rice cake maker at
the local market, and tension and conflict
between merchants at the local market
and the big superstore that opened at the
market entrance.
By chance, An Seok-bbong, a very
ordinary boy who is not particularly good
at anything, runs for school president.
With active support from his classmates
who are also from the market—Jo Jo,
grandson of a sundaeguk (pork sausage
soup) shop owner, and Kim Eul-ha, son of
a dried seafood shop owner—Seok-bbong
sets out on a lively election campaign and
soon becomes the candidate representing
school’s students that are not good at
studying and who are poor.
Students sympathize with Seok-bbong’s
promises to decrease the number of hours
for math classes and to choose cheaper
places for school trips. He attracts the
attention of his classmates with fun and
bizarre events such as wearing traditional
Korean clothes and writing calligraphy in
front of the school gate.
Meanwhile, “white haired witch ”
Baek Bo-ri, daughter of a corner shop
owner, approaches Seok-bbong and he gets
entangled in her audacious plot to protect
the rights of small to mid-sized merchants
against a megastore, which earns him a
visit to the police station. Can Seok-bbong
become the school president and stop the
tyranny of the megastore with Baek Bo-ri?
The strong point of this book is its
humorous portrayal of how “adult” issues
such as megastores taking over local shops
and the electoral system can become a part
of children’s lives, becoming their issues
too. The characters like An Seok-bbong,
Jo Jo, and Baek Bo-ri turn the plot from a
potentially simple allegory into a dynamic
story.
by Yu Youngjin
Powered by Rice
Setting the Table
Joo Young-ha; Illustrator: Seo Young-a
Borim Press, 2013, 60p, ISBN 9788943309107
Three times a day. A long histor y is
contained in the meals we eat. Before rice,
soup, and kimchi became the backbone
of Korean cuisine, there was an extended
cu l i na r y h istor y st retch ing back to
prehistoric times. Food is a window into
humanity. That is why the illustrated book
Setting the Table is subtitled “The History
of Culinary Culture in Korea.”
T he K ore a n p e ople h ave a lon g
history of farming rice. The main staple
is often accompanied by soybean paste
and kimchi. Dishes vary depending on
the era and social class. The nobility of
the Goguryeo kingdom enjoyed meat,
but Korean cuisine during the Goryeo
dynasty was mainly vegetarian as a result
of Buddhist influences.
W h a t w e e a t , h o w e v e r, d o e s n’t
tell the entire story. Related items like
cooking utensils, tables, and tableware are
countless. Ritual food and royal cuisine
are another aspect of Korea’s traditional
culture. There are numerous stories related
to food that excite one’s curiosity, covering
questions as diverse as: When did Korean
people start eating peppers? How big were
bowls in the old days? Was there fast food
long ago?
Despite industrialized societies being
similar around the globe, traditional
cuisine is preserved as each country’s
unique culture. There is no better way to
understand Korea than to read this book.
Its faithful illustrations of food, clothes,
and homes are noteworthy. The long list
of references demonstrates how much
planning and research has been invested in
this little book.
by Kim Min-ryoung
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
71
Healing Stories
The Tiger’s Eyebrow
Lee Bandi; Illustrator: Seo Hyun
Hankyoreh Publishing Co., 2013
100p, ISBN 9788984316539
In t he world of c h i ld ren, t here a re
sometimes things that are invisible to
adults. While it is a reality for children,
it is a fantasy for grown-ups. The four
children’s tales in this book show what
exists in the world of children.
“I Knew It” is a story of Hui-dong
who moves to a new neighborhood. Huidong, who boldly ventures out to the forest
thinking his house is just one slope away,
gets lost. While he is looking for his house,
he encounters a tiger, a dinosaur, and an
ant. After much tribulation, he finally
finds his way home and sees his mother
but doesn’t tell her about what happened
in the forest because he doesn’t think she’ll
believe him.
“The Shoe the Fox Wore” is a story
about Somi who shops at a f lea market
held at t he playg rou nd, a nd buy s a
pair of shoes that were worn by a fox.
The moment she puts on t he shoes,
she becomes invisible. Only Gaettong’s
grandmother knows about Somi’s exciting
adventures that happen when she becomes
invisible.
Spring on a Bike
Blue Bicycle
Kang Hyoun-sun, Jaimimage Publishing Co.
2013, 40p, ISBN 9788986565003
A boy rides through an alley on his blue
bicycle. In the alley, there is a man holding
a boy in each hand, and a woman cutting
up vegetables in front of her house. The
boy greets the woman, and it seems that
he has just finished school. Neighbors
are talking to one another, and a pair
of siblings is choosing snacks in a shop
nearby. By the utility pole, a group of
children are playing noisily. The boy
continues on his blue bicycle. The sky
clears after a bit of wind and rain. The
boy skips stones across the stream. He gets
back on his blue bicycle and heads home,
where he will be welcomed by his mother
and pet dog.
This book does not focus on a distinct
event, but tells the story of a boy riding
on his blue bicycle on a spring day. The
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
writer was inspired by Pi Cheon-deuk’s
“Early Spring.” Through the boy skipping
stones instead of heading straight home
after school, she expresses how one’s heart
flutters at the thought of early spring.
by Eom Hye-suk
“The Tiger's Eyebrow” is about how
an enormous tiger appears before Dongy
while he is home by himself. The tiger
offers him a hair from his eyebrow and
asks him to view the world with it. Thanks
to the tiger’s eyebrow, Dongy is able to
tell the real difference between people and
animals.
“Troublemaker Kiddy Dragon” is a
story about Jae-ha who befriends a young
dragon. Jae-ha feels a barrier between him
and his mother because of his younger
brother. The more he dislikes his mother
and his brother, the bigger the kiddy
dragon grows, filling up the room in no
time.
Are the four main characters and the
amazing experiences they go through in
the four stories for real or fantasy? No
one can tell—except the fact that all four
of them matured considerably after the
encounter with their special friends who
helped each one of them gain courage and
heal their emotional wounds.
by Yoon So-hee
Steady Sellers
Dreaming in Color
Man-hee’s House
Kwon Yun-duck, Gilbut Children Publishing Co., Ltd.
2008, 34p, ISBN 9788986621105
Korea has grown into a modern, advanced
country at an astonishingly fast rate.
This phenomenon has been accelerated,
ironically, by the destruction caused by the
Japanese occupation and the Korean War.
At a time when tradition had collapsed
both physically and spiritually, Korea
could embrace things that were new,
Western, and advanced without much
resistance.
W hen look ing back on t he pa st,
Koreans seem to feel a bit of guilt. Perhaps
we have given up our roots too easily. We
feel obliged to preserve what we can for
future generations and to teach traditional
values to our children.
One way of relieving this guilt is to
write children’s books dealing with the
topic of tradition. Man-hee’s House, the
story of a three-generation household
originally published in 1995, is a good
example. Built in the 1970s, Man-hee’s
house is not a traditional Korean house
but it is older than apartments, where
the majority of Koreans reside today. By
reading about the lives of their parents
and grandparents, children will develop
a natural interest in the past. This is one
of the reasons behind the everlasting
popularity of Man-hee’s House, which has
been loved by Koreans for almost 20 years.
This book shows scenes of children
living together with their parents and
grandparents. In the beautiful house
“with the most f lowers and trees in the
neighborhood,” the loving family raises
two dogs that “recognize Man-hee just
by t he sound of his footsteps.” The
grandparents look after Man-hee in his
bedroom and garden, while the father
plays with him in the bathroom and study.
Man-hee’s friends come over and leave toys
scattered around the room. His mother
always accompanies him in the kitchen,
shed, and backyard. She hangs out the
blankets to dry on a sunny day, and Manhee swims like a fish in the soft covers.
How happy he must be! How we yearn for
a house with a happy child, trustworthy
grown-ups, and a beautiful garden! This
book goes beyond emphasizing tradition
and evoking memories. It allows us to
reflect on the happiness of the present and
helps to fulfill our dreams.
The pictures are based on a traditional
drawing technique, creating a peaceful
veneer despite the use of a variety of colors.
The drawings display the passion of the
young writer, who is one of Korea’s most
famous illustrators. Her portrayal of a
happy household living in harmony with
the past and present has earned the praise
of Korean readers.
by Kim Inae
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
73
Overseas Angle
A New Opportunity for Korean
Literature in Poland
First I would like to thank LTI Korea for supporting
translators and publishers from around the world.
Without LTI Korea many books would never see the
light of day.
Korean literature is still not very popular in many
countries. While several works have been published into
English and other popular languages (including Japanese
and Chinese), some of Korean literature’s greatest works
have remained hidden from readers worldwide.
I would like to share my ideas and strategies for
promoting Korean literature and to pass down some
of the experiences I’ve had during my last five years of
being both a translator and publisher. I will explore some
general parallels which can be found between world
literature and Korean literature in context of the Polish
market. My objective is to draw a contemporary picture
of Korean literature and to suggest some strategies
for more effective dissemination of Korean literature
abroad. I will be touching on such subjects as readability,
authenticity, marketability, and ultimately, responsibility.
The publishing house Kwiaty Orientu, meaning
Flowers of the Orient, was established in Poland in
October 2007 by myself and my colleague Edyta
Matejko-Paszkowska. We both graduated from Warsaw
University reading Korean Philology. Having worked for
many years as translators for several Polish and Korean
companies, a huge interest and genuine passion for
Korea encouraged us to establish a publishing company
that promotes the country, its culture, and literature. We
became the first and only publisher in Poland dedicated
to this cause. The publishing roadmap includes all kinds
of Korean literature, poetry, history, geography, religion,
and even cuisine.
We are the only Polish publishers dedicated to
Korean literature and, quite possibly, the only one
outside of Korean shores. So far we have published 20
books. In that five-year time frame we have published
more Korean books than the previous accumulated
total since Poland started having political relations with
South Korea in 1985. Relations with North Korea ended
in 1989, which spawned a new era between Poland and
South Korea. Poland has thus had diplomatic relations
with South Korea for a mere 24 years. Japan, on the
other hand, to take just one contrasting Asian example,
celebrated 100 years of Polish cooperation last year.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
What does this mean for Korean literature? Up
to 2007, a total of 17 titles of what could be classified
as modern or classical literature have been translated
from Korean into Polish. This is extremely low when
compared to the likes of titles from Japan or China
which both run into the hundreds. There have been
several other books written by the well-known professor
and founder of Korean Philology at Warsaw University,
Halina Ogarek Czoj, on Korean literature, mythology,
and religion, but they remain all but hidden in the
middle of the university library shelves. Two popular
subjects among Polish writers were the Korean economy
and of course, North Korea. There have been several
works published exploring the North Korean regime
and also the boom of the South Korean economy from
virtual anonymity to a global power. But these volumes,
again, were principally published by small educational
publishing establishments and never intended for the
high street.
There are key factors as to why Korean literature has
not been widespread, particularly prior to 2007. First,
a proficient knowledge of Korean language was rare
in Poland. Take the Korean Philology undergraduate
course at Warsaw University 20 years ago and you
would have expected just two other students who
shared your passion. Chances were that you wouldn’t
continue this path post-graduation, let alone become
a translator or dedicate a career to publishing Korean
literature. Secondly, it was very difficult to persuade
anyone to publish anything. Translation was a hobby or
an academic project, and never a commercial venture.
Thirdly, it was very difficult to reach Korean writers
to negotiate foreign rights and there weren’t any agents
representing Korean writers outside of Korea.
Last year was a big step in our publishing journey.
We received several awards: The Best Book for the
Summer (Please Look After Mom), The Best Book of
2012 (The Chicken Who Dreamed She Could Fly) and
one nomination for a very prestigious award, The Best
Translation of the Year. Last year we sold more books
than ever before. But there are a few reasons for that:
award nominations have been very helpful for publicity.
T he Korea n Wave: a lmost e ver ybody k nows
“Gangnam Style.” There are two big K-Pop fan clubs in
Poland. One of them already has 5,000 members! Kwiaty
Overseas Angle
Reflections on
the 12th LTI Korea
International Workshop
by Marzena Stefanska
* adapted from a speech given at the 12th International
Workshop for the Translation and Publication of Korean
Literature
Marzena Stefanska is a translator of Korean
literature and co-founder of Kwiaty Orientu, a Polish
publishing house fully dedicated to Korean literature.
She has translated Oh Jung-hee (The Bird), Shin Kyungsook (Please Look After Mom and I'll Be There) and
Gong Ji-young (Our Happy Time). In 2013 she was
awarded the Distinguished Service Award by LTI Korea.
As a founder of a literary agency specializing
in literature in translation, attending the 12th
International Workshop for Translation and
Publication of Korean Literature organized by
LTI Korea was both fascinating and instructive.
The range of talks at the workshop were
interesting, informative, and varied; it was
good to hear how publishers worldwide seek
to publish and promote Korean literature. The
publishers ranged from France (Keulmadang/
Universite Aix-Marseille), the U.S. (White Pine
Press), Poland (Kwiaty Orientu), to the Czech
Republic (Argo Publishing).
The presentations by Marzena Stefanska from Kwiaty Orientu
and Richard Klicnik from Argo whose talks I had the enjoyable role
of discussing were fascinating.
Ms. Stefanska’s dedication and passion for Korean literature
was very evident. Her publishing house has made great strides to
present and promote Korean literature to a Polish audience. It was
interesting, particularly, to hear how social networking has been
helpful in her work, and it would be good to hear that Korean
institutions based in Poland could help Kwiaty Orientu in their
work.
Richard Klicnik’s presentation was also riveting. Though still
early in the introduction of Korean works, Argo’s display of draft
artwork for the Korean titles they’re working on was interesting to
see, as was hearing some of the suggestions for promoting literature
in the Czech Republic such as having well-known Czech actors drive
around the country and perform works of literature.
From my own work experience at Peony, selling and promoting
works of translation to an international audience can be a slow
process, but also a very rewarding one. It takes patience and
determination as well as a consistent approach. The LTI Korea
International Workshop was inspiring, with an excellent choice
of speakers showing how publishers are working towards finding
international audiences for Korean literature in innovative and
imaginative ways. It also suggests a bright future with many ideas to
move forward and find a larger audience for Korean works.
Copyright © Roger Lee Production
Orientu contacted them right away to
gain their cooperation. We even took part
in some big events by giving away books
as awards.
Facebook: a year ago we built a good
Facebook fanpage and our online sales
are improving month to month. We have
over 1,000 likes.
Word of mouth: people are talking
about us. Kwiaty Orientu is gaining
popularity; we have started a trend. If
you read Korean books, you are cool. We
have put forth a lot of effort, including
designing modern covers and selling
books at reasonable prices so that the Y
Generation likes us and talks about us.
T he g loba l trend is t hat we a re
reading fewer books. That’s a fact. But
also, in Poland we are buying more, so
there is still potential for promoting new
titles.
by Marysia Juszczakiewicz
Marysia Juszczakiewicz is one of the
founders of Peony Literary Agency.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
75
Overseas Angle
Expanding the Overseas Appeal
of Korean Literature in Translation
I recently attended the Seoul International Book Fair in mid-June
and was greatly impressed by the dynamism and multiplicity of
the Korean trade publishers exhibiting there. Korean publishers
are active in translating books from all over the world, especially
from the Japanese and English languages. As a literary scout based
in New York and working in 19 countries, it was an eye-opening
experience to see books from all over the world displayed in the
Korean publishers' booth. I was also surprised to see how many
people are fluent in English and familiar with English language
authors.
I met with Lee Chae Eun of LTI Korea to discuss Korean
literature in translation and exchange ideas about the flow of
Korean books in translation, particularly in the English language
markets. The first thing to emphasize is that the U.S. is a country
that translates very little from any language. The typically quoted
statistic is that only three percent of books published in the U.S.
in any given year are translations. This statistic makes translation
from any language a near impossible feat. The one Korean author
who has really broken through in the U.S. market in a significant
way is Shin Kyung-Sook with her book Please Look After Mom.
Using this book as a case study, one can say that it was
first and foremost an excellent novel with universal themes.
Its translation was excellent as was its editing, marketing, and
publication. It was a perfect storm of a publication that happens
very rarely with a book in translation. Robin Desser, the book's
editor, is one of the best working in the English language and
Knopf, its publisher, is one of the best in the world. These two
factors contributed greatly to the book's success and to the
attention it received.
How to duplicate this experience for other Korean writers
is a question that I pose myself and will discuss further in my
comments. The first thing that is necessary is a great translation
or sample excerpt in English, as this is the international gateway
language for translation. LTI Korea with its formidable team is
well-positioned to execute excellent translations. The next step
is getting the translations in the hands of the right editors both
in the U.S. and other countries. This work of connection often
requires a capable agent or "connector" that has a good handle
on the particular market in question and knows the right editors
working with publishers who have the capacity to put a book
on the world stage. The U.S. is often not the first port of call
for books in translation as Americans like to see that a book has
already been translated in several countries before they embark
on a translation. An ideal interlocutor would be a person familiar
with both Korean literature and the local literature who can serve
as a bridge between the two cultures. Translators sometimes serve
this purpose but there is always the need for a more objective third
party who can advise an international publisher about how and
why to bring a book to their market. Why not enlist some of the
Korean agents who work in the market selling international books
to also work more actively in selling Korean writers abroad? They
travel frequently to book fairs and have contact with rights people,
who in turn can introduce them to editors with an international
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
perspective who would be interested in introducing Korean writers
to their markets.
LTI Korea produces an excellent magazine that reviews many
Korean books and addresses specific themes in Korean writing.
However, more targeted profiles of single authors and single books
could also supplement this work. Korean agents could advise LTI
Korea regarding writers and books that have more "commercial"
prospects and could be more easily marketed. This is not an
attempt to "dumb down" the offering of Korean books but simply
to broaden it.
An author like Michael Sandel has sold more copies in
Korea than in any other country. Are there Korean authors
with a similar profile? Nonfiction is an area that is often
overlooked in translation. There must be authors writing about
global economics, politics, and culture in Korea who have an
international reach. North Korea is much in the news but remains
a mysterious and impenetrable country. Who better than a South
Korean to demystify it and write a compelling book for the
international market?
International agents could also be enlisted to help introduce
Korean writers to the world. There are now agents working
in Hong Kong, London, and New York who are interested in
widening their net of authors to include international authors.
Literary magazines like Words Without Borders, Guernica, and
The Paris Review to name just a few, all feature some international
writers. Words Without Borders, for example, is completely devoted
to international writers. It would be useful to research such
magazines in France, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, and
Sweden to collaborate and to help them introduce Korean writers.
LTI Korea has a broad reach among universities and academic
communities that can also be tapped. Korean immigrants are a
vital part of the U.S. More outreach to them would also be an
asset in reaching the U.S. market as they are perfectly positioned
to be liaisons. Young people who are first, second, and even third
generation Korean-Americans have an interest in preserving their
language and culture. What better way is there than to connect
with books that can illuminate Korea?
by Maria B.Campbell
Maria B. Campbell is the president
of Maria B. Campbell Associates, Inc., a New
York–based company that identifies books
to be translated for the world market and
for adaptation to film. Maria B. Campbell
Associates currently scouts adult and
children’s books for a distinguished roster of
19 publishers in Asia, Europe, Latin America,
and for Warner Bros. She currently serves as
the Co-Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for
Words Without Borders (WWB), an international
magazine promoting the world’s best writing
and authors who are not easily accessible to
English-speaking readers.
Overseas Angle
A Fateful Meeting
with Modern Korean Poetry
It was by coincidence that I encountered Jeong Ji-yong,
the first modernist Korean poet. That is why I never
imagined that he would become so central in my life.
Twenty years ago when I had just enrolled in a master’s
degree program, I visited the home of a friend of my
father and came across Jo Jung-rae’s epic novel, Taebaek
Mountain Range in his study. I borrowed it and read the
whole series. Twenty years has passed, yet I still have a
vivid memory of the poem “Nostalgia” that was in the
book. I cannot forget the shivers I experienced upon
reading that poem which was an integral part of the
narrative of the novel. But there was no way of knowing
about the poet Jeong Ji-yong, the writer of “Nostalgia,”
the poem I fell in love with, or his other works. It was not
until the following year that China and Korea established
diplomatic relations, and until then there was very little
material on Korean studies that I could get my hands on.
It was not until four years later in the spring of 1997
that I was able to re-encounter Jeong Ji-yong. I was
pursuing my second doctoral degree at Inha Univeristy
in Korea. The course on “Modern Korean Poetry,” which
I had registered for during that semester required that I
submit an essay every week. It was a truly difficult task for
someone who was just getting used to attending college
in Korea as a foreign student. But it was from this course
that I was at last able to come in contact with the treasure
chest of Korean modern poetry and found myself being
mesmerized by the beauty of Jeong Ji-yong’s poems. In the
process of studying and analyzing poems like “Nostalgia,”
“Glass Window 2,” “Mount Jangsu,” and “Indongcha,” I
discovered that Jeong, who was known only as a modernist
to me, was deeply knowledgeable about classical Chinese
poetry. I subsequently ended up choosing Jeong Ji-yong as
the topic of my doctoral dissertation.
The time I spent preparing to write my doctoral
dissertation provided me with a diverse range of emotional
and intellectual experiences. I found out that the best
way to appreciate poetry was to keep a relatively objective
aesthetic distance. The more I liked someone’s poetry,
the easier it was to get attached to the poem in a personal
way, hence making it difficult to gain an objective and
rational understanding. After much pondering, I decided
to change my strategy and delve into his biography and
get a hold of his essays in order to analyze the influence
of Chinese in his work. With great difficulty, I sought
out Jeong Gu-gwan, Jeong's eldest son, and conducted a
number of in-depth interviews. In the process, I was able
to confirm the influence of classical Chinese literature on
Jeong's poetry and his deep love of the Book of Odes and
Tang dynasty poetry. Then I read his prose writing with
great care and discovered the poems with direct references
to the following poets: TuFu, Yu-hui, Beomseongdae,
Wang An-seok, and Samagwang. I also found out that
he had made a direct reference to the Book of Odes, the
Analects of Confucius, and Mencius (Hsün Tzu), and the
Book of Lesser Learning (Xiao Xue). Jeong Ji-yong stressed
how poetry should enrich and develop the classical
tradition in a theoretical way. After going over his prose
writing, I applied a detailed analysis to his poetry and was
able to find new aspects of his work.
For example, the line from his poem, “Indongcha,”
which is as follows, “In the mountains without even a
calendar/ the three months of winter are all white,” is
not about his feelings about leisure, as expressed in Tang
dynasty poetry, but instead it is derived from the poetry
of Shin-hwal who lived during the Joseon era, who
wrote, “Upon hearing the news of Shimyang, I enter the
mountains with mixed emotions… All alone in the midst
of the mountains without a calendar/ I shall remember the
spring by the blossoming of the flowers”; these lines reveal
the poet’s strong criticism and resistance against the Qing
dynasty (1644-1912), which brought about the collapse of
the Ming dynasty.
In effect, Jeong Ji-yong’s poems from beginning to
end reflect the influence of Chinese classical poetry, his
later poems, in particular. Hence, the reason why Jeong
Ji-yong can be known as the “father of modern Korean
poetry” is that his poetry is written in a very sophisticated
language while also succeeding in perfecting and bridging
the classical tradition with modernism for the first time in
the history of Korean poetry.
After I completed my degree, I returned to China
and began teaching Korean literature at a Chinese
university. But I was often asked outrageous questions as
to whether or not there is actually any world-renowned
Korean literature, or whether or not there is any immortal
work like Tang dynasty poetry or the History of Song. At
first, I was simply cynical and dismissed these ridiculous
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
77
Overseas Angle
questions. But for someone who truly loved Korean
literature, and taught it at the same time, I could not
remain mute or indifferent. That is because while Guiyeoni
(pen name), a Korean Internet writer, is significantly
inf luencing contemporary Chinese readers, classical
Korean literature is being neglected. Thus, I felt an urgent
responsibility to introduce and acquaint Chinese readers
with classical Korean literature. That is how I embarked
on a project of translating the famous modern Korean
poems with a grant from the Daesan Foundation. In
order to render the most accurate meaning and image of
each and every poem, I did thorough research into the
original text and studied all the relevant research materials
that were available. I must add, in the actual process of
translating, I spent days mulling over a simple name.
Occasionally, when I was able to come up with a wholly
satisfying line with the help of inspiration, I felt great
catharsis. To make the poetry more easily comprehensible
for Chinese readers, I added footnotes and asked
professors of Chinese literature to edit and proofread my
translation. That is because the translation of poetry calls
for a similarity of form and more importantly, a similarity
of spirit with the writer. That is how it can move the heart
of a reader, as well as provide them with a wonderful
aesthetic experience.
Translation is commonly thought of as a kind of
betrayal but “it is better to like something than to know
it and better to enjoy it than to like it.” However, if
one undertakes the endeavor of translation with a solid
literary background and ample understanding of the
humanities, and not be negligent with a single word, then
the translated work cannot be an easy betrayal of the
original work. At present, I am relishing both the anguish
and the bliss of translating the poetry of Baik Suk and
will continue to make an effort to accurately translate the
full spectrum of the poems — for reasons none other than
that Korean literature is connected to me by fate.
by Yin Hai-yan
Yin Hai-yan is a professor of Korean
Language and Literature who has taught at
universities in China and Korea. Since March
2010, she has also served as director of the
Korean Studies Center at Nanjing University. Her
areas of specialization are Korean contemporary
poetry and Chinese and Korean comparative
literature. Her major translations include:
Reading the Best of Korean Contemporary
Poetry (2006) and German Ideology and MEGA
Literature Studies (2010).
LTI Korea
Overseas Publication Grants
LTI Korea provides publication grants to overseas publishers who are planning to
publish or have already published translated Korean books. The aim is to reach more
international readers through increased overseas publications of Korean books.
Qualifications
Application
Schedule
t "OZQVCMJTIFSXIPIBTTJHOFEBDPOUSBDU
for the publication rights of a Korean book
and can publish the book by December
2013.
t "OZQVCMJTIFSXIPIBTBMSFBEZQVCMJTIFEB
translated Korean book in 2013, based on
a contract for publication rights of the
book.
t 3FRVJSFE%PDVNFOUT
1. Publisher’s profile
2. Publication plan
3. A copy of the contract between the
publisher and the translator.
4. A copy of the contract between the
publisher and the copyright holder.
t 3FHJTUFSBTBNFNCFSPO-5*,PSFBT
English website. (http://eng.klti.or.kr)
t $PNQMFUFBOPOMJOFBQQMJDBUJPO
form on the website and upload the
SFRVJSFEEPDVNFOUT
t 4VCNJTTJPOEFBEMJOFT.BSDI+VOF
September 30
t 5IFSFTVMUTXJMMCFBOOPVODFEJO"QSJM+VMZ
October.
t *GUIFCPPLZPVXJTIUPQVCMJTIIBTSFDFJWFE
a LTI Korea Translation Grant, you may
apply for funding at any time.
Grants
t 1BSUPGUIFUPUBMQVCMJDBUJPOFYQFOTF
t 5IFBNPVOUWBSJFTEFQFOEJOHPOUIFDPTU
of publication and the genre of the book.
t 5IFHSBOUXJMMCFJTTVFEBGUFSQVCMJDBUJPO
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Contact
[email protected]
Jenny Kim
New Books
Fiction
Copyright © Kim Han-min, Travel Painting Recommended,
Minumsa Publishing Group
Recommended
by Publishers
Korean editors have handpicked their favorite titles
from their own publishing houses. The following list
contains hidden gems in Korea’s publishing industry.
For further information, please contact the agents
directly.
The Moment the Ice Shines
Beautiful Things
in the World
Lee Geumyi, Prooni Books, Inc.
2013, 320p, ISBN 9788957983492
Two boys struggling on the tortuous
border between childhood and adulthood
are depicted in this book, taking paths
that turn out to be squarely opposite
of each other. They share the same
experiences, but they make different
choices that result in markedly different
lives. The interplay between the two
characters sheds light on the innermost
truths in life filled with a stream of
choices.
Copyright Agent: Choi Jin-woo
[email protected]
82-2-581-0334 (Ext. 117)
www.prooni.com
The Boy of Heaven (2 vols.)
Minimal Love
Kim Jae-sung
2013, 204p, ISBN 9788954621526
Lee Jungmyung, Yolimwon Publishing Co.
2013, 296p, ISBN 9788970637730
Jeon Gyeong-rin, Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd.
2012, 368p, ISBN 9788901148977
The Boy of Heaven is the latest by Lee
Jungmyung, whose recent works such as
The Deep-rooted Tree and The Painter of
Wind drew keen attention from readers
and critics alike. In the story, an autistic
yet brilliant boy manages to escape from
North Korea and wanders around the
world. Armed with an unprecedented
mathematical talent, he bravely confronts
the world.
The book portrays the journey of Heesoo, who searches for her abandoned
sister Yu-ran. Her dying stepmother asks
her to track down Yu-ran, who turns
out to be living in a border town. Heesoo, however, finds that her sister has
already disappeared. Living in the empty
house used by Yu-ran, Hee-soo begins to
retrace her long-forgotten sister’s life.
Copyright Agent: Lee Bokee
[email protected]
82-2-3144-3237
www.munhak.com
Copyright Agent: Angela Koh
[email protected]
82-2-3144-3700
www.yolimwon.com
Copyright Agent: Min Ji-hyoung
[email protected]
82-2-3670-1167
www.wjthinkbig.co.kr
The book is a collection of 38
unpublished articles written by
the late writer Park Wansuh from
2001 until her death. The writings
cover a wide range of topics:
autobiographical confessions about
her personal history leading up to her
debut as a writer; everyday musings;
messages for today’s Korean society;
stories about houses and nature; and
memories of her loved ones.
Copyright Agent: Jung In-hye
[email protected]
82-2-362-1451
www.maumsan.com
Play Play, Galaxy Boys
On Eunha High School’s soccer team,
three 18-year-old players stage a makeor-break showdown. The story captures
their inherent good-naturedness and a
belief in justice while sharply criticizing
the society that forces children to give
up their dreams. The manipulation of
game results, and conflicts and strife
surrounding the soccer games, vividly
reveal the dog-eat-dog structure.
Park Wansuh, Maumsanchaek
2012, 288p, ISBN 9788960901445
The Reason Why You Came
to Planet Earth
Kim Hey-jung, Suseonjae Books
2012, 310p, ISBN 9788967270490
Why is it that people are born? Why do
people live in a whirlwind of pain and
agony? Why do people eventually die?
Who creates humans with this wretched
fate, and why? The author, who worked
as a nurse at a hospital’s emergency
room, deals with important questions
about life in the novel. The central
character chases after his father’s afterlife;
in the process, he witnesses the birth and
death of humankind.
Copyright Agent: Park Jei-young
[email protected]
82-10-7129-7860
www.ssjbooks.com
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
79
Fiction
Love Fills
What Should I Do?
My Inventor Neighbor
Eerie Tales from Old Korea
Sim Yunkyung
2013, 284p, ISBN 9788954621892
Kim Ih-eun, Jaeum & Moeum
2013, 324p, ISBN 9788957077696
Choi Woo-geun, Bookgoodcome
2013, 384p, ISBN 9788997728374
Brother Anthony, Seoul Selection
2013, 176p, ISBN 9781624120022
The book contains eight short stories,
including the title work, “What Should
I Do?” a tragic love story between an
embattled servant and a member of the
elite yangban class. The stories feature the
sadness and scars that characters must
cope with. The characters, confronted
with obstacles, escape or search for a
route to a new world, and cast light on a
demanding reality.
My Inventor Neighbor is a collection
of plays written by a screenwriter with
about 20 years of experience in the field.
The author’s first play “My Inventor
Neighbor” was staged in May 2008 and
was well received by critics and audience
alike. As actors focus on their characters,
dramatic effects are amplified, generating
more laughs from the audience, which
transforms into grief.
Copyright Agent: Kim Young-lan
[email protected]
82-2-324-2347
www.jamo21.net
Copyright Agent: Lee Soon-young
[email protected]
82-10-9036-5433
www.bookgoodcome.com
In the late 19th century, Western
missionaries Homer B. Hulbert and
James S. Gale came to the Joseon
Kingdom and compiled exotic local
stories into a book. Marking the 150th
anniversary of the authors, respected
Korean literature translator Brother
Anthony has compiled 29 stories into a
book titled Eerie Tales from Old Korea.
Ghost stories from the eyes of Western
missionaries offer a unique and rare
perspective.
Love Fills follows up on Love Runs,
which is concerned about the love story
between Hye-na and Wook-yeon. Love
Fills focuses on Hye-na, a 39-year-old
woman who works at an obstetrics and
gynecology clinic and falls in love with
the head of the hospital. Sometimes
events look ordinary, but her story
unfolds in a way that highlights the
shining moments of her life.
Copyright Agent: Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Copyright Agent: Park Shin-hyung
[email protected]
82-70-4060-3950
www.seoulselection.com
Nonfiction
The Voices of Heaven
Nonetheless
Maija Rhee Devine, Seoul Selection
2013, 316p, ISBN 9781624120039
Won Jong-kook, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 286, ISBN 9788932023915
A Korean-American writer takes up
the topic of traditional values that
are threatened in the aftermath of the
Korean War. In the story, a “second”
mother gets introduced; her role is to
give birth to a son to the family. In this
irony-laden situation, the story also
accentuates the healing power of love.
In Won Jong-kook's second collection
of short stories, he showcases his
imaginative ability to create variations of
a single motif. He mixes the sci-fi genre
and experimental techniques in three
serialized works titled “Mix-and-Match,”
which deals with human cloning and
related philosophical problems. The
collection, featuring a total of eight short
stories, depicts characters who all struggle
with the imperfect and the broken, yet
suggests hope throughout the work.
Copyright Agent: Park Shin-hyung
[email protected]
82-70-4060-3950
www.seoulselection.com
Copyright Agent: Choi Ji-in
[email protected]
82-2-338-7224
www.moonji.com
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Today, I’m the Prettiest
Woman
Hwang Jung-sun, Goldenowl Inc.
2013, 249p, ISBN 9788960303522
Popular image consultant Hwang Jungsun offers a comprehensive style guide
for women of a certain age. The target
readers are those in their late 30s through
40s, mostly working women who are
far removed from the typical image of
“ajumma.” Styling tips to highlight the
sexiness of 40-year-olds, fashion tips
based on trendy items, tips on body
shape, and seasonal information are
packed into the guidebook.
Copyright Agent: Cho Yeon-kon
[email protected]
82-2-338-9150
www.goldenowl.co.kr
Discovery of Politics
Park Sang-Hoon, Humanitas
2013, 178p, ISBN 9788964371695
The book is based on five lectures by
the author, targeting those who want to
follow progressive politics. The author
observes the trials and errors of the
past decades in the wake of the 1987
democracy movement. As a political
scientist, he maps out his ideas and tries
to objectively describe the concept of
progressivism. Yet his endeavor turns out
to be harder than he had imagined.
Copyright Agent: Lee Jin-sil
[email protected]
82-2-739-9929
www.humanitasbook.co.kr
Big Data: A New Way to
Understand the World
Park Soon-seo, ReadySetGo Co., Ltd.
2013, 252p, ISBN 9788997729050
A great amount of data is being
generated on a daily basis due to the
widespread use of computers, the
Internet, and smartphones. The book
provides analysis by and the concerns of
some 30 experts on big data. How big
data gets generated and how it influences
people’s everyday lives are presented in
an easy-to-understand and entertaining
fashion.
Copyright Agent: Song In-hye
[email protected]
82-2-711-5507
www.ReadySetGo.co.kr
If You Are Called Crazy, You
Are Leading a Life of No
Regrets
Kim Gyeong-su, Myungjin Publications Inc.
2013, 250p, ISBN 9788976777348
In Seoul, the author is an ordinary
office worker; in deserts and remote
places, he is a bold adventurer. The book
introduces the writer’s experiences and
ideas, with a strong message suggesting
that if you want to change your life, you
must experience nature, where there is
no trace of civilization.
Copyright Agent: Han Hye-jung
[email protected]
82-2-326-0026 (Ext. 112)
www.myungjinbooks.com
Travel Painting
Recommended
Kim Han-min, Minumsa Publishing Group
2013, 276p, ISBN 9788937487361
The book contains pictures drawn by the
author, who has traveled extensively in
the past 10 years. Instead of a camera,
he used sketchbooks to turn his travels
into special experiences, observing at a
deeper level and rediscovering something
new from otherwise ordinary scenes.
For those who hurriedly take pictures
at scenic spots, the book offers a good
alternative.
Copyright Agent: Michelle Nam
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206)
www.minumsa.com
Evolutionary Theory of Dieting
Nam Se-hee, Minumin
2013, 292p, ISBN 9788960173453
Why is it so difficult to lose weight even
though one takes up various methods and
dietary therapies? The author’s answer is
that people tend to adopt a couple of tips
without knowing the full mechanism of
their body. The book deals with issues
of true health and beauty, as well as false
information about dieting tips, in order to
present a new paradigm.
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206)
minumin.minumsa.com
Symphony of Life
Machiavelli
Because We Are All Humans
Future: My Job
Oh Kil-kwon, Sciencebooks
2013, 256p, ISBN 9788983716040
Kim Sang-kun, Book21 Publishing Group
2013, 310p, ISBN 9788950946005
Leu Eun-sook, Little Mountain Publishing Co.
2012, 272p, ISBN 9788989646860
Kim Rando, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2013, 416p, ISBN 9788954621915
In the past three years, the author has
serialized nature articles on a major
portal site under the title of “Biology
Promenade.” Accompanied by photos,
the articles are detailed observations of
nature by a veteran researcher, whose
lifelong endeavor is to unlock the secrets
in the natural world.
For hundreds of years, the perceptions
about Machiavelli and his philosophical
principles have been distorted. Existing
discussions are mostly limited to his
representative work, The Prince. Going
beyond widespread prejudices, the book
attempts to reinterpret Machiavelli's
humanistic aspects. His presence in
Italy and other parts of Europe are also
collected and illustrated in the book.
The author has engaged in the human
rights movement for the past 21 years.
She has also been working at a restaurant
for 12 years. In this collection of essays,
she delivers the message of helping those
in need. The author calls on readers to
join the struggle and never give up even
if there are no immediate results.
Professor Kim Rando has written the
bestselling book Youth, It’s Painful, and
sold its rights in 10 countries, sparking
the first-ever Korean Wave in foreign
publishing markets. His new book is
based on his observation that most of
the concerns of youth stem from the
job search. He attempts to find answers
about what should be done to get your
dream job and envision tomorrow in
pursuit of happiness.
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206)
sciencebooks.minumsa.com
Copyright Agent: Kim Young-hee
[email protected]
82-31-955-2117
www.book21.com
Copyright Agent: Jung Woo-jin
[email protected]
82-2-335-7365
www.littlemt.com
Copyright Agent: Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
81
Nonfiction
Graphic Novels
Harihara's Science Blog
A Snail Can Never Be Late
Lee Eun-hui, Sallim Publishing Company
2005, 220p, ISBN 9788952204318
Jung-mok Bhikkhuni, Sam & Parkers
2013, 263p, ISBN 9788965701675
Biologist Lee Eun-hui is at the forefront
of a campaign to make science more
available to the public. She explains
breakthroughs in modern science while
analyzing lesser known aspects of science.
The book takes up hot topics such as
antibiotics, environmental hormones,
atomic energy, genetically modified food,
test-tube babies, and organ transplants.
Jung-mok Bhikkhuni touches upon
issues that plague many people: anger,
desires, relationships, and fear. The
Buddhist monk explains how to control
anger, handle pain, heal hurt feelings,
and recover peace and happiness in an
easy-to-understand style.
Copyright Agent: Park Jina
[email protected]
82-31-955-1396
www.sallimbooks.com
Copyright Agent: Jeong Hye-ri
[email protected]
82-31-960-4831
www.smpk.co.kr
There Is No Nation
for the Youth
Han Youn-hyung, Across Publishing Company
2013, 308p, ISBN 9788997379231
In different parts of the world, people
begin to notice and classify economically
struggling young people: the 1,000 Euro
Generation, the Dankai Generation,
and the 880,000 Won Generation. A
prominent political critic, the author
analyzes the social issues that bind the
East Asia region in an incisive and
humorous style.
Copyright Agent: Kim Rumee
[email protected]
82-70-8724-0876
Hwa-ja (2 vols.)
Hongjackga, Middle House
2011, 304p, ISBN 9788993391084 (Vol.1)
The book is a mix of various genres.
Mystery, horror, thriller, fantasy and
romance are infused into the title. The
comics also deliver a message that more
social efforts and attention should
be devoted to tackling crimes against
children and taking care of young
victims. The author also published the
French edition of the three-volume
Dorothy Band via the leading comics
publisher Casterman.
Copyright Agent: Lee Hee-sun
[email protected]
82-2-333-6250
www.middlehouse.co.kr
Children’s Books
No Parking
Baek Mi-sook; Illustrator: Oh Seung-min
Nurimbo Publishing Co., 2013
36p, ISBN 9788958761600
When Ttori’s car gets a flat tire, his father
assigns the name “No Parking” to the
troubled tire. It asks other cars not to
stop in front of Ttori’s house, but the tire
does not like his new mission. It wants
to function as a tire for other cars such as
trucks and excavators, only to be rejected.
What will happen to the “No Parking”
tire?
Copyright Agent: We Jung-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-7391
www.nurimbo.co.kr
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Sohn Hye-ryung’s Comics:
Greek and Roman Myths
Sohn Hye-ryung, Amoeba
2013, 172p, ISBN 9788965690290
The book, a hybrid of comics and fiction,
features Greek and Roman myths.
Describing the famous myths in ancient
times through comics together with
concise texts, it is a family-oriented title
suitable for both younger readers and
adults.
Copyright Agent: Hong Chan-mi
[email protected]
82-2-3449-0360
www.amoeba.co.kr
Because He Is an Only Child
What Kind of Seed Are You?
Song Eon; Illustrator: Kim Byeong-ha
Bombom Publishing. Co., 2013
80p, ISBN 9788991742444
Choi Sook-hee, Bear Books
2013, 40p, ISBN 9788993242812
Chang-soo is the only child in the family.
He is also a good at fighting. Encouraged
by his parents, he often beats up and
harasses his school friends. One day, he
comes home crying, apparently after a
fight with his friends. His father, angered
by his son’s defeat, marches toward the
school to punish Chang-soo’s friends.
Copyright Agent: Heo Sun-young
[email protected]
82-2-2212-7088
cafe.daum.net/bbpub
Seeds have a wide range of appearances:
wrinkled, shrunken, even barbed ones
can be found. The book tells younger
readers that every child is like a seed that
can blossom into a flower. At first glance,
a small seed might look like nobody. But
the book shows how it develops into a
beautiful flower, a process that is linked
to the unlimited potential of children and
their dreams.
Copyright Agent: Choi Hyun-Kyoung
[email protected]
82-2-332-2672
www.bearbooks.co.kr
The Cooking Princess:
Party Food (3 vols.)
Studio Haedam; Illustrator: Kim Suk-hee
2010, 160p, ISBN 9788992479790 (Vol. 1)
Catered to girls, this comic book on
cooking is filled with pretty pictures
that will charm younger readers. Good
storytelling stands out in scenes about
cooking contests and fantasy-filled
moments. Cooking fairy Robin and
Brownie play delightful roles.
Copyright Agent: Jung Sun-woo
[email protected]
82-32-323-9985
www.gobook2.com
Catch Me If You Can
Won You-soon; Illustrator: Yoon Bong-sun
Sigongsa Co., Ltd.
2013, 136p, ISBN 9788952768964
In this tale, six characters including a
larva in the cabbage patch, a chipmunk
struggling under the threat of a new
natural enemy, and starving wild boar
family members are fighting to stay alive.
Although the characters have different
looks and lifestyles, their life and death
are surprisingly interconnected. This
omnibus-style story suggests that all the
living creatures are just pieces of nature’s
grand puzzle.
Copyright Agent: Amelie Choi
[email protected]
82-2-2046-2855
www.sigongjunior.com
Kim Hong-do: Artist for the
People of the Joseon Dynasty
Jin Jun-hyun, Namusoop
2004, 48p, ISBN 9788989004158
Kim Hong-do is one of the most beloved
painters in Korea. The Joseon period
painter produced such masterful works
as “Ssireum” and “Seodang” in the folk
painting genre. He also drew excellent
works in other genres such as portraits,
landscapes, and paintings of immortals,
while revealing his talent in music,
calligraphy, and the Korean poetic form
sijo. Kim was born to a middle-class
family, but he made continued efforts to
become a great painter.
12th Nation
Kim Hye-jin, Baram Books
2013, 468p, ISBN 9788994475370
The book is the fourth installment of the
“Perfect World” series. The writer has
serialized the fantasy story over a period of
several years. It is an unofficial biography
to existing fans and a prequel for new
readers. In the book, there are 12 tribes
forming their own nations, and readers can
expect that each nation will present plenty
of interesting stories.
Copyright Agent: Lee Min-young
[email protected]
82-2-3142-0495
cafe.daum.net/barampub
Copyright Agent: Ha Un-ha
[email protected]
82-2-540-7118
cafe.daum.net/namukids
Math Restaurant, Vol. 1
Pretty Face On Sale
The Boys Are Coming
The Polar Bear
Kim Hee-nam; Illustrator: Kim Jin-wha
Thinking & Feeling Publishing, 2012
112p, ISBN 9788992263191
Sun Ja-eun; Illustrator: Kim Moo-yeon
Prunsoop Publishing Co., Ltd.
2013, 148p, ISBN 9788971849750
Yun Hye-Sook, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd.
2013, 216p, ISBN 9788958286660
Lee Mi-jung, Mirae N Co., Ltd.
2012, 32p, ISBN 9788937885273
A math lecture for first graders has been
set up in the form of a cooking recipe.
A chef, who has devoted his life to
researching math meals, and his protege
named Dangke lead a topsy-turvy life at
the Math Restaurant, offering problemsolving techniques and mathematical
principles to young readers.
The book reflects the recent trend of
children’s tendency to prioritize looks. But
the author does not put forward obvious
points such as “Looks are not important.”
Instead, she introduces the unique idea
of “a shop selling pretty faces” and reveals
how today’s children think about looks in
a positive and entertaining style.
In the 1920s, things were changing
rapidly and dramatically. This is a story
of three boys who led a life as storytellers.
One boy left in search of money, the
second tried to maintain friendships,
and the third never stopped pursing
his dream. They are now telling their
innermost stories.
This picture book without text shows how
a white bear trapped in a zoo gets back to
where it should have been. Just like in a
road movie, the story’s fantastic journey
is shown through images that often shift
between reality and imagination.
Copyright Agent: Kim Min-kyeong
[email protected]
82-2-335-7345
Copyright Agent: Park Hyun-sook
[email protected]
82-31-955-1410 (Ext. 306)
www.prunsoop.co.kr
Copyright Agent: Kang Hyun-joo
[email protected]
82-31-955-8600
www.sakyejul.co.kr
Copyright Agent: Park Ji-young
[email protected]
82-3475-3870
www.mirae-n.com
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
83
Meet the Publishers
Sallim
Publishing
Company
Sallim Publishing is quite well known to
Koreans. The Korean edition of The Secret
by Australian writer Rhonda Byrne was
published by Sallim. Published in 2007,
the book sold one million copies within
the shortest time in Korean publishing
h istor y. T hu s, Sa l l i m is a f a m i l ia r
publisher to those who found courage and
hope in the book.
H o w e v e r, S a l l i m i s r e g a r d e d
differently by book lovers with a wealth
of experience, especially readers who
love literature. Many novels published
by Sallim in the 1990s were their own
tour de force in the publishing market so
much, so that people were considered to
be behind the times if they had not read
those books. The publisher has since then
been firmly established as one specializing
in literature.
Sallim, however, does not have a long
history. It was founded in 1989 by the
current president Sim Mansu who worked
as editor-in-chief for MunyeJoongang, an
inf luential literary magazine, for more
than 10 years. The name “Sallim,” which
is a pure Korean root word without
Chinese characters, is an interesting
choice for a publishing company. It
refers to housekeeping by a housewife
and also implies the managing of family
traditions that have been passed down
through generations in Korean society,
such as the relationship between a wife
and a husband, children’s education, and
ethical values. Many Koreans think that a
family will be happy and in harmony if a
housewife manages the household well.
Kang Sim-ho, director of planning
and editing, explains that “publishing a
series of million copy sellers in the early
1990s helped the company establish itself
quickly and firmly.” Novels such as I
Wish for What Is Forbidden to Me, Love
of a Thousand Years, and Contradictions
by Yang Gui-ja, who had an excellent
ability to tell stories that appealed greatly
to fiction lovers, are some of them. Sallim
also published works by Yi Mun-yol, Lee
In-hwa, and Ki Hyung-do, all well known
figures in the history of Korean literature.
Sallim’s direction changed in the early
2000s. Director Kang explains: “The
inf luence of fiction declined greatly by
the late 1990s.” The company changed its
course from literature to the humanities.
The most notable outcome of this change
is the Sallim Knowledge Series, viewed as
the publisher’s most important publication.
With the first volume published in 2003,
all the books of the series are just big
enough to hold in one’s hand, that is,
they have a pocketbook format. With 460
books published so far, the series covers a
variety of subjects.
Director Kang says, “The main idea of
the series was to discover unknown writers
and to appeal to readers who prefer short
books.” Each book is about 60,000 words
long. The series is also published in an
electronic version and a large-print version
in order to cater to people with poor
vision, including the elderly. The publisher
plans to publish the series for as long as
they can up to over 2,000 books.
2002 was a historically meaningful
year for Koreans. The FIFA World Cup
was co-hosted successfully with Japan,
and a liberal candidate was elected as the
president of Korea. When two middle
school girls were run over by an American
armored vehicle that was in training,
Koreans were greatly shocked. Largescale anti-U.S. demonstrations took place
daily, which had not happened since the
1980s. The first 10 books in the Sallim
Knowledge Series are devoted to analyzing
the economy and national security of the
U.S., Korea’s closest ally, as well as its
target of fierce criticism. The titles include
The Left and the Right Wing of the United
States, The Other Side of the United States,
and The Identity of the United States.
When disputes broke out between
Japan and Korea concerning the small
island Dokdo on the east coast of the
Korean peninsula, Professor Shin Yongha’s Story of Dokdo was published.
Book s published by Sa l l i m have
become even more diverse since the mid2000s. Harihara’s Science Blog, a science
book for young people, became popular
when it was published in 2005. Other
books have increased readers’ interest
in historical knowledge: Gyeongseong
Adventure (Seoul was originally called
Gyeongseong) which solves 10 horrific and
mysterious cases that shook Joseon society
in the 1930s; Russian Coffee, a story of
Joseon’s first barista at the beginning of the
20th century; and Bank, which portrays
the currency war between Korea and Japan
during the Joseon era.
by Shin Junebong
Sallim Knowledge Series
Sallim Publishing Company.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
85
Afterword
Messy Business:
Translating Ambiguity
If you read a translation later of any of the books presented
in this autumn issue of list_ Books from Korea, you may
appreciate the translation more if you know something
about the difficulties that the translator will most likely
have encountered. Probably the most intractable and most
interesting difficulty that the translator will face is the proper
treatment of the various ambiguities that present themselves
in the original work.
There are different kinds of ambiguities, and the nature
of each determines how it will be handled. Most ambiguities
are unintended, but some are intended; in some cases we don’t
know whether the ambiguity is intended or not, and have no
way of finding out.
If the translator knows that the author intended the
ambiguity, she will take one of two approaches: either clarify
the ambiguity or maintain it. Most translators will retain the
ambiguity. Usually, however, the ambiguity simply cannot
be properly rendered. Take the well-known example: Flying
planes can be dangerous. Is the act of flying dangerous, or is
the flying plane dangerous? Try rendering that in Korean, and
the reader won’t get the point at all.
When rendering is possible, though, it should be rendered
in a way that reflects the experience that the reader of the
original was subjected to, allow the reader of the translation
to experience, in other words, the various possible choices
of interpretation that were presented by the author. This
is usually a frustrating and time-consuming task because
different cultures present ideas in different constructs,
which prevents the translator from employing a point-bypoint corresponding construct. A really true rendering of the
ambiguity will often require a modification of its structure.
Dražen Pehar said, The translator must “construct, or invent,
a kind of target language-discourse to which the audience can
take the same attitude that a speaker and an author take to
their sentences.”
How about unintended ambiguity? If the author did not
intend ambiguity, it would seem logical that the translator
should figure out what the author meant to say, and then
express that in the translation. Or not.
First, a little background. Many authors are not careful
about clarity. I have encountered this in the translation of
short stories, works on topics in the humanities—especially
art—and corporate writing. Most of these authors know
what they want to say; they’re just careless in expressing it. In
such a case, the translator can usually clarify the ambiguity
with a phone call. But some authors do not even have a
clear understanding themselves of what they have written. I
have found this to be true on more than one occasion. For
example, I call an author to ask precisely what he intended,
and the author, after hemming and hawing in answer to
my embarrassing but unavoidable interrogation, gives up
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
in exasperation and says, “Oh, just write what you think
I meant.” If that is truly the last word, the ambiguity is
clarified—unethically—with a little imagination.
What should the translator do when the author insists that
his expression is not ambiguous? In the process of translating
one short story I thought that an event in it was ambiguous.
One native-speaker informant, after much deliberation,
said it meant A, and another informant said it meant B.
So I conducted an informal survey to find out what a few
more native speakers thought. I found that three quarters of
those surveyed thought it ambiguous, and the number who
understood it as A was about the same as the number who
understood it as B. In a later conversation with the author,
he insisted that the passage was not ambiguous. Should the
translator therefore present it unambiguously, or, assuming
that he is not concerned about losing the author’s regard,
should he craft it in a way that ideally approximately three
quarters of the readers of his translation find it ambiguous?
There are translators who think that the unintended
ambiguity should be presented to the reader as close as
possible to the way that the reader of the original writing
encountered it. And this same principle applies to other flaws
with which the writing may be encumbered. This reflects the
attitude that a translation is not mainly a conveyor of ideas
but a whole package of ideas and language and rhetoric.
In the case that an ambiguity was intended, most
translators will maintain the ambiguity; if the translator
knows it was not intended, he may or may not clarify it. If
he doesn’t know, though, whether it was or was not intended
and does not have access to the author, what can he do? The
translator who focuses mainly on conveying the author’s ideas
to the reader (and understands what the author intended to
say) will probably clarify; the translator who focuses on the
process of writing, on the work as a whole rather than only
the work’s ideas, will probably maintain the ambiguity.
But I hope this messy business doesn’t prevent you from
enjoying the next translation that you read!
by John Holstein
John Holstein recently retired from
his teaching position in the Department
of English at Sungkyunkwan University in
Seoul. When his teaching duties allowed, he
both translated and wrote works on Korean
literature and culture.
Contributors
Bae No-pil is a reporter with the
JoongAng Ilbo.
Bok Dohoon is a literary critic. His
collections of critical essays include A
Portrait of a Blindman and The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He is on
the editorial board of list_Books from
Korea.
Cho Yeon-jung is a literary critic.
She made her debut in 2006 when she
won the Seoul Shinmun New Critics
Award. Her collections of critical essays
include Time for Touching.
Choi Jae-bong is a senior reporter
at the culture desk of The Hankyoreh
newspaper.
Eom Hye-suk conducts research in
children’s literature and is an illustrated
book critic who also works as a
translator. Her most well-known work
is Reading My Delightful Illustrated
Books.
Hong Jung-sun is a literary critic and
Professor in the Department of Korean
Language and Literature at Inha
University. His career as a literary critic
began in 1982 when he founded The
Age of Literature. He is the author of
Literature as a Branch of Humanities,
Kafka and North Korean Literature,
and Prometheus’ Time.
Jung Yeo-ul is a literary critic. Jung
teaches at Seoul National University
and the Korean National University of
Arts. She is the author of a collection
of critical essays, A Small Antenna in
My Study.
Kim Do-eon is a writer. His literary
career began in 1999 when his fiction
won the Hankook Ilbo New Writers
Contest. He is the author of short
story collection, A Riverside View with
an Iron Staircase.
Park Hae-cheon is a researcher
Kim Dongshik is a literary critic
and a Professor of Korean Language
and Literature at Inha University. His
collections of critical essays include
Cynicism and Fascination and Memory
and Vestige.
of design. His major works include
Interface Chronicle; Human, Design,
and Technology; and Concrete Utopia.
Pyo Jeonghun is a book reviewer,
columnist, translator, and freelance
writer. He has translated 10 books into
Korean and written Books Have Their
Own Destiny, A Short Introduction to
Chinese Philosophy, and An Interview
with My Teacher: What Is Philosophy?
He is on the editorial board of list_
Books from Korea.
Richard Hong is a book columnist
and the head of BC Agency. He
translated 13: The Story of the World’s
Most Notorious Superstitions. He has
appeared on KBS 1 Radio’s “Global
Today,” and writes columns for The
Korea Economic Daily and Posco News.
Yu Youngjin is a children’s literature
critic and a teacher at an elementary
school. He is the author of The Body’s
Imagination and Fairytale.
Translators
Shin Junebong is a reporter with the
Kim Kyung-yun is a critic of
JoongAng Ilbo.
children’s and young adult literature
and translator. She is the author of
a collection of critical essays Our
Portraits of Others and a number of
translations.
Brother Anthony has been translating
Shin Soojin is a freelance children's
Son Jong-up is a literary critic and
Professor in the Department of Korean
Language and Literature at Sunmoon
University. His major works include
Theater and the Woods and The Fear of
the Analyst.
Kim Mansu is a professor with the
Department of Culture and Contents
at Inha University. His works include
Plot and Character in the Age of
Storytelling. He is on the editorial
board of list_Books from Korea.
Kang Yu-jung is a literary and film
Hankook Ilbo.
Kim Min-ryoung is a children’s
story writer who also studies children’s
literature. She made her literary debut
in 2006 when her children’s story
won the Munwha Ilbo New Writer’s
Contest. She is the author of My
Cousin Sera.
Kim Chong-khwang is a writer.
Kim Su-yeong is President of Rhodus
He made his debut in 1998 when
his short story “Farewell to the Police
Station” appeared in the quarterly
Munhakdongnae. His major works
include short story collections, Farewell
to the Police Station and Rice Planting
Blues, the novel A Tale of the Military,
and the historical novel A Story of the
Gwangjang Market.
Publishing Company and an instructor
in philosophy.
critic, and the author of Oedipus’
Forest, a collection of critical essays.
She is on the editorial board of list_
Books from Korea.
Kim Beomsoo is a reporter with the
President of KL Management. His
main interest lies in selling Korean
literature to overseas markets. He is the
author of A Man Selling Novels.
Yoon So-hee is a children’s book
writer. She has written Prejudice,
Aram’s Secret, and 7 Stories To Help You
Study. She is the winner of the 13th
MBC Children’s Writing Prize.
critic, and author of a collection of
critical essays Ethica Falling.
Shin Hyoung-cheol is a literary
book editor.
Joseph Lee is a literary agent and
has published Yi Myung-suk’s Japanese
Comics; Manhwa; Finding the Critical
Point; and A Cafe for Every Day.
Kim Ji-eun is a children’s book
writer and children’s literature critic.
She currently lectures on theories
of children's fiction writing in the
Department of Creative Writing at
Hanshin University. She is on the
editorial board of list_Books from
Korea.
He was the publisher of The Economist,
a weekly business magazine by Korea
Joongang Daily. His works include
Romantic Apartment, M-Everything
(Media Ever ything), and Wa r m
Capitalism.
her debut in 2002 when she won the
New Writers Contest sponsored by
Literature and Society. She is the author
of the short story collections, Romantic
Love and Society, Today’s Lies, and the
novel My Sweet Seoul. She received the
Hyundae Munhak Award.
Yi Myung-suk is a columnist. He
Ally Hwang holds a doctorate
in Comparative Literature from
B i n g h a m t o n Un i v e r s i t y a n d i s
currently translating the short story
collection, Myoungrang by Cheon
Un-yeong. She was a fellow of the
International Translation Foundation
and has recently published a short
story translation of Seo Hajin's “At the
Gunwale.”
Huh Eui-do is a journalist and poet.
Jeong Yi-hyun is a writer. She made
Kim Inae is a children’s story writer,
critic, and the president of the KBBY
(Korean Board on Books for Young
People). She is the author of the
children’s stories Across the Duroke
River, The Brave Little Mouse, and
a collection of critical essays, Why
Children’s Stories Are Fun to Read. She
is also the recipient of Today’s Young
Artist Award.
Yang Yun-eui is a literary critic. She
won the 2006 Joongang New Writer’s
Award in the literary criticism category.
Uh Soo-woong is Editor-in-Chief of
the Chosun Ilbo Weekly Magazine.
Korean literature for over 20 years,
and has published some 30 volumes,
mostly of modern poetry. Currently, he
is Distinguished Professor at Dankook
University, Professor Emeritus at
Sogang University, and President of the
Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch.
Cho Yoonna is a freelance interpreter
and translator.
Choi Inyoung is an artist and
translator specializing in Korean
literature and the arts. She has been
translating for over 20 years.
D a v i d I . St e i n b e r g r e c e i v e d
his under-graduate education at
Dartmouth College and Lingnan
University in Canton, China. His
graduate training in Chinese and
Southeast Asian subjects was at
Harvard and the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of
London. He is the author of several
books on Korea and on Burma.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
87
Featured Authors
E.K. DuBois is a freelance translator.
Yang Sung-jin is a staff reporter and
She currently resides in Seoul.
editor at The Korea Herald. Yang wrote
a Korean history book in English, Click
Into the Hermit Kingdom, and a newsbased English vocabulary book, News
English Power Dictionary.
H. Jamie Chang is a Bostonian/
Busanian freelance translator.
Heidi Shon is a freelance translator.
She has also taught English as a fulltime lecturer at Hongik University.
Jaewon E. Chung is working on
several translation projects under
the guidance and support of the
International Communication
Foundation and LTI Korea. Chung
received the 38th Korea Times Modern
Literature Translation Commendation
Award For his translation of Hwang
Jung-eun’s “The Door.”
Jung Yewon is a freelance interpreter
and translator. She received the Daesan
Foundation Translation Grant in 2009,
the LTI Korea Translation Grant in
2010, and the Korea Times Translation
Award in 2011. She is currently
working on the translation of Vaseline
Buddha, a novel by Jung Young Moon.
Kari Schenk was the co-recipient of
the commendation award in the 2006
Korea Times Literature Translation
Awards, and in 2010 she attended a
special course in translation at LTI
Korea. She teaches at Korea University.
Kim Soyoung is currently working
on translating fiction and nonfiction
from Korean into English.
Kim Ungsan is a freelance translator.
He has worked as a lecturer in English
literature at Seoul National University
and at Korea National Open University.
Park Kyoung-lee is a graduate
student at Hankuk University of
Foreign Studies. She won the 9th
Korean Literature Translation Contest
for New Translators in 2010.
Fiction
pp. 42-44, 57-58
Yi Jeong-hyeon is a freelance
translator. She has translated several
books and papers, including Korean
Traditional Landscape Architecture and
Atlas of Korean History.
Editors
Kim Stoker is an editor and lecturer
a t Ew h a Wo m a n s Un i v e r s i t y ' s
Graduate School of Translation and
Interpretation.
Bae Suah made her literary debut
in 1993 in the quarterly Fiction and
Philosophy with “The Dark Room of
Nineteen Eighty-Eight.” She is the
author of the short story collection
Green Apples Along the Highway, and
the novels Sunday Sukiyaki Restaurant,
North Living Room, and Untold Nights
and a Day. Bae is the winner of the
Hankook Ilbo Literary Award.
Krys Lee is a writer and Professor of
Creative Writing at Yonsei University's
Underwood International College.
Her short story collection Drifting
House was published by Viking/
Penguin in the U.S. and Faber and
Faber in the U.K., in 2012.
Cover Art
Park Sang-hyeok graduated from
the Braunschweig University of Art
in Germany, with a double major in
photography and graphic design. His
works of digital photography, digital
painting, and animation appeared
in a number of group exhibitions
in Germany and Korea. He uses
nonexistent but imaginable comic
subjects, such as talking animals or
moving shade, in creating a world
with a touch of hope, humor, and
humanism. His short comic book
collection (2012) and his feature-length
comic Seni (2013) were published
electronically.
Jung Mi-kyung made her literary
debut in 1987 as the winner in the
drama category of the JoongAng
New Writer’s Award, then went on
hiatus before publishing a short story
in the quarterly World Literature in
2001. She is the author of the short
story collections Bloodstained Lover,
They Gave Me Balkan Roses, My Son’s
Girlfriend, and The French Laundry;
the novels La Vie en Rose, The Strange
Sorrow of Wonderland, and Stars of
Africa. She is the winner of the 2006
Yi Sang Literary Award.
Peter J. Koh is a freelance translator
and interpreter who completed LTI
Korea's Special Workshop in 2009 and
Intensive Workshop in 2010.
Lee Hyun-soo made her literary
debut in 1991 as the winner of the
Chungcheong Ilbo New Writer’s
Award. She is the author of the short
story collection The Rosewood China
Cabinet and the novels New Tales of
Gisaeng and Four Days.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
Kim Soom made her literary debut
Lee Yeon-sik is an art historian. He
Mun Yo-han is a psychiatrist,
is a writer and translator whose tastes
in art history run to the grotesque,
the macabre, and the erotic. He is the
author of Art History of Forgeries and
Stolen Works; Ukiyo-e: Pictures That
Seduce; and Monsters in Art.
therapist, and counselor. His long-term
interests include expanding the narrow
definition of therapy with an emphasis
on personal growth. He is the author
of Goodbye, Laziness and Stethoscope for
the Heart.
Lee Gi-ho made his literary debut in
Rieu Dong-min majored in
Oh Yeong-jin is a comic book artist.
the monthly Hyundai Munhak in 1999
with the short story “Bunny.” He is the
author of the short story collections
Earnie; Having Been at a Loss, I Knew
It Went That Way; Who Is Dr. Kim? and
the novel At Least We Can Apologize.
economics at college, and wrote his
dissertation on Marx’s labor theory of
value. He currently teaches economics
at various universities. He is the author
of Marx Asked Me If I Was Sick, The
Economics of Prometheus, and The
Montage of Memories.
His unique point of view on current
affairs is well documented in such
works as The Pyeongyang Project, Fishy
Terrace, and Visitor from the South
which have won him recognition both
inside and outside Korea. He is the
winner of the 2008 Prix Asie-ACBD
for the French translation of Visitor
From the South (Le Visiteur du Sud).
His book, Adult Park, will be published
in France before the Korean market,
due to popular demand in Europe.
in 1997 as the winner of the Daejeon
Ilbo New Writer’s Award for the short
story “On Slowness.” She is the author
of the short story collection Liver and
Gallbladder and the novels Water and
Women and Their Evolving Enemies.
Han Yujoo made her literary debut
in 2003 as the winner of the quarterly
Literature and Society New Writer’s
Award. She is the author of the short
story collections To the Moon; The
Book of Ice; My Left Hand Is King, My
Right Hand the King’s Scribe; and the
novel The Impossible Fairytale. She
is the winner of the Hankook Ilbo
Literary Award.
Nonfiction
pp. 60-66
Go Mi-sook is a scholar of Korean
classical literature. She is the author
of Yeolha Ilgi: Space of Laughter and
Irony; Yeolha Ilgi: Dazzling Vision of
Life and Civilization; Two Stars, Two
Maps; and others.
Seo Joon-hwan made his literary
debut in the quarterly Literature and
Society in 2001 with his short story
“Aquarium.” He is the author of the
short story collection You Are the
Memories of the Moon and the novels
The Goldberg Variations and The Death
of Robespierre.
Park Cheol-soo is a professor of
Kang Dae-jin is an independent
scholar of Greek classics. He wrote his
master’s thesis on Plato’s Symposium
and doctoral dissertation on Homer’s
Iliad. He is the author of such books
as The Iliad: Epic of Heroes in the
Warfield; The Odyssey: An Epic Study of
the World and Man; and The Secret of
Greek Tragedy.
architecture at the University of
Seoul. His key research interests lie
in exploring the relationship between
residential architecture and culture and
the relationship of urban space and the
social environment. He is the author of
A Cultural History of Apartments and
Apartments, and a co-author of Houses,
Not Apartments.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
89
Children's Books
pp. 68-72
Jin Hyeong-min won the Changbi
Good Children’s Book Award for his
first book Candidate No.3 An Seokbbong.
So Yunkyoung is an illustrator. She
is known for her often grotesque and
highly impressionistic style of drawing
and illustration, mainly focusing on
children’s books. She has illustrated
s u c h b o o k s a s C a p s u l e W i t c h’s
Abracadabra Drugstore and The Golden
Feather, and wrote Restaurant Sal.
Joo Young-ha is professor of folklore
Ma Hae-song (1905-1966)
pioneered the field of creative children’s
fiction in Korea. He penned such
classics as “The Lily Star and the Little
Star” and “Mother’s Gift.” He is the
author of Haesong’s Fairytales, The
Rabbit and the Monkey, Rice Cakes and
Sweet Cakes, The Past and Present of
Sand, The Barking Wanderer, and many
others. A new 12-volume collection of
his works, The Collected Works of Ma
Hae-song, is being published in June
2013.
studies at the Academy of Korean
Studies. His key research areas include
folklore studies and food studies. He
is an avid field researcher and writer of
Korean, Chinese, and Japanese culinary
culture since the 1990s. He is the
author of such books as Food Studies as
Humanities, Delicious World History,
and Setting the Table.
Lee Bandi is a children’s writer. She is
the author of The Three Little Raccoons
(winner of the 2010 Changbi New
Children’s Writers Award), and The
Tiger’s Eyebrow.
Cheon Hyeon-jeong won the 2013
Biryongso Gold Goblin Award for her
first book, Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!
Kang Hyoun-sun is a children’s book
illustrator. She is the author of Blue
Bicycle, a picture book without words
based on early spring imagery.
Vol.21 Autumn 2013
INDEX
Title
Original Title
Publishers/Agent
Copyright Agent
E-mail
Phone
Homepage
4p
The Ultimate Baseball King
(Magumaguyaguwang)
Mirae-N
Park Ji-young
[email protected]
82-2-3475-3870
www.mirae-n.com
The Vegetarian
(Chaesikjuuija)
KL Management
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
The Investigator
(Byeoreul Seuchineun Baram)
KL Management
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
The Greatest Leaders
in Economics Who Managed
the World
(Segyereul Dwiheundeun
Gyeongje Daetongnyeongdeul)
Samsung Economic Research
Institute
Yu Da-young
[email protected]
82-2-3780-8003
www.seri.org
6p
Moonlight Tales
(Darege Deullyeojugo Sipeun
Iyagi)
KL Management
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
Goguryeo V: King Gogugwon
of the People
(Gogulyeo)
Saeum Publishing Co.
Choi Hana
[email protected]
82-2-394-1037
saeumbook.tistory.com
Salt
(Sogeum)
28
8p
KL Management
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
28
The Empty House
(Binjip)
KL Management
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
Kang Publishing
Kim Jeong-hyun
[email protected]
82-2-325-9566
9p
A Wife’s Box
(Anaeui Sangja)
(Nae Insaenge Yonggiga
Doeeojun Hanmadi)
VICHE KOREA BOOKS
Cha Jin-hee
[email protected]
82-2-3668-3203
www.gimmyoung.com
The Art of Reading
(Ojik Dokseoppun)
Gimm-Young Publishers, Inc.
Cha Jin-hee
[email protected]
82-2-3668-3203
www.gimmyoung.com
Life
(Choi In-houi Insaeng)
Yeobaek Media. Co., Ltd.
Kim Mi-sun
[email protected]
82-2-546-5116
7p
The Return of Hope
(Huimangui Gwihwan)
Wis&Vis
Ha Seung-jin
[email protected]
82-2-324-5677
See Your Own Big Picture
(Big Picturereul Geuryeora)
The Business Books and Co., Ltd.
Jo Min-jung
[email protected]
82-2-338-9449
www.businessbooks.co.kr
They Cry Silently
(Geudeureun Sorinae Ulji
Anneunda)
Lee & Woo Press
Woo Jaeo
[email protected]
82-31-901-9616
(Geokkuro Segye)
Min Ji-hyoung
[email protected]
82-2-3670-1167
www.wjbooks.co.kr
It’s OK
(Gwaenchana)
Min Ji-hyoung
[email protected]
82-2-3670-1167
www.wjbooks.co.kr
Hankyoreh Publishing Company
Lee Ji-eun
[email protected]
82-2-6373-6710
www.hanibook.co.kr
World’s 100 Greatest
Masterpieces More Exciting than
the Louvre Museum
(Rubeureu Bangmulgwanboda
Jaemiinneun Segye 100Dae
Myeonghwa)
Toe Ma Rok: The Records of
Exorcism - Sidequel
(Toemarogoejeon)
Samsung Publishing
Lee Myung-jin
[email protected]
82-2-3470-6811
www.samsungbooks.com
Elixir
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Secretly, Greatly
(Eunmilhage Widaehage)
GULLIVER
Kim Chang-hee
[email protected]
82-10-3709-2559
Faith (Vol.2)
(Sinui)
Cha Jin-hee
[email protected]
82-2-3668-3203
www.gimmyoung.com
(Nae Ireumeun Parijiok)
Elbow Society
(Palkkumchi Sahoe)
Galapagos Publishing Co.
Kim Ji-Hwan
[email protected]
82-2-3142-3797
galapagosp.blog.me
Pressure To Be Happy
(Haengbok Seuteureseu)
Changbi Publishers, Inc.
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
www.changbi.com/english
Time Shop
(Sigangage)
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
(Geokkuro Segye)
Min Ji-Hyoung
[email protected]
82-2-3670-1167
www.wjbooks.co.kr
Munhaksasang Co., Ltd.
Sara Jung
[email protected]
82-2-3401-8543
www.munsa.co.kr
Fantasy Notebook
(Hwansangsucheop)
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
The Fruit of My Woman
(Nae Yeojaui Yeolmae)
Joseph Lee
[email protected]
82-10-6239-9154
Talking to Strangers
(Tainege Malgeolgi)
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
22p
The Semiotics of Space
(Gongganui Gihohak)
Sweetfish Correspondence
(Euneonaksitongsin)
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
In This Earth And In That Wind
(Heuk Soge Jeo Baram Soge)
41p
Sara Jung
[email protected]
82-2-3401-8543
www.munsa.co.kr
Romantic Love and Society
(Nangmanjeok Saranggwa
Sahoe)
Sujin Lena Park
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 350)
www.bir.co.kr
Sara Jung
[email protected]
82-2-3401-8543
www.munsa.co.kr
Candidate No.3
An Seok-bbong
(Giho3beon Anseokppong)
29p
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
Choi Ji-in
[email protected]
82-2-338-7224
www.moonji.com
19p
The Needle
(Baneul)
The Flower at the Equator
(Jeokdoui Kkot)
Literature Translation Intitute of
Korea
[email protected]
A Stranger’s Room
(Tainui Bang)
Michelle Nam
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206)
www.minumsa.comfc
The Sloping Shade
(Bitaljin Eumji)
Hainaim Publishing Co., Ltd.
Lee Jin-suk
[email protected]
82-2-326-1600 (Ext. 206)
www.hainaim.com
Choi Ji-in
[email protected]
82-2-338-7224
www.moonji.com
Marriage Is a Crazy Thing
(Gyeolhoneun Michin Jinnida)
Michelle Nam
[email protected]
82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206)
www.minumsa.com
As You Know, Mother
(Eommado Asidasipi)
My Wife Got Married
(Anaega Gyeolhonhaetda)
Kate Han
[email protected]
www.munhak.com
43p
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
(Allyeojiji Aneun Bamgwa Haru)
Jaeum & Moeum Publishing Co.
Kim Young-lan
[email protected]
82-70-8656-9583
www.jamo21.net
Ginger
(Saenggang)
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
44p
The French Laundry
(Peurangseusik Setakso)
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
33p
Ginger
(Saenggang)
21p
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
A Long Day
(Ginagin Haru)
37p
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
His House
(Geu Namjane Jip)
45p
Jiwon and Byeong-gwan Series
(Jiwoniwa Byeonggwani Series)
The Woman Herding Goats
(Yeomsoreul Moneun Yeoja)
Choi Ko-eun
[email protected]
82-31-955-4359
Yolimwon Publishing Co.
Angela Koh
[email protected]
82-2-3144-3700
www.yolimwon.com
Go-Go-Go, Fat Club!
(Euratchacha Ttungbokeulleop)
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Blue Child
(Paran Ai)
Winter Wanderer
(Gyeoul Nageune)
Smaller Is Better: Japan’s Mastery
of the Miniature
(Chuksojihyangui Ilbonin)
Haegreem
Jeon, So-Hyun
[email protected]
82-2-335-5016
Yie Ho-gyun
[email protected]
82-31-955-3270
www.gilbutkid.co.kr
39p
Kate Han
[email protected]
82-31-955-2635
www.munhak.com
Four Days
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91
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Women and Their Evolving
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Korea`s Apartment Buildings

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