Asia Literary Review No. 23, Spring 2012

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW No. 23, Spring 2012

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW No. 23, Spring 2012

Publisher Ilyas Khan Managing Editor Duncan Jepson Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Literary Editor Kelly Falconer Features Editor Kathleen Hwang Art Editor John Batten Consulting Editor Peter Koenig Office Manager Canny Au Production Steffan Leyshon-Jones Design Steffan Leyshon-Jones Proofs Shirley Lee, Ysabelle Cheung Main Cover Image from the Hunminjeongeum (1446).

Asia Literary Review is published by Print Work Limited 2401, Winsome House, 73 Wyndham Street, Central, Hong Kong Website: www.asialiteraryreview.com Subscriptions: subs@asialiteraryreview.com Submissions: subm@asialiteraryreview.com Editor: editor@asialiteraryreview.com Editorial: (852) 2167 8947 Advertising: (852) 2167 8910/8980 Image on p. 10 from the Sokpo Sang-jol.

‘The Korean Soldier’ (abridged from a longer story) published with acknowledgements to Changbi Publishers, Seoul, Korea.

Kind acknowledgements to The Korean Literature in Translation Institute for ‘Is That So? I’m a Giraffe’, ‘The Korean Soldier’, ‘Black-and-White Photographer’.

Photos by Won Seoung Wong courtesy of Cais Gallery www.caisgallery.com Image on p. 124 from North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection reproduced with kind permission from David Heather and Koen de Ceuster.

All photos in ‘Holiday Tours to the DPRK’ courtesy of Koryo Tours.

Poems by Ko Un are from First Person Sorrowful, to be published in November 2012 by Bloodaxe Books.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Chan Sheung Kee Book Co., Ltd. ISBN: 978-988-18747-0-2 Individual contents © 2012 the contributors/Print Work Limited This compilation © 2012 Print Work Limited A note on the spelling and presentation of Korean names: our contributors present their own names in different ways and we have followed their preferences.

Contents Publisher’s Note From the Editor

7 11

Fiction Ice Cream

15

Kim Young-ha translated by Dafna Zur

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

51

Park Mingyu translated by Sora Kim-Russell

The Korean Soldier

107

Jeon Sung Tae translated by Jae Won Chung

from How Kim Seon-dal Sold the Water of the Dae-Dong River

135

story by Cho Hak-rae art by Pak Chang-yun introduction and translation by Heinz Insu Fenkl Black-and-White Photographer

151

Han Yujoo translated by Janet Hong from What You Never Know I-hyeon Jeong translated by Chi-Young Kim

185

Poetry from First Person Sorrowful My Next Life Armistice Line Song of White Seven Little Songs Ko Un translated by Brother Anthony and Lee Sang-wha 3

30 79 81 183

Crystal Kay in the Tokyo Dome Walk on Jeju Isle A White Shirt The DMZ

39 40 69 98

Robert Ricardo Reese

Zainichi Star Clusters

41 106

Min K. Kang

Ramen of the Heavens Fallen Angel The Story in Which I Appear as All the Characters 2 A Way to Read the Morning

121 122 173 174

Hyesoon Kim translated by Don Mee Choi

One Mind The Sound of a Stone

134 134

Cho Oh-Hyun translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl from I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won

Executioner The Journey Is Hard but We Go Forth with Laughter For Us, Life I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won The Dreaming Child

177 178 179 180 181

Jang Jin-sung translated by Shirley Lee

Non-Fiction Korean Literature on the World Stage

31

Joseph Lee translated by Shirley Lee

Interview: Shin Kyung-sook Charles Montgomery translated by Ed Park

4

35

Image and Identity

43

Michael Breen

Pyongyang: City of Prestige and Pretence

71

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

My Experiences in the Korean War

99

Liu Jiaju translated by Martin Merz

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema

125

Daniel Levitsky

Interview: Blaine Harden

199

Kathleen Hwang

Photography Piling Yesterday Wondering Tomorrow Bed-Wetters Laundering

6 14 182

Won Seoung Won

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

82

Simon Cockerell

Reviews Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

203

J. E. Hoare

All Woman and Springtime by Brandon W. Jones

206

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

The Old Garden by Hwang Sok-yong

209

Lucia Sehui Kim

Contributors

212

5

Piling Yesterday by Won Seoung Won

6

Publisher’s Note

T

his edition of the Asia Literary Review, dedicated to Korea, has special significance to me.

In July 1984, just a month before my twenty-second birthday, I was asked by my employer to travel to the Republic of Korea. The fact that I had barely a day to make the arrangements was a small inconvenience when set against the excitement of the trip. This was before emails and mobile phones, when the fax represented the height of technological advancement.

I spent time consulting my rather ragged edition of The Times Atlas, tracing the journey (Heathrow to Anchorage, from there to Tokyo, a change of planes to Seoul and then a bus ride to Pusan) and deciding on my reading material (I took Yukio Mishima’s tetralogy The Sea of Fertility and Edmund Wilson’s Finland Station, a reflection of my then newly found enthusiasm for modern American writers).

I found myself stuck in the back of the plane and badly airsick between Alaska and Tokyo but, in retrospect, these were minor inconveniences – a small price to pay.

That initial trip soon led to living and working in Seoul for just over two and a half years, including a fourteen-month stint when ‘home’ was a room in the Seoul Hilton. It also led to a lifelong love affair with a country that remains stubbornly on the edge of most people’s consciousness, and in the shadow of its two immediate neighbours: Japan and China. In recent years the headlines have tended to revolve around events in North rather than South Korea, and I realise just how easy it is for most people to forget that the divided peninsula is not only the most aggressively militarised zone in the modern world, but also an unresolved casualty of the Cold War. Friendships I made at the time I lived in Seoul are among the ones I value the most. My dogged affection for the board game of baduk (sadly 7

Publisher’s Note

more an enthusiasm than a skill), my secret love of boiled rice and kimchee and my cheering for the South Korean team whenever they play anyone other than England in pretty much any sport, are only some of the ways my affinity for all things Korean remains robust and undimmed. I took my first tentative lessons in Tae Kwon Do at the hands of a charitable instructor in Yoido, and I still have my kumdo stick from the eight months of almost twice a week instruction with a sixty-something-year-old who had hands strong as granite. My respect for rock climbing took shape in the summer of 1986, after the Asian Games, when a professorial general manager at a large investment fund gently guided me up sheer rock faces in the lower reaches of Seoraksan. The scenery in that part of the country, in and around the national park, is as breathtaking as anything I have ever seen. Waking up in the morning and watching the sun rise over the jagged eastern horizon of Mt Seorak in early winter seemed an out-of-body experience.

Almost twenty-eight years have passed since my first visit to the Land of the Morning Calm. My stout but imperfect grasp of the language has slowly given way to just a handful of words, although I can still pull out my party trick of recognizing the Hangul alphabet. What I do retain, however, is a vivid appreciation for the unique and ancient culture of a people who, in my early twenties, took me into their hearts and who I can describe as being the salt of the earth without any fear of sounding clichéd, artificial or affected.

My father’s view of the Korean people was formed by his image of them as tough fighters. As an ex-soldier himself, he once told me that if he were ever in a corner and needed a regiment of soldiers to defend him, he would be hard pushed to decide between Koreans and Gurkhas. Before he died my father asked me why I was so fond (inordinately so in his view) of the Korean country and people. I was living in Hong Kong by then and had spent extended periods of time in Tokyo and China on business. I replied: Dad, you know how, when people ask me where I’m from, and I say “Lancashire, England”, most people sort of look at me and then say, “No, no . . . I mean, where are you really from”? Well, in Japan and Hong Kong and China I always have to explain that my grandparents emigrated to England; in Korea no one ever questions my answer.

8

Ilyas Khan

7

Koreans are rightly proud of their unique culture and their fine literary heritage; they respect and appreciate their writers and poets. And if any place could be described as a country of readers, it would be South Korea.

Their writers, however, have yet to be discovered by English-language readers in the way their counterparts from Japan and China have been. This is now changing, as is evident from the award of the 2012 Man Asian Prize to Shin Kyung-sook. I hope this issue of the Review will also be a catalyst for greater interest in Korean literature, so that it may receive the wider recognition it deserves.

Ilyas Khan

9

The first printing with movable type of a Hangul text from the Sokpo Sang-jol (Episodes from the Life of the Buddha), 1449.

10

From the Editor

P

utting together this issue of the Asia Literary Review has been an exciting adventure and an exploration of contrasts. Korea was long known as the ‘Hermit Kingdom’, detached and mysterious, and in many ways North Korea retains that isolation and mystique. South Korea, on the other hand, is the origin of the vibrant Korean Wave that has broken cultural barriers around the world: Korean TV dramas top the rankings from Iran to Mongolia, while young Japanese and Chinese idolise the stars of K-pop and Korean cinema. It is now the turn of Korean literature to ride this wave. Novels and short stories in translation are attracting a great deal of attention: novelist Shin Kyung-sook won the recent Man Asian Literary Prize and publishers and readers are taking note. We can expect more outstanding writers to be available in translation.

Young writers and translators from South Korea and the expanding Korean diaspora are distinguished by the confidence and daring of their work: playful, inventive and complex, it articulates a fresh and exciting new perspective. Modernity has redefined South Korean identity and widened the gap between the young artists of today and their predecessors, who tended to dwell on the scars left by the occupation and partition of the Korean peninsula, and later the struggle for democracy under an authoritarian regime. The new generation of writers, in contrast, spares little thought for the turmoil of the past. They are moving forward, quietly revising perceptions of their place in the world. It would be a mistake, though, to think these writers are unaffected by their legacy. A lingering sense of alienation and loss pervades their work; lost children – and adults – is a recurring theme. The writers ask: How does one belong? What has happened to certainty? As they explore complex, unsettling issues, their voices are influencing the way the nation sees itself and its future.

11

From the Editor

They are also distinguished by a new internationalism, which is dissolving the barriers that have made Korea such an insular peninsula. The notion of bloodline has been inherent to national identity for generations of Koreans. However, increasing numbers of young Koreans are of mixed race and others have grown up in foreign countries where Korean was not their mother tongue.

While these changes have been transforming the South, a completely different reality has prevailed in North Korea. More than half a century of partition has bred two markedly different identities: the two nations have grown apart and turned their backs on each other, looking over their shoulders in anger, fear and incomprehension. While Southerners have become more vocal and outward-looking, the Northerners have remained silent and withdrawn. Most people in the North have only a shadowy awareness of life outside their country. This awareness is gaining clarity as radios, TVs and DVD players make their way across the border with China, opening the door to programmes broadcast from Seoul or recorded, cheaply reproduced and smuggled in.

For the authentic voices of North Koreans, we are forced to rely on those who have escaped. Most are angry and outraged when they discover the extent of the deceit that had entrapped them, and they are fierce in their opposition to the oppressive DPRK regime. Jang Jin-sung, a former state poet in Pyongyang who defected to the South, described his work in praise of North Korean leaders as a ‘betrayal and distortion of true poetic feelings’.

Only after arriving in the South could he be honest and sincere in his work, he said. Some of his poems are published in this issue for the first time in English. Alongside his South Korean counterpart, Kim Hyesoon, Jang will represent his country at the Cultural Olympiad in London this summer.

Another notable defector is Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person known to have been born in a North Korean prison camp and to have escaped to tell his harrowing story. This issue includes an interview with Blaine Harden, whose recent Escape from Camp 14 has brought Shin’s dramatic story to the attention of the world. Jim Hoare, who established the first British Embassy in Pyongyang, reviews the book. Apart from defectors, we look for insight to outsiders who have studied North Korea. These include academics, journalists and a tour guide who conducts holiday trips to the enigmatic North.

12

Martin Alexander

7

The Korean language has a distinguished history, and I would like to add a few words about our cover. Up to the reign of King Sejong the Great (r.1418-50), generations of Koreans had struggled to use Chinese characters to record and express their own language, which is fundamentally different from those spoken in neighbouring China. King Sejong and his scholars devised Hangul, an alphabet that matched the vowel and consonant sounds of Korean. Our cover is a page from the Hunminjeongeum, used to promulgate the new writing system, and one of Korea’s defining artefacts. The page on our front cover declares, ‘This is our language.’ The one on the back says, ‘Our language is different from Chinese.’

We would not have been able to share with our readers the richness of Korean literary creativity without the work of highly skilful, discerning and dedicated translators. We are grateful for the assistance and generosity of the Korean Literature Translation Institute (KLTI) in Seoul, which funds and publicises the translation of noteworthy literary works. In addition to the writers we have discovered through the KLTI, we are pleased to introduce other modern Korean writers previously unpublished in English. We would especially like to thank Heinz Insu Fenkl and Charles Montgomery for their suggestions and expertise. It has been an honour to work with them, and with all our contributors, who have made this issue a pleasure to compile and edit.

We hope these pages will evoke in our readers a resonance with the Korean people and culture, and help Korean literature assume the place of prominence it deserves.

Martin Alexander

13

Wondering Tomorrow by Won Seoung Won

14

Ice Cream Kim Young-ha translated by Dafna Zur

‘C

an you smell the petrol?’ Mina asked him. Eugene tilted his end.

‘I’m not sure, but something’s off.’

‘C’mon, we’ve been eating these bars for ages.’

‘This one doesn’t taste right. I’m telling you, it stinks of petrol.’ She was already washing her mouth out.

Eugene put the remainder of the ice-cream bar in his mouth.

‘Are you nuts?!’ she cried.

He ignored her, swirling it around with his tongue, trying to detect the smell. He then spat out the mouthful.

‘You’re right. It does smell like petrol.’

It all began when the International Monetary Fund seized control of South Korea like an occupying army. The football team were hopeless, the economy desperate and the entire nation felt as if it were on its last legs. It was at this time that Eugene and his wife liked to buy their favourite brand of ice-cream bars at the supermarket. They came in a box the size of a bound volume of the Holy Bible, and containing twenty-four individually wrapped bars. Each bar was roughly half the size of a mobile phone: slightly too large for one clean gulp, yet not big enough to eat in two bites. One had to carefully peel the wrapping halfway, stick the bar in one’s mouth, wait for the chocolaty aroma to take over and only then swallow the other half.

Around that same time, confectionery companies scrambled to change their packaging in an attempt to lend their products a classier feel and hike up their prices. Perhaps it was because the entire nation was practically 15

Ice Cream

bankrupt that even trivial luxuries like these brought Eugene and Mina great pleasure. The couple would choose an ice-cream box from the freezer section, throw it in the trolley, pay for it hurriedly and head home. Upon arrival, they would place the box in their own freezer for a while, since the ice cream might have melted on the way, and then they would indulge in one bar each. They stripped their ice cream of its wrapper and revelled in the happiness that overwhelmed them. The subtle excitement aroused by the chocolate, combined with the sensuous cold of the cream, melted them slowly and completely.

Their 750-square-foot flat had been built in the mid-eighties. The hallway leading to their flat was always booby trapped with tricycles left outside by neighbours. The front door opened up to a vestibule that was too narrow for two. To the right of the living room was a kitchen with a small sink, where black soot and grease soiled the grout between the tiles. Mina would occasionally attempt to scrub the filth with special detergent, but it seemed to have been there too long. The dirt refused to come off. To make things worse, some tiles were beginning to crack.

‘It’s because the building’s crooked,’ grumbled the next-door neighbour.

‘Even the bathroom door won’t close properly.’

The sink area was forever a source of embarrassment. It had obviously never been replaced – they were already the fourth tenants in that particular flat – and the landlord showed no intention of replacing the sink, claiming the one they had was still perfectly usable. As far as they were concerned this flat was temporary, and they saw no reason to spend their hard-earned cash to add value to someone else’s property. So they put up with the old, moisture-worn, peeling, crumbling plywood countertop. Where the sink ended a wooden plank began, extending about three feet out and supported by a single leg. It served as their dining table. They would pull up two chairs on either side of the plank and have their meals. When things got desperate, the plank would be called upon to serve as an extension of their limited countertop. At times they would put the cutting board on it and chop their vegetables; at other times they would place their large marinating bowl on top. If a friend dropped by, they had to resort to using the swivel chair usually reserved for the desk.

Eugene’s study was a few steps away to the left; beyond that was the bedroom. They kept the television there. They liked to lie in bed and watch the 16

Kim Young-ha

twenty-inch screen that lay within reach of their toes. To the right of their bedroom was a balcony. The entire length of the flat was such that, theoretically, if the doors and windows were open one could charge through the front door, crash right through and drop straight off the balcony, which was separated from the living room by an opaque sliding door, and so narrow their clothes rack hardly fit. They liked to do a wash, hang it to dry, and leave the clothes there until the next wash. That way, the clothes served as a curtain of sorts by keeping out the little sunlight that managed to filter through their small window. The outdoor condenser of their ancient air conditioner slouched like a seal in a corner of their balcony. When turned on it created a terrible cacophony that the downstairs neighbours could not tolerate. It bellowed like a peevish monster just roused from sleep. The noise it made was like the combined clatter of scraping metal and a hammer banging on an iron plate.

They spread themselves out on the bed and turned the TV on. Those days there was always something about local industries giving in to foreign capital. The news and special broadcasts desperately tried to enlighten the public: ‘It may pain us to accept foreign capital at this moment, but it is a necessary sacrifice for our economy. We should be prepared to spend taxpayers’ money on insolvent enterprises. It’s our nation’s only hope!’ said some. ‘Capital has no nationality. If it’s in Korea, it is Korean,’ insisted others.

Eugene thought he had never heard truer words. As Deng Xiaoping had said, if it catches mice, it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white. Eugene, as a taxpayer, couldn’t agree with everything they said, but he did not think it was desirable to abandon the failing industries to their miserable fates. Once in a while, the couple would argue over the matter. Mina deeply resented the bailouts of private companies. She thought all those corporations should be liquidated once and for all.

‘But what about the employees?’ he’d say.

‘You wanna tell me that our government should feed every laid-off employee?’

‘Not necessarily, but isn’t it unfair to turn them out on the streets just because they happened to work for some insolvent corporation?’

‘This is exactly the kind of moral hazard that caused the IMF crisis in the first place,’ Mina pouted.

In a fit of anger, she had quit her job as a childcare provider right around the time of (but without any direct connection to) the Korean Economic Crisis of 1997. Her relationship with the manager had been the problem, 17

Ice Cream

but Mina seemed to regret it soon after she’d quit. She’d majored in early childhood education, after all, and had professional aspirations; but things happened, and suddenly she was unemployed at a time of nationwide economic crisis. People were losing jobs every day, so getting a new job was totally out of the question. And because there were many other women who, like Mina, were unemployed, fewer and fewer children were being sent to day-care. Eugene knew all this, so he kept his mouth shut. Every time the question of firing or unemployment came up Mina would invariably get upset and argumentative, but she was also profoundly sympathetic. She remained stoic in front of the news, but when she watched documentaries about the unemployed her tears would start to flow, and she would sneak donations to random fundraisers on TV. While her husband was the one who agreed to the necessity of bailout on principle, never once did he donate a single penny. They differed on that point.

‘Want a Mitch?’ Eugene tried to lighten the mood, and his wife nodded and brightened. He had been propped up against the wall, and now began to slink and slide like a cabbageworm, inching his way off the bed. Lying down, they took up the entire double bed, so this was the only way to get off the bed without climbing over Mina.

He went to the kitchen, opened the freezer and took out the box of ice cream. Opening the box, he drew out two individually packed bars, and put the box back in the freezer. He placed the bars on a small plate and approached the bed. He perched himself on the bedside and passed his wife the small plate. Then, using the cabbageworm technique, he slunk back to his original position, fluffed up the pillow behind him and stared at the television. Mina tore open the wrapper and placed the entire bar in her mouth. Eugene did the same. And then, all at once, they turned to each other. She was frowning, searching his face for the same reaction. He wore an identical expression, mirroring hers precisely.

She spat the partially melted ice cream back on to the plate, then jumped to her feet and ran to the kitchen sink to wash her mouth out. Eugene, however, didn’t bother with all that.

‘Can you believe it?’ Mina was livid as she scrutinized the torn wrapper for the name of the company. It wasn’t there. ‘Shouldn’t we report them to a consumer protection agency or something?’

Eugene opened the freezer. He took out the Mitch box. On it was the 18

Kim Young-ha

phone number for customer service. Eugene showed this to his wife. Then he lifted the receiver.

‘Are you really going to call?’ Her eyes widened.

He was resolute. ‘Of course. We paid good money for it. It’d be a waste to toss it. They should know about it before people get hurt.’

‘Ooh, maybe we’ll get some kind of compensation,’ she said, getting excited. ‘A friend of mine found a bug the size of her thumb in her soda, and I think they took really good care of her.’

‘What if they make some kind of excuse?’

‘They couldn’t.’

‘Why not? They may not believe us. Remember that guy who put poison in his yoghurt and then tried to blackmail that company? They caught him in the end. Lots of people try it. What if they suspect us of trying to poison their product?’

‘They wouldn’t dare.’

They stared at each other for a moment.

‘Look,’ said Eugene, ‘let’s just ring them. If they try that trick, we’ll just call the Consumer Agency.’ He memorized the number on the box and dialled it carefully.

Mina placed the ice-cream box back in the freezer and watched her husband’s lips.

‘Hello?’

A young woman’s voice greeted him at the other end. ‘Yes, Sir? What can I do for you today?’

‘I’m calling about your ice-cream product, Mitch. We buy it about twice a week. The ones we just bought smell distinctly of petrol. Is this the right number to call?’

‘Yes, Sir, it is. We sincerely apologize for any discomfort. Our representative will visit your home shortly to inspect the product. Sorry to trouble you; would you give us your address and phone number, please?’

‘What are they saying?’ Mina whispered. Eugene held up a hand. He then recited their address and phone number.

‘Thank you very much. Our manager will be with you shortly, sir. We are sorry for the inconvenience you have experienced.’ Her response was calm and measured. The matter had been resolved so simply that Eugene felt slightly apologetic.

19

Ice Cream

‘She said someone will be over “shortly”. She was super apologetic, actually really nice about the whole thing.’

‘Someone’s coming over?!’ Her eyes widened in horror. ‘But our place is a mess!’ The hoover, which had been standing by the fridge, was already in her hands.

‘Slow down a minute.’ Eugene stopped her. He was biting his nails.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Say they come over, but the rest of the bars are fine, and it’s only the two we ate that were spoiled. It’s entirely possible, don’t you think? They might get ticked off that we called them for nothing. You can get sued for that kind of thing.’

Mina’s face darkened. Each box of Mitch had twenty-four individually packed bars of ice cream. Before those bars made it into their home, various ingredients had been laid out along a conveyor belt, ice cream had been poured into rectangular receptacles, frozen solid, wrapped up, and finally placed in a cardboard box. Statistically speaking, the chance was slim that all their twenty-four bars were contaminated. But then again, it couldn’t be that the two bars they ate were the only ones that stank. The production machines created precise multiple replicas; some foreign substance could have been injected by mistake.

‘Let’s try one more,’ Mina suggested. ‘They may be OK after all.’

Eugene agreed. He took a bar out of the freezer and stripped it with care.

He could still taste the obnoxious hint of petrol in his mouth. But when he remembered that someone from the ice-cream company was going to be on his doorstep at any moment, he had to take action. His wife anxiously awaited the tasting. He put a third of the bar in his mouth.

‘So? Do you taste it? Do you? Don’t you?’

Instead of answering, Eugene tilted his head. He wasn’t as confident as he’d been before. He could taste petrol, but it might have been the lingering taste of the first bar he’d eaten.

‘I’m not sure. I think it tastes funny. But maybe not.’

She scowled. The disapproval in her eyes was clear. ‘What do you mean?

That’s impossible. You either taste it or you don’t. Give it to me.’

‘Brush your teeth first,’ Eugene insisted. ‘I can’t tell because I can still taste the first one.’

While she brushed her teeth, Eugene took another third in his mouth.

20

Kim Young-ha

Again, he couldn’t be sure. He could sense a whiff of fumes tickling his nostrils but, then again, maybe that was the way ice cream always tasted.

Mina finished brushing her teeth, and he passed the rest of the bar to her.

She composed herself with great gravity, as if she were about to engage in the tasting of wine: she straightened her back, took the ice cream, and placed it in her mouth. She then closed her eyes and sat still for a moment. This time it was Eugene who felt anxious.

‘So? Does it smell?’

After a moment her eyes popped open. ‘It does!’ she pronounced, as if some deep truth had been revealed to her. ‘I’m positive. It tastes like petrol or engine oil or something.’

‘Seriously?’

‘I’m pretty sure.’

‘You’re positive?’

She looked uncertain. ‘Look, it’s just a feeling. I mean, it’s not like taste has some kind of scientific proof.’

‘So are you sure, or not?’

‘Well, I was, but now that you’ve hassled me I’m not sure anymore.’

‘All right, this is it. Last one.’ Eugene said, and silence followed. They hesitated. They both felt slightly nauseous. The nausea was probably caused by the nasty chemicals that had by now made their way into their digestive systems. They were both nervous.

‘Hold on. They might come over with some kind of testing equipment, and then we’ll know for sure.’

‘And what if it’s nothing?’

‘Well then, we’ll get sick, and that’ll be the end of it.’

‘How could such a large corporation make this kind of shit?’ Mina was furious. Just then, the air conditioner shut off, its internal thermostat indicating that the room was cool enough. The summer buzz of cicadas filled the room instead.

‘Fine. Just one more.’

Eugene brushed his teeth. The toothpaste made him gag. He rinsed with water, came back to their small two-seater kitchen and sat down. His wife had already prepared the Mitch for him to taste.

She tore the wrapper off for him and placed it in his hand. Out of nowhere, Eugene thought of Socrates and his poisoned chalice. He thought of all those 21

Ice Cream

figures in history forced to swallow things against their will. He pictured priests, all over the world, imbibing tasteless wine at mass. Then he placed a quarter of the bar into his mouth. Mina observed him closely, squinting in concentration.

‘So?’ ‘Oh, it definitely stinks. I’m positive. It’s not normal. It just can’t be. It should be sweet, but it’s not; it’s bitter, and it definitely smells of petrol.’

Now that he was confident about what he’d tasted, he got excited and took another bite. Mina also cheered considerably.

‘See? We’ve had zillions of these. They can’t fool us!’ Bursting with triumph, Mina stuck the rest of the bar in her mouth. She let it melt there, savouring the taste.

‘You’re right. I taste it. Petrol, no question about it.’

Mina took out the noisy hoover and started tidying the flat. The air conditioner also clamoured back to life. The cicadas joined the cacophony by buzzing and latching on to the window screen. Eugene picked up the broom and shooed the pests away. They spread their wings and, like kamikaze fighter planes, dived towards the neighbour’s window one floor below.

Eugene looked up and saw a kestrel circling high above their block of flats. These birds of prey had been on the news. The title of the news clip had been ‘Return of the Yellow Hunter’ – the birds apparently symbolized the recovery of the environment. Eugene returned to the living room and picked up the magazines and newspapers lying around. The couple had forgotten about dinner completely; instead, they busied themselves with tidying and cleaning. Neither of them was hungry, anyway.

‘You never know – we could end up on the news.’

‘Yeah, people are so sensitive about what they eat these days.’

‘Then again, it might not be anything.’

‘True.’

After they were done cleaning, the two sat on the edge of the bed and turned to the television. Five minutes passed. The doorbell rang.

‘You go,’ Mina said, nudging her husband.

Eugene went to the front door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Customer service.’

Eugene opened the door. ‘Pardon the mess – we were just out, and had no time to clean . . .’

22

Kim Young-ha

The man was middle-aged, balding, and wore a clean-cut suit. In his hands were two large, black briefcases. He ignored Eugene’s invitation to enter, bowing deeply before him.

‘I sincerely apologize for the consternation we have caused you.’

Caught completely by surprise, Eugene simply bowed in return. The man placed his briefcases on the floor, reached for the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out a business card.

‘My name is Kim Sung-yong, Department Chief of Customer Consultation.’

It said as much on the card.

‘Very nice to meet you.’ Eugene bowed once again. ‘Please come in.’

Mina scrutinized Mr Kim carefully from her hiding place behind her husband’s back. She reckoned he was in his early to mid-fifties. Everything about him, from his voice to his body language, exuded eminence. His suit and tie were clearly expensive. He also wore a pair of heavy black glasses with large, thick lenses, the kind that might suit a powerful pastor. In a word, he looked like a gentleman. His exposed forehead was slick and wrinklefree, and it glowed unnaturally pink. By contrast, his cheeks sagged; in a different context, one might imagine the man had a bad temper; however, from the moment he stepped into the house, he flashed them an exaggerated smile that attempted to subdue the authority etched into his face.

Dozens of administrators like him worked at Eugene’s company, so the way Mr Kim carried himself was utterly familiar. Eugene imagined that, when commanding his subordinates, Mr Kim must always sport a slick forehead, those imposing glasses and saggy cheeks. But in the presence of his superiors or nit-picking customers he had to assume an unnatural courteousness and self-deprecation, which came to him at a high cost. This moment gave Eugene a thrill: to think that, as a consumer, he had the power to intimidate even a managing executive of this giant of the confectionery industry! Indeed, there was something surprising – yet utterly delightful – about the way that he, Eugene, a man who spent his days grovelling at the feet of large corporate buyers from his pathetic position in his subcontracting business, had summoned this Mr Kim with a single phone call. Look at how quickly this guy had rushed over on this unbearably muggy summer day, all the way from his cool office, just to keep Eugene and his wife quiet about a box of ice cream.

23

Ice Cream

Mr Kim closed the front door behind him, slipped his feet out of his shoes and carefully stepped into their flat. He then squinted, adjusting to the sudden darkness. At once, Eugene felt ashamed of his sofa-less home and its lack of inviting space. Mr Kim hesitated, not knowing where to sit.

Reluctantly, Eugene led him to their makeshift ‘table’.

‘I’d like to see the product now, if you please,’ Kim asked. Mina opened the freezer and took out the culprit. Her frozen fish shifted quietly, shedding scaly bits of frost.

‘Here you are, sir. You’ll notice the smell of petrol right away. It’s not the first time we’ve had this particular brand. It’s so hard to believe!’

Eugene cut his wife’s indignant claim with a glare. Here was a senior corporate official making a house call in person. And Mina was bitching away as if she were talking to the local grocer.

‘In my humble opinion, sir, it seems there was a product error in the process of production,’ Eugene offered politely.

‘Ah, yes. Let me see now,’ Kim answered, and he scrutinized the box with suspicion. He was as discreet as an appraiser of precious stones. Eugene and his wife stood by the table with bated breath, anxiously awaiting the ruling of this most honourable Mr Kim, this representative of their nation’s eminent confectionary corporation. Kim began by examining the expiry date.

‘As you can see, there is still plenty of time until it expires. I always check these things when I shop, you see,’ Mina interjected.

‘Indeed.’ Kim nodded respectfully in response.

Mr Kim opened the box. Inside were the remaining twenty bars. Eugene looked casually in Kim’s general direction. He didn’t seem to have arrived with special tools or devices to help him investigate the ingredients. Kim picked up one bar and studied it from different angles. Then, without warning, both hands forcibly tore open the wrapper. Without hesitation, he placed the entire ice-cream bar into his mouth. Eugene and Mina were taken aback by this unexpected turn of events. Eugene was thunderstruck by the lengths to which this man was willing to go for the sake of his company, and moved by his personal sacrifice. He felt at once humbled by the culture of the grand corporations and impressed by this man’s awe-inspiring struggle for survival. Eugene looked at his wife – he wanted to make sure she was witnessing the extent to which men suffer at the workplace. Take a good look at this man, honey; this is what it takes to feed a family! Indeed, she seemed 24

Kim Young-ha

taken aback. Mr Kim had popped the ice cream in his mouth without proper equipment, without a single precaution, and without concern for what might be inside that bar. The couple tried their best to hide their surprise and waited for the verdict. The ice cream was a bit large to swallow quickly, and Mr Kim seemed to take his time, considering the product as it melted in his mouth.

Eugene couldn’t wait another second. ‘See? It’s weird, right? Can you taste the petrol? I’m sure you will. What do you think?’

Kim sat there, eyes shut, and continued to roll the ice cream around in his mouth until he had swallowed the last of it. The air conditioner shut off again. The cicadas came back on. The suspense was unbearable.

Now it was Mina’s turn to speak up.

‘So?’ she said boldly, ‘What do you think? Don’t you find it off ?’

Mr Kim remained stolid. ‘I really can’t say.’

The couple were disheartened. They might have been mistaken from the start. Kim’s expression was worrisome; he looked as if he’d been deeply disappointed. He picked up another Mitch, then skilfully peeled off the wrapper and inserted its contents into his mouth. Eugene and his wife stood on each side of Mr Kim, still as stone figures at a cemetery, while they waited for him to finish his examination. Again, Kim unflinchingly picked a Mitch and devoured it slowly and methodically. Eugene spoke up in a weakened but slightly hopeful voice.

‘How is it? Can’t you tell yet?’

Kim tilted his head ever so slightly. ‘Hmm.’ Again he tore open a bar and ate it. He was moving faster and faster.

Eugene gave up asking; he would wait quietly until Mr Kim had accumulated enough data. Kim tore open yet another bar and put it into his mouth. This time, however, it was Mina who could wait no longer.

‘Isn’t it strange?’ she burst out.

Mr Kim opened his eyes.

‘Yes, I do seem to detect a slight degree of idiosyncrasy. But until I’m absolutely sure, I’m afraid I can’t tell you . . . ’ With that, Kim picked up another bar and slowly removed its wrapper.

Then he placed this fresh Mitch bar in his mouth. Eugene felt sick to his stomach. For his part, Kim was carrying on as if this were part of his routine.

The wrappers started piling up in front of him. Eugene had stopped counting, 25

Ice Cream

but by now he guessed that Kim had polished off about six. What surprised Eugene was the fact that Kim was capable of stomaching so many of these potentially contaminated, petrol-smelling ice-cream bars. Compared to the way he looked when he first walked in the house, Kim was looking visibly paler. No, it wasn’t that his face was pale; rather, it was serene. Eugene and his wife adored Mitch bars with all their hearts, but they’d never eaten more than three at a time. The couple knew better than anyone that ice cream was one of those foods that you couldn’t eat without restraint. But here was Mr Kim, polishing off six or seven of these at breathtaking speed. They were just about to beg him to stop the madness, for goodness’ sake, when Kim stood up.

‘How is it, then? Or can you still not tell?’ Eugene asked, harbouring the last vestiges of hope. Yet his voice wasn’t completely bereft of an irritated edge.

Kim brushed off his suit, straightened his lapels and tipped his head slightly in Eugene’s direction. Mina took a step back, afraid that the man was going to vomit.

‘Again, please accept our deepest apologies for the consternation we have caused you.’ Kim bent over and reached for the black briefcase to his right. Inside were two boxes of his company’s most expensive chocolates. He took them out and handed them to Eugene. Then he took out a useful-looking company calculator/alarm clock and placed it on the table.

From the briefcase to his left came a fancy pre-packaged cookie-collection gift set. Next, he gathered the empty Mitch wrappers left behind from the bars he had eaten, and added to them the remaining unopened bars, gathering them all into the black briefcase on his left. He closed the catch with a snap.

‘If you should have further questions, please do call again.’

Before they knew it, he was halfway out the door, his shoes back on. He bowed deeply in farewell, closed the door behind him, and was gone. The couple returned to the living room and sat at the table where Mr Kim had eaten all those bars. They were in shock, and for a while, neither of them spoke.

Mina picked up the box of chocolates Kim had given them.

‘These are worth ten times the price of Mitch.’

‘I know. We hit the jackpot.’

The couple placed the chocolates and cookie set on the bare kitchen counter and went into their bedroom. They turned the TV on and climbed 26

Kim Young-ha

into bed. Eugene discovered the remote control as he was inching backward on his bum, and started to flip through the channels. But they were both too busy with their own thoughts to pay attention to what was being aired.

What had just happened, for crying out loud? They began to question whether their summer afternoon uproar had ever taken place. And what was the truth? Was there ever really a smell of petrol in those ice-cream bars?

Now they would never, ever find out.

‘You know, about that guy. . .’ Eugene began, staring at the ceiling.

‘What about him?’

‘You think he was who he said he was?’

‘It said so on his business card.’

The couple sat back in bed. They visualized a group of middle-aged men, each a customer service representative, together in one meeting room.

Men dressed in smart suits, newspapers in hand, reading the same articles over and over, killing time. Then the phone rings; a conversation ensues; and the presiding section chief enters with the following announcement: Men, it’s potato chips this time. I think you, Mr Pak, should be the one to go.

You know what you need to do. . . With that, Mr Pak, who had been forced into early retirement but lured into this job by false advertising and with nothing but a CV in hand, this unfortunate Mr Pak jumps to his feet and, briefcases balanced either side, heads for the troubled destination without another word. From that moment on, all he has to do is fulfil his duty with as elusive an expression as he can manage. If he’s lucky, he gets away with the consumption of a small snack; if unlucky, the incident could end with the devouring of an entire box of ice-cream bars. And if it hadn’t been, for example, for a certain couple who had stood over him with bulging eyes, pressing him to determine if their product stank or not, someone like dear Mr Kim might have got off without eating as much as he had. He could have simply removed the contaminated objects. From the look of it, Mr Kim was probably a novice in that world. Who could know?

Eugene and his wife stopped their musings and turned towards the television. Comedians were falling over and rolling about, desperately trying to entertain their viewers. Neither of them laughed.

‘It’s dark already. Wanna go out for a bite?’ Mina suggested.

Eugene was feeling sick, as if he were the one who’d eaten an entire box of contaminated Mitch. But he turned the air conditioner off and joined 27

Ice Cream

his wife. A wave of outdoor heat surged at them. They walked through the hallway and stopped in the foyer.

Languidly, Eugene read a poster that said: ‘Credit or No Credit – We Lend You Money!’ Then he chuckled. The lift arrived and the two stepped in. He still felt sick. A moment later they were on the ground floor. They ambled slowly in the direction of their neighbourhood stores.

The pair stopped at the corner of the commercial block and stared at the long line of neon signs.

‘How about fried chicken and beer?’

‘Sounds good.’

They sat on the plastic patio chairs in front of the eatery. The owner, a man in his forties with dishevelled hair and a cheap suit, came to take their order.

‘One order of fried chicken. Do you have beer on draft? Two pints, please. And give us lots of those pickled radishes.’

‘Will you be eating the chicken out here?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘For here, or take away?’

‘For here,’ Eugene replied indifferently.

The owner pressed him again, ‘So you’re going to eat the entire chicken here?’

‘I said yes,’ Eugene repeated, slightly annoyed.

Mina scowled at her grumpy husband. The owner said nothing. He went back inside and muttered something in the direction of the kitchen. The woman there, probably the owner’s wife, gave them a cold, hard stare. A moment later, the owner came back to their table with a brown fried chicken dripping with oil, and two pints of beer.

‘You know those bars? ’ Mina said. ‘I don’t think we should eat them anymore.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right. I could swear I tasted petrol.’

‘C’mon. Let’s dig in,’ she said, and Eugene turned to the food. Mina stuck her fork in the body of the chicken.

‘Nasty! They must’ve reused the oil, yuck. The oil turns rancid, and that’s how you get carcinogens.’

‘Hey, if you keep that up we won’t be able to eat anything on this planet.

Eat up.’

28

Kim Young-ha

Eugene yanked off a chicken leg and stuffed it in his mouth. Then he took a slug of beer. Mina took a knife and fork and sliced herself a piece of the breast, exposing the chicken’s white flesh. The two gobbled down the chicken and gulped their beer. They thought they’d have no appetite, but they were wrong. They ate and they drank. There was no stopping them. It was a frantic binge.

29

Ko Un translated by Brother Anthony and Lee Sang-wha

My Next Life I entered the forests of Mount Seo-un. Home at last!

I breathed a long sigh.

Shadows lay heaped on shadows.

I let go the few drunken rays of light I had brought with me. Night fell.

In every country without fail freedom was at an end.

I also let go, bit by bit, the past hundred years’ garbage.

The next morning drops of dew were hanging in empty cobwebs.

There were too many pasts in the world. The future had shrunk.

Elements of the wind beyond nuzzled into the forest.

The oak leaves were twittering like returning birds.

Looking back, I knew I came from generations of illiterates.

Somehow Somehow I have been caught in the inescapable letters of an agglutinating language.

In my next life I will be a breathless stone deep beneath the ground, under a mute widow’s skeleton and the new, silent corpses of several orphans bundled in straw sacks.

30

Korean Literature on the World Stage Joseph Lee translated by Shirley Lee

I

n Korea it was the morning of 1 October 2010; in New York it was the evening of 30 September. I could not contain my excitement – the live Amazon bestseller list had just been updated with Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic Is Calling You. That morning, as New Yorkers went to work, National Public Radio had introduced the book to America and following the broadcast online sales skyrocketed. The positive reaction of readers confirmed the global relevance of Kim’s work: it had the power to move people and provoke a universal response.

A few years earlier, in the autumn of 2005, I had felt electrified when I heard that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt wanted the rights to Kim’s novel I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. With its publication in July 2007 Korean literature had finally – and of its own accord – broken through the glass ceiling and entered the American market. The achievement held value for all Korean writers because it opened the way for Korean literature in a highly competitive international arena. Kim’s second novel was published in 2010 and released in ten countries; his third novel will be published at the end of this year.

Korean literature has been through a series of transformations. In the 1980s the culture of reading was at an explosively formative stage, and writers were breathing in intimate concert with their readers. Many new publishers were established during this tumultuous era, which continued into the 1990s, and many literary works of this time bear the painful marks of that era’s suffering. For example, authors of the so-called ‘486 Generation’ (then 31

Korean Literature on the World Stage

in their forties, at university in the 1980s and born in the 1960s) had seen the clashes between the previous military government and studentled democracy movements. In their works they tended to depict the oppression and injustice of an authoritarian establishment, and the faith and suffering of a generation who sometimes risked their lives to fight against it. Similarly, the generations who lived through the Korean War had used literature to assuage the pain of their years under Japanese occupation, and continued to do so through to the 1960s, when the country was at its poorest as a consequence of the war. These stories resonated with contemporary readers and created strong bonds between authors and audiences. Writers such as Ko Un, Park Kyung-ri, Choi In-hun, Kim Won-il and Hwang Sok-yong depicted with brilliance this dark time.

Today, we breathe more quickly. We find pleasure in snatched moments rather than delighting in the blank margins of unhurried time. With only a tap on the keyboard, I can send my thoughts travelling a thousand miles.

Now, we keep our finger on the world’s pulse. But does Korean literature live in the present, or does it stubbornly reject the inevitable passage of time and regress into the past? Earlier authors went against established practice by capturing in their works the subtle nuances of their contemporaries’ suffering.

Are today’s Korean authors producing works of comparable relevance?

Lee Tae-jun’s Before and after Liberation (1946), Choi In-hun’s Forum (1976) and Lim Chul-woo’s Hundred-Year Inn (1994) are all outstanding works that encapsulate the suffering and complexities of each author’s contemporary world. In each of these stories, a scene depicting reality is first sketched out. Then, as in a watercolour splashed with various paints, the author builds on this canvas with further strokes of imagination. In this way, the authors depict their times and capture the attention of their audiences.

To one reader, a work may serve as a vehicle for grafting reality to his personal cause, thus creating a fresh artefact; another reader may search for the original message of the work and the author’s less obvious intentions, and compare these with reality. In other words, the author either summons the reader into the book to collaborate with him in thought, or calls the reader out into the realm of the real world. As a result, the author and reader may at times be fellow travellers, and at other times be set against one another.

Readers in the 1980s and 1990s wished to explore the complexities of their age through literature – a medium that is both intellectual and 32

Joseph Lee

artistic. This desire is not as evident in today’s readers. The expectations of the audience have changed. Many would rather hold an individual opinion than meditate upon a collective experience; they have also become repelled by topics that deal with darkness and suffering. Such readers may lack the attentive patience of past generations, or perhaps simply have less time to deal with such issues. Koreans formerly favoured cafés with intimate booths; today we prefer open-plan seating.

Similarly, we now make more use of direct expression. We live with an eye to the future, and are progressive in our thoughts. I believe Korean literature mirrors this. In the literature of the past, much ink was spilt in pages of conversations regarding the shared pain of the nation’s citizens. In contrast, today’s authors take the present as a starting point. Kim Young-ha, Cho Kyung-lan, Han Kang, Kim Yun-soo, Pyun Hye-gyung and Kim Ae-ran are some of these authors, currently in their thirties and forties, who are in tune with their readers through the imaginative power of their work. Shin Kyungsook, who has been writing for nearly thirty years, is one of these writers.

On 15 March 2012 Shin’s Please Look after Mother won the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, which was established in 2007. There were seven books on this year’s shortlist, reduced from a longlist of twelve. Admittedly, all seven shortlisted authors had already been recognized in the international sphere. Although it feels a little late in coming, the prize does represent the increasing recognition of Korean publishing and literature, and serves as a symbol of hope for Shin and other Korean writers.

The rights to Please Look after Mother had already been sold in thirtyfour countries when the book appeared in Amazon’s ‘Ten Best Fiction Books of the Year’, and also in its ‘100 Best Books of the Year’, which covers both fiction and non-fiction. This inclusion indicated the significant interest of both critics and readers in Please Look after Mother, and I see it as signalling a tipping point if Korean literature is to establish a secure appreciation in the West. Literature in translation makes up only 1 per cent of the American market, and every established author from abroad has to compete within this narrow margin. In this context, for Shin’s novel to have been selected for Amazon’s top ten seems even more significant than the fact that it had been on The New York Times bestseller list.

The two notions of ‘mother’ and ‘disappearance’ – which are at the heart of the novel – aim straight for the reader’s instinctive core. The story is about 33

Korean Literature on the World Stage

me, about us and, consequently, about us all. As we read, we recognize the despair, longing, sadness, pain, anxiety and fear that accompany the loss of a loved one. These feelings are universal, but they are juxtaposed for Western readers with the hitherto undiscovered spaces of modern Korea, and with its unfamiliar social mores, cultural expectations and expressions of individuality. The story unravels through the voices and distinctive gestures of the family members, who represent the diverse rural and urban settings of a multifaceted Korea. In this context, Shin’s Please Look after Mother provides a taste of what Korean literature may offer to the foreign reader; it also sustains the popularity of the book in the international market.

Within Korea itself, Shin is an author who removes the barriers between generations; outside Korea, she erodes the barriers imposed by translation.

34

Martin Alexander

Interview: Shin Kyung-sook Charles Montgomery translated by Ed Park

S

hin Kyung-sook is one of South Korea’s most popular writers of contemporary fiction. She has published seven novels and numerous short stories, and has won several literary prizes in her own country. She broke new ground for Korean writers in March 2012 when the English translation of her novel, Please Look after Mother, won the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. The book had already sold close to two million copies in Korean.

ALR: Is Please Look after Mother autobiographical?

SKS: I have lived as the daughter of a mother. My personal stories, of course, are contained [in the novel]. In writing a book with ‘mother’ as its theme from the first page to the last, how could I leave out my feelings towards 35

Interview: Shin Kyung-sook

my mother? As is the case with any writing, my work begins from within myself; however, when the novel becomes complete it is no longer my story.

It is a story of my contemporaries in society.

ALR: Now that you are internationally known, will you adapt your style to a foreign audience?

SKS: Is it even possible to tailor a book for someone? In whatever circumstance, I only write a story that I want to write, and I do it in my own style.

One of the reasons I chose to become a writer was my desire to be free, without any constraints imposed on me. Now, when I write, I feel infinitely free. I relish this freedom, which I have only recently attained.

ALR: Do you think there is anything uniquely Korean about the way Korean families interact? Are there some things that might be difficult for foreigners to understand?

SKS: Korea is essentially a society centred on blood ties. We have a word, jeong, which is difficult to translate. There is perhaps no phrase more Korean than jeong deunda [to grow attached]. Once jeong takes hold in you, it results in an irreversible attachment. Jeong is not only about joy; it encompasses sorrow, pain and compassion. If you leave out jeong when trying to describe Korean relationships, it is like leaving out the heart when describing the human body. Korean family relationships are founded on entanglements of jeong. This jeong can drive you to perform an otherwise unimaginable service or sacrifice for your family. Foreigners may find such a concept quite puzzling.

ALR: Historically, modern Korean literature has been national in nature; is there still a national Korean literature or is it being globalised?

SKS: I don’t think internationalism can be separated from globalisation anymore. We live in an era when stories are transmitted rapidly: events on this side of the world can be immediately broadcast on the other side of the globe. Whatever society or culture an author is immersed in is in fact the whole world. If it appears that Korean literature is becoming international in step with the phenomenon of globalisation, it is not something we have planned. Rather, it is the most natural course.

36

Charles Montgomery

ALR: The use of the second person in the narrative is unusual – how and why did you develop that voice and did it affect the development of the characters?

SKS: In this novel, the second person voice is significant. I wanted only the missing mother to use the word ‘I’. Readers would then be led to ask themselves: Who really went missing? In addition, allowing only the mother to use the word ‘I’ is my tribute to all mothers. As a literary device, the second person voice allows an objective description of the family members’ agitation as they suddenly lose their mother. Only then do they begin to realize who she really is. Addressing the father, son and daughter as ‘you’ allowed me to distance myself.

ALR: Please Look after Mother describes a variety of relationships between the sexes and generations and deals with the ways communication works or fails. How is the issue of communication important to your work?

SKS: I considered the missing mother ‘tradition’ and the children who felt lost after losing their mother ‘modernity’. It is part of human nature to fail to recognize the value of something until it is lost. Things that have gone missing as we have turned towards modernity are nested in the symbolic figure of the mother. If the reader begins to consider the loss of cherished and valued things, then I have communicated these ideas successfully. For me, writing is a path connecting this world to the irreconcilable or forbidden, and to the oppressed and weak.

ALR: The technique of using multiple narrative structures is a Korean tradition seen in other novels such as Cho Se-hui’s The Dwarf and Choe Yun’s There a Petal Silently Falls, where the ‘true’ story emerges in the process of a quest. Why is this approach so popular in Korean literature and why did you choose it for Please Look after Mother?

SKS: A mother is a complex entity. Her nature cannot be fully grasped, regardless of who describes her. Even when exploring her character in the context of her relationship with her husband, she cannot be completely portrayed. The multiple narratives [in Please Look after Mother] allow each character to give a personal account of Mother, and she can also talk about herself. The entity ‘mother’ is like a book that never finishes no matter how many pages have been read. We have a saying: ‘God sent mothers to 37

Interview: Shin Kyung-sook

this world because he was not able to oversee everything.’ To reveal the complexities of a mother, I had no choice but to vary the voice.

ALR: You have won the Man Asian Literary Prize and are long-listed for Britain’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. How important are these achievements to you and to the effort to internationalise Korean literature?

SKS: Personally, I felt a sense of freedom. It was as if my book opened a door and surged into the unknown. I felt invigorated. Yet fundamentally I believe there are no national boundaries in literature, which we conveniently categorize as Asian, European or American, but literature is simply literature. Having said this, it is clear that Korean literature has embarked on an unfamiliar road. I hope my book turns out to be the first auspicious snowfall of the year.

ALR: Can you tell us a little about the translation process – how did you work with the translator, how much of the original work do you feel survived the translation process, and did you find that process difficult or creative, or both?

SKS: Translation is like a journey. If the book meets a competent translator who cares for the work, the journey is good. When the opposite is the case, the journey is bad. Don’t we read most of what we consider world literature in translation? If a book’s destiny is to encounter a great translator, the writer is fortunate. Please Look after Mother found not only a wonderful translator, but also an editor from Knopf who particularly cherished the book. We were able to discuss many things, and this was the best possible scenario.

ALR: Are any of your other works going to be translated?

SKS: The next work will be 㛨♈㉔ᴴG ⇌⪰G 㵲⏈G 㤸䞈ⷜ㢨G 㟬⫠ḔU The English version is I’ll Be Right There, which is the title of one of its chapters. I would also like to see a collection of short stories translated, and it would be nice if 㞬♨ⵝG(A Secluded Room) were published in English.

ALR: What are you working on now?

SKS: I am writing about a person who suddenly went blind. You can find out more when the book is complete.

38

Robert Ricardo Reese

Crystal Kay in the Tokyo Dome aidoru we seek believe aidoru aidoru like an Egyptian with such a figure goddess princess temple of the royal highness Cleopatra in the land of the rising sun coloured all through black the singer Korean coloured all through black the singer sings sways in Japanese this is a sold-out crowd in Japan there will be more sold-out crowds more and more sold-out crowds she sweet-smiles she puts spells on one-sided lovers aidoru aidoru she is soft glow she fancies herself she vogues every lyric she spins her free hips around she becomes the body of her black and chosun people her in the kaleidoscope lights flashing our escape our pain more and more sold-out crowds 39

Poetry

she gestures her hand slight she brings angels down she the absolute first everyone sees her aidoru aidoru diva of the divine derivative singer charmer the absolute first on the platform to climb Japan’s pop chart to be big now to be worshipped now beat by beat

Walk on Jeju Isle large lavender Roses of Sharon – romance we smile at each other from the trail of the garden where we kissed each other this spring sweet shrubs purple flush flowers of the land we are mild and fair with each other like the lovelight of morning sun lavender – lavender the canopy of the Rose of Sharon blooms in fire

40

Min K. Kang

Zainichi 1. the way you unlearned unpacked foreign words shed what you could ate each soapy syllable that fell from your mouth in slivered pieces like water snakes splitting your tongue in two discovering lingual inflammations behind your lips more betraying to self the motherland

41

Poetry

2. the way we grew unlearning unfurling: terebi gukmin-hakgyo sleppah bakketsu bento biniru tamanegi tonkatsu allereugi enerugi shedding what we could eating soapy words that fall from our mouths in slivered pieces splitting our tongues in two no-goot meet-ting sogae-ting es-line shop-ping oh-kay oh-bah oh-rai short-dari rong-dari are you tangkong i ni?

42

Image and Identity Michael Breen

I

f there is a heart to Seoul, it is the Lotte Department Store. It is permanently crowded, with ten floors of stuff that costs more than it should. My landlady was a VIP club member because she spent over four million won (close to US$4,000) in an average month. She once invited me to the club lounge.

I’m sure she enjoyed other small differences, making her feel a little special amidst the mass of other shoppers within and the traffic jams without. There is no more representative place to bang shoulders with Korea.

It was by chance my focal point when I arrived in the country. My office was around the back and my first three weeks were spent in the adjacent Lotte Hotel. I learned to navigate – in a country where streets are not named and buildings not numbered – with reference to landmarks.

I would walk to the nearby Central Post Office to telex stories to my newspaper in the USA. Over the road, hundreds of people would line the pavement’s edge alongside the department store, where they would stare in the same direction, all of them waiting for buses. This was in pre-history, before Koreans dyed or bleached their hair and had plastic surgery, when foreigners looked really foreign and caught everyone’s eye. That bus queue full of people was staring at me. I had to walk past them all – it was a long hundred-yard squirm. Moving under such scrutiny, a chap lacks confidence that his foot will land squarely with the next step. It was a mental version of a physical sensation I’d experienced while working on an offshore oil rig where the wind was often so strong that on the helicopter deck you had to fight to stop gusts pushing your legs from under you.

The store itself presented other stresses. At opening time, hundreds of attendants would line the aisles, Japanese style, to bow to the first customers.

43

Image and Identity

This was the price of beating the rush. It was like arriving at the airport after a long-haul flight to find you’d won the ten-millionth-visitor award.

Sometimes, it’s not unnatural to pray for an earthquake. I learned to manage my Lotte and post office visits to minimize embarrassment.

Then it all evaporated. Standing out no longer bothered me. I had acclimatized. There was no single moment when this happened; one year I was squirming and the next I was blithely observing the people observing the outsider. Thank you, Lotte shoppers.

Some Korea-based foreigners I know yearn to be insiders. They become fluent in the language, change their nationality and plot their climb up the status ladder. One or two, I am convinced, dream of becoming president.

But I like being an outsider. It’s my disposition; I’m an observer by nature.

I see, as Auden wrote, ‘as the hawk sees it or the helmeted airman’, and take joy when the clouds part, when understanding illuminates the landscape. I love Koreans because they let me do that.

They remain able to do so because they are race-based nationalists.

This may sound like a naughty thing to be – and I’ve written columns in local newspapers saying so – but I’m OK with it because they’re not wielding clubs. In principle, I am opposed to countries. This goes back to my childhood when I lived in Germany: during our family travels through Europe I observed my father’s frustration when trying to explain that he was Scots-British to people who equated Britain with England. As a ten-year-old I concluded, Who cares? But the world is organized by nation states that run their own shows, in theory. People generally accept this state of affairs. If Martians landed in Hong Kong or Accra, the locals would not take them to Washington DC for questioning. Nationality gives meaning and identity. Most people accept local – that is their country’s – authority.

Those unhappy with the present arrangement, like some Kurds, Scots, and North and South Koreans, think their country should be configured or run differently. For this system to function, countries have to feel distinct. This they do with reference to broad themes: the French say their language and culture set them apart; for the Americans, it’s freedom and the law; and for the people of North and South Korea, it’s race. That’s why I will never fit in.

My friend Peter Underwood was born in Korea, the fourth generation of a famous line of missionaries. Once, when he was walking up a temple path chatting, in Korean of course, with a monk, two old ladies passed by.

44

Michael Breen

He heard one say, ‘You know, I don’t think English is that hard. I could understand everything that foreigner was saying.’

Being put in a box labelled ‘foreign’ isn’t so bad. In fact, foreigners in Korea have long been treated as first-class citizens. When I was interrogated by prosecutors a couple of years ago, after a company filed a criminal defamation suit over something I had written, the interpreter told me they had been much more polite with me than was usual. This is not a contradiction. The race-based nationalist can be very nice to people from other countries, provided those people aren’t dating his daughter or making big profits in his country. I’ve been receiving praise for years for my kindergarten-level Korean, but a Korean-American who’s been in the country for a week and speaks in poor Korean to a taxi driver will get a telling off. He’s considered one of the team, but I’m not.

It is generally not known that Koreans think this way. In part, this is because of their tendency to hide behind two curtains of language: of Korean itself and from the habit of telling outsiders what they want to hear, rather than what is true. As an example of the latter, even at the height of the military dictatorship in the 1980s, I was often told by government spokespeople that Korea was a liberal democracy.

It is a remarkable but little-noted fact about Korea that it lacks articulate spokespeople. The foreigner is left to figure things out. Surface behaviour can seem weird when you don’t understand the other nine-tenths that lie buried.

Take, for example, the way people cut off their little fingers and engage in furious protests over Dokdo. (Huh? What’s that? My point exactly. Dokdo is group of rocks in the Sea of Japan owned by the Koreans but also claimed

by Japan.) Another heated issue is that same Sea of Japan, which the Koreans want the world to call the ‘East Sea’. This absence of articulate spokespeople means the Koreans have suffered for a long time from bad global PR. In his 1969 book Streets of Asia, the poet and travel writer James Kirkup informed the galaxy that the widely used epithet about the Koreans, that they were the Irish of the East, was an ‘insult to the Irish’. Then he got even more bitchy: Lying between chill sheets that night in my icy room, I tried to organize my first impressions of Seoul. In the back of my mind I felt that the place reminded me of somewhere I had been before. The 45

Image and Identity

impression of gloom and darkness and wildness could not be dispelled . . . and everywhere there was the curiously clanging, grumbling tone of Korean speech. From time to time I was reminded of northern Japanese towns in winter-time – Akita, Aomori, Niigata or Sapporo.

But then it flashed into my mind that what Seoul really reminded me of was the Arctic: the bare, freezing desolations on the outskirts of Kiruna and Narvik.

Maybe he was inspired by the journalist James Cameron, who two years earlier had employed weather to dismiss the peninsula. Here’s an account of his train journey from Busan to Seoul: The sun seemed abruptly to leap into the sky and the heat came pouring down. And with the heat, the smell; it rose off the fields almost visibly as the morning grew. Although as one’s experience of Korea lengthened the first revulsion dulled, the smell remained as a background for all other sensations. This characteristic of Korea – the hand-fertilizing of the paddies with domestic ordure – was of course by no means unique in the East, but it is a fact that here it reached an especial concentration of evidence. I have never known a country where there was a more lively and thriving commerce in human excrement, even throughout the continent of Asia, which always seems to Europeans excessively reluctant to part with its sewage.

Nasty. But as a Brit, I know exactly where these two writers were coming from: the world of unexamined superiority, aggression and the clever putdown. When these accounts were written, the Koreans were poor and had recently fought a vicious war.

With democracy and wealth, the Koreans have changed and so have foreign perceptions. During the 2002 World Cup games in South Korea, Korean fans were so passionate for their country, and at the same time so nice to others, that a reporter from the British tabloid the Sun – which normally wouldn’t cover Koreans unless they were eating dogs or testing nuclear weapons – joined them and wrote an article, ‘I was a Korean for a day’.

On the train back from the Ireland-Spain match, I fell into conversation with an Irish fan. He was astonished by how developed the country was.

46

Michael Breen

‘I was expecting the Third World,’ he said. Actually, with his accent, he said turd world, which for a moment reminded me of Cameron’s experience a generation earlier.

While older visitors are impressed by economic development and the general wiredness of the country compared to their own, young people, especially from Japan and China, find Korea cool thanks to movies and K-pop artists.

Resident expatriates, a global tribe given to whining about the natives, have also become more positive. Until the late 1990s, whenever two or more expatriates were gathered together, they would moan up a storm about their hosts. Now they don’t so much, because their circumstances have changed: in recent years, the Korean authorities raised the nationalistic portcullis and let in decent foreign wine, Starbucks and Toblerone. Korea is no longer a hardship post. Another change is that a lot of expatriates have begun to learn Korean. Once upon a time, a foreigner could live here for decades and not even know how to ask for a cup of coffee.

Whatever foreigners think of them, Koreans in general are very engaging.

You can’t ignore them and, when you pay attention, you find puzzling differences. Foreign employers, for example, find university graduates willing to work hard but remarkably poor at problem solving. In general, there is a tendency to rush to tactics rather than debate strategic approaches. That comes from what you might call a horizontal idea of learning. At school I learned theories – evolution, for example – upon which information was laid like bricks. When the theories are challenged and modified, society goes into a tizzy. But Koreans at school learn facts.

Even a theory is a fact. Historical facts about Korea are important to the notion of nationalistic pride. Questioning them is an insult to the teacher.

And facts that are unpleasant risk making the country look bad. This thinking manifests in the type of information given out at major tourist sites. A visitor will learn how many tiles went into building this or that palace and in which year, but nothing about the blood-and-guts drama that went on there. That learning process actually makes it difficult to put a value on things. For example, employers find it difficult to know how to assess job applicants. They seem to interpret the form of a CV as its substance – in other words, that someone must be good because they went 47

Image and Identity

to X university, even if it were thirty years ago. As a result, fabricating CVs is common practice.

While many foreigners have warm experiences with some Koreans, they often feel rejected by Koreans in general. Foreigners feel conditionally accepted – to fight for Korea in wartime, for example, and provide free markets and favourable loans in peace time – and then collectively rejected.

Amongst the nationalists, your forehead is branded ‘foreigner’, and you are treated accordingly. I am British and, fortunately, have been labelled a gentleman, not a football hooligan or defanged imperialist.

A local psychiatrist once introduced an interesting difference: ‘Western history is a history of disobedience. It tells of the struggle for individual freedom,’ he told me, ‘but our history is one of the struggle to obey.’ Korean heroes are the loyal subject and the filial son, whose exemplary virtue is their suppression of self in the practice of obedience.

‘Psychoanalytically speaking, this means prohibition of one’s own instinctive urges,’ he said. ‘Traditionally, if a man loved a woman but his parents ordered him to marry another, he would obey, and live with han (resentment or sorrow). This is a typical Korean experience. Han has hung like a tranquil mist in the valley of our hearts.’

He believed the division of Korea after the Second World War disturbed this tranquil mist. When their country was torn apart, Koreans found that people they had loved in their families, at school and in their hometowns had become ideological enemies. This led to what the psychiatrist claimed was collective ambivalence. ‘Ambivalence is a major symptom of schizophrenia,’ he said. ‘Your love and hate go to the same target, like a jealous woman. In this way the division of Korea invited a kind of collective madness.’

If the Koreans are explosive, and even a bit mad, they are also exquisitely sensitive. In fact, they tend to dwell too much on their delicate feelings.

The kibun (feelings or state of mind) is of prime importance. Not only does feeling good make you feel good, it’s also better for your health. When you feel bad you feel justified in behaving badly, rejecting business proposals, barking at your spouse or secretary. The kibun is translated as ‘mood’, but is accorded higher importance than we would attribute to that word. It is perhaps best described as that part of you that extends beyond the physical body, your inner atmosphere or, perhaps, your continental shelf. This invisible part of you can be damaged by loss of face, disrespect, bad news or 48

Michael Breen

unhappiness. Or by the appearance of someone who threatens you, or who previously damaged your kibun.

With their awareness of the ‘inner self ’ and the appreciation of harmony to avoid kibun-damage, Koreans are adept at sensing people’s character and mood, and at helping them out of a foul temper by giving them space, silence or gifts. I once had a row with a colleague in the office. He went off, no doubt feeling the two fingers I was mentally flipping at his back.

Ten minutes later he came back with some apples. He quietly cut them up, brought them over, sat down beside me and offered me a small fork. This wordless gesture washed away all my irritation and impressed me deeply. My priority had been proving the correctness of my opinion, whereas his was maintaining our relationship and office harmony.

Here lies a cultural difference that invites great misunderstanding, for it is not easy for one side to see the virtue of the other. When is one individual’s correctness more important than a group’s happiness?

Obviously sometimes, but much less often for the Korean who places his emphasis on ethics in relationships, and less on the individual and his or her conscience. The Korean naturally seeks harmony in relationships over objective truth and goodness. So kibun is high on the agenda.

Its importance cannot be underestimated. Koreans can make important decisions on the basis of kibun, whereas we would rely mainly on rationality.

These decisions include such things as whether to marry the person the matchmaker suggests, or whether to build a factory on this spot or that one.

When Koreans make decisions using kibun as an important factor there is a lot of talk about ‘timing’ and ‘feeling right’. At its best, this tendency can indicate a subtle intuition. At its worst, it is timidity over common sense.

For example, your dry cleaner might mumble ‘Yes’ if you ask if your dress will be ready tomorrow. A minuscule hesitation in the ‘yes’ indicates a kibun-sensitive, ‘Well, actually, no, but I neither want to upset you nor lose your business.’ So you conspire in your own frustration by saying, ‘Good’, and giving him the dress. While the foreigner may only follow the script, Koreans live between the lines.

We should not assume that kibunists are irrational. In fact, Koreans can be remarkably rational and calculating on issues we Westerners tend to consider emotional. Take choosing a partner, for example: professional or amateur matchmakers are still widely employed. They may factor in all 49

Image and Identity

considerations, including attractiveness and character, and which university they attended, and weigh these factors with their intuition. They reach a decision we foreigners might be unable to make: we tend not to consider marriage until we’ve fallen in love, by which time it’s too late to retrieve ourselves.

The surprising thing is that so many Koreans are deciding to marry foreigners. Over 10 per cent of weddings in Korea these days are international. This may prove the ultimate undoing of the country’s race-based nationalism, and there is no telling how it will impact the national kibun.

50

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe Park Mingyu translated by Sora Kim-Russell My Arithmetic Must be nice to be a Martian.

Summer that year was so muggy I couldn’t help thinking that way. The vocational high school’s holiday was longer than I thought, so I wouldn’t have been able to stand it if I didn’t at least daydream about Mars. It was a long, long summer and to make matters worse I was holding down two jobs: the petrol station in the afternoon, the convenience store at night.

Sure, there were girls at each place, neither good nor bad, but since they were neither good nor bad, I was bored all the same.

Since I was only making fifteen hundred won an hour at the petrol station and a thousand won at the convenience store, I felt disgruntled all the time. I mean, it had started off OK but . . .

My boss at the convenience store said that’s how you learn about the world, and I didn’t feel I could ask him if it would really kill anyone for me to earn two thousand an hour while learning. And if what he said were true, how come he showered so much money on his own kids? I always thought that what I was doing was worth at least two thousand an hour. Seriously? Only a thousand?

It was around that time that Coach came to the store one morning.

How’s it going?

Fine.

Since he was the one who’d got me the gig in the first place, I had no choice but to say it was fine. You could say he had the corner on all the part-time jobs in the area. He liked helping the younger guys find work and coaching them on this and that.

51

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

Well , that’s convenient, I thought, taking a Capri-Sun out of the fridge compartment and handing it to him.

It’s on me. I said it with a smile but as I glanced up at the clock I thought, I hope you know that’s worth twenty-five minutes of my life.

This place I’m working now, Coach said, the boss is an idiot . . . even today he touched a girl’s thigh . . .

Man! How do you get away with that? Right or wrong, if you touch a girl’s thigh, I think you should at least pay her ten thousand an hour. There’s nothing wrong with touching. But there is something wrong with only paying her a thousand. Anyway, that’s what I thought.

Say, are you good at push-ups?

Push-ups?

You know, press-ups.

I automatically said I was. Saying yes automatically was what you had to do to get a job. That was already the basic of the basics by then.

The pay’s good. Three thousand an hour . . . but it’s a little hard on your body.

Three thousand? That was all I needed to hear. The words three thousand an hour knocked the wax right out of my ears. To think that a business with such a high rate of return existed near me! Even just getting the offer made me feel like I had suddenly become a member of a highly advanced industrial society. No problem! In comparison, do the rays of the sun that reach Mars at last, after passing Mercury, Venus and Earth, feel the way I do?

So long, neither-good-nor-bad, whether-I-get-it-or-not Earth!

That’s the reason I became a pusher.

The good thing is that you get to ride the subway for free, your arms get strong, and it doesn’t even interfere with your other jobs. In other words, once you’re done here, you head over to the station, take your turn in the ring, and that’s it. Clean and easy. The pay is guaranteed since it’s through the city, food tastes better because you’re getting good exercise, and you can keep working at the petrol station . . .

Coach’s nonstop coaching was reason enough but more than anything, the reason was the three thousand won.

So what you’re saying is, it’s like doing heavier weights with shorter sets?

Yeah . . . I guess you could look at it that way.

52

Park Mingyu

Coach looked confused but I thought, that’s definitely how it is. That was my arithmetic. Laugh if you want, but there are people in this world who have to do that kind of arithmetic to get by. There just are.

I’m sorry.

That’s what Dad always said. There he goes again. It was the same every time I said I’d started working. I liked hearing it the first time, but now it had lost all meaning.

Thirty-five hundred won an hour at the age of forty-five, that was Dad’s arithmetic. In any case, he worked in some trading office, the kind of place you just called The Office. Just once, I went to see him there. It was back when I was in middle school and Mom had sent me to deliver his lunch.

Is this map right? I wondered. I kept wandering all over the neighbouring alleyways and checking the map she’d drawn for me. I barely managed to track down Dad’s office. Anyway, it was just sort of there, one of those types of offices: fluorescent lights, paint peeling from the wooden door, a dimly lit hallway that looked as if it were frequented by mice. It almost made you wonder if you’d stumbled into some foreign country; it was such a ‘godforsaken’ place. That’s weird, I thought, where did that word come from?

We weren’t well off or anything but I listened to a lot of Metallica and stuff back then. Won’t life be kind of like an ESP Flying V (the guitar model used by Metallica), I used to wonder vaguely.

Yeah, that’s how I used to think, but then I opened the door and saw my dad sitting at his desk. He had the wan expression of a man who had eaten a packed lunch every single day.

Dad, I’m here.

I used to be the playful type but after that day, oddly enough, I turned into a quiet kid. I didn’t realize why at the time, but I guess it was because some sense of my own arithmetic popped up inside me. Looking back on it now, I think that’s what happened. It wasn’t anything to be happy or sad about, and definitely wasn’t anything to feel bitter about. It was literally just a matter of numbers. Instead of running off at the mouth, I started working hard at part-time jobs and saving up money. Go for the big payoff.

My friends seemed to pity me, but I knew the drill. In the end they, too, would have to do the same arithmetic.

53

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

So what are you gonna do?

Me? I dunno. Lately I’ve been thinking maybe something in showbiz.

When it comes to people, everybody has their own arithmetic. And it’s a sure thing that one day you’ll discover this. Of course in this world there are some lives that need higher mathematics; for most, it ends at arithmetic.

Like picking and eating a leaf from the highest branch – you painfully add to and subtract from your tiny, unchanging pile of money, until one day your life draws to a close: The End. Maybe that day I saw Dad’s arithmetic with my own eyes, or saw the answer to the arithmetic operation or, who knows, maybe I even inherited it in its entirety. That was pretty much the case: hand him his lunch, take his arithmetic; handed him his lunch, took his arithmetic.

And from what I sensed, I turned into someone who never let the words ‘Dad, can I have some money?’ cross his lips again.

Seriously, that arithmetic of mine.

I’m sorry.

Dad always said that but I thought, Dad, this is my arithmetic. Instalment savings, instalment savings, and another savings account. When I thought about my hourly wages of fifteen hundred won and a thousand won each growing bit by bit in those accounts, there was no such thing as hard work.

I guess you could say that’s how it was for everyone I knew. Even Coach had five accounts of his own. Coach didn’t have a dad but, then again, he didn’t have a sick grandma at home either. Same, same. His mom worked in a restaurant, and I don’t know the rest because he never talked about it.

I’d heard that Coach was known for being a glue sniffer in middle school but I couldn’t believe a word of it at the time. Well, everybody has to get by on their own arithmetic.

That’s why I say, MY Arithmetic.

The Train Is Now Arriving Passengers, please stand behind the yellow line.

Which is impossible. Everyone has to get on the train, but there’s no more room. If you don’t get on, you’ll be late. The body’s yellow line may be here, but life’s yellow line is inside the train. Which one would you choose?

54

Park Mingyu

I’ll never forget that moment when the first train arrived. I mean, not a train, but a freakishly huge animal that crawled up to the platform and wheezed, paah, haah, then ripped its sides open and spewed out people like it was vomiting.

Argh, I moaned involuntarily.

It looked like a dam breaking, and I could feel the inside of my head filling with vomit through my eyes, ears and nose.

Hey! If Coach hadn’t yelled at me I might have fallen prey to the beast. When I snapped out of it, I saw that the creature’s sides were sucking the pool of vomit back up. It did so with enough force to have generated electricity.

Just then, Coach yelled: Push!

So, despite myself and with a heave ho, I began shoving in spongy things, hard things, but even now I couldn’t tell you what they were.

Seriously, how dare I say they were human beings?

As the train left, Coach came up and gave me a firm warning: Keep it together.

Yes, Sir. I took a deep breath, but my legs shook all the same.

Don’t think of them as people. Think of them as cargo, or something.

Got it? Got it?

Just as he said ‘Got it’ again, another train was pulling in, so I braced myself once more.

Paah, haah. The train bound for Uijeongbu threw up twice as many people. It was like all of humanity this time.

It went on for an hour. When I came to my senses, I was slumped outside the yellow line, i.e. the Please Stand Behind point. And before my eyes – three tiepins, two buttons and the broken leg from a pair of glasses like the crutch of an injured soldier were lying there. The glasses were horn-rimmed.

Collecting the lost articles of mankind, I realized suddenly that my entire body was soaked in sweat.

Like I said, must be nice to be a Martian. Seriously, nice.

A week went by.

Witness the tragedy of mankind by morning, catnap before noon, 55

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

then work the petrol station in the afternoon and the convenience store at night. My body hurt so much. You could say my head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes ached all day, and then the next day, my head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, and knees ached, and then after that, it was head, shoulders, toes, knees and toes, head, shoulders, knees and ears, nose, ears.

This . . . shouldn’t it pay at least thirty thousand won an hour?

I felt disgruntled again but Coach asked, Wouldn’t it be a shame to quit now?

Coach’s coaching made sense, so I gritted my teeth and kept going to work. Maybe that’s the secret behind the pyramids: Would be a shame to quit now.

Maybe, just maybe, that was the slaves’ arithmetic.

Oddly enough, once I gritted my teeth and gave it my all the work began to have a fun of its own. My head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes no longer hurt or ached and, what the hell, I was having a good time. The early summer mornings were fresh and cool and Coach was usually smoking a cigarette by the Gaebong Station entrance. We would get free tickets from Eldest Brother (that’s what Coach called the ticketbooth guy). Then, standing on the platform, we would wait for the train at the very front of the line – as if it were a privilege. The old me would have automatically waited in line near the eighth exit (where I always stood because it was the shortest distance from my house) but that summer I was a pusher.

Following Coach’s cue, we would bow respectfully to the subway drivers and they would usually open the door to the engineer’s seat or the conductor’s seat for us.

How cool was that?

People hail us as legends. I even liked listening to the talks Chief gave in the night-duty room. You could call them instructions or, rather, sermons. Age, experience, arm strength, cast-iron work ethic and mongrel philosophy . . . our leader in every respect, we called him Chief.

Since he was in charge of the pushers, his word wasn’t quite the light and the life but it was: Sir! Yes, Sir! Of course, of course! And the point stayed the same – we were the backbone of the nation’s economy, the Dutch boy 56

Park Mingyu

(you know, the one who plugged the dyke) preventing traffic chaos, not to mention being legends of the trade.

Sir! Yes, Sir! Although we had no intention of playing the Dutch boy for three thousand won an hour there was one thing Chief said that we all agreed with: we were worth a hundred men each.

Best of the best, Chief always preached on and on that those who were not worth-a-hundred, best-of-the-best were not worthy of the post of pusher at Sindorim Station. He gave us tips on how to push people, how to rescue a person whose foot got caught in the gap, or how many people one train was supposed to hold. On top of that, he had a knack for catching a person off guard by suddenly saying something like: There’s a new cookie called Oh, Yes. It’s really good. And then asking you which do you like better, Choco Pie or Oh, Yes? Ha, ha! Sir! Yes, Sir!

A lot of things happened.

A kid sandwiched in a crowd of adults blacked out.

Who in the world would let their kid ride the subway at this time of the day? Chief muttered, all worked up and looking around for the kid’s parents, but parents like that weren’t the type to be on the train themselves.

When the kid opened his eyes in the night-duty room, he burst into tears, bawling that he was supposed to be at a maths contest so he was really going to get it from his mom.

Chief offered to buy the kid, who said he lived in Bucheon, a Coke and an Oh, Yes with his own money.

The youngest guy should go get it, he said.

I took the thirty minutes of his, Chief ’s, life that he handed me and surprised myself by answering briskly, Yes, Sir! Please . . . I’m late.

A girl said that to me one day.

Just the back or shoulders . . .

I was still having a hard time pushing a woman’s body any which way.

So I hesitated while two trains went by. She started crying right in front of me; it was too much for me to take. So I called for Coach. A train for 57

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

Uijeongbu pulled in, but it was so full that even Coach couldn’t squeeze her in. In the end though, Chief was the one who got her in.

Don’t look at the train. Here, look at me.

I saw that he had no problem pushing her on the chest and stuff and shoved her in easily.

Listen up. Guys go in easier facing front, and girls facing back. Got it?

Why is that?

Doesn’t matter, it just is.

One time, one of the pushers got swept on to the train. He was shoved by the passengers behind him, and it happened in a flash. It was just something that could happen any time, but the problem was what happened next: one of the passengers picked a fight with him and punched him in the head.

The reason was simple: he thought pushers were jerks. The guy he punched wasn’t actually all that nice, so the fight got bigger and bigger. It ended in a dog pile. Took the pusher three weeks to recover. None of the passengers that ran off were caught, so the guy had to pay for his new front teeth with his own money. After that, we never saw him again.

As for me, I saw a lot of perverts. And even when I didn’t see one, I could tell by the sound of a woman shrieking that there was a pervert somewhere in the carriage. Once, a guy in his forties was caught red-handed, smearing semen on a woman’s skirt. How did he have room to move his hands? I thought it was amazing, both trying something like that in there and then us managing to catch the guy.

There’re a lot of them, a whole lot. Coach shook his head.

But Coach . . . no matter how badly they want to do it . . . why would they want to get on that crowded train?

I have no idea. Who knows what perverts are thinking? I have this friend who just became a cop. He said that one day he got a report of a thirty-yearold naked guy eating flowers in a garden.

Did you say flowers?

Yup, flowers.

The man who got caught ejaculating turned out to be a habitual offender.

His face was pasty and covered in moles, and he had a quiet look about him.

Sweat kept dripping along the folds of his fat neck.

58

Park Mingyu

Looks like the pervert’s been to Hawaii or something, Chief said, making fun of him, but the guy never raised his head.

For no other reason, just that his flowery aloha shirt next to the uniform on the cop standing next to him looked so beautiful, I was struck by a sudden thought: Are there subways in Hawaii, too? Is there a stark naked guy eating flowers in a garden in Hawaii, too? And in Hawaii, are there pushers?

Since the earth is round, if you keep on walking, then it’s like, Aloha ’Oe. Maybe in the end all human beings are habitual offenders, I thought. We habitually ride the subway, habitually work, habitually eat meals, habitually make money, habitually have fun, habitually harass others, habitually lie, habitually misunderstand, habitually hang out, habitually converse, habitually hold meetings, habitually get educated, habitually ache in our head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, habitually feel lonely, habitually have sex, habitually sleep, and, habitually, die.

Sung-il! Put your whole body into it, your whole body!

I started pushing people again. With my whole body, habitually.

By August I’d started getting the hang of things. Plus we kept getting more newbies. That was partly fallout from the fight on the train, and partly because the job was so tough that a lot of guys quit. As a result, I had to keep making my way closer to the centre of the trains. There were more and more people, and the more I pushed, the more people poured out. Of course I was treated better, and there were fewer difficulties when everyone saw that I had guts, but the real problem lay elsewhere. And of course the money was good, but witnessing the suffering of countless people every morning was turning into one big stress. Each time the doors squeaked closed, I would be confronted with someone’s face pressed up against the glass. Ever seen a balloon like that?

I laughed until my stomach hurt at first to see all those squashed cheeks and lips about to burst and the flattened piggy noses, but as the days went on, the laughter went away. Fine, that’s all fine, but what I want to hear about is the face of humanity as you remember it! If someone from Mars were to interrogate me like that, I would feel pretty tortured. When it comes to telling beings from other planets about it, just how sad is this montage of humanity?

The train is now arriving. Paah, haah.

That’s right, just ride the train, don’t even think about the Galaxy Express.

If this is what humanity is.

59

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

7

In the end, I got pushed down another space by a newbie, and found myself in charge of train door number eight – 8 – and looking down at the number embossed in yellow, I suddenly thought of My Arithmetic.

Why do I have to live this way? The foolish question popped into my mind briefly but I consoled myself by saying, Arithmetic is nothing more than numbers.

My head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes felt especially heavy that morning.

Paah, haah.

Then the train came in as usual, the doors slid open and someone popped out of the carriage from the pressure of the other passengers. It was Dad. How can I put this? It made me feel like throwing off all my clothes once work was over and heading for the nearest garden to eat the flowers. D-Dad . . . I don’t remember whether I actually said that or not. He only had to get to Sinsol Station but like the first time I had to push a woman, I just, I couldn’t push him in, and I pushed a little anyway but he, he couldn’t get in.

The train doors closed.

Paah, haah.

I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.

Paah, haah.

Dad stood there adjusting his tie with an awkward look on his face. Then briefly, a moment – barely long enough to tie a Windsor but with a knot so tight it would never come undone – passed between us, weaving us together.

It was really odd. Outside the knot, it was noisy as could be, but between my dad and me, something resembling the silence of outer space pooled between us. Inside that silence, the announcement came again, streaming over the walls of our sanctum where we could not meet each other’s eyes.

The train is now arriving.

A Roof Somewhere Nearby Sometimes you realize: the earth really is spinning. This was especially true after work, when Coach and I would sit side by side on a bench in the station. If I stretched my legs out and leaned my head back just a bit more, I could see the clouds outside drifting past. It made me a little dizzy but it 60

Park Mingyu

also made me realize, Aha, the earth really is spinning. I liked that feeling.

So, I lay on that bench a lot. I did it again the day I saw Dad. Seung-il . . . I’ve got to get on the train this time.

Two trains went by without Dad on them. When the third one came in, Chief, who had figured out that the current was against us, came over to help.

Push! Push!

He had no idea the cargo we were trying to load was my dad but, still, he was too rough, jamming his head down, ramming his elbows hard into Dad’s back, shoving him in.

GET in. GOT in.

Just then a faint sound, now you hear it now you don’t, seemed to seep out of Dad’s thorax: paah, haah.

But the train snapped its own thorax shut, trapping Dad’s sound deep inside its lungs, and I had no way of figuring out what that sound was.

Anyway, it was just, like, an air bubble, a sound or a breath trapped inside the depths of, like, a train at rush hour.

Stifling and long and strange, the summer was.

Coach, the earth is spinning.

Is it?

I’d meant to say something about my dad, but that popped out of my mouth instead, totally unexpected. Coach offered to buy me a drink. So I drank the cup of Mirinda he got for me and, well, that was it. After that, I bumped into Dad pretty often. Slowly, we developed a kind of immunity towards each other, but even with that immunity they were not happy encounters.

Sometimes I managed to push him into the train just right, though it took me most of the summer to figure out how. On those days I treated myself to a soda. The distant clouds drifted along and, well, I was thirsty.

That’s how I spent my summer.

When the holidays ended, my days as a pusher ended as well. I returned to school for the second semester. It was complete chaos.

No jobs, the upperclassmen said in chorus but, chorus or not, everyone knew about the global recession. It didn’t matter if you were qualified or not, and the assumption that changing the name of the school to Information 61

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

Technology High School would raise the employment rate was nothing more than wishful thinking. The seniors were losing heart, the clouds still drifted by, and I was thirsty. The world was one big train. It could only hold 180 people, but there were 400 who needed to get on. The long, strange and stifling summer ended, but a long, strange autumn took its place.

And just when September was on the verge of ending, Mum collapsed.

She had been working for a long time as a cleaning lady at a shopping centre, and she collapsed due to overwork or something. Luckily she was taken to the hospital right away, but they couldn’t tell what was wrong with her, and for the time being they said that her nerves or something were totally shot.

Let’s keep running tests. That’s what he said, the doctor.

I guess we’ll just keep running tests then. Because that’s what he said, the doctor.

When I went into her hospital room, I saw Dad holding Mum’s hand.

How is she?

He stared at me wordlessly. It was a dark, dazed look – like an ostrich that’s suddenly lost the use of one leg in the middle of a savannah. Actually, I thought he had been walking, no, running along pretty well all that time.

Mum’s soon-to-be-lost wages, her soon-to-be hospital bills and Grandma’s continuing medical bills . . . that was when I first realized Dad’s eyes were an ashy grey. I guess you could say they were the same shade of grey as the dead display on a calculator that’s run out of batteries. The numbers weren’t coming up.

In the unlit emergency stairwell of the hospital, I called Coach.

My homeroom teacher, who had also worked his way through school, was a pretty understanding guy: Hang in there. I’ll take care of things for you.

Thanks to him, I started skipping first period and became a pusher again.

It was once again up to me to control that tidal wave of humanity, and I often saw my dad floating in there like a strand of seaweed.

Oh, right, where’s my head? What did Dad do for lunch? Did he go hungry? I pushed Dad, who was one lunchbox lighter, again and again.

Pushed by my hands, my father felt as if he were sometimes crouching, sometimes drooping, sometimes flapping in the chilly autumn wind.

A children’s song suddenly came to mind: Morning wind, cold wind, that wild goose cries then flies away.

62

Park Mingyu

Coach never stopped trying to hook me up with this or that parttime gig. Thanks, Coach. So even though my thanks were stiff as a carved wooden goose, I actually wanted to cry. The days passed by like new, insignificant figures flickering past on the display of a calculator with a fresh set of batteries. That’s how it felt. One day when I looked in the mirror, I saw those ash-coloured eyes. Two concentric circles the same shade as Dad’s; I was my dad’s arithmetic operation after all. 3.1415926535897 . . .

And there was trouble with my boss at the convenience store. He hadn’t paid me, so I asked him to, and it became clearer and clearer that he was trying to stiff me. We squabbled over it and I wound up shoving him; even I was surprised to see how far he flew.

He made a big stink about it, saying that his back had been hurt and he was going to press charges but, as always, Coach straightened it out. All he did was talk to him briefly in a low voice, and my boss came out and handed me the money. Or, rather, he threw it at me.

Let’s pick it up.

If oh-so-calm Coach hadn’t been there, I might have gone for one more push.

Is it all there?

It’s a thousand won short.

Hey, it’s a thousand won short! Coach yelled in a loud voice.

Oddly enough, I pushed Dad hard, really hard, that morning. I wasn’t proud of it, but that’s the mood I was in. Maybe it’s because I had to pick the money up from the floor, one bill after the other. That’s probably why. No matter how hard I tried to console myself, my mood didn’t get any better.

Seung-il, wait . . . wait. Hang on a second, Dad’s groan pushed its way into my ear but, weirdly enough, I didn’t feel a thing.

Dad, come home safe.

Home safe, Dad opened up to me that night about this and that. In a word, it came down to arithmetic.

The company is doing worse and worse. I’m looking for another job. I’m sorry, we each have to pull some weight for a while.

I’m not having a hard time at all, I said. The next morning I ran into my apologetic dad again but I couldn’t push him properly for feeling sorry.

Dad, come home safe.

63

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

I straightened out my legs and tilted my head back, watched the clouds drifting by and said, Coach, the earth really is spinning.

Oh, yeah?

When I feel the earth turning like this, it makes me think.

What?

Well . . . we really are living on a planet . . . in outer space.

So? So, I mean, why are we living like this?

Coach was silent for a moment then stood up and said, Let’s get a drink.

I sat up and straightened my head to stop the earth from spinning, and there was a cup of Mirinda, extra full because he’d pushed the No Ice button, floating before my eyes. On the stopped earth, once again, a train was now arriving.

Want to hear something funny?

After the now-arriving train had left, Coach suddenly threw that question out there. I figured, well, may as well skip second period, too, and wound up staying on the bench that day.

His story was more weird than funny. This was back when I was sniffing glue all the time. As usual I thought I was as high as I was going to get, when suddenly I was floating over the roof. The funny thing was that I could see myself down below with my head shoved in the bag, and the me who was watching this was giving off a strange light. I automatically thought, Am I dead now?

It was so scary. I looked around and there was another guy floating like me way over by Oryu-dong. His name was Jinho and he used to hang out there all the time, sniffing glue. So of course I thought, Is he dead, too? Then, how long did it take ?

I came to and sobered up. Or, should I say I came back to life, which is what I thought then. I breathed a sigh of relief but later that afternoon the craziest thing happened: Jinho came to see me.

He asked if I’d been sniffing glue the night before. So I said I had. Then he asked if I’d seen him floating in the air. He said that he’d seen me.

I was so shocked.

After that I became a totally different person. I quit sniffing glue, though I don’t really know why. I mean, what if I left my body at some random moment, and went floating over a roof somewhere nearby?

64

Park Mingyu

So, I thought, maybe there’s no other way but to live life to the full. A roof somewhere nearby? Yeah, a roof somewhere nearby.

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe Must be nice to be a Venusian.

Winter that year was so bitterly cold I couldn’t help thinking that way.

The vocational high school’s winter holiday was harsher than I expected, and I wouldn’t have been able to stand it if I didn’t at least daydream about Venus.

All winter long, I was still working odd jobs. From the early morning subway station to the late-night kitchen of the barbecue joint to the paper route of three blocks of flats at the crack of dawn.

Paah, haah.

The puff of my breath and the sweat beneath my clothes. Looking back, it felt as if I were looking down at myself from a nearby roof. As if it were from their point of view, the Venusians.

The early morning subway was like the Galaxy Express. Are you comfortable with saying that? Even if I were grilled by someone from Venus, I would still be able to say that. The dawn was vast and dark, and the biting air was always harsh. Just as it says in the Thousand Character Classic: ‘The universe (Á ) is vast (I) and wild ( ).’ And me, I was alone.

Everyone is sleeping, everyone is safe, I assured myself as I swayed in the darkness of the rails past Guil and Guro to Sindorim. Inch by inch, the train swayed along and, inch by inch, so did my heart. Life, the world, was always in sway.

Not one of us was passing through life safely. Coach quit working parttime and got a job selling flats on the sly. In a month he was a changed person. He got a car, albeit a used one, and spent more money than before. I bumped into him once on the street but he seemed like someone who only bore a passing resemblance to the Coach I used to know. But a passing resemblance to someone like Coach doesn’t mean passing safely through life.

Chief was the same as ever, but he wasn’t passing safely through, either.

Rumour was that he’d been hit by a marriage scam, and afterward didn’t show up for work for ten days. Then suddenly he was back. He didn’t say anything, and neither did we.

People have to learn.

65

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

He would say that out of the blue, and I would respond briskly, Yes, Sir! When I thought he was done, he would suddenly ask me, Have you tried the new cookie called Chic Choc? Which do you like better, Oh, Yes or Chic Choc? he would ask.

Sir! Yes, Sir! Then it happened one day that winter: my dad disappeared.

He really was gone. He had shown no signs of leaving, and I’d had no way of guessing. At first I thought there’d been an accident and searched everywhere for him, but there was no trace of an accident anywhere.

Can you tell us his last known whereabouts?

I was the last one to see Dad so of course I had something to say: I saw him that morning in the subway station.

In the subway station?

Yes, he was on his way to work and I was working there part-time. We ran into each other now and then, and that day as well I helped push him on to the train like I always did.

Was there anything different about him?

Hmm . . . come to think of it, Dad had said, Wait, I’ll take the next one, and stood aside.

He’d never done that before?

No, I don’t think so.

So what did you do?

I just thought he was tired. So I put him on the next train.

He didn’t resist? No, he didn’t seem to.

And that was the last of Dad. He didn’t show up at work, and he didn’t come home. He was, literally, missing. The police tried to comfort me by saying there were a lot of people like him nowadays, but what’s the use of knowing there were lots of people like my dad?

My memory from then on is all mixed up. I got the two months’ pay from Dad’s company that they had been withholding, which wasn’t an easy thing to do, and I prepared all the documents to send Grandma to an old folks’ home, which was also a really complicated and difficult thing to do.

I went back and forth between the police station and the hospital, and went to work as usual, as I had to. Sometimes, when I put my tired body on the subway at dawn, I felt like someone was shoving me into the darkness.

Don’t push. Stop pushing, I said!

66

Park Mingyu

Why is the world full of pushers? Why are there only pushers in this world and no pullers? And why is this train, life, the world, always swaying?

In that way the swaying winter passed, and spring came. That spring was enough to make both the Venusians and Martians jealous. Dad didn’t come home but Mum miraculously recovered consciousness. I cried with joy, not so much because she had recovered but because she wouldn’t have to stay in the hospital anymore.

Well, with as sad a reason as that, who wouldn’t cry?

Now she just needs physical therapy. That’s what the doctor said.

So she just needs physical therapy. Because that’s what the doctor said.

That’s how our family started breathing again. Because even though Dad had disappeared we didn’t have the burden of Grandma, and Mum was earning enough again to pay her own medical bills. If you were watching us from a neighbouring roof, it probably would have looked a lot like a small shoot sprouting out of a lawn. We were alive. It was far from passing through safely, but how great a blessing was it that I could still do similar arithmetic?

Before we disappear, before we disappear, I mean.

How perfect was that spring day? After finishing work, I dozed off on a station bench and fell into a perfect sleep. Then I opened my eyes. I was thirsty. I drank my usual cup of Mirinda and felt the fizzy rays of the spring sun prickle my skin. The sun’s rays, which were naturally No Ice, held that much more warmth.

Aah. I straightened my legs and tilted my head back as if stretching.

The clouds were still drifting and the earth was spinning, and when I straightened my head I spotted a strange face floating near the platform roof on the other side.

No way, it can’t be. A giraffe. It really was a giraffe. The giraffe was smartly dressed in a suit and it was slowly strolling back and forth along the platform. The station wasn’t busy before noon but no matter how few people there were no one was paying any attention; they were acting as if it were no big deal.

I kept a close eye on the giraffe, thinking, Come on, shouldn’t at least one person be alarmed by this?

Bobbing its head, the giraffe walked to a bench near the corner and stopped. Then, it SAT. I have to say, Then, it SAT, because it was such a sweeping, disjointed movement.

67

Is That So? I’m a Giraffe

Oddly enough, at that moment it occurred to me that the giraffe was my dad. I don’t know why, but I was sure of it. I was already running towards him. Before he disappears, before he disappears.

To my relief, the giraffe was sitting completely still. I hesitantly made my way over to it, then carefully and hesitantly sat next to it. Once I was sitting I realized how tall the giraffe was, even when it was sitting. And on the whole it seemed gentle and indifferent. The giraffe didn’t even look my way, but I was crying to myself. Strangely enough, the tears wouldn’t stop coming.

Dad . . . I pulled out the word that was in my heart and placed my hand on the giraffe’s knee. Through my trembling palm, I could feel the texture of the suit that only someone who had pushed it before with his hands would remember. The shadow of the clouds zoomed by. The giraffe didn’t react.

Dad, Dad, it’s you, right? Please tell me what happened.

I shook the giraffe’s knee but in the end gave up on getting a response and talked instead about how the family was. News about Grandma and Mum’s recovery, and how I could learn how to do real estate, and how one of the older guys was trying to get me into the trade, how he said there was an opening.

People say the economy is supposed to get better, Moody’s or whatever upgraded our credit ratings, so things are getting better. So come home. You don’t have to worry anymore.

The shadow of the clouds zoomed past again.

Dad, just tell me one thing, OK? It’s you, right? Just tell me that.

At last, the indifferent but ash-coloured eyes turned to look at me vacantly. The giraffe lay its hoof over my hand and slowly spoke: Is that so? I’m a giraffe.

68

Robert Ricardo Reese

A White Shirt after Wallace Stevens In the thick of the hundred machines stitching the only things pacing faster are the shoes of the white shirt She’s on the double-shift track faster than a locomotive but still there are double the white shirts The white shirt frisks in the restroom stalls my imo is a big party for loss prevention The hands and the pedals are one the hands and the pedals and the white shirts are one She can’t see what hurts more the pain of infection or the pain of intimidation the white shirt hums on and on Steel links chain the main doors with American locks the copper keys of the white shirt ring back and forth the song jingle by the copper keys an indisputable wait Hello the thick pockets of the haves 69

Poetry

have you not heard of five-minute lunches do you know how the white shirt circles with arms of chrome around us She sees private labels colourful indulgent fabrics but she sees too the white shirt tangled in all she sees Whenever the white shirt’s gone pokes and probes at the bottoms of more than a few women In the eyes of the white shirts sweat on silk seams the dresses of Koreans clinging heavily

My imo sits at her workstation in gate-locked warehouse my imo my imo hears the copper keys of the white shirt The handbags outpacing the white shirt must be pushing Night-time again night-time stitching stay stitching the white shirt marches beneath the green exit sign

70

Pyongyang: City of Privilege and Pretence Sue Lloyd-Roberts

O

n the day of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s funeral the BBC asked me in to the news studio to comment on the extraordinary scenes broadcast live from Pyongyang, of distraught and weeping crowds lining the streets as the cortège of the Dear Leader passed through the city. Why, in a country with one of the lowest living standards in the world and where people starve to death, should there be such an outpouring of grief for their unprepossessing and misguided leader?

My immediate reaction was to remark on the strange nature of the city of Pyongyang, which I had visited the year before, in 2010. Pyongyang is the ‘city of the elite’: only those with impeccable, politically correct family pedigrees are allowed to live there. If someone’s grandfather had a quarrel with the Great Leader back in the 1950s, it could take three generations for their family to purge itself of this ‘crime’. It can therefore be assumed that the residents of Pyongyang are loyal to the Kim dynasty, now also running to three generations. In return for enthusiastic support, citizens may have access to private food markets or enjoy the privilege of living in apartments that might benefit from electricity twelve hours a day. I went on to remark that such privileges come with obligations, which include exaggerated displays of grief at state funerals.

Later, on reflection, I wondered if such a display was perhaps more complicated and subtle than I had originally surmised. In 2010, when I was in Seoul, I spoke with North Korean refugees who had come from provincial cities and villages. They said their parents had told them how ‘the light had gone out of their lives’ when the death of Kim Il-sung was announced 71

Pyongyang: City of Privilege and Pretence

in 1994. Twenty-nine-year-old Chun Hei told me she remembered how her mother staggered back from the TV ‘as if she had suffered a mortal blow. My parents really thought the world had come to an end’.

The heir, the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, was not as widely adored. He lacked the charisma and the status his father had cultivated by mythologizing himself as a revolutionary war hero. Nonetheless, both leaders were seen to be godlike. I attended the celebrations of the Great Leader’s birthday that April, when the city came alive with a frenzy of operas, folk dancing, flower festivals and fireworks. I turned to my guide and asked, ‘Why such a fuss for a birthday? Isn’t he dead?’

‘Oh, no,’ she replied, ‘we do not believe he has passed away. He is still with us.’

Kim Il-sung is referred to as North Korea’s eternal president.

Pyongyang is adorned with gargantuan posters, images of the two leaders in poses reminiscent of religious iconography, with the mountains and blue sky behind them and the sun’s rays forming halos around their heads.

People worship the twenty-metre-tall bronze statue of Kim Il-sung by laying flowers at its feet. It is a place of pilgrimage where they go to have their marriages blessed. There are rules of etiquette and behaviour, just as there are for visiting cathedrals in other parts of the world: filming parts of the statue, such as head and shoulders only, is not allowed. It must always be photographed in its entirety, and never from behind.

I was glad I had taken George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as my bedtime reading. It helped me understand the phenomenon of national brainwashing, especially when I looked again at the passages on thought crime and how a climate of perpetual fear can be used to keep people in line.

I also took with me Barbara Demick’s recently published Nothing to Envy, a moving insight into life in the so-called Hermit Kingdom gleaned from North Korean refugees who had fled to the south. The book’s title comes from the nursery rhyme the children of North Korea are required to sing in praise of their country, which they are taught leaves them ‘nothing to envy in the outside world’.

When I arrived in North Korea, my mobile phone was confiscated at the airport and this, coupled with being denied access to the Internet for two 72

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

weeks, made me more sympathetic to addicts who are forced to go cold turkey. In a world where I can check with Wikipedia for the dimensions of Kim Il-sung’s statue or the date of the Dear Leader’s funeral, it is hard for me to comprehend a country that doesn’t allow the majority of its people access to things like Google, which I consider a necessary part of modern life. Even so, the government of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) likes to boast of its advances in information technology.

In an attempt to find something positive to report, I asked to be taken to Pyongyang University’s e-library. As you would expect to find anywhere in the world, there were rows of earnest young students poring over their PCs. I asked a chemistry student: ‘What search engines do you use?’

‘I can’t connect directly to the World Wide Web,’ he replied, and explained that the Dear Leader had arranged it so that all they needed to know about chemistry, and everything else, was put on their Intranet. But ‘everything else’ did not include the name of the president of the United States of America: I met graduates from North Korean universities who had not heard of Nelson Mandela or Barack Obama and who were largely ignorant of the outside world.

It became easier to understand why people were bedazzled by the accomplishments of the Great and Dear Leaders. At the factory making gas turbines and at the museum of agriculture attached to the collective farm, I heard the same story: ‘We had a problem . . . ’ with metal fatigue, or with crop failure, the guides would explain. And on every occasion, the Leaders in their wisdom had come to the rescue with a solution.

‘Your Leaders must be very knowledgeable, to be experts on such different specialities: metallurgy and sunflower oil production,’ I commented, raising my eyebrows.

‘Yes, we are very fortunate,’ was the standard reply.

Official guides in the DPRK do not do irony.

Do they believe the propaganda? My cameraman and I speculated endlessly about our minders, who introduced themselves as ‘Mr Lee’ and ‘Mr Jeon’. We had plenty of opportunities to get to know them over the course of our two-week stay. They slept in the same hotel as we did, in rooms on the same floor as ours but further along the corridor. They accompanied us during every waking hour. They had both been to Europe – Mr Lee to Barcelona and Mr Jeon to Dublin – ‘to improve our language skills’. They 73

Pyongyang: City of Privilege and Pretence

had walked through crowded streets with shops bursting with goods from all over the world and had seen people sitting at Internet cafés where they could write and talk freely.

But Mr Lee and Mr Jeon did not like to talk about freedoms. The official line is that ‘we do things our way’ and they stuck to it. We could only assume they had both made that Faustian pact with the government that allowed them to live in comfort in Pyongyang and, what’s more, enjoy the benefit given to the tiniest minority: overseas travel. No doubt they wept when the Dear Leader passed away. They revealed not an inch of their true feelings about their country, although one of them, in bouts of self-destructive alcoholism every night, confessed that his marriage was breaking up and shared with us the depths of his personal despair.

Does anyone have fun in the DPRK? We learned from those who have escaped that crates of gourmet foods and wines were shipped from France to the Dear Leader’s palace. He obviously ate well while his people starved, but he was rarely seen smiling. The firework display celebrating the Great Leader’s birthday was the only party I went to while I was there. Thousands stood on the banks of the Taedong River and gazed at the elaborate pyrotechnics.

With my minders hovering, I asked some nearby children if they were having fun.

‘Oh, yes,’ one little girl answered breathlessly. ‘The Great Leader is great and we are the happiest people on earth.’ The drama of the lights was enhanced by the night sky’s canvas of darkness: the city is plunged into black every evening because of electricity shortages. After the show, people made their way home through unlit streets and up the unlit stairwells of twenty-storey blocks of flats. They must have cooked their special birthday meat ration earlier in the day.

I began to think about how the nature of happiness is tied to expectation.

The most unsettling visit of all on the carefully prepared itinerary in North Korea was to the kindergarten in Pyongyang, which was a far cry from the one described by the nursery school teacher in Nothing to Envy. Her class, who had so eagerly greeted her on the first day of term, diminished in numbers due to death by starvation in 1990.

As we arrived, children grabbed our hands and dragged us into classroom after classroom to watch carefully prepared tableaux and performances. In 74

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

one, set up as an indoor fairground, a full-size carousel whirled around as delighted students waved at us. In another, set up as a theatre, children with thick make-up and elaborate costumes played musical instruments, danced and sang, their smiles desperately rigid.

It was unnatural, shocking and disturbing. My cameraman and I felt uncomfortable, as if we were being made to witness child abuse but could do nothing about it. Who were these children? For how long had they been made to rehearse for our visit? What would happen to them after we had gone? Would the little girl who slipped during the ballet performance be punished for allowing us to see something less than perfect? We learned that these three- to six-year-olds slept at the school five days a week. Were they children of the elite, groomed for some special purpose? Their faces haunt me.

My surreal trip through the DPRK was filled with propaganda and Potemkin villages. At the collective farm, my reference to the famine of the 1990s and the fact that the World Health Organization says that one third of the people are still undernourished were brushed away as ‘short-term problems which can be solved by our own industry and output’. When the only mechanised bit of farm equipment, a tractor with an EU aid sticker on it, chugged into sight, the driver was instructed to go away quickly.

I was invited in to an ‘ordinary’ farm worker’s house. He was waiting at the door, his chest bristling with medals.

‘Do you wear your medals every day?’ I asked.

As was his wont, Mr Lee refused to translate my question. The dining table inside was groaning with extravagant dishes. The decorated ‘farmer’, the abundance of food and the polished speech thanking the Dear Leader for his generosity and benevolence were so far-fetched and well-rehearsed that they were merely absurd.

‘What about those broken-down old houses we saw on the way here?

Will you take us there?’ I asked.

Both Mr Jeon and Mr Lee turned away, refusing to answer.

It was clear I was not going to get at the truth in the North, so I went to the South, where some two thousand refugees from the North find their way to Seoul every year; as many again probably die in the attempt. To get there, they first go north, crossing the Tumen River on the border with China. The Chinese police are paid by the North Korean authorities to return defectors, 75

Pyongyang: City of Privilege and Pretence

if they are caught. Subsequent imprisonment is the best they can hope for. If they make it through China and across the Mekong River to Thailand, they do so in constant fear of thieves and rapists. If they are lucky enough to slip into a South Korean embassy or consulate, they are flown to the south of the Korean peninsula.

I met one of these refugees, Garam, in downtown Seoul. She had made the journey over a year ago yet her eyes still widened with amazement whenever we passed a food shop or restaurant.

‘You can choose what you want to eat here,’ she told me excitedly.

‘In the North, we only eat meat twice a year on special days, like Kim Ilsung’s birthday. We were told that people in the South were so hungry they’d rummage through rubbish bins and carry old tins with them to collect food.’

She said the journey had been frightening but the thought of being sent back was worse: ‘We carry poison with us when we set out. If we’re caught by the police in China then we’ll be sent back to North Korea, which is like a death sentence for us. There would be no point in going back to certain prison, to live like an animal. That’s why we are fully prepared. If we’re caught, we can take poison to kill ourselves.’

I showed Garam and her fellow refugees the footage we had taken in the North. They did not know whether to laugh or cry. When she saw the piece from the kindergarten, Garam said, ‘Maybe that happens in Pyongyang but in the North, children don’t play. They are thin and malnourished. There are hundreds of homeless street children who live and die in the streets.’

‘It’s all lies,’ said another refugee when she saw bananas on the table in the ‘ordinary’ village house. ‘I never saw bananas back home. We never had enough food. Four of us lived in one tiny room and shared facilities with other families.’

Despite such contrasts, life is not easy for them in the South. Garam is a singer who was in trouble with the authorities in the North when she was found listening to tapes of South Korean music, smuggled in from China.

She had been sent to a gulag as punishment but managed to escape en route.

She is struggling to find work and complains that the South Koreans despise the refugees from the North.

‘They make fun of our accents,’ she says, ‘and they don’t want to give us work.’

76

Sue Lloyd-Roberts

However, the authorities do everything possible to welcome the new arrivals. They are given accommodation for a year in boarding school-type institutions, where they are taught how to cope with freedom, and life in the twenty-first century.

‘They know nothing,’ one government official told me. ‘We have to teach them about money, how to open a bank account, how to use a mobile phone – everything!’

It is supposed to be a fact of life in South Korea that people dream about the eventual unification of the two countries. That is the official line; however, many will readily tell a different story: that they are appalled at the idea of 20 million hungry and ill-educated peasants crossing the border and asking for help. The people of the South suffered and worked hard to transform themselves after the divisive Korean War. They had been dependent largely on agriculture-based industry and also suffered from strict rationing, but within less than twenty years effected an economic miracle that continues to this day.

Such xenophobic sentiments go hand-in-hand with China’s preference for maintaining the status quo vis-a-vis its eccentric neighbour. Unification would increase US influence in the peninsula, and this does not suit China’s geopolitical interests.

At the time of Kim Jong-il’s death on 28 December 2011, the military in South Korea was put on alert and the US Navy repositioned its warships into the area.

‘Nothing will change,’ I commented assuredly in the BBC studio.

Why would the junta, the wicked aunt and the devious brother-in-law, or whoever rules North Korea today, put a chubby, inexperienced twentysomething young man in charge of the country, perpetuating the absurd oxymoron of a communist dynasty, unless they were signalling to the rest of the world that it would be business as usual in the DPRK? A crowd of tens of thousands gathered in Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang to listen to the new leader, Kim Jong-un, as he promised to topple South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and continue the ‘sacred war’ against the South. This sabre rattling was to be expected. Kim Jong-il did exactly the same when he succeeded his father in 1994. It was to reassure his people 77

Pyongyang: City of Privilege and Pretence

that a new, equally tough Kim was in charge and that the rhetoric and the situation would remain the same.

In his address, Kim Jong-un claimed that the latest routine round of South Korean and US military exercises were preparation for an invasion of the North. He promised to ‘sweep out’ the South Korean traitors with guns. Soldiers and citizens responded with raised, clenched fists, chanting, ‘Let’s kill Lee Myung-bak by tearing him to pieces.’ It is the classic tactic, described so chillingly in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, of using the threat of permanent, imminent conflict to keep the people in a perpetual state of fear and hysteria.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the North Koreans negotiated tonnes of US food aid in exchange for an agreement to suspend nuclear missile tests, uranium enrichment and long-range missile launches. International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are being invited back to the country to inspect the nuclear facility in Yongbyon, just as they had been invited five years ago under a similar agreement.

But as far as the unwitting North Korean people are concerned, nothing has changed. They still have nothing to envy.

78

Ko Un translated by Brother Anthony and Lee Sang-wha

Armistice Line Today again the sun is setting.

The tight-lipped ridges and valleys are opening wide their heart-hollows, and the sun is setting along the 155 miles of the Armistice Line.

How I long to shout like a mute, like a . . .

What words could remain at the ice-crusted headwaters of the Imjin River?

What could remain in those Baekma Highlands, in Daesung Mountain, in the rusted helmets below Hyangno Peak?

Fifty years of Armistice Line have passed in a flash at the constricted waist of our land.

They have passed on wings beating quicker than agonized love.

There were days of snowstorm.

At high noons of hatred, not minding who went first they should have laid down their stand-off guns, should have buried them in the thick snow-flurries, should have buried them all in the day-long songs of cuckoos.

79

Poetry

All those years every word was a lie.

All those years the roaming souls of the fallen alone have spoken the truth.

Fifty years of division have passed.

Today again the sun is setting on 155 miles of barbed wire.

For what do I sing now, coughing blood, if some day I should visit here again?

Don’t blame me for singing.

Today again the sun is setting in silence.

Darkness comes without our waiting.

80

Ko Un

Song of White One life dreams of another life.

Late spring white pear blossoms, their hearts throbbing, await the moon.

One life resembles another life.

In the summer night, the field of buckwheat flowers awaits the moon.

One life buries another life.

It’s winter.

The snow that fell heavily yesterday awaits the moon with all its heart.

I throw a stone.

Buried in the snow, it begins another life.

Finally the moon rises.

81

A military guide poses with the child of a tourist at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang.

82

Holiday Tours to the DPRK Simon Cockerell

T

he Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) established its state-owned tourism organization in 1955, initially to welcome visitors from other socialist countries and then a small number of visitors from ‘non-aligned’ states. It wasn’t until 1987 that citizens of Western nations were admitted on tourist visas. The first brave group to venture into this unknown country were Australians; their North Korean guides love to repeat stories about this first group – how one guide mistook the offer of a meal for a suggestion of a suicide pact, for example.

Koryo Tours, where I work as general manager, started organising tours in 1993 and rapidly became the market leader and the only recognized specialist in the field. Since then many other companies – from Europe, the United States, Canada, Singapore and elsewhere – have dipped in and out of this small but fascinating market.

North Korea presently divides tourists into three main groups: Chinese, Malaysians and Europeans. Given that officials choose not to provide accurate numbers for these visitors, estimates are between 30,000 to 50,000 Chinese and between 2,000 and 5,000 Malaysians per year, and in 2011, around 3,000 Europeans, half of them through Koryo Tours.

In the world of North Korean tourism ‘Europe’ encompasses North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania and, of course, Europe. Before 2010 the United States was not considered part of ‘Europe’ and had its own specific restrictions. In a perverse form of means testing, US citizens were charged higher prices than other nationals for the privilege of entering the country. Some niggling restrictions remain: hotels in some towns and cities may not accept American guests and 83

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

Helpful women wait at the information desk at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang.

84

Simon Cockerell

US passport holders are not allowed to travel in or out of the country by train.

In many ways the structures of the DPRK state and society mirror those of the Soviet Union or China; however, there are also lingering elements of Confucianism, such as respect for elders and obeisance to a rigid authoritarian hierarchy. But it would be a mistake to believe that the more than 20 million people who live there are an example of a hive mind; they have their own thoughts, preferences, feelings and characteristics.

They may share the national aims of their monolithic state such as the annihilation of their enemy, the reunification of Korea, the ultimate victory of Korean socialism, the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, a nuclear deterrent and an end to the economic blockade they blame for many of their wellknown problems; but they also hope their lives will improve and that their children will be well educated. They want their parents to be healthy and to lead long lives; they want to marry a pretty woman or a handsome man, to make money and to be entertained.

What do tourists actually see when they visit North Korea?

Are they unwitting dupes dragged around a Potemkin city in a Potemkin country and then out to some Potemkin towns and villages where trained locals and undercover agents pretend they are living in paradise? That’s what many expect. The truth, however, is more complicated. Yes, there are a limited number of places tourists are allowed to go and a much larger number of places where tourists are not allowed; but the former expands every year while the latter gradually diminishes. In the last decade the number of places open to tourists has more than doubled and the disparity in infrastructure between Pyongyang and other parts of the country has become clearly visible. Tour guides will discuss topics their charges expect to be off limits, such as food supplies and national security policy. There are still taboo topics, but there is nevertheless a perceptible and increasing openness in official and general attitudes towards tourism.

Tour companies such as ours create bespoke itineraries: trips to remote areas can be arranged and homestays are possible (in one beachside 85

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

village); tickets to local football matches can be obtained; and festivities and Sunday picnics can be crashed and shared. Such possibilities are in addition to visiting official sites where North Korea’s version of history is set out.

No one can deny that the DPRK is a deeply troubled state, that the clash of wills over this small peninsula is potentially dangerous and that this could affect the future of millions of people. No tourist is expected to join the North Korean national cause or pretend to agree with the ideas and histories they are shown. Tourists learn what is going on as best they can: directly in some ways, by inference in others.

Many tourists develop an abiding interest in the country, and some return year after year. Others have developed impressive reputations 86

Simon Cockerell

A train formerly used on the Berlin underground arrives at Glory Station on the Pyongyang Metro, the deepest underground railway in the world.

for their online travelogues or their Flickr photosets. Some of Koryo Tours’ most worthwhile trips have been with international students who meet, however fleetingly, their counterparts in North Korea. We have also arranged amateur sporting events with and against local teams in football, basketball, volleyball, ice hockey, cricket and even Frisbee.

Tourists go to North Korea with many questions; they return with many more, but also with an increasing number of answers. Though a holiday in North Korea is certainly not for everyone, those who are fascinated by this enigmatic place find it offers its own rewards. A week at a beach resort may be temporarily refreshing but the same amount of time in the DPRK provides an experience that will resonate for a lifetime.

87

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

A public bus in Pyongyang as seen from Mansu Hill in the centre of the city.

88

Simon Cockerell

One of Pyongyang’s iconic traffic ladies directs cars in the city centre; they have been largely replaced by traffic lights in recent years.

Young Pioneers battle the wind in Pyongyang.

89

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

Pyongyang women protect themselves from the sun at the War Victory Monument Park.

90

Simon Cockerell

Military cameramen film crowd reactions at the Arirang Mass Games.

Tae Kwon Do artists sing in front of the national flag after their performance at the Arirang Mass Games.

91

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

Local men watch a tug-of-war contest at the May Day folk festival at Taesongsan Park in Pyongyang.

92

Simon Cockerell

A poster in the city of Kaesong glorifies the four main classes in DPRK society: the military, workers, farmers and intellectuals.

93

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

Above: A future general? Children dressed in military uniform are a common site in the DPRK.

Right: Cadets at the Mangyongdae Central Military Academy pose for a photo with a tourist at Mangyongdae Native House, the birthplace of DPRK founder Kim Il-sung.

94

Simon Cockerell

95

Holiday Tours to the DPRK

The United Nations/Republic of Korea forward base on the demilitarized zone, viewed through binoculars from the North Korean military viewing post.

A soldier sits on a rock at the peak of Mount Baekdu, the highest mountain in Korea and a sacred place to all Koreans.

96

Simon Cockerell

Tourists look across the demilitarized zone from a military post.

View from Jannam Hill over the old city of Kaesong, formerly in South Korea and untouched by the US Air Force’s aerial bombing during the Korean War. Kaesong lies just south of the 38th parallel and was the only city to change sides as a result of the war.

97

Robert Ricardo Reese

The DMZ they want to kill me inasmuch as curiosity kills me long warding border razors on the fence but they just watch outside till I see them out or they just watch till I leave them everyone who faces the fence each and every morning they stare each and every morning and if shots pop off the tennis shoes may have to break out there is no return never running faster than in the live fire the smoking barrel the tracer light there is nothing they want to see more nothing they want to show me more than the wasteland that widows their home at the waist me the south they never live on but will die for me messenger mediator on the fence

98

My Experiences in the Korean War Liu Jiaju translated by Martin Merz ‘My Experiences in the Korean War’ was first published in Chinese several years ago in the now privately distributed magazine Wangshi. Liu’s memoirs stirred up a huge controversy on the sixtieth anniversary of the Korean War in 2010 after they were widely posted on the Internet.

The following passages are excerpted from the ‘The Hunger Chapter’.

Introduction lived through the fifth campaign of the Korean War. It lasted for fifty days, from 22 April to 10 June in 1951. During that time we were only issued marching rations once, which meant that for thirty-six days we were short of food. How did we survive? Some say it was the awesome power of the Chinese army’s political indoctrination. I say that people on the brink of starvation have the instinct to survive.

I

The porters I was a teacher, but on the battlefield I was assigned to manage the porters attached to Mr Lu’s mobile pharmacy because I couldn’t shoot a gun and I didn’t know how to dress a wound. Ten porters balanced two crates each at the end of poles – those twenty crates contained pharmaceuticals, medical instruments and rolls of gauze for dressings. Mr Lu was responsible 99

My Experiences in the Korean War

for keeping the medicines and instruments ready for whenever they were needed. I was put in charge of burying the dead. All the wounded who died in the field hospital were buried by porters under my supervision.

The porters were soldiers who had received light sentences from the military courts. Some were recaptured deserters, some had caused injuries when they accidentally discharged their guns and some were rapists. They were all assigned to hard labour in lieu of incarceration. The political instructor and Mr Lu warned me that these liberated soldiers – former Nationalist soldiers captured during the civil war – had committed crimes but had not yet undergone ideological reform. I was to be constantly vigilant, they said, against breaches of discipline among the porters.

Two deserters Late one night, we saw sparks up ahead. In the starlight we could make out the indistinct outline of a village. Our small detachment stopped by the roadside and the staff officer dispatched a few soldiers to search the village for stragglers. The soldiers soon returned. After briefly questioning them, the staff officer led us into the village. A light flickered from the window of a farmhouse. The staff officer pushed the door open. A stove in a pit below the floor was alight. Two soldiers, with their rifles cast aside, were roasting corn on a brazier.

‘What unit are you from?’ demanded the staff officer.

‘Second company, third battalion,’ said the tall soldier, raising his head as he put down the poker in his hand.

‘Why aren’t you looking for your battalion?’

‘We’re too hungry to walk. We’ll head off at first light.’

‘You’re coming with us now!’

‘We haven’t slept in ten days,’ said the skinny soldier languidly. ‘We’ll leave after catching up on some sleep.’

‘The enemy will be here soon. You must leave immediately!’

‘We’re not rookies. Don’t think you can scare us so easily.’

‘Are you coming or not?’

‘What are you going to do about it? No one pushed us around when we fought with the Nationalists,’ snapped the tall soldier confidently.

He then pulled his rifle closer to him from where it had been discarded, as if to assert his right to decide for himself.

100

Liu Jiaju

I could tell they were veteran liberated soldiers; their battlefield experience made them very bold.

‘Are you leaving now or not?’

‘We’ll decide when we leave,’ said the skinny soldier. ‘No need for you to waste wax holding up a candle for the blind.’

‘You want to end up POWs?’ The staff officer was furious.

‘If it happens, it happens,’ said the tall soldier. ‘It’ll be our second liberation.’

The staff officer slammed the door loudly as he stormed out. Walking down the steps from the entrance he waved his hand and gave the order: ‘Let’s go!’ When we got outside the compound, he glanced back and yelled, ‘Third squad leader!’ A thick-set soldier came forward. ‘Take Li with you and deal with them immediately,’ he ordered. The staff officer then turned and led us out of the village. Once on the road we heard some yelling from the compound we’d just been in, and then two shots. That made my flesh creep. I felt a rock weigh down heavily on my heart.

The Korean guide The two of us thanked the Korean guide and were about to head off when the staff officer said to the third squad leader, ‘Take the guide somewhere quiet and get rid of him.’

I was numb with shock when I heard this.

Mr Lu rushed over to beg for leniency: ‘Please let him go! He led us out.’

‘If you let him go, do you think the enemy will let you go when they catch up with us? It’s not just the two of us here – I’ve got to consider the safety of more than a thousand people,’ he bellowed in reply. ‘Take him away,’ he abruptly ordered the squad leader.

When the squad leader started unceremoniously to manhandle him, the Korean realised something was up and began to shout. With a lot of pushing and shoving the squad leader got the Korean over to the side of a nearby ditch. I couldn’t watch . . . but I heard the shot as if it were passing through my own heart. My whole body shuddered.

Survival on the battlefield Just after sunrise we got the order to put on our air-defence camouflage.

I tied some leafy twigs together and fashioned them into what looked like 101

My Experiences in the Korean War

the large bamboo hat worn by peasants. Then the enemy planes appeared – four oil porters (the US F-86 Sabre fighter jet has two fuel tanks under the wings so we called them oil porters) found their objective and flew straight at the platoon marching in front of us. The jets went into a dive, strafing the area and even dropping a few bombs. Several soldiers fell but most scattered in chaos.

By the time we arrived at the site of the attack the wounded had already been carted away, leaving just two dead bodies. They were covered in blood and someone had stolen their socks. Their chests were wide open and shiny white intestines flopped out of their ruptured abdominal cavities, revealing occasional clumps of half digested grass oozing from fissures. The females in our group covered their mouths and walked past quickly.

When the porters reached the corpses the team leader set down his load and squatted to get a closer look. He pushed the intestines aside and shoved his hand right up into the man’s chest cavity and rummaged about for a while. When he pulled it out, his whole arm was dripping with blood. He shook his arm vigorously a few times, then spoke to me.

‘The heart and liver are gone. The others must’ve taken ’em.’

‘What’s that all about?’

‘Dead-soldier flesh don’t taste good,’ he explained. ‘But human hearts and livers are much tastier than pigs’ or goats’.’

‘You’ve eaten them?’

‘Yes. When there’s nothing else to eat on the battlefield you eat what you find on dead people. You’ll eat anything, especially treats like hearts and livers.’

This old soldier, originally from the Nationalist side, had his own law of survival.

As a child I often went to the execution ground to watch criminals being dispatched. People jostled to get a bit of human blood as a talisman to exorcise evil spirits from their homes. I did it once. The executioner had just chopped off the head of an opium dealer and we kids rushed up to dip some rough paper or a copper coin into the fresh blood to stick on our headboards at home. But, even so, the head porter telling me about eating human organs really made me shudder. Truly, war forces people to revert to the level of animals.

7 102

Liu Jiaju

The mule I was in a daze when someone nudged me from behind. ‘The jets killed a mule up ahead. Hurry up, maybe we can get something to eat.’

As soon as I had taken in in the good news I staggered forward with Mr Lu. On the side of the road an unruly mob of thirty or forty people swarmed around the mule’s carcass. They were bickering and fighting and Mr Lu and I could not squeeze our way in. I walked around looking for an opening.

‘Look, a leg,’ said the keen-eyed Mr Lu. I turned my attention to where he was pointing and saw a mule’s hoof protruding from between a soldier’s legs. Mr Lu grabbed the hoof and pulled and tugged with all his might but was unable to pull it away. I pushed my head against the soldier’s backside and helped Mr Lu pull on the hoof for a while, still without success.

Suddenly two large hands joined the affray from behind me. They twisted and turned the hoof and after a forceful tug pulled the mule’s leg out. I turned and saw it was the head porter. Mr Lu grabbed the mule’s leg and, holding it close to his body, began to run. Several soldiers who had not been able to get into the throng saw their opportunity and began to chase Mr Lu. He left the road and stopped beside a small stream. By the time we arrived he had tossed a shiny white bone to the ground. There was hardly any meat left and the pursuing soldiers departed in disappointment.

Retreat We were a defeated army and dead on our feet from exhaustion, yet we still went on a forced march for two days and nights to the Bukhan River (the North Han River). American bombers had destroyed the bridge and our engineering corps were making emergency repairs. Most of the troops were stuck on the southern bank. We were on a single-track road with steep precipices on one side and sheer cliffs down to the water on the other.

Misfortunes don’t come singly. American rapid deployment forces occupied our rear base in Hwacheon County (South Korea) and the camp hospital had been decimated, making war trophies of the 4,600 injured soldiers and 300 medical staff. It was some thirty kilometres from Hwacheon to the bridge just ahead of our position. The enemy tanks outflanked us and cut off our retreat. We had to send an entire battalion to block their progress.

103

My Experiences in the Korean War

Our hospital caravan was stuck in the middle of a serpentine column of soldiers. I could see neither the head in front, nor the tail behind us.

Shells exploding near the bank sent shrapnel flying over our heads.

Bombs detonating in the river whipped up columns of water, and people struggled to the opposite bank oblivious to everything except survival.

Very quickly, the Bakhan River took on the appearance of a pot full of dumplings on the boil, with thousands of people struggling and jostling in the water.

As we forded the river several women who could not swim stood wailing on the riverbank.

‘Put down your poles and carry them across,’ shouted the head porter. He led the way by carrying Miss Feng, who was crying the loudest and flailing her arms as he staggered across to the middle of the river. The porters then followed suit, crossing back and forth at least three times until they had carried everyone who needed assistance over to the other side.

Missing porter The hospital had finally broken through the blockade and everyone had reached the northern bank safely. Because the hospital director wanted to continue our escape from the encirclement, we had to set off again immediately. The main group departed first. Mr Lu and I waited for the porters to retrieve the supplies they had left on the south bank while they had been ferrying people across the river.

When they returned I did a headcount and realised the head porter was missing.

‘Where’s your leader?’ I asked.

‘He gave me his load and said he’s not coming,’ replied a tearful porter who was carrying two loads.

Little Li told me the head porter had instructed that the bag half full of gauze in his case was for me.

‘Why didn’t he come back across?’ I asked. ‘What else did he say?’

‘When we went back to get the cases he said to me: “You all have wives and children and you have to think of your families. Just go through the ideological reform obediently and return home alive. I don’t have anyone.

I’m leaving . . . ”. ’ We returned to the rear to rest and regroup.

104

Liu Jiaju

At the summing-up the political instructor said: ‘In this campaign, the field hospital faced enemy shelling and endured the torments of hunger. We treated and transferred 3,700 casualties. Seventeen of your comrades made the ultimate sacrifice while protecting the motherland on the battlefield.

There were also instances of defection to the enemy . . .’ The authorities decided that the head porter was a defector but, to my mind, he was just a soldier who had not crossed the river.

105

Min K. Kang

Star Clusters Grandfather always had a soft spot for sweets.

His first memory of chocolate: the way the molten cocoa wax from Yangkee soldiers coated his friends’ teeth into toothless smiles.

When he had any, he’d chew the bubblegum even after the sugar had been worked out of the rubber. He pressed a mound of hardened pink onto a wall so his brothers wouldn’t steal it by morning.

After the war he sold bags of beige, pillow-shaped biscuits on the black market, but not until he’d cut open the bag, plucked out a plastic packet of sugar in star clusters. He’d let them disappear on his tongue as he taped the bag back good as new.

He carries a yellow bag full of peanut M&Ms – colourful shells click together as he shares handfuls with his grandchildren. Some enjoy them there and then.

Others throw away the sweet pebbles on their walk home.

106

The Korean Soldier Jeon Sung Tae translated by Jae Won Chung

T

he flat looked neat and tidy. It had a living room that doubled as a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom, complete with a tub long enough to stretch out in.

When Bat and his wife had first opened the door to the flat, the afternoon sun had blinded them as it poured through the white curtains draped across the south window. The curtains filtered the light and spread it like fine golden powder across the floor. Below the window was a steam heater, which left the room’s air comfortably warm but smelling faintly of heated metal. The room was furnished around the edges with a khaki-coloured sofa bed, a TV and an old glass table with a phone on top of it. The style was a little severe, making the place feel as if it were somebody’s office, but Changdae thought it would do just fine.

‘The flat is in typical Russian style,’ Dolma said as she pulled the curtains aside. Dolma was Bat’s wife. Her words touched Chang-dae, evoking something not unlike nostalgia. ‘Russian style’ meant northern style, and he had never been this far north his entire life. He would have to think of a name for this room. The Siberian Room. That would do. This was far south of Siberia.

The land wasn’t even part of Russia but he felt, all of sudden, a sense of being close to the very origin of things.

They were on the eighth floor, and he could look down from here at the sea of grey exhaust that seemed to overwhelm the city in an impervious haze.

‘It’s an amazing view,’ he said.

Dolma’s face lit up. She must have been worrying that this professor from Korea wouldn’t like the flat, which belonged to her younger sister.

107

The Korean Soldier

Bat went back and forth between the bathroom and the kitchen and turned on the taps. The water gushed out. Bat was like an estate agent, hurrying things along. He pointed out the refrigerator designed for one person, an electric hob and an oven big enough for a small lamb. Cheap forks and plates produced in China were stacked up neatly.

When Chang-dae found spoons and chopsticks among the kitchen utensils he said, far too loudly, ‘It’s perfect!’

He would not have reacted this way if he had been in Korea; instead, he would have suppressed all emotion until the contract was finalized. With his arms folded fastidiously in front of him, he would have walked around with great caution, prepared to find the tiniest flaw. But Bat and Dolma were locals who were helping him out. They’d come to greet him at the airport, made reservations for him at a hotel and had even taken him there. From this point on they would continue to be his guardians by helping Changdae adapt to this new place.

Bat’s confidence seemed to grow as he guided Chang-dae to the bathroom. The large tub cramped the space and there was barely enough room for a toilet, especially one like this, with a bowl that seemed very wide. Not so wide that he would fall in, but wide enough that it looked as if it would be painful to sit on. It was too bad, for this was where he normally enjoyed reading magazines or the papers. He would get used to it soon enough. That’s why there was all that flesh back there: to get used to situations like this. He could read The World of Silence here. The Secret History of the Mongols would be good, too. When he came to Mongolia he’d brought books that were very thick or books that put him to sleep after a few pages – books, in other words, that in Korea had piled like overdue homework on one side of his desk. Among them were The Lotus Sutra and the Bible. He’d cracked open those sacred books but had never properly read them from beginning to end.

He pressed the flush and the water swirled in a surprisingly strong vortex before draining away. When he came out of the bathroom shrugging his shoulders, Bat told him: ‘This is the tenth district but the centre of the city isn’t that far away.’

They walked towards the sofa bed.

‘If you take a taxi, a dollar will be more than enough to get you there. Plus, it’s hard to find a flat near the centre. Especially for a three-month lease.’

108

Jeon Sung Tae

Bat appeared to be pressing for a decision. Chang-dae sat down on the sofa bed and said, ‘Let’s draw up a lease.’

Afterwards the three of them, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, went down in the lift to bring up his bags. Among them were sacks of groceries Dolma had picked up early in the morning: kimchi, bottled water, a loaf of bread, some sliced ham and fresh fruit. Dolma disappeared, saying she would get the extra set of keys while the men took care of the rental agreement.

‘Dolma’s older brother lives upstairs.’ Bat raised his eyes to the floors above.

‘It’s good for brothers and sisters to live close to each other,’ Chang-dae answered as he handed over three months’ rent.

Bat took the money and placed it on the glass table without even checking the amount. He handed his keys to Chang-dae, as if the transaction were complete. He smiled and said: ‘I don’t think there’s a need for anything like a lease between us, do you?’

For a second, Chang-dae looked at the foreigner sitting across from him as if for the first time. He had the sudden impression that he was sitting in some estate agent’s office in Korea. Bat’s words had come out so nonchalantly. They had sounded so urbane and slick, as if he had picked up nothing but dirty tricks while he’d been in Korea. Chang-dae felt uneasy but also that he had no choice but to nod in assent. He couldn’t help feeling as if he were missing something; it was true that he was only renting the flat for three months, but it seemed not quite right to wrap up the transaction without a lease.

Dolma returned and handed the keys to Bat, who’d signalled that he’d given his own set to Chang-dae. ‘There’s another set,’ she said, ‘but we’ll hold on to that one in case of an emergency.’ She slipped the envelope containing the rent into her handbag.

Chang-dae had thought the process would be more complicated, but it was over in a heartbeat.

Bat explained a few details about the flat that required Chang-dae’s attention: ‘You can leave the rubbish outside the door on the first floor. The utilities bill arrives at the end of each month but we’ll stop by and take care of that ourselves. Let’s see, is there anything else?’

109

The Korean Soldier

He looked around to jog his memory, and his wife pointed to the bathroom. ‘Oh, right. Don’t let the water spill over onto the floor, because if you do it’ll leak through to downstairs.

‘Oh, and another thing!’ Bat said, as though he’d almost forgotten something crucial. ‘You must carry your keys with you at all times, because the door locks automatically.’

He went out the front door and shut it behind himself to show Changdae what would happen: a round locking mechanism turned automatically, making a click. You could hear the sound of someone turning the knob outside, but the door wouldn’t budge. The entrance actually had two doors, back-to-back: connected to the steel door was also a wooden one.

‘It looks more secure than a prison.’ Chang-dae smiled at Dolma to assure her that he was satisfied.

Dolma nodded. ‘It should be enough to just lock the outside door.’

He had a mischievous thought: he wouldn’t open the door for Bat. How would this man react if his wife and some strange man deliberately kept him locked out? But then he hurried to release the locking mechanism, as though someone would find out about his idle fancy.

Bat came inside. ‘Don’t open the door for anybody you don’t know. Even if the person speaks Korean. If you want to talk you can do it while standing here, inside.’ He took one step closer to the threshold.

Chang-dae kept nodding; it was something he often told his young daughter.

‘I’m just saying this as a precaution,’ Dolma began. She had been studying him attentively. ‘Mongolia’s going through a period of transition, as you know. Things are chaotic. It’s only been about ten years since it changed to a market economy.’

‘There are thieves and muggers in Korea, too,’ Chang-dae answered knowingly. ‘There are people like that no matter where you go in the world.’

Standing there by the doorway, the three of them nodded, smiling ruefully.

Chang-dae was growing a little resentful. The last piece of advice had been given out of kindness and goodwill, but to a traveller, especially a foreign one, it could plant preconceptions. From that moment on, the traveller would always be on guard, watching his bags anxiously, worried about his surroundings. He might limit where he went and miss out on all there was to be experienced.

It was best not to say such things to a traveller. Even if the place were a little 110

Jeon Sung Tae

dangerous, wasn’t it better to leave the visitor alone to experience it for himself ? Chang-dae tried to forget this warning. He would erase it from his mind the moment these people shut the door behind them and disappeared.

The first thing he’d smelled when he’d stepped off the plane last night was the stink of cooked lamb. It had bothered him, much as the smell of garlic was said to bother visitors to Korea. And though the smell of lamb faded quickly, he found it hard to put up with the dry air. His nose and lips felt dry and his throat was parched. He’d soaked four towels in the sink and laid them out by his bedside. But even when he woke up in the morning his throat was swollen, his voice hoarse. The towels had stiffened like dried fish overnight. It made sense: a few hours’ drive from this city took you to the Gobi Desert. He reached for his notebook and jotted down ‘humidifier’.

He realized during the first few days of his stay that the flat was noisy; there was a lot of construction nearby but he hadn’t thought anything of it when he’d seen it on the day he’d come to look at the place. With all the different kinds of machinery and the shouting of the workers that went on from morning to midnight, it was hard to concentrate on a single line from his book. A dozen or so Mongolian soldiers had been dispatched to work at the parking-garage site behind his block of flats, and Chang-dae sensed that one of the higher-ups was using the military for his own private purposes.

Since the weather was becoming colder, they seemed to be on a tight schedule, which forced them to use the headlights of military trucks when they worked after darkness fell. He didn’t like the feeling of the workers’ gaze on him each time he went in and out of the building, and the area around the block of flats was so busy with construction that it reminded Chang-dae of his childhood in Seoul during the 1970s.

He went sightseeing around the city using his tourist map of Ulaanbaatar, and resolved to learn how ordinary Mongolians went about their daily lives.

Back in the flat, he spread open the map to search for the biggest market.

There it was: The Narantuul Market. It was located on the right-hand edge of the map. He’d once read that markets like these sold Russian-made binoculars cheaply.

Before he went out he placed his passport in a kitchen drawer. It was risky to carry it around a marketplace teeming with people. He made sure 111

The Korean Soldier

to put the keys in his pocket. Checking to make sure he had the key on him at all times had become a harrowing obsession. Even after walking outside the door with the key, he would check his pockets again before he closed the door behind him. He’d become a slave to the keys. When he was in his twenties, he’d lost his keys on more than one occasion and had to call the locksmith, a service that had cost him dearly. When he was newly married, it was a great relief to know that he no longer had to worry about losing his keys. He’d joked to his single friends that they should just get married if they ever wanted to be free from the tyranny of keys.

He stopped himself in the middle of putting his wallet in his pocket.

Instead, he removed enough money for a pair of binoculars and put the wallet containing his two credit cards on top of the passport in the drawer.

He was about to take off his watch when he found himself shaking his head.

Without knowing why, he became annoyed with his behaviour.

The Narantuul deserved its reputation for being the biggest market of its kind. It was enormous in scale and teeming with shoppers. No matter which store you entered, it was hard even to stand in place without being pushed along by waves of people. There were shops selling antiques from India, China and the Middle East; and shops selling a dozen different kinds of dairy products from horses, camels, sheep or cows; shops that sold clothing fashioned out of fur and leather; still others selling handmade rugs or mobile phones or satellite antennae, or tack and various other equestrian gear, or home-brewed koumiss and vodka or, to top all that, snakes and scorpions bottled in liquor. Everything under the sun was for sale.

After wandering around for an hour or so, Chang-dae finally found a store with a huge display of used Russian-made binoculars, the kind he had read about on the Internet. He picked out a pair tiny enough to fit in the palm of his hand. The clerk was asking for twenty dollars but he haggled down to eighteen. He didn’t care about the money, it was just that he didn’t want to miss out on the experience of negotiating a better price.

He was pleased with himself for finding such a good place to shop. He would come back often. He put the binoculars in his overcoat pocket and left, quickly caught in the wave of the crowd.

It happened as he arrived at a display board just on the corner where the alley turned. He got tangled up with the people who were coming from the 112

Jeon Sung Tae

opposite direction and when he found himself about to collide with two well-built men he shouted, ‘Sorry!’ and twisted his body to step around them. One of the men threw himself against Chang-dae. Had he moved at the same time? Chang-dae twisted his body the other way but then realized what was happening: the men had put themselves intentionally in his way.

He could feel fingers groping around in his back trouser pocket while the men standing in front of him thrust their hands into his coat pockets.

There was a stir of people around him but nobody intervened. He stood there like a criminal being patted down and with his mouth agape. One of the men in front stared at him coolly and spat out something that stuck to Chang-dae’s face, and which then became mixed up with his own saliva. He wiped it off with the back of his hand and checked to see what it was: the skin off those pine nut seeds the Mongolians often chewed between meals.

Casually, the men disappeared into the crowd. He stood in a daze in the middle of the alley. He couldn’t tell exactly how many people had been in on it. Everyone around him looked like a conspirator.

‘You can’t be walking around alone at night. The back roads and alleys are dangerous even during the day.’ Bat brewed some coffee and brought it over.

Chang-dae was being treated to coffee in his own house. ‘My wife and I leave for Russia tomorrow. While we’re away, it might be best for you to stay in as much as possible.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘We should be back in ten days.’

Chang-dae let out a sigh of relief.

‘As long as you stay in the flat there should be nothing to worry about.’

Just as Bat had suggested, Chang-dae refrained from going out, apart from trips to the nearby supermarket for necessary supplies. At this point he wasn’t at all tempted by curiosity. Actually, there didn’t seem to be anything he wanted to see or experience any more. With the entrance doors locked, he endured the noise from the construction sites and wrote a poem for the first time in ten years.

Occasionally, there would be a knock on the door. He would look through the peephole to see some man or woman he didn’t recognize, and he wouldn’t open the door for them. Eventually they would go away.

113

The Korean Soldier

One night someone else knocked on the door. It was a man with a hat pulled low over his brow. Chang-dae held his breath and stood close to the door. The man kept banging like a drunkard trying to get into his own house. Before long, Chang-dae could hear him humming, which came to a halt with the sound of a hiccup. Next, the man kicked the door.

It had to be a drunkard who’d come to the wrong house. If he were that drunk, he probably wasn’t going to go away anytime soon. Changdae opened the door so he could send the man away. He held on to the doorknob and blocked the gap to prevent the man from coming in. The man seemed embarrassed when he saw Chang-dae’s face. The strong smell of alcohol wafted over to Chang-dae, who smiled to show that the man had mistakenly come to the wrong flat.

Chang-dae had probably mumbled something because the man said: ‘An-nyeong-ha-se-yo,’ which means hello, in Korean. It popped out of the man’s mouth unexpectedly. He seemed to want to say something else but threw up his hands as though the alcohol had scrambled his mind. He said a few more things in Mongolian but Chang-dae had no way of understanding, and must have looked frustrated, too.

The man threw up his hands again as if to say, ‘Just forget about it!’ His middle finger was cut short at the first joint.

Bat didn’t return even after ten days had passed. He didn’t answer his mobile or his home or office phone. Chang-dae reassured himself that no trouble would come to him as long as he stayed in. This was what he told himself every time he set down the receiver.

He made himself some soybean stew, thinking it would help change his mood. The small flat was soon filled with the pungent smell of the broth.

Get a whiff of this! he thought, opening the kitchen window. Dust and cold air blew fiercely inside. He closed the window and opened the living-room window instead. He turned on his laptop and used it to play some Bach. He dined slowly, as if he were savouring a lavish feast. The meal washed away the cloying odour of lamb that had enveloped and invaded his body since he had arrived.

Someone knocked on the door while he was washing up. He looked through the peephole and became nervous at the sight of a man in a leather jacket. The man hadn’t just knocked on the door of Chang-dae’s flat but 114

Jeon Sung Tae

was walking around knocking on other doors, too. The guy was holding a clipboard.

Chang-dae opened the door and stepped out half way to peer around.

The young man had a black bag with him and his short hair had been made to stand straight up with some kind of hair gel. In fact, his general appearance looked too well-groomed to inspire Chang-dae’s confidence. Seeing that a foreigner was staying in the flat, the young man pointed his finger at an electric meter installed further down the corridor. The meter housing had two locks on it to prevent people from siphoning off electricity. He must be a meter reader and he must be telling Chang-dae over and over in Mongolian to open the housing. But Chang-dae didn’t have the keys. The two keys he’d received from Bat were for the front entrance.

He asked the man if he could speak English. The man nodded and said he could speak it a little. Chang-dae explained that he didn’t have the key.

The meter reader took out a large set of keys from the black bag. So what he needed wasn’t the keys after all. Chang-dae asked how he could help.

The man said Chang-dae would have to confirm the reading but Chang-dae didn’t want to step outside the flat. He was barefoot, wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. He said he would trust the meter man to take the correct reading and asked him to just check it and go. The meter man looked as though he didn’t know what to do; either he hadn’t understood Chang-dae or he wasn’t allowed to do what Chang-dae had asked.

‘All right, all right,’ Chang-dae said. He put on a pair of slippers and went outside. He wouldn’t let his guard down. But the moment he shut the door he realized what an awful thing had just happened. The meter man let out a cry almost at the same time.

‘The keys!’

This turn of events was completely unexpected. Chang-dae took a few deep breaths to regain his composure.

‘Can you call a locksmith for me?’ he asked, but the meter man shook his head. He said there were no locksmiths in Mongolia. Upon hearing those words, Chang-dae could feel what composure he’d fought to keep begin to fall apart.

‘Do you think maybe there’s some other way?’ Chang-dae asked. The meter man shook his head and let out a weak laugh. Rage rose up in Chang-dae.

He tried hard to stay calm. It was useless trying to figure out who was really 115

The Korean Soldier

at fault. Perhaps a solution would come just as unexpectedly as the catastrophe had arisen. His mind began to work: Chang-dae remembered that Dolma had an extra set but she and Bat hadn’t returned from Russia yet. It couldn’t be that they would go abroad and take the keys with them. They had to be in the house. He clapped his hands together. But he became despondent again. The notebook with their home phone number was on the table inside. And his notebook was sitting right next to the keys. Besides, there’d be no point ringing their house when nobody was there.

Still, he was definitely on to something. He now remembered that Dolma’s older brother lived upstairs. Maybe the brother had a key to Bat’s house. Even if there were no key, he might know how to get in touch with them in Russia. It was a twelve-storey block so he would only have to ask around briefly before he’d find where the brother lived. He started following the meter man as he went floor to floor, knocking on each door, completely indifferent to the fact that Chang-dae was trailing him.

Chang-dae felt like a soldier all by himself in enemy territory.

When they reached the tenth floor, Chang-dae fell in line with the meter man and knocked on the doors. Only one person in three answered. A man in his underwear poked his head out, looking as if he had just woken up.

Chang-dae moved in front of the meter man and asked if he knew Bat or Dolma. Even if the man didn’t speak English he would at least recognize the names. But the man just blinked his bleary eyes.

There was nobody home on the eleventh floor either. And though the meter man understood Chang-dae’s situation perfectly, he wasn’t about to put his own work on hold. He went about his routine thoroughly, and Chang-dae could feel his hope fading. He might have to continue going up and down the stairs with hardly any clothes on. He would have to knock on people’s doors late into the night as they returned home from work. And now the skin on his forearms was breaking out in goose bumps. The ends of his toes were freezing.

He ascended to the final floor, praying silently.

When nobody answered, his shoulders drooped in defeat. At that moment, the lift bell rang and a woman came out. This time, the meter man took it upon himself to explain. He pointed to the meter box and gesticulated how the door had shut. At this point, for the first time, Changdae began to like the young man. The woman stood in front of her door 116

Jeon Sung Tae

in the middle of the corridor and looked at him pityingly. The young man turned to Chang-dae after his lengthy explanation.

‘What are the names of their relatives?’

‘Bat and Dolma.’

Chang-dae studied the woman’s face as she answered. Her expression changed immediately.

The meter man laughed. ‘She said the man you’re looking for is her husband.’

Maybe his life would be spared after all. Chang-dae bent at the waist to bow and greet her.

She removed her mobile phone from her bag and rang someone. She rang off and told Chang-dae that she’d spoken to her husband, who’d said he didn’t have the key to his sister’s house, and neither did he have their phone number in Russia.

Chang-dae sighed and sank into a low crouch on the floor. The woman seemed to feel sorry for him as she went over to the meter box. It was obvious now that there was no way he’d be able to get back into the flat. If he didn’t break down the front door, he might end up freezing to death in this tundra. How was it possible that something as insignificant as a little metal key might drive him into the maw of death?

The hall window was practically shrieking as the wind blew in from outside. Chang-dae wrapped his arms around his knees. The meter man, having completed his work, thrust his pack of cigarettes towards Changdae. He helped himself to a cigarette and put it in his mouth. The man lit Chang-dae’s cigarette and sat down next to him.

‘What country are you from?’

‘Korea.’

‘It’s really cold today.’ He patted Chang-dae on the shoulder and stood up.

Chang-dae looked up with glistening eyes at the man, who was preparing to leave. He probably had many more meter boxes to inspect. Chang-dae couldn’t think of a single reason that would persuade him to stick around. Only then did Chang-dae realize that having the man around had been a real consolation.

The young man pressed the lift button. The hall window moaned again as it rattled against the frame.

‘Hey, listen!’ Chang-dae shot up to his feet. His face flushed with newfound vigour. ‘I’ll go through the window!’

117

The Korean Soldier

The man looked at Chang-dae blankly. The lift arrived and Chang-dae went in with him. At the ground floor he took the meter man with him to the courtyard. The sharp wind tore at his flesh.

Chang-dae pointed to his window. It was high up but it was the only one wide open. It was easy to spot.

‘I opened it a while ago.’

The meter man seemed to understand.

‘Help me get a rope.’

‘A rope?’ The man looked Chang-dae up and down. ‘You’re going to climb up there yourself ?’

Chang-dae nodded his head. He was grim with courage.

‘It’s dangerous. It’s over thirty metres.’

‘Not a problem. I was a soldier for three years.’

‘You’re a Korean soldier?’ The meter man looked at him in surprise.

Chang-dae nodded.

The man was mistaken in believing that Chang-dae was still a soldier, but that wasn’t important. If the man understood the situation and helped Chang-dae prepare, that was all that would matter.

The meter man made a tight fist and raised it high. ‘Let’s go, Korean soldier!’ he said, and then led him to the manager’s office.

An old woman with yellowed teeth came out. The meter man explained at length. Chang-dae stood off to the side, wiggling his toes in agony. There was an incredulous look in the old woman’s eyes but soon she appeared to soften.

She guided them to a storage room by the first-floor garage. The place had the appearance of a machine room, with its network of intertwining pipes. They found an iron ladder but no rope, and nothing that could be used instead. The old woman then took them to the office of the adjacent block of flats. A young woman appeared and the meter man repeated his long story. Chang-dae felt increasingly frustrated and wished he could speak Mongolian so that he could explain everything himself.

They didn’t seem to have any rope either.

Chang-dae told the meter man: ‘Let’s go to the construction site where the Mongolian soldiers work.’

The two women followed them.

A dozen or so soldiers stopped what they were doing and looked at the 118

Jeon Sung Tae

four of them. After the story had been told yet again, the soldiers let out a collective cheer. The officer went to the truck and unloaded a spool of electric cable. His expression made it clear that this was the best they could do. The cable had a black coating and was about as thick as a little finger.

‘Won’t it be too slippery?’ the meter man asked Chang-dae, running the cable between his thumb and fingers.

‘It’s not a problem. This should do.’

Chang-dae was already coiling the electric cable into a loop around his shoulders. As he did this he began to grow afraid. He’d been so focused on acquiring a rope that he hadn’t had the chance to consider how dangerous and reckless it would be to attempt this. If something went wrong he might even die. Was there another way?

The officer thrust his hand forward and Chang-dae, bewildered, offered his own, which the officer shook vigorously. Then, to Chang-dae’s surprise, he yelled in awkward English: ‘We’re your friends, Korean soldier!’

His enormous hand gave Chang-dae’s another vigorous shake.

The meter man, the old female superintendent, the young woman, Chang-dae and the officer now headed towards the twelfth floor. Dolma’s sister-in-law looked a little confused but welcomed everyone inside.

Chang-dae went straight to the bathroom where he filled the tub with hot water and sat on the edge, warming his hands and feet. Once he’d come into contact with the water, he realized he needed to pee. He waddled over to the toilet. Even if they were all anxiously waiting for him, he wanted to prepare himself mentally at his own pace. His body wasn’t wholly defrosted yet, so he loosened up by twisting his waist and stretching his neck back and forth.

There were worried murmurs coming from outside.

When Chang-dae emerged, the woman who lived there bowed to him quite unexpectedly.

‘She says her husband spent three years in Korea,’ the meter man said.

Chang-dae remembered the man who had knocked on his door a few nights before. He must have been Dolma’s older brother.

Chang-dae slapped his own forehead and approached the meter man, realizing that he was still there. ‘Thanks for everything. If you have things you need to do, you should go on ahead. Will you knock on my door when you come by next month?’

119

The Korean Soldier

The young man laughed and did a little pantomime of holding on to a rope. The woman living in the flat shook her head doubtfully and cleared a path for Chang-dae. He walked over to the living-room window.

The Mongolian officer had tied the cable around the steam heater and helped Chang-dae pass it through his legs and wrap it around his pelvis. The officer then helped him tie the knots. As Chang-dae tied the wire around his body he felt fear spread like an electric current through him. Twenty years had passed since he’d been discharged from the army, and he realised that because of his experience in the military he’d lived his life with a confidence that really had no basis. Not one day in his life since then had been physically demanding enough to overshadow that experience. This day would be the sole exception. He felt himself to be very small. How many years had gone by when he’d sat around with his friends, drinking and talking about his time in the army? Was it possible that military duty didn’t end when your thirty months were up but instead lasted your whole life? The fact became clear to Chang-dae that in Korea the soldier was mightier than the poet.

How else could he explain what he was about to do?

He kicked off his slippers, pulled himself through the window and climbed on to the ledge. The wind from Siberia blew so hard it seemed that pins were being driven in to his face. Behind him and with bated breath the officer and the meter man held on to the cable. The women shrieked when he seemed for a moment about to lose his balance. Chang-dae held on to the window frame and looked down between his feet. The Mongolian soldiers had gathered in the yard. They cheered when they saw him: ‘Go, Korean soldier! Go!’ The Mongolian battle-cry rang out and filled the yard so boisterously that the sound echoed everywhere. Just as these strangers believe me to be, Chang-dae thought, I am for ever a soldier.

He took the slack length of electric cable moaning against the wind and tossed it weakly into the air.

120

Hyesoon Kim translated by Don Mee Choi

Ramen of the Heavens Like when the sky boils a star for a long time sixty million humans, countless mushrooms and more countless fish come out when you boil the earth’s night, the night’s delusions for a long time (I lift the lid and watch my boiling brain) The employee of Nongshim Ramen of Kyongi Province, Ansong City, Taedok District, Sohyon Village, who’s explaining that there are plenty of clams, beef, and vegetables in the soup sounds as if he is talking about the stars If you boil the delusions for a long time new stars burst out (I rip open the soup pouch The boiled then freeze-dried stars fall out into the sink) The hot night is boiling like the pot of ramen The shoeshine men are having ramen leaving the old shoes strewn on the street in front of a department store The stars travelling to the ramen pot plunge down, Ah it’s hot, ah it’s hot And this single bowl of ramen each sky that you and I boil with reverence that ultimately cannot be crossed …

(As soon as I turn off the stove my bloated brain melts into the reddish broth) 121

Poetry

Fallen Angel 1.

When I tear the screen of my body holograms burst out and I can go to you Even if I don’t go myself I am here and can also be there A says to B, B says to C, C to D, and D to A ‘I want to run toward you and explode!’

B is so miserable that in the end he forgets his suffering A scene where a 38-caliber revolver points at the people who are eating Instantly blood splatters all over the empty rice bowls!

The audience with no emergency exits in their bodies face the movie screen with their eyes wide open 2.

The woman speaks to the man inside the car. You know that C who gives pedestrians a scare by spraying ketchup on his body and falls down as if he has been shot. It’s fake, but there’s something to it. It could be loneliness or something. Why doesn’t it explode? – that kind of thing. You know the way your body twirls, feeling so burdened. So the man replies that he already lives his life feeling like that! And so he claims that his body begins to twirl when he sits in the same spot for even five minutes. The woman (totally ignoring him) goes on to say, You know that C who barges into a store that’s closed in the middle of the night and forces customers to buy things and wash their hair. C who leaves the lights on in someone else’s store and blabs that the store also has a heart. That’s Z, who is talking about his film. The kind of film that leaves the lights on in the dark theater and keeps showing other people’s things. So the man replies, Yes, it’s like you are sitting inside me, the car (the heart). Then he goes on to say, C is massaging a pig that has shed its skin, D is crossing her legs on some guy’s bed, and those killer black stockings with holes in them. How thrilling it would be to have such a sexy woman clean my room daily while I’m out.

122

Hyesoon Kim

3.

All the films speak: Modern angels are MAFIA They need to have the mafia connection in order to grab the brightly lit stores at night An Eastern European film speaks again: Modern angels are well-mannered, wearing black funeral suits in preparation for our forthcoming death The film speaks confidently: You mustn’t have any feelings in this kind of work!

The angels are kind beings who point rifles at us Today my daily angels are five crows who use pseudonyms Blue, White, Brown, Orange, Pink If you punks are going to trash things, bust my tires (A teardrop is about to burst out of the body like the way the entire sea quivers uncontrollably When a single drop of water is about to burst out from it thousands of turtles carrying eggs in their bellies run out of the sea, covering the sand dune black A drop of rain falls onto the car window)

123

This North Korean propaganda poster reads: ‘More fruit through the development of pomiculture!’

124

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema Daniel Levitsky

E

very revolutionary regime needs a master narrative. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet people were bombarded with tales of the storming of the Winter Palace and the bitter struggle to win the revolutionary civil war. At the heart of this narrative was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who announced soon after the revolution that ‘for us Bolsheviks, the cinema is the most important of the arts’. Film was thus drawn into the service of the Soviet project. It was used to immortalize the heroic revolution by turning it into a grand visual tale, affirming the righteousness of the Bolsheviks’ cause and the grandeur and drama of the founding of their revolutionary state.

Bolshevik agitation groups took films to Russian villages where delighted, illiterate peasants watched them projected on to sheets strung up between poles or illuminated against the sides of buildings. In the 1920s, Soviet citizens in town and countryside could watch the historical epics of directors Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, and relive the dramatic taking of Soviet power in their own locality. By the 1930s, the rise of Stalinism, together with Stalin’s personal passion for the cinema, allowed the Soviet film industry to produce great revolutionary epics, ideological adventure films depicting the exploits of the Red Guards of 1917 or the valiant Red soldiers of the civil war.

These dramatic films, whose release often coincided with the anniversaries of notable Soviet accomplishments, provided ‘living’, emotionally powerful examples of mass sacrifice and dedication, as well as revolutionary guidance from the Communist Party’s exalted leaders. Soviet cinema produced the first revolutionary films in the world, setting a shining 125

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema

example for other one-party communist states to follow. It did so in three distinct ways. First, Soviet cinema signalled that the primary subject for socialist films should be specific glorious moments in the recent revolutionary past, thus combining a comforting nostalgia with a stirring, heroic narrative. Second, it ensured that the ‘retrospective gaze’ uniquely provided by film would be simultaneously immortalized and ‘modernized’, brought into the present day and made relevant to the future building of socialism. In order to move forward, Soviet film directors told their audiences they first had to look back for examples and inspiration. Third, this ‘history film’ linked the great foundation of the revolutionary state to its increasingly deified leaders, Lenin and his loyal follower, Stalin.

Following the liberation of Korea from Japan in 1945 and the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948, this model of Soviet culture, along with economic and social blueprints, was exported to the Soviet Union’s new eastern ally, and a vibrant North Korean cinema industry was quickly established. In 1947 a National Film Production Centre was opened in Pyongyang under the guidance of the young leader Kim Il-sung. With finance and expertise provided by the Soviet Union, the new North Korean state began disseminating its revolutionary message cinematically to its impressionable citizens. Awestruck, illiterate peasants, this time Korean, once again flocked to village halls and squares to witness this new visual wonder. But the North Korean regime’s radical message went beyond historical facts and ‘new’ film images; it was dramatized into an inspiring revolutionary story which, like Soviet films of the Stalin period, featured working-class heroes galvanized by the example and guidance of the Great Leader himself.

From the beginning, Korean revolutionary films closely resembled the cinema of late ‘high’ Stalinism in their visual constructions, didacticism and overt promotion of the leader. In 1948, three decades after Lenin had proclaimed cinema to be the ‘most important’ revolutionary medium, North Korea produced its first feature film, My Home Town. Soviet films of the late 1940s idealised the Russian landscape, the rural way of life and the chaste spirit of the Russian peasantry, often celebrating the return of demobilized Red Army soldiers to help rebuild the local infrastructure following wartime devastation. North Korean films took this cinematic model and adapted it to fit the needs of their own embryonic revolutionary 126

Daniel Levitsky

regime. The North Korean leadership, after all, had inherited a country still reeling from the trauma of over three decades of brutal Japanese occupation, compounded by the ravages of the Second World War. As Charles K. Armstrong has shown in his book The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950, the film My Home Town embodies the spirit of socialist pastoralism, based on a lyrical, rustic ideal. It sets the model for future North Korean cinema with its celebration of historic socialist accomplishment. It also launches one of the two principal subjects for the Korean cinematic foundation narrative in the story of the valiant and ultimately victorious anti-Japanese struggle of ‘revolutionary guerrilla fighter’ Kim Il-sung in 1930s Manchuria. The imagery and storyline of this film extol the socialist struggle for the motherland, unswerving devotion to the new state and the enlightened role of General Kim Il-sung. With its opening shots of sacred Mount Baekdu, long, lyrical shots of forests, fields and streams, and its rousing tale of two young revolutionary fighters whose families suffered utter ignominy under the Japanese, My Home Town establishes a canonical cinematic narrative. The film’s heroes not only suffer the indignity of imprisonment for engaging in revolutionary discussion and education but with almost superhuman strength, they overcome their Japanese prison guards with their bare hands. Subsequently, they join Kim Il-sung’s guerrilla fighters in the Manchurian border region in a dramatic battle to overthrow their Japanese oppressors.

My Home Town also establishes a link between past revolutionary struggle and present political achievement with its climax on 15 August 1945, the day of liberation from the Japanese yoke. In the spirit of Soviet films, inter-titles explain that this was the moment when ‘patriotic General Kim Il-sung overthrows Japanese imperialism and liberates the Fatherland’.

Following Soviet cinematic convention, the film’s liberated hero travels to Pyongyang, the seat of the new revolutionary government, to meet leader Kim Il-sung himself. Not only do such scenes echo the ‘unforgettable meetings’ between Soviet heroes and Stalin that were intrinsic to Soviet cultic film, they also show the personal benefits revolution can bring to the formerly oppressed: the hero’s final return to his hometown is as a government official, smartly dressed in a suit.

In an echo of numerous examples of late Stalinist cinema, the film closes with melodramatic, close-up images of the hero’s mother’s face, 127

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema

emphasizing her joy at the return of her ‘transformed’ son, whose dedication and abilities have been officially recognized. Lastly, with a backdrop of bright, sentimental images of smiling peasants and long shots of an eternal Korean landscape, the film’s dialogue points out that the benefits gleaned by the hero and his family are a gift not just from the regime but also from Kim Il-sung himself. The Stalinist ‘economy of the gift’ is transposed faithfully to the Soviet Union’s Korean disciples.

My Home Town marked the beginning of a close relationship between North Korean leaders and this most revolutionary of art forms. In the mid-1960s, Kim Il-sung’s son, Kim Jong-il, was put in charge of party propaganda and agitation, a role that encouraged his growing interest in film. Under his enthusiastic tutelage, Korean cinema was restructured, renewed and shaped to glorify the activities of his father, the Great Leader. At a special party meeting at the Pyongyang film studios, held to inaugurate his son as the mentor of Korean filmmakers, Kim Il-sung told his directors that Korean film should depict and dramatize two great historical events above all: the anti-Japanese struggle of the 1930s and the traumatic Korean War of 1950-1953.

In the 1960s as North Korea’s ideology matured and its infrastructure developed, increased confidence in its own capabilities led to the radical imposition of the ideology of Juche, or self-reliance. In cinema the ambitious, politically astute Kim Jong-il ensured this meant all films would be made with the purpose of glorifying his father’s ‘incomparable’ leadership of the country’s glorious struggles. This was a time of Korean historical epics, of intense, overpowering melodramas, many of which proved extremely popular because they allowed people to immerse themselves once again in the ecstatic sense of freedom that followed Japanese oppression, as well as in the horrific suffering of the more recent Korean War, with the cathartic reminder that it was over. Stories of lost children, grieving parents, and inspiring military and political leadership took them back to a time of emotional passion, of trauma and loss. But it also reminded them of ideas such as comradeship in adversity, and of the opportunity to take vengeance upon brutal invaders and occupiers, whose defeat made it possible to rebuild their country anew.

Two films made under Kim Jong-il’s tutelage exemplify this intense, melodramatic style of historical revolutionary film. Sea of Blood, allegedly 128

Daniel Levitsky

written by Kim Il-sung, was released in 1969 and later adapted as an opera. It tells the story of an ordinary Korean mother who is converted to radicalism by the opinions of a political activist, and is then spurred on to revolutionary action by the dramatic deaths of her husband and son, both dedicated socialist activists. This film was the Korean version of the tale of the ‘revolutionary mother’s emergence’ circulated through film and literature in most socialist states. Its origins can be found in the 1905 socialist-realist novel Mother by Maxim Gorky. Replete with revolutionary romanticism, Sea of Blood contains expressive, emotive camerawork. Heavily stylized close-ups show the mother’s reactions to the revolutionary activities and deaths of her relatives, her subsequent overthrow of local Japanese overlords and her post-liberation appeals to the local masses. At one point the mother listens to an old villager’s account of the anti-Japanese struggle of Kim’s guerrillas and when Kim’s name is pronounced, a wide smile appears on the mother’s face and the sun emerges from the clouds.

The Fate of a Self-defence Corps Man, released in 1970, charts the conversion to revolutionary faith of a young man who had previously served the Japanese imperialists. It contains similarly exhortative, melodramatic imagery and dialogue, and its ‘seed’ – to use the cinematic terminology of Kim Jong-il – is that anyone, irrespective of their background, can become a dedicated revolutionary fighter if exposed to the right ideas.

These two films were followed by others with similar themes while the teachings of Kim Jong-il, immortalised in his 1973 book On the Art of Cinema, were put into practice on the screen with revolutionary gusto.

The three-part historical epic Five Guerrilla Brothers (1972), produced to mark Kim Il-sung’s sixtieth birthday, tells the story of a group of guerrilla fighters who ‘under the wise guidance of the Great Leader, General Kim Il-sung, join the revolutionary struggle and grow up in the course of the revolution to be revolutionaries of a Juche type’. A Flower Girl, also released in 1972 and based on a work written by Kim Il-sung in the 1930s, is possibly one of the most important and widely seen North Korean films. It tells the story of the suffering – and subsequent liberation – of the heroine, Kkoppun, under the Japanese oppression of the 1930s. All North Koreans will have seen this important film. The entrance to the Pyongyang Film Studios is marked by a large statue depicting Kim Il-sung with A Flower Girl ’s cast and crew.

129

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema

These films reveal a great deal about the early career and character of the young Kim Jong-il, who, like Stalin before him, was fascinated by film and its potential and was often involved in the filmmaking process. From the 1930s Stalin had personally edited film scripts by night in the Kremlin, frequently summoning famous directors such as Eisenstein to tell them if they had made ‘historical mistakes’ in their films. He would regularly stay up late with comrades to watch Soviet films shown in his private cinema in the Kremlin, or projected onto the specially designed walls of the balconies of his opulent summer residences overlooking the Black Sea. He is known to have watched the 1934 civil war epic Chapaev more than fifteen times.

Kim Jong-il spent much of his childhood and adolescence watching the same Soviet films in the company of his father and close relatives, locked away in a dark room in one of the Kim family palaces outside Pyongyang.

There he soaked up the drama of Soviet revolutionary film, enjoyed emotional tales of Moscow’s young construction heroes who were inspired to serve the Soviet cause, and admired the bombastic, theatrical films of the high Stalin cult made by Georgian director Mikhail Chiaureli after 1945.

Kim Jong-il would not only emulate Stalin’s compulsive film watching and involvement with filmmaking, but would assume the directorship of many key cinematic pieces. Many photographs exist of him on the Korean film sets of the 1960s and 1970s. He spent his days with film crews and, like Stalin, worked through the night to edit film scripts or negatives with scissors. In his book Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, Bradley Martin provides an atmospheric account of Kim Jong-il’s dedication to the making of these pieces of Juche art: One night the scriptwriters, who often worked late, were just going to bed when Kim Jong-il called them, handed back their manuscripts, and asked them to bring him any other manuscripts they had. It was already 2:30 a.m., so they hesitated. One of them suggested that he should sleep. “Never mind, give me manuscripts you’ve written, if you have any . . . You know, the president wrote this celebrated work, sitting up all night for several nights, taking time off in the intervals of the grim, bloody struggle against the Japanese. Given that, how can we allow ourselves to write the screen version of that masterpiece while taking as much rest and sleep as we want, satisfied with our 130

Daniel Levitsky

comfortable conditions? I prefer to work in the peaceful, small hours.

Give me manuscripts you’ve written, please.”

The 1966 film Ch’oe Hakshin’s Family exemplifies many of the tropes of the films on the Korean War. One of these is the extremely negative portrayal of US occupation forces, who in this film betray the faith of naive Korean priest Ch’oe and in the process reveal their hypocrisy and capacity for unspeakable evil. The inhuman US soldiers speak of ‘philanthropy’ and ‘liberty’ while at the same time savagely abusing the Koreans under their rule. As Hyangjin Lee noted in his book Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics: The moral depravity of the US occupation forces is represented most vividly through their commander’s attempted rape and murder of Songok, Ch’oe’s eldest daughter. US duplicity is also extended to Richard, who is the missionary living in the village and an old friend of the Ch’oe family. He has always shown deep affection for Songok, treating her as if she were his own daughter. After she is murdered by the commander, however, Richard attempts to hide the crime. He orders his henchmen not only to throw her body into the sea but also to kill her mother to cover up the treachery of his fellow countryman.

The Communists in the film, by contrast, are shown to be humane, kind-hearted and considerate, displaying a healthy outrage at the criminal inhumanity of their occupiers.

Two films on the Korean War released in the 1980s, Wolmi Island (1982) and Order 027 (1986), demonstrate key themes of the ‘Great Fatherland Liberation War’. Wolmi Island, considered one of the greatest Korean War films, shows the enduring power of Kim Jong-il’s attempts to implant the Juche ideal and the worship of his father into North Korean film. It depicts a brutal, prolonged battle between UN forces and communist soldiers.

While superficially representing the bravery and dedication of the North Korean soldiers, the film’s true message is ‘the artistic spirit and great deeds of the Great Leader’. And in this film Kim Il-sung assumes the identity of the Korean nation itself, as the hero tells his followers that their ‘fatherland is Kim’. In tones of unstinting praise, he describes Kim as the person who 131

North Korea’s Revolutionary Cinema

single-handedly saved their country from the Japanese, and frames their mission in terms of protecting the Great Leader. They must, he insists, stop the enemy from advancing to Pyongyang where ‘General Kim lives’.

Order 027 tells the story of a group of North Korean soldiers who infiltrate the South during the war. Like the 1948 film My Home Town, it begins with tranquil scenes showing the pastoral landscape of North Korea and the comradely drinking and socializing of its inhabitants. Very quickly, however, this sense of sublime peace is contrasted with strong antiAmerican imagery similar to that of Ch’oe Hakshin’s Family. From the start, the camera dwells on a poster showing a US soldier being bayonetted by a valiant Korean, and the film continues to demonize the enemy. Order 027 shows South Koreans brutally attacking their brave countryman from the North.

The South Koreans also indulge in decadent activities, drinking beer in pubs and flirting with vacuous South Korean waitresses. The brave, strong and dedicated North Korean female soldiers, who talk heartily with their male counterparts and fiercely attack their enemies, are contrasted with the vain, self-absorbed South Korean women who sit lazily painting their nails, and who are indifferent to the political events around them.

In keeping with cinematic convention, Order 027 is full of intensely dramatic and emotional scenes. Long, penetrating shots single out the North Korean dead and their mourning comrades. This is intensified by rousing music to emphasise the glory of sacrifice. One North Korean soldier martyrs himself to ensure his company’s success, and the climactic scenes convey the message that only through such actions can collective victory be gained and South Korean decadence and American military aggression be vanquished. In the final thunderous denouement, tragic personal loss is transformed into determined resolve. The frame is filled with military trucks full of joyous North Koreans waving and smiling as they hold their weapons high. Military victory and endeavour is linked to personal satisfaction and happiness, as columns of tanks drive resolutely through the Korean landscape.

The Korean War offered opportunities to show valiant combat and unflinching patriotism, and to embody the core values of the Korean revolutionary foundation myth in a single powerful narrative. It evoked memories of the suffering experienced by the vast majority of North Koreans while simultaneously alluding to the more mystical and distant but ideologically 132

Daniel Levitsky

vital anti-Japanese struggle of Kim Il-sung in the 1930s. Wolmi Island, despite being set during the Korean War, is a fusion of these two narratives, making it perhaps the quintessential revolutionary epic. By 1982 the cinematic representation of Kim Il-sung had become the definitive icon of the North Korean nation, past and present, in the hearts and minds of millions of Koreans who remained as awestruck as their forebears had been in the late 1940s.

North Korean films stirred the memories of the old and fostered a sense of duty in the young. Kim Il-sung had repeatedly stressed that film was the most important and powerful means of mass education. North Korean cinema, initially imported from and based upon its Soviet predecessors, lived up to this maxim and produced some of the most resonant, moving renditions of Lenin’s ‘most important of the arts’.

133

Cho Oh-hyun translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl

One Mind Though that ancient Titan could lift the whole world, put it down again,

that one thing, smaller, perhaps than a single mustard seed

he could never have grasped, nor released: the one mind

The Sound of a Stone That sole, indifferent lump of stone – try to hear its sound: though you listen and lift it up, you will never succeed.

But naturally, like age spots, dark, dark blotches will bloom.

134

Kim Seon-dal: Korean Folk Hero Heinz Insu Fenkl

K

im Seon-dal, whose name is made of the surname ‘Kim’ and the official title ‘Seon-dal’, is one of the most popular figures in North Korean folklore. He is said to have been a real person who lived sometime during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910). Stories about him are often linked to other local and regional figures in Korea, both North and South. Though he retains the familiar features of the archetypal prankster in North Korean comic book representations such as How Kim Seon-dal Sold the Water of the Dae-Dong River, he is always portrayed as being dedicated to the service of the people.

Like traditional prankster figures in other cultures – Germany’s Tyll Eulenspiegel, Mullah Nasreddin (also known as Nasreddin Hodja) in Islamic tales, and Hershele Ostropoler of nineteenth-century Jewish lore – Kim Seon-dal typically exposes the contradictions and tensions between rich and poor, high and low, virtuous and vile, educated and ignorant. If we study the nature of his tricks – and thereby understand and appreciate the layers of meaning in the stories – his antics become our education. This is especially relevant for North Koreans, since Kim Seon-dal bears the same surname as the current ruling ‘dynasty’ of Kims. His name (and his pseudohistorical background) is especially resonant with that of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung.

The name Kim Il-sung is generally said to mean ‘become the sun’. Kim is one of the three most common Korean surnames (they say if you throw a stone into a Korean crowd, it will hit a Kim, a Lee or a Park). The Chinese character for the surname can signify either ‘gold’ or ‘metal’. ‘Il’ can signify 135

‘sun’ or ‘day’ but when spoken it sounds like ‘one’. ‘Sung’ (seong) is usually read as ‘become’, but it may also be read as ‘star’, which when spoken sounds like ‘fortress’. Kim Il-sung’s name is not written in Chinese characters in North Korea; this permits a wider range of homophonic readings, which are actually encouraged in order to mythologize and deify him. Thus, he is the ‘Golden Sun Star’ or the ‘Golden Unifying Star’ in state symbolism. His name also resonates with the isolationist ‘Hermit Kingdom’ when it is read as ‘Single Fortress of Steel’.

Since ‘Seon-dal’ is a Joseon Dynasty title for a man who has passed the civil exam but not yet received a ‘crest’ (i.e., a specific position and assignment), the name has the generic resonance of ‘gentleman’. Kim Seondal is not just an educated Everyman, but also a ‘golden’ one. Seon-dals were often idle intellectuals; South Korean variants of the Kim Seon-dal stories often show how his inherent laziness is the source of his ingenuity as a prankster, but in North Korean comics Kim is industrious. ‘Seon’ and ‘dal’ together form his title, but taken separately for their homophonic resonance, ‘seon’ can be understood as ‘enlightenment’ (as in Zen) or ‘goodness’. ‘Dal’ is the pure Korean word for ‘moon’. In Asian cosmology, it is understood that the moon reflects the sun – it is a mirror. Indeed, Kim Seon-dal is the figurative mirror to the solar brilliance of the Great Leader.

When we read Kim Il-sung as ‘Golden Day Star’ (the sun) and Kim Seondal as ‘Golden Enlightened Moon’, the two figures complement each other alchemically, connecting the cosmos to man in ways that correspond deeply with Korean folk religion and Taoism. They represent the sun, the moon and the stars, protecting the people of North Korea in the secure embrace of the Great Leader above and the dedicated champion below.

The following extract was originally printed in Korean at the Pyongyang Central Press

by Gold Star Children’s Publishing, Juche 95 (2006). The full story will appear on our website.

136

137

138

139

140

141

142

143

144

145

146

147

148

149

150

Black-and-White Photographer Han Yujoo translated by Janet Hong

B

etty’s name is Betty and her last name is unknown. Betty leads an ordinary life in a small house with her husband and son. Her son’s name is Alan and the dog’s name is Toy. Her husband’s name is Jim. Betty loves her husband, Jim. Jim loves Betty and their son, Alan, and on the weekends he walks their dog, Toy, around the neighbourhood.

One day Jim comes home from work a little earlier than usual. He is agitated. With a reddened face, he asks Betty for a glass of water. As she picks up the water container from the kitchen table she senses what people commonly refer to as ‘the future’ starting at that very moment, or perhaps that its start is starting.

Betty kicks off her slippers and goes to Jim. Jim wipes his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. As he receives the glass filled with water, he drops it. Alan hasn’t come home from school yet. The water makes a puddle on the floor.

The broken glass scatters in a mysterious formation. Water splatters Betty’s bare feet. It’s difficult to distinguish the water droplets from the glass shards.

As she turns her body towards the cupboard to take out the hoover, she asks Jim what is wrong.

Jim says he has found his twin brother. He tells her that he and his younger twin had occupied the same womb but then were separated four months after they were born. He senses that his past, frozen like a lifeless black-and-white photograph until now, will come alive.

As Jim wipes his tears with his sleeve, Betty walks towards him with her arms outstretched in joy. She cleans up the broken glass only after Alan comes home. When Alan walks in, Toy springs out. The boy and dog 151

Black-and-White Photographer

watch Betty and Jim who are still locked in an embrace. Betty is happy. Jim’s unfinished birth will become complete and Jim will be happy.

Jim’s brother’s name is Jim. The older Jim and the younger Jim have different last names, but they don’t come to mind now. When Jim went to Jim’s house, knocked on the front door and was greeted by Jim, both Jims saw themselves in each other’s faces, and saw each other in their own faces. And out of the doorway sprang a dog, a child, a smaller child and a woman. The dog’s name was Toy, the child’s name was Alan, the smaller child’s name was John and the woman’s name was Betty. The two Jims embraced each other and became the most famous twins in the whole world. Requests for newspaper and magazine interviews never ended. The two Jims had the same face, voice, height, weight and job. Jim was a policeman. The names of their wives, ex-wives, children and dogs were also the same.

Jim’s family invites Jim’s family to their home. Betty looks lovely.

Compliments are exchanged over two tables that have been put together.

A turkey sits in the centre. Betty and Betty eat without talking. A withered stain on the floor, seven pairs of legs assembled beneath the table, the transparency of a sliver of broken glass that has managed to remain undetected.

The two Bettys think about Jim and Jim’s ex-wives, Linda and Linda.

Betty has never met Linda before and Betty has once written to Linda.

Betty wonders if the feelings she had when she and Jim first fell in love, met each other’s family, exchanged vows and rings were really her own.

The children, Alan and Alan, look very similar. John’s name and photo didn’t appear in the newspaper. This is because John is the odd one out and does not have a double. Alan, John and Alan, who resemble one another by a third, run out into the yard, and while Jim and Jim sit side by side on the living room sofa, Betty clears the table, and Betty goes to the bathroom.

Betty piles up the dirty dishes still with bits of food left on them, and Betty sits on the edge of the bathtub and lights a cigarette. Betty cries, and Betty weeps. For all those years as Jim and Jim were being drawn towards each other, what were Linda and Betty, Betty and Linda doing? Who am I? The clock in the kitchen is pointing to eight. The refrigerator stops refrigerating. In the sink, the kitchen knife slips down between the plates. It clunks to the bottom.

152

Han Yujoo

The person Jim fell in love with, was it me or was it Jim? Blood from the meat has soaked into the chopping board. The broken piece of glass that hasn’t been detected lies in wait for someone’s bare foot.

Betty pats her face dry and arranges some cookies on a plate. She takes off her apron. When Betty steps out of the bathroom into the living room as if she is slipping, the black clock hanging above the TV points to eight. In the future whenever Betty recalls this moment, she isn’t sure whether it was eight in the morning or eight at night.

It’s raining. Seven days and seven nights have passed. It thundered occasionally and I woke up from the noise. While I was half asleep, I heard Betty’s story in my dream. I had no idea who told me. It was a story I already knew.

There are times when lightning flashes through the tiny window that’s cracked open. Then the walls grow pale, as if they are about to say something.

No, that’s crazy. Or maybe it’s an absurd wish.

Poor Betty . . . However, we mustn’t pity Betty.

The rain falls methodically. Faintly, I hear the sound of distant cars driving through puddles. When I lie still and gaze up at the ceiling, I can’t see anything. What time is it now? Is it early morning? Because I can still hear the occasional passing car, maybe it isn’t yet past midnight. The sound comforts me. The windows are boarded up. I won’t be able to fall asleep until a few rays creep in through the cracks along the edges, barely enough for a couple of fingers to fit through. Right now, the only name I can remember from the dream is the proper noun Betty. Tap, tap-taptap, tap, tap-tap. The dark raindrops falling on the roof sound like Morse code, but I can’t decipher them. Like the first time I heard a foreign language, the sounds slip past meaninglessly and when lightning strikes, they are wiped clean.

There is no feeling in my bound hands. A thin rope is wound tightly around my wrists so that the backs of my hands are touching – so tightly it digs into my skin every time I try to move my fingers.

On the first night my wrists hurt. On the second night my whole body ached. Today nothing hurts. My dulled nerves block off the pain. I haven’t cried out during the last seven days. Because when a person decides to lock up a person, everything – even the soundproofing of the room – is planned from start to finish. No one would hear anything.

153

Black-and-White Photographer

And I count the remaining days. One, two, three, four. The days that haven’t yet come slip past helplessly. When lightning flashes and darkness paints the walls, there are faces I remember. Faces of family, friends and people who have slipped past, faces with no clear contours. Now even their names are hazy.

It’s sad, but the tears won’t come. There’s a reason for everything, but this principle operates according to chance. This person with bound hands and feet who is staring up at the ceiling, locked up in an unknown place, could easily be someone else with a different name. If I think this way, I get angry. So angry I can’t stand it. There’s a fire inside my body. This fire will burn my body.

Inside my pocket is a crumpled-up letter. The words in the letter are so clear in my mind that I don’t need to take the letter out and read it again. It smells ashen, like dust. Typed neatly in black in the centre of a white square are the words: ‘If one million won isn’t deposited in three days, your only son’s finger will be cut off.’ It was the first letter. The account number was fake, and ‘three days’ and ‘one million won’ were ambiguous figures.

One million won becomes the problem more than anything. Three days pass. The finger is safe. The police dismiss the case as a prank. A few months pass. The finger is safe. People have almost forgotten about the incident, but I sometimes wondered which finger he would have started with.

Mother’s room gets the most sun. The top of her dresser is cluttered with glass bottles containing liquid and solid matter, and at the back of the old shallow drawer is the letter. When I start to read it word by word, phantom pains start from my left pinky and travel to the ring finger, then to the middle finger.

The second letter sails in. This time, the name of each family member is written on the letter. It says that the son’s finger will be cut off if one hundred million won isn’t ready in three days.

The letter is kept secret, but every night in my dreams white sheets of paper with jumbled-up inky words slip in through the crack under the door. The second letter does not contain instructions on how to deliver the money. Investigators come and go. From their clothes and the air they give off, it’s easy to tell they are police.

When one hundred million won is compared to the pinky finger of a child who has just turned ten, there is no way of knowing which is more 154

Han Yujoo

important. I want to hear what my parents and the investigators are saying in the living room. They speak quietly; the corners of their words are pared away, as if I’m listening through static on the radio. The television is switched on. A soap opera is playing. Now, buried under the noise of characters shouting, their words are even more difficult to pick up. I want to ask them if one finger is worth one hundred million won or if ten fingers are worth one hundred million won.

There is no clock in the room. There is no one who will tell you the truth. Perhaps there is no such truth. The letter is written on ordinary white paper and the words are typed in a common font. Most likely, there won’t be a single fingerprint. The age when people could be tracked through their handwriting or the kind of paper has passed. There is no stamp on the envelope. It was in the postbox with the electricity bill. The postbox cost ten thousand won.

Some people want addresses just to receive letters. But more than anything people need houses. They pay their phone, water and electricity bills, and the term ‘payment’ is used rather than the term ‘pay’, and a house is needed in order to receive bank brochures, advertisements and gift catalogues. A house is also needed to receive things like Christmas and New Year’s cards. A house makes one think of home and home makes one think of family.

It isn’t clear whether the word ‘family’ can conjure up the words ‘love’, ‘warmth’ or ‘relationship’. According to certain stories, such homes do exist.

The people who live upstairs have been out of the country for a long time.

Post that couldn’t fit into the box is heaped up on the ground. Magazines sheathed in plastic with names such as Our Nation, 21, The Green Review, Geo and American Traveler create layers of red, yellow, blue and black.

I think about stealing a few of them but in the end, I don’t. I also don’t know where the people downstairs have gone. Their postbox is stuffed with payment notices from banks and credit-card companies. It pains me to see the red print on the envelopes.

Another family moves in downstairs. People from collection agencies knock on their door. The head of the new household doesn’t open the door, and from behind the steel security door, tiny children claim they have no ties with the person in question, that he is a complete stranger, that they have never even seen him.

155

Black-and-White Photographer

Once, a chain letter went around. The letters were scattered all over a mountain where I went on a field trip. They said that whoever read them would go blind.

All the payment notices were addressed to someone with the last name Kim. The first name was so common that I can’t remember it now.

I gradually lose the feeling in my fingers. I can’t grip a pencil; chopsticks slip out of my hand. Three days pass like this, and nothing happens. I think it would be nice to go to a foreign country. America, China, France, Thailand – it doesn’t matter. Not as many countries come to mind as I expected. I want to be in the midst of a foreign language that would naturally infiltrate my ears, then my mind, then my veins. If I can put two oceans between myself and this place, safety can be guaranteed by a time difference of twelve hours. The anxiety that resided in just a few fingers gradually spreads through my whole body and nervous system.

Soon, the third letter will arrive, and then everyone will feel the danger.

An incident that hasn’t even begun also doesn’t end. I look at my pinky, valued at one hundred million won. It’s an outrageously expensive object.

Finally, the third letter arrives.

In order to begin this story, we need three characters.

This time, there is only one name written on the envelope. It’s my name.

The day before, my family and I had gone out to eat grilled cow’s intestines. Cow’s stomach, cow’s liver and cow’s intestines travel down the throat. They say a cow has four stomachs. A cow’s protein-rich innards will soon be transformed into my flesh and bones. I can’t tell if I’m the one who has swallowed grease or if the grease has swallowed me. I reek of barbecued meat. My entire being is slipping into something unknown.

My parents barely speak while we’re eating. I get the feeling that I will be safe tonight. The garlic is burning. But we mustn’t trust feelings. Father eats a piece of grilled onion. The multi-layered onion reminds me of a babushka doll. A lizard cuts off its tail and escapes when danger strikes, but because my finger is different from a lizard’s tail, it won’t grow back once it’s cut off. They say a cat has nine lives, so even in life-threatening situations, they do not back down. Back down, beat down. Beat down, bow down.

Bow down, break down. Break down, burn down. I concentrate on endless 156

Han Yujoo

wordplay. I, who am not a cat, suspect these stories were made up by those afraid of dying.

Mother orders some beer. Liquor companies should package liquor in paper cartons, not glass bottles. Even juice bottles should be made of plastic. I’m scared of the hours that are approaching. My parents are in a good mood today. It’s because the letter will arrive tomorrow, and nothing should happen today.

The next morning, I head to school. An ordinary white sedan follows me. The horn honks softly. A man with ordinary features steps out of the car. In an ordinary tone he tells me that my father has been in an accident.

There is a kind of insistence in the way he speaks, but I’m not suspicious of him. It has already been several months since the second letter arrived and my mind is filled with all sorts of worries of my own. I’m wearing black sneakers, grey trousers and a black T-shirt. Mother fills my wardrobe with neutral greys, blacks and whites. After I’ve been in the car for five minutes, I begin to wonder if Mother knows what I’m wearing today. In order to file a missing person report, a description is needed, and she probably won’t be able to remember anything about my physical appearance.

It’s June 1991: an ordinary time when some are being born and some are going to their grave. When I ask if Father is badly injured, the man replies that it’s not too serious. When I ask if the hospital is close by, he says it’s not too far. I’ve been in the car for five minutes. The man starts to whistle.

When I ask him who he is, he says he works with my father. Then he turns and asks me who I am. My whole body freezes with terror.

He stops on a quiet street and blindfolds me.

No more talking, he says.

I follow his order not to attract any attention and crawl under the back seat. He ties up my hands. The car makes left turns, right turns and U-turns again and again. These are ordinary things people do when they drive.

Tears flow from my eyes. I sniffle as I cry.

Shut up, I told you not to make a single sound.

I swallow my tears. It feels as though I’ve heard those words many times.

Once, at school, I’d been asked if I knew the difference between time and the hour of day. It was maths class and we were learning how to tell time.

I answered that time is in constant motion and the hour of day is a fixed point. I never found out if I was right or wrong.

157

Black-and-White Photographer

Suddenly the term ‘nonpartisan representative’ comes to mind. I try to guess the time in the dark. I force myself to remember that the situation I’m in is happening right now. Time brims over. 8:03, 8:04, 8:09. The hour swells painfully. Even the hour knows its end. I’ve never seen the end.

Suddenly I’m unbelievably sleepy. There is nothing I can do.

He writes the letter after he has locked me in the storage room. It says that if he doesn’t get five hundred million won in three days, he’ll cut off my finger.

He treats the letter with care. While I doze off, he goes to what had been my home until just a few hours before and puts the letter in the box. In the box is a car brochure advertising the latest model, and glued to the back of the brochure is a free packet of lettuce seeds. He puts the seeds in his pocket and comes back to the storage room. The morning passes.

There is no one home, so no one learns I missed school. At three o’clock in the afternoon, classes are dismissed. Troublemakers sometimes toss the milk cartons they were given at lunch onto the two-lane street in front of the school.

The cars drive over them and the cartons explode in a white spray. The milk leaves a long pointed stain on the asphalt. The children shout. It doesn’t matter if it’s white; a stain is still a stain. The stain’s expiration date is 8 April 2001. But the stain will follow the tyre tracks, travel to other places and soon grow dirty.

Suddenly the term ‘black-and-white photographer’ comes to mind.

Some children don’t like to drink milk, and some children vomit immediately after they take a sip. They say that students are forced to drink milk, which is commonly referred to as nature’s perfect food, because either the Ministry of Education is in league with the dairy industry or because the Ministry of Health and Welfare aims to raise the entire nation’s average height, making us the tallest race in Asia. Where I live there aren’t any extremely poor kids, or at least they’re not noticed, and most children can afford to buy a carton of milk every day.

Milk, which is no longer special around here, is mashed into a white smear on the road, fed to dogs and cats, or used as an instrument of violence. There is more than enough milk. If we took all the milk in the whole country and dumped it into the Han River at the same time, what would happen to Seoul?

He returns to the storage room and checks up on me where I am toppled over asleep. He then brings a small plastic flowerpot from the corner.

158

Han Yujoo

The pot is half filled with dried dirt. When he cuts off the corner of the packet, the seeds spill out like grains of sand. In order to grow lettuce, we need lettuce seeds, a flowerpot, soil, water and sunlight. Just as we need three characters in order to begin this story. He takes out a 500 ml water bottle, unscrews the cap and pours some water into the pot. Barely any light comes into the room. No one has read the third letter yet. The seeds won’t be able to sprout. Sunlight and water must be given every day, and the frail stem must be reinforced with a thin support to prevent it from toppling over. Most importantly, we must wait. We must wait for the new bud that’s smaller than a seed to push its way through the dirt, for the threadlike stem to rise up, for the small curve of the leaf to spread out, for each small seed to calmly defy gravity. The man puts down the pot and straightens up, slapping his hands against his trousers to brush off the dirt. The sound wakes me up.

My hands are still tied. I raise myself up from the sofa. He approaches me slowly. I start to cry again.

The very first person to find the letter is Father. On his way home from work, he stops by the convenience store to buy two tins of tuna and a packet of cigarettes. It hasn’t been that long since the convenience store with its familiar blue sign that’s the same all over the world came into our neighbourhood. I felt a sense of relief when the store first opened its doors.

They said that for 24 hours, 52 weeks and 365 days the sign that lights up the store would never be turned off. That fact comforted me. Whether it was late at night or early in the morning, its doors remained open, and inside was a person who wasn’t yet asleep, and the display shelves were filled with merchandise that wasn’t yet opened: processed foods, snack bags inflated with nitrogen, drinks of every colour behind the transparent glass doors of the refrigerator.

Occasionally, I picture the convenience store that lights the empty street at night. Even though I’ve hardly ever stepped inside, it becomes my refuge.

First-aid kits, security personnel, trucks, plastic bags, bills, coins, telephones, plastic, glass, vinyl, plastic.

Father takes the familiar envelope from the postbox. At the same time magazines, catalogues and bills spill out of the box above. Father’s footsteps on the stairs are anxious. There is no one home. He sticks in his key and opens the door. He puts the letter on the table. He waits.

159

Black-and-White Photographer

The first person to read the letter is Mother. She uses the kitchen scissors to snip off the end of the envelope. Father looks for me. Mother’s face turns pale.

They call the police. Mother can’t remember what I was last wearing.

Father opens and closes my bedroom door several times. There is dirt on the shoes the investigators have removed. They drink a glass of water and then start to talk. They ask my parents the standard questions. My mother is half out of her mind. Father tries to act calm.

In order to begin this story, we need five characters.

One of the investigators also has a son. I don’t know his name or age.

The investigator thinks about his son. My parents read the letter again and again. It’s a neat letter printed in the same block letters as the first and second letter.

Mother’s face is stained black with mascara. I’ve seen that face before.

My aunt is a painter and on a shelf in her room I once found a face like that in a book about Picasso. It was a crying woman. At the time, I thought it was monstrous. I don’t remember the other paintings.

My parents and the investigators wait for the phone to ring. The small living room fills with tension. Father lights a cigarette. The investigators, too, take out their cigarettes from their pockets and smoke. Just then, the phone rings. It’s my teacher from school.

What puts Father to the test is the five hundred million won. To hand over a bundle of fifty thousand paper bills in three days seems impossible.

Friends and relatives gradually find out that I’ve been kidnapped. My grandmother bitterly mourns my fate. There is no time. Like the old saying that time is money, the property of time that doesn’t wait for anything applies to money. Of all the countless figures in the world, why five hundred million won? If he had demanded a billion won or more, such an astronomical amount that anybody would be forced to give up, how would we continue this story?

Time is slipping by. Soon, the sun sets. Two of the investigators leave.

They whisper to each other as they walk down the steps. One of the investigators’ sons is working on a school project. He is making a decahedral out of cardboard. The finished decahedral looks like a ball. One of the properties of a ball is that it can roll.

The investigator’s wife is removing the stitching from an old quilt. The investigator drinks a cup of coffee while he watches a soap opera. The decahedral, each side covered in different-coloured paper, rolls by. Soon, it comes to a stop.

160

Han Yujoo

7

My father is thinking. He isn’t sure if one finger is worth five hundred million won or if ten fingers are worth five hundred million won. If the item to be exchanged were my life, the story would change. That was the problem.

Father wonders if chopping off a finger is a metaphor for taking my life.

Father is a law-abiding citizen, obeying every law but for a few trivial ones, and he has never missed a day of work except on special occasions, like funerals and weddings. In a word, he is a true family man. So it’s only natural that Father would lose his temper: Why is this happening to our family?

According to the National Statistics Office there are close to twenty child kidnappings each year. This means that out of all the families in the country, twenty families must undergo such incidents every year. The chances are approximately 50,000 to 1. Chance always betray us. The more ordinary a family is the more tragic the situation seems.

What puts Mother to the test is simply love.

In order to begin this story, we need two characters.

I was turned upside down in my mother’s belly. The obstetrician, who was a devout Catholic, permitted a Caesarean section only at the very last moment. I started talking earlier than others my age. I would lisp: Mum, Dad. Mother faints for a moment. Father slaps Mother’s cheek. The inexplicable feelings Mother had towards me until now begin to come alive, one by one. She had truly believed they were feelings of love. She was wrong.

She frequently feared that her child was a monster or a mutant. There’s nothing she can do. That’s why she must, at times, demonstrate her love in strange ways. Mum cries.

And I cry too. He slaps my cheeks. I’m used to it. It doesn’t hurt that much. I catch a whiff of dirt. I know instinctively that I mustn’t provoke him. I think I’ve seen him before. I’m probably wrong. I’m just trying to find comfort by assuming that I know him. I decide that I don’t know him.

I want to live. I take a breath and ask.

He tells me to be quiet. His response doesn’t stray an inch from what I’d expected. I close my mouth. There is still a lot of time left. The finger’s expiration date is two and a quarter days from now.

He turns on the television. The picture is sharp. I’m momentarily awed that there is reception here. He watches a game of football. The game is 161

Black-and-White Photographer

taking place in a foreign country. The ball rolls on the grass. One of the properties of a ball is that it can roll. In order to have a football game we need a playing field, two goalposts, key players, a referee, linesmen, flags, coaches, substitutes, and a ball. In order to watch an entire game, we must wait. A game lasts over ninety minutes. Most of all, we need gravity. One of the properties of gravity is that it makes a ball roll. Skilled players know how to handle gravity. Maybe it’s gravity that has brought me to this place.

A dog barks in the distance. I’m hungry. One player is awarded a penalty kick. It’s just him against the goalie. I get nervous for a second. It’s a strange moment. The ball misses the net. This is to be expected, since there is a higher chance of missing a penalty kick. But the crowd still jeers. A replay is shown and the ball sails into the stands. The game resumes.

There’s never been a time that I wasn’t me. That truth haunts everyone.

The first half ends and three extra minutes are played.

He looks over at me. Aren’t you hungry?

The storage room is dark and I’m hungry. I don’t know if it’s hunger or pain. He removes the plastic wrapper and takes out the food. Cold dumplings are set in front of me. I’m relieved as soon as I see the food.

I want to ask him, Why did you choose me? Why me?

He takes a water bottle from a plastic bag and pours water into a paper cup. In order to eat dumplings, we must first buy dumplings. In order to drink water, we must first buy drinking water. In order to begin this story, I’m needed. People are driven by their desires. In order to continue this story, desire is needed. The desire for a bag filled with green paper bills, the desire to live, the desire to get your child back, the desire to reverse time, the desire for someone else’s child.

Don’t do anything stupid, he mumbles in a low voice as he unties my hands.

My wrists burn.

Doing something stupid is also a desire. The dry air inside the storage room has caused me to break out in a rash. My skin, my whole body – no, my whole being – is so itchy I can’t stand it. He puts a pair of chopsticks in my hands. He places a paper cup of water in front of me.

Hang on for just three more days, he says.

I need to go to the bathroom. There is no bathroom in the storage room.

He takes out a pocketknife and slowly cuts away the top of a 1.5 litre plastic bottle. The movement of the knife is chilling. I think he purposely took out 162

Han Yujoo

the knife to scare me. If that’s the case, he succeeded. I’m so scared I can’t think straight. The knife goes back into his pocket.

One player scores a goal. The sports commentator says the dull game is starting to come alive again. The second half is almost over.

Suddenly, the words ‘Ouagadougou, Panama Canal’ flash across my mind. Is it the name of a place?

The person who answers the phone is Father. To avoid being traced the man uses a pay phone in the middle of a busy downtown street. It’s a classic method.

I’m still tied up in the storage room and I’m hungry. Because I can’t use my hands, I pick up a dumpling with my mouth. It’s ice cold. I cry as I chew.

I’m thirsty.

The phone rings ominously. As soon as Father picks up the receiver, the machine starts to record. He asks if the money is ready. Father wants to listen to my voice, but the man won’t give an inch. He tells Father not to contact the police, but he probably knows that the police are already recording the entire conversation. He says he will call again tomorrow. He says that if five hundred million won isn’t ready, the kid won’t have a finger.

I’m just a paper doll. I can’t do anything.

According to statistics, 90 per cent of kidnappers are arrested in the end.

The football game has ended. The referee gives the whistle a long blow.

A team has won. One of the properties of all ball games is that at the end of every game, one team wins and another loses, or both teams tie. The reason why so many people are obsessed with football or baseball is that these kinds of games race towards the end from the second they start. Every game must end and every game must have some kind of progression. I’m anxious. Perhaps my life will end here. I make an effort to use the future tense. There’s no use.

He comes back to the storage room at dawn. My parents sit awake all night. Father is listing all the things that can be exchanged for cash. He will have to withdraw all his savings, file a personal accident claim and get help from friends and relatives. But who can suddenly help out with that kind of money? He can only come up with five hundred million won if he sells the house. Could he sell the house in three days? Father shakes his head.

A house is needed to sustain a family.

Time passes even in a dilemma.

163

Black-and-White Photographer

A weekly magazine is spread open on the table and an article describes a gun battle that’s taking place on the West African coast. Now, it’s no longer shocking news.

Father drinks a cup of coffee, urinates in the bathroom and, while squeezing toothpaste onto his toothbrush, he cries. His tears get sucked down the drain.

Mother spills hot coffee on her knees. The morning light makes its way through the cracks of her scream. The fluorescent light in the living room is still on. According to statistics 90 per cent of kidnapped children are murdered.

Light seeps even into the storage room.

It’s time for school. My homeroom teacher has two young children.

Before going to work, he looks down at the peaceful faces of his sleeping children and is comforted. On the bus, he is troubled with thoughts of me. My desk is still empty. The kids start to wonder why. Someone called yesterday, looking for me. It was Inshik. He has a brother three years younger, and his mother is pregnant with her third child. As the due date grows closer, Inshik’s father buys a new car. The interior of the new car is spacious and comfortable. He spent a lot of money to install a stereo and leather seats. I’ve seen that car before.

It was a rainy day. Inshik’s mother had come to pick him up in the new car. He waved goodbye to me. I opened my umbrella. There was a small sticker with the words ‘Baby on Board’ stuck to the back window. As I watched the car move slowly out of sight, I repeated the words to myself: baby on board.

The teacher tells the other students that I’ve caught a cold. They don’t think much about it.

Someone from the office calls for Father. He makes up an excuse.

The investigators come. The ash they carelessly dropped from their cigarettes leaves grey marks on the floor.

There’s no time. He wakes me up and gives me a bun. Inside the wrapper is a monster sticker. I put the sticker in my pocket. He turns on the television.

A middle-aged couple are talking about their problems. They have two daughters in their late teens. Before their problems can be revealed, he 164

Han Yujoo

changes the channel. A weather forecast is on. A storm is approaching. The weather forecaster is wearing a raincoat.

To prevent damage to infrastructure . . .

As soon as I hear the word ‘damage’, I shiver.

Before he ties up my hands again, I pee into the plastic bottle. He waters the lettuce seeds. In a burst of courage, I ask him, Why me? I ask him when and where he found me.

Peering into the pot, he says lazily, It couldn’t be a girl.

I don’t understand what he means.

He tells me he’ll untie my hands if I promise to behave. I nod. He avoids my eyes. A shadow falls across his face. It’s an ordinary face. It wasn’t far fetched to have thought I’d seen him before.

Suddenly, the word ‘sinkhole’ comes into my head. At noon, he ties me up again. After he has shut the window with care and made a thorough inspection of the room, he leaves. I don’t know where he’s going. He’s probably going out to make a phone call.

It’s not even the weekend, but the downtown streets are overflowing with people. He walks for a long time with his hands shoved in his pockets. Heat rises from the pavement. Pay phones are harder to find these days. He stops for a moment in front of a medical supplies store. He purchases a blood pressure cuff. From the convenience store next door, he purchases some buns. The buns expire in twelve days.

Holding a plastic bag in each hand, he swings his arms and forces his way through the crowd. There’s a pay phone near the steps of the subway entrance. He steps into the phone booth.

Again, the one who answers the phone is Father. As soon as he picks up the receiver, the machine starts to record. The man detects the sound. He asks if the money is ready. Father says yes. The man has no way of knowing if that’s true.

Father asks if he can speak to me. The man says that I’m safe and that I had bread for breakfast and dumplings for lunch. What he’s saying isn’t a complete lie.

Father starts to sob. Mother who is sitting beside him weeps silently.

The man tells Father to put the money in a plastic bag and place it under the streetlight in front of a fast food restaurant near the Shinchon overpass, making it look as if it’s garbage. Father says yes.

According to their conversation, I will be left by the back gate of Shinchon Church as soon as the money is delivered. The story could have ended this way.

165

Black-and-White Photographer

Mother slumps down onto the cold kitchen floor in a daze and thinks about me. Mugs with sticky coffee stains at the bottom are piled precariously high in the sink. Fruit flies swarm. Fire ants gather. When the block of wood that has fallen on the floor is moved accidentally, thousands of red ants scatter in all directions. The block of wood is actually a package of imitation crab meat. I have no idea what Mother is thinking about me. No idea at all.

On the third morning, the lettuce seeds start to sprout from the little pot.

Twenty new transparent leaves unfurl like insect wings. He marvels and, after he waters them, he cracks open the window and places the pot on the sill in the slice of sunlight.

I can’t remember last night’s dream. I barely slept. After he shakes me awake, he gives me a bun. It’s a red-bean bun. It will expire in twelve days.

Inside the plastic wrapper is a monster sticker. I put the sticker in my pocket.

I’m anxious. I chew and swallow. Flour, sugar and lumpy red-bean paste travel down my throat. It feels as if I’m swallowing stones.

It seems that he also barely sleeps. He feeds me, wakes me, feeds me and watches me. Since I have never met any other kidnappers, I don’t know what type of kidnapper he is. He doesn’t hit me or swear at me. He turns on the television.

The morning news is on. There was a big accident last night on the Honam Expressway. A bus tipped over. Ten people are dead and seventeen are in critical condition. The injured have been taken to the hospital and are being treated.

He changes the channel. A view of the National Assembly building comes onto the screen. The newscaster says there have been unforeseen difficulties in the passing of a certain bill.

He changes the channel. A news update reports that a gun battle has broken out on the West African coast. But Africa is too far away. Some people say we have now reached the end of civilization but in another country, what we call civilization has not yet begun.

He changes the channel.

Commercials flash on the screen.

He turns off the television.

7 166

Han Yujoo

The exchange is set for 8 p.m. It’s right after sunset. Father takes a deep breath and walks down the narrow street. Policemen in civilian clothes are hiding everywhere. The story could end this way.

Shinchon at eight o’clock on a Friday night is filled with people. Whether it’s people or objects, nothing exists in moderate proportions – there’s always an abundance or a shortage. It’s the same with emotions. In order to hide his nervousness, Father purposely takes big strides. People bump into him.

People go out for different reasons. Some meet others, some buy things and some dine out. They must satisfy their desires, whether it’s for food, sex or wealth, and in order to do so they need time, money and people.

Father passes yellow, red and blue cosmetic stores and stands at the zebra crossing in front of a white bakery. Hundreds of people are waiting for the light to turn green. Right then, someone grabs Father’s arm. The buses and taxis in the double lanes haven’t moved for a long time. Lights blink.

He whispers into Father’s ear. Be quiet and listen to me carefully.

Father stares straight ahead as if frozen. With his left hand, the man feels for the small knife in his pocket.

Pass the bag behind you and don’t attract any attention.

Slowly, Father passes the black plastic bag filled with a hundred 10,000won bills behind him. In return he is given an identical black plastic bag of the same size and shape. Father is sweating.

The light changes. All at once, hundreds of people are released – fire ants, all of them. There’s nothing they can do about it either. The man disappears into the crowd. People push past Father who stands glued to the same spot.

His legs give way. It takes him ten minutes to reach the streetlight in front of the overpass, so the investigators lose the man completely. Father dashes to Shinchon Church. He runs up and down along the stone wall several times but I’m not there.

Inside the plastic bag Father received was a bundle of neatly folded newspaper. It was the Munhwa Daily News. Except for the creases from where the paper was folded, the man left behind no traces.

My parents despair.

It’s past midnight when he returns to the storage room. I am lying face down on the sofa with my hands tied behind me. Tired foam pokes out from the torn vinyl of the sofa. I smell dirt. It’s going to rain soon. I’m anxious.

167

Black-and-White Photographer

In my dream I’m sitting in a dry bathtub. Fire ants parade by.

He wakes me up and gives me dumplings. The swollen dumplings have no flavour. The skin is white and the filling is black. His hands are white and his hair is black. These are simple facts. Nothing surprises me anymore.

He turns on the television. There’s nothing on. He uses the plastic bag filled with a hundred million won as a pillow and lies down on the floor where a mat has been spread.

The storage room is small. Hardly anything is stored in it. It occurs to me that we should investigate all the storage rooms in the world. They would reveal people and bones and soggy memories. As I strain to listen to the vibrations coming up through the floor, I await his decision. In the distance, people are moving. The floor seems to be bulging. It feels like it is.

It’s my fourth morning in the storage room.

He unties my hands after he wakes me, and gives me a bun. It’s the same kind. Inside the plastic wrapper is the same monster sticker. The sprouts in the pot have grown even more. I get a strange feeling. There are three stickers in my pocket.

He turns on the television. He doesn’t watch it. He’s thinking about something. I watch him from behind. He’s a thin person. His square shoulders are tense and they cut sharp, ninety degree angles into the television screen. He doesn’t hit me. He only slapped me a few times the first night. That’s it.

I remember reading an article in the newspaper about a Chinese kid who gnawed off all his fingers. He couldn’t feel pain because he didn’t have any pain receptors. They say animals have pain receptors in order to prevent greater damage to the body.

My pain receptors were fully alive, so rather than chew my fingers off, I sucked them constantly. Both my thumbs were always swollen. My parents rubbed ointment on my thumbs or wrapped gauze around them. Because those methods didn’t work, they even scratched up the sides of my thumbs with a razor blade. All things take time. The shape of my mouth changed.

I was helpless as a plant. I grew older in a kind of stupor.

7

168

Han Yujoo

When night comes, day comes. It’s been five days.

He disappears and comes back. It rains. I concentrate on wordplay. Village and pillage. Creation and cremation. Winter and splinter. Attic and static.

Ammunition and premonition. I think up these words then forget them.

Six days pass.

Father removes a necktie from the wardrobe. Mother breaks a teacup.

She turns on the hob to boil water. A blue flame appears. Without thinking, she puts her hand close to the flame. It’s warm. I know that all pain disappears in a second. But I’m scared. So scared I can’t stand it.

Every morning, he waters the lettuce. The sprouts have grown considerably. I look down at my watch. It’s an old watch that has to be wound once a day. I secretly took it from the small wooden box where Father keeps his things. The hands of the watch have stopped at 4:24. Even now, I can’t remember if it was 4:24 in the afternoon or 4:24 in the morning.

The next morning, he loads me into the car and takes me somewhere. With my eyes covered, I sit like a piece of luggage on the back seat. My black shirt and black sneakers absorb the sun. It’s warm.

The car rattles every time it goes over a bump. I hear coins fall. I need to pee. I wet my pants. After driving for a long time, he stops the car. He turns the engine off and everything is silent. He puts something in my shirt pocket. I flinch. He uncovers my eyes. Both of my hands are soon freed. I’m dizzy.

I stand leaning to one side and look up at his face. He doesn’t look at me.

So long, he says.

I collapse. The car pulls further and further away. The licence plate is covered. Everything grows hazy. I cover myself in sunlight and fall asleep.

There is nothing I can do.

Someone wakes me up. When I open my eyes I see an old man’s face.

In order to begin this story . . .

I sit up slowly. There’s a two-lane road in front of me. It’s a country road. There are signs for lodgings and seafood restaurants. I push the man’s outstretched hand aside and start walking. He calls out to me from behind.

I turn around and look at his face. It’s a worried face. But I can’t trust him. I ask him which way it is to the bus terminal. He answers that it doesn’t matter which way I go.

169

Black-and-White Photographer

This is an island connected to the mainland and either way will lead me to a terminal. He offers to give me a ride, but I can’t trust anyone. I wave him away and set off blindly. My lips are parched. Trucks and buses go both ways on the perimeter road.

Although he said this was an island, I cannot see the sea.

As if in a trance, I keep walking. A fire burns inside me. The rash I’d forgotten about starts to act up more than ever. There is moisture left on the leaves, and once I step into the shade, it’s cool. It’s always the senses that create problems.

I look at my watch. It’s 4:24. A van pulls up beside me. The driver rolls down his window and offers to give me a ride. I shake my head stupidly. A long time passes. I learn from a sign that this is Kanghwado. I’ve lost all sensation in my legs. When I realize that having no sensation is also a problem, I’m standing in front of a small police station.

There is a 10,000-won bill in my shirt-front pocket. I keep it safe. I go back home. My parents hug me until I’m numb and refuse to let me go. My pain receptors come alive again, but I don’t feel good.

I was still young. There were still an absurd number of days left ahead of me. They said it was a miracle that I had returned alive. But I realize the word ‘miracle’ is no more than a figure of speech.

School hasn’t changed. I tell the other kids I had been ill with a serious cold. The kids don’t think much about it. After school, Inshik takes me to the house of another friend whose father works for an airline. Inside a desk drawer, there are neat rows of black-and-white film canisters filled with foreign coins. I don’t remember the kid’s name.

Two years pass.

Ever since that day, my parents haven’t laid a finger on me. I realize how appropriate the expression ‘not lay a finger on’ is.

I nearly forget that I have pain receptors. When I have dreams, I’m always in a bathtub. The water either comes up only halfway or is so shallow I can barely submerge my feet.

I’m in middle school. My fingers have survived. On the first day, I sit in the second seat in the front row. I haven’t grown an inch since that day.

I still look like a little kid.

The stinging wind cuts through my baggy uniform. The school playground is still frozen.

170

Han Yujoo

On the way to school I run into kids dressed in the same uniform. They threaten me.

In order to begin this story, we need many characters.

An incident never actually ends. The next day, and the next, they wait for me in the same alley. I’m sick of it all. It doesn’t even surprise me anymore. I don’t avoid it. It’s because there is too much time. I frequently get punched.

Now I know the reason he decided not to kidnap girls. It was to avoid accidental rape. Uncomfortable desires grow each day.

One day, a kid chokes me for fun. As soon as that happens, the past comes rushing back.

Is one hundred million won too much or too little? There’s no such thing as an appropriate sum.

I now have seven monster stickers. With them, I try to count the days.

Even when I nod off, my hands are always clenched tight. In the evenings, it’s easier to move my hands. I pick up the dumplings with chopsticks. The water bottle smells bad. The rain lashes down. Even the rain smells bad. It’s been a week. It’s a long time, long enough for someone to create the world.

I’m so scared and anxious I can’t stand it. I start to sing. The song starts out low and anxious then grows louder and louder until it begins to push the darkness out of the storage room.

He gets angry. He flings down the television remote control and comes towards me.

I keep singing and run away from him. Blue, red, purple, yellow, black, light, darkness, discord, distraught, dismember, disfigure, disciple, dislocate, fornicate, dominate, masturbate, isolate, hesitate, gravitate, deflate, delay, decay. I sing and run around the storage room. But I trip over the potted plant and fall. Dirt and lettuce sprouts scatter.

In order to kill a plant, we must wait. The underdeveloped leaves will soon rot and become dirt again. But there is no time . . . Dictation, mutation, castration, starvation, salvation, sedation, relation, release, recoil, refuse, remit, omit, submit, subway, subdue, sublime, submerge. I don’t stop singing.

He slaps me a few times on the cheeks. It doesn’t hurt that much. There is nothing I can do. Navy, crimson, violet, amber, black, green, white, light, shadow, grass, wind, mother, father, light, darkness, flowers, trees, and the sea. I sing. He threatens me.

171

Black-and-White Photographer

In order for an incident to end, we must wait. This story could have ended this way, too.

His voice grows louder and louder with anger. He swings his arms like a crazy person. At last, he grabs me by the collar and starts to choke me. My song fades lifelessly. Now, it has ended.

172

Hyesoon Kim translated by Don Mee Choi

The Story in Which I Appear as All the Characters 2 Take off all the verbs, adjectives, adverbs that have stuck all winter long then dust off a two-piece dress and take it to the cleaners At the Tonghyon Cleaners well-ironed subjects covered in plastic hang from the ceiling Even though the memory vanishes like water that has been gulped down the song always remains!

After the flock of chicks play tweet tweet tweet and leave a patch of green water parsley sprouts Even without the subject (the mountain fills up with a flock of yellow-green chicks) outside this breathing object

173

Poetry

A Way to Read the Morning In January, many stars fell like rain, but they fell only into the river, unable to reach the land.

In February, the scripture that I read daily packed up its bag and took off to another country like the missing child of the universe, like the floating Challenger, a fish. (You bad guy!)

In March, all the fish came out of the frozen river and died.

In April, the scales of the stars that fell nonstop piled up. The north is still ferocious.

In May, obstructions were everywhere, TV screens were always on, the river empty of fish flowed by.

In June, the department store south of the Han River sank into the ground, becoming a crater, and those who saw apples in their dreams made it out alive.

In July, the underground wells overflowed, causing the houses to float away, and the pigs cried on the rooftops. Instead of the trains, the crimson river whistled and streamed down the tracks.

In August, a reddish cloud from the southeast rolled out like silk, then it rained, and the fish fell too, mixed in with the rain.

In September, the wind came to the front door and cried, Open up, open up. Next morning, a bundle of the wind’s hair was found tangled around 174

Hyesoon Kim

the doorknob. There was a full moon, and a place other than east west south north was most auspicious. Did he also shoot all six bullets?

In October, cherry blossoms suddenly bloomed in late autumn. I kept thinking about him every time they bloomed. Dead fish floated up all white along the riverside.

In November ‌ In December, with thirty seconds left to dream, the river froze again.

White Out. Every time I took a wrong step, I fell into the thousands of roads, below the crevasses, into the river’s blue teeth. The blanket was white like the South Pole and an iceberg floated beneath it. He soldered me to the same circuit again.

Again in January,

175

The Execution by Jang Gil-su Jang Gil-su was fourteen when he and his extended family, facing starvation in North Korea, crossed the Tumen River into China in 1999. His parents were later caught by Chinese security forces and sent back to North Korea. Gil-su and several other family members were protected by ethnic Koreans in China for three years. The group then made a dash into the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Beijing, the first North Koreans to attempt this. They were given sanctuary and later flown to Seoul. Gil-su drew pictures of events in his former life – including this one of a public execution – to pass the time while he was in hiding. Executions for petty crimes were common and everyone was expected to attend, including children.

176

Jang Jin-sung translated by Shirley Lee

Executioner Wherever people are gathered there are gunshots to be heard.

Today, as the crowd looks on a man is executed.

‘You are not to feel any sympathy!

Even when he’s dead, we must kill him again!’

The loudspeakers’ words are interrupted.

Bang! Bang!

The rest of the message is delivered.

Why is it that today the crowd is silent?

His crime: to steal a bag of rice.

His sentence: ninety bullets in his heart.

His occupation: farmer.

177

Poetry

The Journey Is Hard but We Go Forth with Laughter!

This country brings us to tears.

That’s why we live by a slogan: ‘Go forth with laughter!’

Not any old laughter but Official Laughter.

We must laugh to a slogan.

Forget about happiness Live by the slogan!

The laughter of love!

The laughter of loyalty!

The laughter of faith!

So what if I starve?

So what if I die?

Today, I drank only saliva. Yet I go forth with laughter!

Jong-il turns his face from us.

He lives for victory.

He flashes gold when he laughs but our laughter is ugly.

Still, we must respect our superiors. We must go forth with laughter!

We flash the yellow of stains as we laugh.

We are bastards when we laugh.

Ha Ha Ha 178

Jang Jin-sung

When I become a corpse How will they close my eyelids?

How will they keep my mouth shut?

I will be laughing so hard!

Ha Ha Ha

For Us, Life Every morning when I wake I shake my brother to and fro – his lungs are weak.

I know that Chul next door went off to sleep for good.

Whenever mother is late I tune my ears to the lightest breeze.

I hold my breath to count the hours.

I know that our water-lady cut her own life short.

I know there are many paths in life but just one choice for us: to carry on.

179

Poetry

I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won She was desolate.

‘I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won.’ With that placard on her neck with her daughter by her side the woman standing in the market place – she was mute.

People looked at the daughter being sold and the mother who was selling.

The people cast their curses at them but keeping her eyes downcast she was tearless.

Even when the daughter wrapped herself in her mother’s skirt shouting, screaming that her mother was dying the woman kept her lips tight and trembled – she did not know how to be grateful.

‘I’m not buying the daughter I want to buy the mother.’

That soldier came by with a 100 won note in his hand.

The woman who ran off with the money, she was a mother.

With the money she got for her daughter she bought a loaf of bread 180

Jang Jin-sung

and put a chunk of bread in her daughter’s mouth as they said goodbye.

‘Forgive me,’ she cried.

She was desolate.

The Dreaming Child What could he have seen in his dreams that he ran out into the night?

What could he have seen in his dreams that he did not fear the gunshot?

What could he have seen in his dreams that he held it so tight as he died?

The dreaming child, dying, would not let go of a sweet corn cob.

Note: In the autumn, after a year’s toil, the soldiers came to guard the crop.

Anyone who stole corn was deemed reactionary and executed on the spot.

181

Bed-Wetters Laundering from the series My Age of Seven by Won Seoung Won

182

Ko Un translated by Brother Anthony and Lee Sang-wha

Seven Little Songs Without Titles I asked a child: Do you want to be a beggar, or a thief ?

The child asked: Why, is there nothing but that in this world?

Indeed so. In this world, there is only the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. 7

Let go of the things you have spent thirty years shouting for.

Among them, justice!

Let go of it forever.

7

One day in March I looked down at the Mongolian desert.

It looked like my father.

It looked like the face of my mother.

183

Poetry

Above all, I felt ashamed of myself.

7

On top of a heap of garbage by the roadside a trashed electric fan is turning eagerly in the cold wind.

Passing by, I stopped there for a long time.

7

Ten years, thirty years, or fifty years, if such time-spans were not transient, if such life-spans were not transient, humans would have become much more barbarous.

Oh, long live sublime transience!

7

Today may be a trivial day, the day someone is being born, someone is leaving, someone waiting.

Today too, the glow of the setting sun is glorious!

7

Zen koans are a trap, a pit.

A tiger falls into a pit and can’t get out again. Silly koan!

184

Extract from

What You Never Know I-hyeon Jeong translated by Chi-Young Kim

H

is wife was like a roe deer whose leg had been cut off while alive. She writhed in pain, her entire body twisted.

Sang-ho was envious. The right to be tortured, shaking as much as she wanted, the right to cry out their daughter’s name through heavy sobs – his wife had that privilege. He didn’t. He didn’t dare mimic it.

‘I know how you feel, really. But there is a procedure to everything.

Please just wait a little longer.’ Pleading didn’t work. ‘I’m not useless. You know that. You think I’m just sitting here not doing anything? Please, just trust me. Just once, just this once.’ Imploring didn’t work either.

That morning, she had shaken him awake. He was jolted out of light sleep. Nothing had changed. He must have been dreaming of a faint hope that he could almost grasp. Miserable and embarrassed, he slowly rubbed his eyes. Had she spent the whole night sitting next to the phone? Her eyes were steeped in fatigue and anxiety, shadows of misery and pain crashing to the surface like waves. He could sense her desperate will not to fall into the deep hole of despair. Sang-ho searched for his pack of cigarettes in the trousers he had flung to the floor the previous night.

‘Listen to me,’ she said, looking straight into his eyes. She enunciated each word clearly. ‘I can’t trust the police anymore. They don’t care about one small child who’s gone missing. I guess that makes sense.’

He broke a cigarette in half. He could already taste bitterness. ‘So what do you want me to do?’

185

from What You Never Know

‘There has to be another way. We have to start looking for her today. Together. If we just leave it to the police I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘I told you to stop it!’ he shouted. ‘Of course I know that! Why do you insist on being ridiculous? What would we do? Stand in the middle of Seoul Station Plaza and ask anyone we see, “Have you seen our daughter?”’ Sangho rose brusquely from the bed.

Ok-yeong grabbed his arm. ‘Is there something I don’t know?’

Her voice was sharp, as though her words could razor his chin. Everything in the room stood still for a moment. He looked away.

‘What? No, of course not,’ he managed to retort. He thought he sounded unnerved.

His wife’s grip loosened, leaving a red mark on his arm. She sat down limply on the edge of the bed.

‘I’ve talked to the police about all of this,’ he said, lowering his voice, attempting to be conciliatory. ‘If we make too much of a fuss it might goad the arseholes who have her.’

‘How can you be so sure that it’s . . . ’ Ok-yeong paused; perhaps it was too difficult to utter the word, ‘kidnapping’.

Sang-ho burst out of the room, slamming the door in his wife’s face.

He heard her sobs but rushed away, pretending not to notice. He really was sorry, but he couldn’t do anything. He just wanted to avoid her. Sang-ho didn’t realize that Ok-yeong needed to heap her guilt on someone else, just as he did.

The pre-dawn roads were empty. It was still early for rush hour and Gangnam Boulevard was quiet. He put his foot down and blazed through the Yeoksam Station intersection; the engine then sputtered, the RPM dropped instantly and the car stopped. Drivers behind him started to lay on the horn but his car wouldn’t start. He was out of petrol. The red warning light must have been blinking for a while. He buried his face into the wheel, at a loss. What else had he neglected to see? What was it that he rushed towards, without noticing anything else? The cars behind began to swerve around him, one by one. Beleaguered, he was stranded in the middle of the street.

At about ten in the morning the private investigator came to see him.

Sang-ho had asked him to come to the office as he hadn’t known where else would be safer.

186

I-hyeon Jeong

‘You’ve come to work,’ Yeong-gwang observed. He seemed at ease, as if he would have strolled in and made himself at home even if Sang-ho hadn’t been there. Or maybe he would have hummed a waltz as he rifled through the cabinets and desk drawers. Sang-ho invited him to sit on the sofa. Yeong-gwang was straight-backed even when he sat down. Sang-ho was glad he had told his employees to come in later than usual.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Sang-ho. ‘I couldn’t get in touch with you yesterday.’

‘I was busy with a few things,’ said Yeong-gwang, adding in a polite and business-like tone, ‘That’s why I’ve come to see you now.’

Sang-ho instinctively understood that he was at a disadvantage.

‘Mr Kim,’ Yeong-gwang said.

‘Yes?’ ‘Is there something you always carry around with you?’

Sang-ho nodded, at a loss. Strangely, at that moment, what popped into his head wasn’t a square briefcase but a black golf bag.

‘Do you happen to know what’s in your bag?’

‘What?’

‘Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t a test.’

Sang-ho wrapped his hand around a glass of water. He didn’t have the energy to bat idle chatter back and forth. He couldn’t understand what Yeong-gwang was getting at. Could he know the golf bag had only held a shirt with a damn crocodile logo on it, instead of the promised USB drive?

‘I see that you don’t know off the top of your head. A lot of people are like that. They always carry something with them out of habit. They feel naked without it, but a lot of people don’t actually know what’s in their bags. You see that a lot, especially with people in my line of work. That’s why I never carry anything with me.’ He smiled curtly. ‘Your wife must be very worried.’

Sang-ho frowned.

‘I went to Galma-dong yesterday.’

Galma 2-dong, Seo-gu, in Daejeon. Where his wife’s family lived. The home of his elderly mother-in-law and his sister-in-law, who wasn’t married and past forty.

‘I don’t always do this, but I wanted to confirm some things,’ Yeonggwang continued.

187

from What You Never Know

Sang-ho didn’t say anything.

‘I was going to take the KTX high-speed train there but changed my mind. I wanted to follow the same route your wife did on Sunday. I started off from Bangbae-dong. Your house is really close to the Banpo Interchange.

Oh, of course, there are many different factors at play. When I went it was a weekday, and I’m sure we drove at different speeds.’

‘So what? Just tell me, don’t beat around the bush. Is Yu-ji there?’

‘There’s no trace of her at your in-laws’.’

‘What?’ A hot flame burst up from Sang-ho’s heart. Damn it. He didn’t know what to do at this juncture so he shouted. ‘Who told you to do something useless like that? Something I didn’t even ask you to do?’

Yeong-gwang gazed at Sang-ho, who couldn’t read anything in his unblinking eyes.

‘I don’t only do what I’m told, you see.’

‘What?’

‘I have my own ways,’ Yeong-gwang said calmly. ‘Right now I’m gathering every strand of evidence. Until I can see some sort of clear outline.’

Their eyes met. Sang-ho looked away first. ‘But there’s no time . . . ’ Sangho faltered. ‘You know how desperate we are, how we feel. Why Daejeon?’

‘To meet your mother-in-law, among other things. I have to say, although she’s not young, she’s in fairly good health.’

Even though he had been with Ok-yeong for over ten years, Sang-ho wasn’t close to her family. When Yu-ji was a baby his mother-in-law had visited a few times a year and spent some time with them, but her visits almost stopped after Hye-seong moved in. When she did come for a rare visit she would hurry back when Sang-ho came home. They didn’t have many opportunities to become close, and it didn’t seem as though his wife really cared if they had a good relationship or not. Ok-yeong didn’t even ask him to come along when the family got together in Daejon for his mother-inlaw’s birthday or for Ok-yeong’s eldest sister and brother-in-law’s visit from America. Sometimes he wondered if she didn’t want him to go.

He had asked her about it, and she made excuses: ‘It’s uncomfortable for you, because of the language barrier and everything.’

Sang-ho was grateful. He still had unpleasant memories of his ex-wife mentioning her mother in every other sentence. Ok-yeong was different from Mi-suk in every way.

188

I-hyeon Jeong

‘Your sister-in-law told me her mother doesn’t know about this. That your wife asked her to keep it quiet. Thinking about her mother when she must be out of her mind with worry – she’s very considerate. Your wife, I mean.’ Yeong-gwang explained he had only said hello to her mother, and that her sister had confirmed that Ok-yeong had come on Sunday and left on Monday. ‘She couldn’t remember exactly when she had arrived and left. But then again, not many people remember trivial details like that.

And it’s been over a week.’

Sang-ho’s heart constricted without explanation.

‘But anyway,’ Yeong-gwang said, changing the subject, ‘that neighbourhood has a real parking problem. I guess it’s an issue no matter where you go, not only in Seoul. It was hard to find a spot even though it was in the middle of the day and on a weekday. Maybe because it’s an old block of flats, or maybe there aren’t enough spaces. As soon as I parked a guard came running up. He wrote down the building number I was visiting, and put a piece of paper on my windshield. Apparently if they don’t check each car like that, people who live or work nearby park there on the sly. I guess that’s inevitable because there isn’t enough space, but it does seem a little uncharitable among neighbours, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, that’s just how things are these days,’ Sang-ho murmured uncertainly.

Yeong-gwang nodded. ‘Right. That’s just how things are. They have this log that records every visiting car. Of course, they’re not that well organized like at your place; it’s pretty basic. The guards just scribble down the make of the car and the licence plate.’ He took out a notebook from his pocket and opened it. ‘Your wife drives a white BMW 320i, licence plate 7279, right? I couldn’t find any record of 7279, from February twenty-fourth to the twenty-fifth, or before or after that. The guards were perplexed, too. If she’d parked there overnight, it would be hard not to notice a nice car like that in that neighbourhood.’

Sang-ho wanted to shut him up but Yeong-gwang was too quick.

‘One of the guards had been working at that particular building for seven years. He knew that the youngest daughter of the Chinese woman living in 801 was very rich, that she lived in Seoul. Until last spring was driving in a Sonata but from a certain point she started to arrive in a BMW. He said it must be true that her husband has a successful business.’

Sang-ho coughed.

189

from What You Never Know

‘When your wife visits, he says he always gives her a good spot right in front of the guard booth, to make sure her expensive car doesn’t get scratched. And he told me he was certain he didn’t see her car on Sunday or Monday. The records match his recollection. So . . . where did she park?’ Yeong-gwang asked, as if truly curious, lengthening the inflection of his voice.

‘She could have parked somewhere else, I guess,’ Sang-ho said, wondering why he was searching for excuses. ‘Or maybe she took the train or the bus.’

‘Your wife told me she’d driven there. And the guards at the Bangbaedong villa said they saw the car leave. I guess she could have parked at the bus terminal to take the bus, or at Seoul Station and to take the train. But why would she go out of her way to do that?’

It made Sang-ho nervous that a third party was telling him about his wife’s movements, especially those he hadn’t known about. That nervousness soon turned into annoyance and meant that he might not know about something important, which could make this situation worse. That vague thought made him feel as though his head would explode.

‘Of course, I can’t be sure of anything right now,’ Yeong-gwang said.

Sang-ho looked away.

‘But I am curious. A question is like a small stone that disturbs the peaceful surface of water. Or, let me rephrase, like a stone that has the possibility of disturbing the peaceful surface.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘I have a theory about this, up here.’ Yeong-gwang pressed his pen to his temple. ‘My investigation is still in the early stages so there are only a few lines that are definitively drawn, but I think my theory might have some weight. I have a request for you.’

‘For me?’

‘Yes.’ What the private investigator wanted was his wife’s mobile-phone records.

‘Isn’t this something I hired you to take care of ?’ Sang-ho asked.

Yeong-gwang lowered his voice. ‘If I did it, it’d be illegal. It’s confidential information.’ He remained impassive, but to Sang-ho it seemed as though he were grinning. ‘There’s no point in risking everything for something that trivial.’

190

I-hyeon Jeong

Sang-ho either had to get the records himself or pay for the risk the investigator would have to take. He reached into his back pocket and removed his wallet. Thankfully he had brought along some large notes. He handed over the money and, trying hard not to appear hesitant, said, ‘They would have planned for a long time before taking her. And in that process they would have done something suspicious.’

‘You are certain it’s a kidnapping, then. Who are you talking about?’

‘If I knew I wouldn’t be sitting here, would I? But . . . maybe it’s someone who wants to get back at me.’

‘Get back at you?’

‘Well, when you’re in business . . .’ Sang-ho couldn’t tell what he was trying to say, or whether this man understood what he was suggesting.

‘So let me summarize what you’re telling me. Yu-ji would have been kidnapped by someone who had been planning it for a long time. Someone who would have held a grudge against you. And there’s a distinct possibility that it would be a business-related grudge. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’ ‘So then you’ll have to give me a list of the people who are holding a grudge. You’re the one who’d know best.’

Sang-ho understood that he was stuck in a deep, narrow cave. What could he say? Where could he begin? His heart was heavy as he said goodbye to Yeong-gwang. His throat burned and his heart filled with despair.

When they first met, Ok-yeong had been an instructor at the Chineselanguage school Sang-ho attended. Several years previously, he’d begun working in the import-export business, travelling between Korea and China, but he could barely utter a word in Chinese. He’d enrolled in a basic conversation class at a large language school and gone once or twice before quitting, and this pattern continued. Evening classes were impossible because he went out drinking after work, and morning classes were inconvenient because he was hung over and could never get up early.

This was why he didn’t have high expectations when he’d signed up for an 8 p.m. class at a small new school in his neighbourhood. He’d arrived five minutes late on his first day. Two students and the teacher – all women – turned to look at him. They were all in their late twenties and early thirties, and they were all pretty good-looking. Sang-ho started to attend regularly.

191

from What You Never Know

They became friendly, and after class would sometimes grab a coffee or go out for a beer. One of the women was a graduate student and the other worked at a publishing house, and they both called him Elder Brother. To meet his duties as the elder brother, he paid for everything and listened attentively.

He didn’t do any of this with an ulterior motive. He was lonely, which was an unfamiliar feeling for him, and he didn’t know how to overcome it.

Ok-yeong didn’t often come to these after-class gatherings. They always invited her to join them, but she would only come once every three or four times. And when she did, she would sit ramrod straight and not long after would say, ‘I should get going.’ He thought she was a little too aloof. It wasn’t that she acted high and mighty. She was nice enough and answered questions with a gentle smile on her face. In other words, she smiled at everyone the same way. To him, it looked as though she were trying her best to protect her pride and dignity, rather than just being sociable. She was different from any other women he had encountered. That made Sang-ho uneasy.

One day, a month later, he arrived five minutes late, as usual, to find that Ok-yeong was the only one there. She was sheathed in a black turtleneck, with her hand cradling her chin and her elbow propped on the lectern.

‘Ji-yeong can’t come because she has to work late,’ she said, and let out a dry cough.

Had she always been this small and thin? Sang-ho was surprised. They decided to wait another five minutes for Mi-gyeong. An awkward air settled over the room. Sang-ho took a seat in the middle. He looked down and pretended to concentrate on his class materials. Words entered his head but didn’t stick. Ok-yeong kept coughing. She seemed tired.

‘Have you caught a cold?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she said vaguely, as if she were talking about someone else.

‘I was really busy today and now this. It’s killing me.’

Sang-ho realized she wasn’t wearing her usual polite smile. He left the classroom without a word, went over the road to a snack bar, asked for two rice rolls to take away and then went to the pharmacy next door for some cold medicine. To the pharmacist, who asked, ‘Which would you like?’ he replied, ‘The most expensive kind, please.’

Ok-yeong didn’t smile when he returned with the plastic bag of food and the bag from the pharmacy. She swept aside her long fringe and, grateful but uncomfortable, said, ‘Thank you. I’ll eat it later, after class.’

192

I-hyeon Jeong

‘Please, have some now.’

‘No, no. Let’s start. I guess Mi-gyeong can’t come today.’

‘Go ahead and eat. If we start now we’re going to be too far ahead.’

‘I can’t. The school rules . . .’

‘Rules are meant to be broken, aren’t they?’ Sang-ho snapped a pair of wooden chopsticks apart.

‘Maybe,’ she murmured slowly. She took the chopsticks he’d handed her.

And that was the beginning.

The next month, Ok-yeong quit the school without notice. The new instructor was a man in his fifties, who talked through the phlegm rattling in his throat. He banned the use of Korean during class. Sang-ho grew annoyed and returned to being a lazy student. Another season dragged by. He went once a week to his ex-mother-in-law’s to see the kids, paid a prostitute twice a month for sex, and drank every other day. And one day he picked up the phone and it was her.

After work, he headed to the place they’d decided to meet, feeling as if he were under a spell. He started to climb up the subway stairs when an old woman selling roses nudged him. He bought a stem and put it deep in the inside pocket of his coat. Ok-yeong looked prettier and more mature than she had before. Her cheeks were less full and her eye make-up was darker.

Thanks to her low neckline, he could see her collarbones, stretching across, taut. His eyes were drawn to them. They drank, and he started to get a bit pissed. She had a higher tolerance for alcohol than he’d expected.

‘You know, I felt a little hurt. You quit without saying anything,’ Sang-ho said.

‘I went to Taiwan,’ she said, her pink lips hesitant, and she shook her head violently. ‘I’m never going back. That’s why I went.’

‘Did something happen?’

‘I feel like I keep going backwards instead of going forwards. Reverting.’

‘Well, that happens in anyone’s life. You go back then get it together and go forwards again. People who just go on without looking back don’t know a thing about life.’ It sounded pretty good, even as it came out of his mouth.

He felt as if he suddenly knew a lot about life.

She slipped a cigarette in her mouth. Sang-ho lit it for her. She blew smoke and laughed.

‘What?’

193

from What You Never Know

‘Nothing. It’s funny.’

He looked down at the lighter in his hand. It read: ‘Adult Club Queen Bee.’ ‘Oh, these days they just give these things out on the street.’ Turning red, he tried to explain it away.

She stubbed out the cigarette firmly. ‘That’s OK. I like that about you.’

She murmured, ‘You might have guessed already, but I’m Chinese.’

Sang-ho sat there in a daze, not knowing what to say. It wasn’t because she revealed herself to be Chinese, but because she had just said she liked him.

‘Oh, well, I –’ he said seriously, ‘I’m divorced.’

She was quiet for a while. They drank a few more glasses, swelling like a cloud right before a heavy snowfall. He remembered the rose in his coat.

When he presented it to her, Ok-yeong swept her fringe back. It might have been her way of showing that she didn’t know what to do. But this time, she had a smile on her face. He laughed heartily, like an idiot. It was probably the most romantic day in their history. A few glasses later, he reached out and touched her face. She didn’t move. He mustered up the courage to stroke her cheek. It was pliable and soft. She didn’t move at all.

About three months after that Ok-yeong cautiously said, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ It hadn’t happened that first date. They didn’t do it that day but soon enough they’d slept together four or five times. After she broke the news she said, ‘But don’t worry, you don’t need to feel responsible.’

When Sang-ho told his family, his eldest brother, who was never able to conceal his thoughts, spat out, ‘What’s wrong with you? How is it that each time you get married it’s because of a baby?’ Sang-ho yelled back at him, insisting that it wasn’t so this time around. But, even now, he knew for certain that he would never have been able to marry Ok-yeong if it weren’t for Yu-ji, who had appeared at the right moment – Yu-ji, the life that came into Sang-ho’s so unexpectedly.

When she’d returned to Korea in the mid-1990s after university, Ok-yeong found work as a Chinese-language instructor. She didn’t have any other option. With an F2 visa, it was impossible to get a steady job. ChineseKoreans who didn’t apply for naturalization needed an F2 long-term residency visa, and this had to be renewed every five years. It wasn’t difficult to find work if you gave up on finding stability. Taiwan University was a 194

I-hyeon Jeong

good school, was recognized as such even in Korea, and learning Chinese seemed to be the rage in the early to mid-1990s. But it wasn’t easy to work as an instructor at a large language school or a large corporation. Those places were mired in rigid bureaucracies. The instructor reviews that students completed every month were delivered like a carefully folded paper airplane to the director’s office, and on months when enrolment dropped, teachers were harangued by the management.

Apart from this, and most importantly, she couldn’t stand the people. She grew tired spending hours face to face with people she didn’t have a say in choosing to spend time with. All the energy in her body leached out of her.

During her breaks, when she contemplated entering the classroom again in ten minutes, it felt as though a heavy metal block were weighing on her shoulders. She didn’t know what to do, and resorted to moving from school to school on the outskirts of the city. She could easily begin and then quit those jobs.

It felt like a perfect fit, since she went to Taipei two or three times a year: when she managed to save enough money after working a few months, she would quit and fly there. When her relationship with Ming started to crack, she packed her bags and returned to Seoul. She felt she was ageing fast. Her life was always teetering on the edge, as it would be for anyone if they had to fall asleep every night on a mattress topped with an open suitcase. When she was there she missed being here and when she was here she missed being there. It was a demoralizing routine. She was almost thirty.

One autumn day, as dead leaves scuttled over the ground, Ming flew in to Seoul on an afternoon flight. It had been four months since they’d seen each other. Ok-yeong drove to the airport in her white Pride. They began to argue at the arrivals gate at Gimpo Airport. The fight was sparked by something trivial: the thin tan jacket Ming was wearing bothered her. It was threadbare, and as he’d had it since he was twenty, the edges of his sleeves were frayed.

‘I told you to throw this out!’ Ok-yeong reacted more edgily than usual.

‘Why? It’s comfortable, and I like it,’ Ming said, laid back as always.

‘I don’t. We’re older now. Why don’t you care about what you wear?

We’re in Seoul now. Don’t you know how people look down on you if you wear things like this?’

Ming lowered his head and fidgeted with the passport he was holding.

On the dark green cover were the words ‘Republic of China’ in Chinese and English and the round imprint of the flag.

195

from What You Never Know

Something hot shot up from inside her. ‘Answer me!’ she cried, and he looked at her in surprise. ‘Please don’t wear this when you come here.

Everyone can tell you’re Chinese at one glance.’

‘I am Chinese,’ Ming said derisively.

She hated how he said that. They didn’t say another word until they got to her studio in Mapo. She glanced at Ming as she drove. He seemed on edge, and his expression betrayed his stubbornness. Nothing had changed since the time he’d announced his intention to drop out of school with only one term to go. She went to work, and left him lying across her bed avidly reading an old newspaper. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater and a scarf but she still felt cold. Every time she coughed her chest rang. Only when one of her students held out a plastic bag of rice rolls did she realize she hadn’t eaten a bite all day.

Until then, she hadn’t paid much attention to Sang-ho. With the inertia that came from being with the same person for a long time, Ok-yeong believed her life was on a straight track, a line that was forever long and stretching beyond the furthest point she could see, like a book with the same prologue and epilogue. This belief wasn’t a matter of will but a matter of habit, and it didn’t have anything to do with whether the book was fascinating or dull. The first time she took the subway with Sang-ho she was momentarily dazed, realizing that he wasn’t that big compared to the other men in the carriage. In her mind Sang-ho had always been a large man. For ten years, Ming had been the standard by which she’d judged everything in the world.

With Sang-ho, there were moments that took her by surprise. After sex he’d walk around the bedroom without anything on, not bothering to cover himself. He was dark-skinned and had the broad shoulders of a former wrestler. His body, the muscles that were carved into his body, the movements his body made – they were so unfamiliar to her that she’d try to figure out where she was. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Sang-ho. She was attracted to his simplicity and intuitive ways, to his innocent expression when he laughed at a comedy show on TV, to his even, white teeth that showed when he grinned. Perhaps she had given these characteristics more weight because she had never seen them in Ming.

Ok-yeong could finally breathe: her relationship with Sang-ho didn’t oblige her to read every atom of his soul. She couldn’t live her life like two 196

I-hyeon Jeong

baby potatoes, stuck together and softening in the little crisper drawer of the fridge. Ming was still there, though. Every few days, they’d talk for a while on the phone, and continued to visit each other in Seoul and Taipei.

Ming didn’t throw out his old tan jacket. Sometimes she had the urge to tell him in the most cowardly and hurtful way she could imagine: ‘I’m seeing someone else.’ No: ‘I’m sleeping with someone else.’ But she didn’t. Without a word, she’d fall asleep holding his hand, which was as familiar as the map to her hometown. She thought that was revenge; revenge without a target.

Sometimes when she woke up she had tears in her eyes. She wished her life would head in an unpredictable direction.

She didn’t recognize the symptoms of pregnancy. Unlike the heroines in daily television dramas, she never opened the fridge door and, suddenly nauseated, rush to the toilet. She was just tired and sleepy all day long. After each class she was so exhausted that it felt as though she wasn’t so much walking through the school hallways as pushing her way through a fog-heavy night. Six weeks after her last period, she stopped by a pharmacy on the way to work and bought a pregnancy test kit. She unwrapped it in the first-floor public toilet of the commercial building that housed the school. Drops of urine seeped into the stick. Two lines. She stared down at it for what seemed like a long time, but which probably had been less than a minute.

Someone knocked on the door. She didn’t know whether to toss the stick in the bin or walk out with it. The world spun.

The following Saturday she took an early morning flight to Taipei. She told Sang-ho that she’d landed an urgent interpretation job. She hadn’t meant to lie but it popped out because he’d asked, out of the blue, ‘What if I come with you?’ When she explained, he suggested: ‘While you work, I can just sightsee. I’ve always wanted to go to Taiwan.’ He seemed hesitant, but she didn’t think he would drop it easily.

She replied, sharply, ‘You said you were going to see your kids this weekend.’

He was deflated, his Achilles’ heel attacked. He was someone who couldn’t hide his emotions, whether he was happy or sad.

She calmly told him, ‘See you later.’

7

197

from What You Never Know

As usual, it was raining in Taipei. When she saw Ming, who looked morose, like a plant growing in the shade, her mind went blank.

‘Anything new?’ she asked, and he shook his head, placidly.

‘There must have been at least one exciting thing that happened,’ Okyeong insisted, desperate. Ming calmly related the news that a famous politician in Taiwan was in trouble because he was suspected of taking a large bribe.

‘No, not stuff like that. Something that was really exciting for you. Tell me about something like that.’

‘There was nothing like that,’ Ming said, shrugging. ‘You’re acting really strange today. What do you want to eat for lunch?’

‘What?’

‘We have to eat. Where to you want to go?’

‘What about you, what do you want to eat?’

‘Me? Anything.’

‘Again! Why do you always hide like that? Why don’t you just tell me what you really want to eat, what you really want to do?’ Ok-yeong cried in frustration and Ming snorted, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

They left his place and went to Ming’s motorcycle in the car park. He put on a yellow raincoat and handed her a purple one. She took it with the hand that wasn’t holding her umbrella.

‘Aren’t you going to get on?’ he asked. Transparent raindrops slid down his slick jacket.

Ok-yeong gripped her umbrella tightly. ‘I’m pregnant.’

There was a deep, wretched silence. Ming was first to speak. ‘Is that why you won’t get on?’

It would have been better if she hadn’t seen his expression. She understood that an era, one that was innocent and unformed and silly and lacking in obligations, was for ever gone. Perhaps it had ceased to exist a long time ago. ‘You don’t have to feel responsible.’

Ming didn’t answer. A dense pain gradually pressed down on her heart.

Ok-yeong told herself she wouldn’t blame anyone, not even herself. That was all she could do.

198

Blake Chambliss

Interview: Blaine Harden Kathleen Hwang

B

laine Harden is the author of Escape from Camp 14, which chronicles the life of deprivation and cruelty faced by Shin Dong-hyuk, who managed to escape from the North Korean prison camp in which he was born and raised. A former journalist for The New York Times and the Washington Post, Harden has long experience in covering repressive regimes.

ALR: Your book is a powerful and disturbing story that exposes the evils of a system in which people, including children, are treated as subhuman.

What impact do you hope or expect your book to have?

BH: The purpose of the book is to raise awareness about the long-running human rights catastrophe in North Korea. In the United States especially, knowledge of North Korea tends to be limited to a cartoonish image of the leadership (Kim Jong-il’s big glasses, puffy hair; Kim Jong-un’s chubby cheeks) and stories about nuclear tests and long-range missiles. People do 199

Interview: Blaine Harden

not understand that North Korea is the world’s longest-enduring totalitarian state and that the labour camps are one of the key means of creating the terror sustaining such a state.

ALR: Will the book be published in South Korea? If so, what reception do you anticipate there?

BH: So far, we do not have a South Korean publisher. But since the book was published in the United States on 29 March and became a New York Times bestseller the following week, I have done interviews with two of the three largest South Korean dailies – and there seems to be keen interest in the book and in Shin’s adjustment to life outside the camp. The reporters I spoke to suggested that a publisher would soon step forward. The reception for the book there, I expect, will be considerably different than elsewhere because readers know so much more about North Korea and about the labour camps. But the power of Shin’s story – an escape adventure and a psychological examination of a prison-bred man learning how to acquire human emotions – should be just as appealing in South Korea as elsewhere.

ALR: When discussing North Korean defectors some South Koreans have expressed horror and revulsion, more at the prospect of being overwhelmed by a catastrophic flood of damaged refugees, than at the suffering in the DPRK revealed by your book. How would you respond to them?

BH: I think Shin’s story would force every thinking South Korean to examine his or her conscience and reflect on Seoul’s responsibility to pay close attention to and perhaps hasten the end of this human rights nightmare.

ALR: Shin’s escape depended on a series of coincidences that would, in fiction, tax the credulity of the reader. In the book you mention that Shin, after finding friendship among Christians in California, came to credit God for helping him. Has he sustained that faith?

BH: Yes, Shin has a Christian faith, but I don’t know how much it has become a part of the way he deals with the trauma of being a survivor.

In my reporting for the book, we did not talk at any great length about religion. However, he does struggle to understand some of the basic tenets of Christianity; for example, forgiveness is something he struggles with, and the idea of grace. His discovery of God, in a Christian sense, goes along 200

Kathleen Hwang

with his discovery that mothers and sons are supposed to love each other.

He is drawn to these ideas, but still regards them as foreign and hard to master, something like learning a very difficult foreign language and never being comfortable with it.

ALR: In a way, even more poignant than the horrors of his gulag experience is the story of Shin’s efforts to overcome the damage done to him as a human being. At one point he describes himself as having a ‘dead space’ inside, and being unable to experience the emotions he believes other people feel. He says, ‘I am evolving from being an animal.’ Has he continued to make progress in his personal development since the book was written?

BH: He said recently in Washington that he continues to struggle, he continues to have nightmares, and he continues to evolve from being an animal to being human. It is not getting much easier for him, but he shows no signs of giving up.

ALR: Your story describes a great deal of human tragedy and suffering.

How does this affect you as a person?

BH: I have seen and heard a lot of tragic stories as a correspondent for three decades in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia. Shin’s story has not been traumatic for me to hear or write about, but the depraved behaviour of the government in North Korea does make me angry. I wrote this book – and worked very hard to get Shin’s trust and all the details of his life – as a way of showing readers in the United States and around the world how hideously cruel North Korea is. It is my hope that awareness will lead to change. In any case, awareness and understanding and empathy are better than ignorance and apathy.

ALR: While working on this book did you encounter any efforts to obstruct your access to people or information? Did you encounter any disbelief, real or professed, concerning the veracity of Shin’s story?

BH: Shin’s story is incredible. It strains credulity. But it is consistent with the stories of camp survivors, it is consistent with what human rights investigators have been hearing for more than a decade, it is consistent with the many scars on Shin’s body, and it is consistent with his psychological problems. North Korea denies the camps exist, although they are clearly 201

Interview: Blaine Harden

visible on Google Earth, and survivors of the camps keep turning up in South Korea. So its denials are lies, pure and simple.

Scepticism has been overwhelmed by evidence such as satellite images by the thousands and the stories of camp survivors in studies like Hidden Gulag (a new version of which has just been released and can be found on the web at HRNK.org). Shin’s story just happens to be the most amazing of the bunch, since he is the only known person to have been bred and raised in a camp – and escape to the West to talk about it.

ALR: North Korea’s gulags have historical parallels in other parts of the world, where similar gulags were created by dictators including Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Do you think there is anything unique about North Korea’s system of controlling its ‘hostile classes’? Is there anything unique about the regime or the country that has allowed this system to continue for sixty years?

BH: What is unique about North Korea is the willingness of the government (the Kim family dictatorship) to sustain its cruelty so long. The camps in North Korea have existed twice as long as Stalin’s gulag and twelve times as long as the Nazi death camps. Totalitarian states usually collapse in less than twenty years. North Korea is the exception. Its tools of totalitarian control came out of Stalin’s bag of tricks. But the North Korean regime has been willing and able to use them so much longer than any other government: for six decades and counting.

ALR: Do you have any hope or expectation of positive change under the regime of North Korea’s youthful new leader, Kim Jong-un?

BH: No. There are no indications – yet – of substantial change.

ALR: Do you anticipate the eventual collapse of the DPRK? How would the consequences of that collapse play out on a world scale? Do you think your book and other exposés of the DPRK prepare for or hinder that collapse?

BH: Yes, the state will eventually collapse. It depends mostly on what China does – as the DPRK’s primary supplier of fuel and food and other goods.

I am not sure the collapse will be an event of world-shaking dimensions, unless it is accompanied by massive artillery and missile attacks on South Korea and Japan. That is possible, but I do not know if it is likely.

202

J. E. Hoare

I

n a very brief time, Escape from Camp 14 has become a famous book.

This is not surprising. It is well-written and easy to read even if its subject is horrific. Since it began life in the form of a newspaper article, it has been serialized on BBC radio and extracted around the world in a variety of other newspapers. It tells the story of a man now called Shin Dong-hyuk, who lives in Seoul after having spent some time in the United States. But he was formerly Shin In Geum, born in one of the toughest North Korean labour camps where there was no faith, hope or charity, just sheer mind-boggling brutality. Today he has found a sort of peace, recounting his story to audiences who listen to his tale with horror.

Shin does not tell his story directly. He tried to do that in a book published in Korean soon after he arrived in the South Korean capital but it attracted little attention and sold few copies. Now, however, having been taken up by the veteran American journalist Blaine Harden, the story 203

Review: Escape from Camp 14

is getting the attention outside the Korean peninsula that Shin’s autobiography failed to attract in its original language. There have been other accounts of the conditions in North Korean labour camps. What makes Shin’s story different is that he was born in a camp, and is acknowledged to be the only person with such a background ever to have made good an escape. Otherwise, the details of how he was treated, of the casual brutality and even of the summary executions, are similar to other accounts that circulate among a relatively small number of people. Christian Solidarity Worldwide has drawn attention to many of these. Eyes of the Tailless Animals, published by Soon Ok Lee in 1999, tells a similar story of cruelty and savagery, often directed towards Christians. In 2004, the BBC’s Access to Evil detailed horrendous chemical and biological experiments that it claimed were conducted on prisoners, among whom those from religious backgrounds featured prominently.

This book does raise some questions. Harden knows no Korean and by his own account was searching for a good story with a human rights angle. He certainly seems to have found it. The public execution of Shin’s mother and brother for attempting to escape is described more than once and illustrated by a line drawing. But the story is different from the one Shin told in his own book. In that version, the execution was a surprise.

He now admits that it was he who betrayed his mother and brother to the authorities. He hardly knew his brother, several years his senior, and he hated his mother, who beat him for stealing her food. When he realized late one night that they were plotting to escape, he had no compunction in betraying them to the only official he could find, in return for a promise that he would be appointed class monitor. Alas for Shin, the official in turn betrayed him by not revealing the source of his information. As a result, Shin and his father, whom he also seems to have hated, were detained and tortured in the belief that they knew more about the planned escape than they were willing to reveal. Only gradually did Shin realize why he was being so badly rewarded for being an informant. Somewhat late in the day, his story was believed – the man who had failed to credit Shin disappeared and was no doubt tortured in turn – and Shin’s life was spared. The second version may be correct, but who is to know?

It certainly makes for a more dramatic if equally appalling story, with Shin subsequently coming to realize, with the help of religious 204

J. E. Hoare

groups in the United States, the enormity of what he had done. He now expresses repentance.

Years ago, I remember South Korean intelligence officers saying they were reluctant to rely on testimony from North Korean defectors since the more harrowing the story, the greater the impact and the stronger the possibility of making money out of it. They said those who had spent their lives in a system that relied on lies and deceit would not change just because they were now in South Korea. Nevertheless, Shin’s account is echoed, and aspects of it verified, in other narratives. Perhaps his story, in reaching a worldwide audience, will at last draw more widespread attention to the desperate state of human rights in North Korea.

In any case, I suspect that Shin’s story, harrowing as it is, will not change the general perception that it is the North Korean nuclear programme that really matters. Although awareness of North Korean human rights issues have a higher profile today than ten or twenty years ago, and may well be considerably heightened by this book, nowhere do they top the international agenda. Human rights trail a long way behind bombs and rockets.

205

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

L

ast December, all eyes turned to North Korea with the news of the dictator Kim Jong-il’s death from a suspected heart attack. As the succession falls on his little-known and untested youngest son Kim Jong-un and the world waits on high alert, the attention is unlikely to diminish.

Yet, despite all the news coverage, precious little is known about what life is like for those in the so-called ‘Hermit Kingdom’. American author Brandon W. Jones seeks to address the deficiency with his debut All Woman and Springtime. Essentially a coming-of-age tale, the novel follows two young North Korean women as they make the transition from their teenage years to adulthood in the most brutal of circumstances.

Gyong-ho and Il-sun work in a clothing factory by day and spend their nights in an orphanage for girls. Each has experienced the savage hand of 206

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

the state: Il-sun when her outspoken brother ‘disappeared’, leaving her widowed mother to die of a broken heart; Gyong-ho when her family was thrown into a forced labour camp for failing to show proper respect for the hallowed portraits of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. However, the girls could not be more different.

Il-sun is a conventional heroine. Despite the hardships of daily life she has a lust for experience that will not be suppressed. Petulant, independent and devastatingly beautiful, she is the title’s ‘all woman and springtime’.

In contrast, Gyong-ho (nicknamed Gi) is the more nuanced and interesting character. A skinny, hunched and conscientious girl, she adores the Great Leader as much as she fears what he represents. And while Il-sun uses their intimacy to confess her crushes on boys and coax Gi into handing over surplus garments to make up her work quota at the factory, Gi harbours a secret, repressed desire for her friend.

The arrival of the rebellious, seductive Gianni – a trader of black-market goods – throws their lives into turmoil when he whisks them across the border to the South and into the sex trade. What follows is a vicious ravaging of their innocence, accompanied by suffering far beyond the girls’ worst imaginings.

In illuminating both North Korea and the inhumanity of sexual slavery, Jones touches on two important topics; however, the novel would benefit from more fully developed characters, a more convincing denouement and a purging of clichés. Il-sun, for example, is described as having a ‘heart-shaped face’, ‘pouting red lips’ and a full bosom ‘tempting as low-hanging fruit’.

All Woman and Springtime is at its best when the action takes place in North Korea. Jones effectively conveys the suffocating nature of daily life under constant surveillance. In one memorable scene at a ‘voluntary’ education meeting, all the factory girls laugh hysterically in unison – afraid that if they stop it would be considered unpatriotic. It’s a disturbingly absurd moment that recalls images of forced crying and wailing at Kim Jong-il’s recent funeral.

Jones complements this with small pieces of information: Americans are referred to automatically as Miguk nom (American bastards); Joseon (North Korea) is believed by all who live in it to be the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on earth; people go hungry while food is stockpiled, 207

Review: All Woman and Springtime

allegedly for the starving South Koreans; and children in labour camps must betray their friends to the authorities in order to survive.

An interesting beginning is undermined by the remaining two-thirds of the novel, which descends into brutal and often gratuitous sexual violence.

On the surface, the novel’s sympathy is for the women as they are forced into acts of increasing depravity, but there is a touch of tabloid sensationalism at play: moral outrage to excuse salacious gawking.

All Woman and Springtime has been compared to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha – another novel by an American man about oppressed women in a foreign country. And though the novel’s North Korean setting makes it topical, the scrutiny of the female psyche and the Hermit Kingdom lacks Golden’s subtlety and complexity. Nevertheless, it is still a compellingly racy read.

208

Lucia Sehui Kim

‘T

hey say they feed you first because the well-fed ghost is prettier.’

So observes Hyun Woo, the lead character in this novel, as he watches his fellow prisoners being led to the execution chamber. He is serving an eighteen-year sentence for his involvement in the Kwangju Uprising.

In The Old Garden, author Hwang Sok-yong revisits the uprising, a popular revolt that occurred in May 1980 against the martial law imposed

by General Chun Doo-hwan, which resulted in South Korea’s brutal massacre of its own citizens. Surviving activists went underground. They, like Hyun Woo, were branded as Communist sympathizers and pursued with vengeance. The Old Garden begins as Hyun Woo is released from prison and jolted back into a country he fails to recognize.

Hwang’s personal experience as a political prisoner lends authenticity to this tale. He describes the obsessions that can either save or destroy the 209

Review: The Old Garden

mind of an inmate and the way order and routine can be self-imposed as a means of survival: Hyun Woo measures the exact dimensions of his cell, keeps a precise tally of its contents, observes the regimen of a successful hunger strike and imagines carefully following the recipes of Korean dishes.

Hyun Woo’s story is juxtaposed with that of Yoon Hee, a painter who helps him hide from authorities after his participation in the uprising. They live simply in the village of Kalmae: fishing, hiking, cooking and tending to their garden. They fall in love. Their Edenic closeness to nature and freedom from artifice isolates them from the rest of the world, but their idyll is cut short when Hyun Woo’s photograph appears in newspapers. By this time many of his fellow activists have been captured, yet despite being a wanted man he decides to help others who remain in hiding. With a promise to return, Hyun Woo leaves Kalmae, unaware that Yoon Hee is pregnant with his child. After he is caught and imprisoned they begin to correspond. At one point Hyun Woo writes: ‘In here, when a woman finds new life they say she puts her rubber shoes on backwards. I have too many hours to spend in here so, please, Yoon Hee, I want you to turn your shoes around.’

Nearly two decades later, Hyun Woo learns of Yoon Hee’s death and returns to Kalmae. In their old house he finds her letters, notes, diaries and paintings: a revelation of her extraordinary life. While Hyun Woo languished in isolation, Yoon Hee had expanded her world to include not only motherhood but also a graduate degree, solo art exhibitions and, most notably, a vital role in the enduring underground student movement.

Fiercely independent and with a disregard for social norms, Yoon Hee propels the story forward: ‘Art,’ she writes , ‘what the hell. Will never paint again. Meaningless innumerable mistakes. The word “mistake” is quite amusing. In Chinese, it means the tracing of a lost hand. Today, I continue writing the old letter to him.’

The pace of the novel is modulated by portrayals of Hyun Woo’s slow acclimatization to modern South Korea. Yoon Hee’s lively written documents, woven throughout the book, contrast with Hyun Woo’s quiet, uneasy reservations about his new surroundings. He sees a country transformed, a government disconnected from its people, a political system that is corrupt and a citizenry conditioned to be little more than consumers.

His disenchantment is fuelled by his meetings with other surviving activists in Kalmae, and on the sixth morning he prepares to leave. He 210

Lucia Sehui Kim

packs Yoon Hee’s notebooks in his bag, taking her words with him: ‘I guess you are an old man now. Everything that we wanted to protect, the things that we endured so much for, are shattered now, but they are still shining through the world’s dust.’

With one last look back at the village, Hyun Woo moves on to meet his seventeen-year-old daughter, Eun Gyul.

The Old Garden is both a chronicle of South Korea’s modern history and a tragic love story; the separation of Hyun Woo and Yoon Hee is a metaphor for the division of Korea. The novel explores the nature and consequences of obsession – with ideology, art and love. It shows how individual and collective identity can spring from chaos.

Hwang does not shy away from expressing his political views, and though the embedded references to Western writers and artists that reinforce his opinions can sometimes be obtrusive, they add context.

Hwang Sok-yong’s distinctive perspective originates not only from his personal experiences as a prisoner and political dissident but also as a day labourer, student activist, Vietnam War veteran and advocate for factory workers. He balances the brutality of physical, emotional and mental deprivation with elegant, poetic and wistful dignity. The Old Garden is an elegy to those activists who did not survive the Kwangju Uprising, and Hwang reminds the reader of what is sacrificed when a fledgling country stumbles to establish itself. He insists that we remember.

211

Contributors BROTHER ANTHONY was born in 1942 in Cornwall, England. He has lived in Korea since 1980 and is both an Emeritus Professor at Sogang University and Chair Professor at Dankook University. He has published thirty volumes of English translations of Korean poetry and fiction, including seven volumes of poetry by Ko Un. He is a naturalized Korean citizen with the name An Sonjae.

MICHAEL BREEN has lived in South Korea for thirty years. He served for many years as Seoul correspondent for the Guardian and the Washington Times.

He now runs his own public relations firm in Seoul, and frequently writes essays, commentaries and features for the local media. He is the author of The Koreans and Kim Jong-il: North Korea’s Dear Leader.

CHO OH-HYUN, who goes by the pen name ‘Musan’, was born in 1932 in Miryang in South Korea. He has lived in the mountains since he became a novice monk at the age of seven. He has written over a hundred poems, including many in sijo form. In 2007 he received the Cheong Chi-yong Literary Award for his book Distant Holy Man. The lineage holder of the Mt Gaji school of Korean Nine Mountains Zen, he is currently in retreat at Baekdamsa Temple at Mt Seorak.

DON MEE CHOI is the author of The Morning News is Exciting. She received a Whiting Writers Award in 2011. Choi lives in Seattle and translates contemporary Korean women’s poetry.

JAE WON CHUNG was born in Seoul, grew up in Philadelphia and is currently working towards a PhD in modern Korean literature at Columbia University in New York. His English translations of Kim Hoon, Ki Hyeong-do and Kim Yeonsu have appeared (respectively) in Azalea, Washington Square and New Writing from Korea. His short story ‘How Harold Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Han’ is forthcoming in Apogee Journal.

SIMON COCKERELL, originally from southwest England, moved to Beijing in 2000, joined Koryo Tours in 2002 and has since travelled monthly to North Korea. He has given presentations and lectures on the DPRK in many countries including China, the United States and South Korea. He is a keen football fan, and organised the first friendly soccer tours to North Korea.

212

Contributors

HEINZ INSU FENKL, born in 1960 in Bupyeong, South Korea, is a novelist, translator and editor. His autobiographical novel Memories of My Ghost Brother was named a Barnes & Noble ‘Discover Great New Writers’ selection in 1996 and a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist in 1997. He began translating Cho Oh-hyun’s Zen poetry in May 2010. His most recent prose translation, Yi Mun-yol’s short story ‘An Anonymous Island’, was published in the 12 September 2011 issue of the New Yorker.

HAN YUJOO debuted in 2003 when her short story ‘To the Moon’ won Literature and Society’s New Writers Award. She has published the short story collections To the Moon, Book of Ice and My Left Hand the King and My Right Hand the King’s Scribe. She won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award in 2009.

She currently teaches at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and Korea University’s Department of Creative Writing.

J. E. HOARE has a PhD from the University of London, and was a research analyst in the British Diplomatic Service from 1969 until his retirement in January 2003. He served in the British embassies in Seoul (1981-5) and Beijing (1988-91), and was the first British representative in Pyongyang (2001-2). He now writes and broadcasts on Korea and teaches a course on North Korea at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

JANET HONG is a writer and translator living in Vancouver, Canada. She received the grand prize in fiction from the 32nd Korea Times Modern Literature Translation Contest. Her translations and original work have appeared in numerous newspapers and periodicals in Canada, the United States, Japan and Korea. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and is currently at work on a collection of short stories.

JEON SUNG TAE was born in 1969 and graduated with a creative writing degree from Chung-Ang University. In his works he uses humour and satire to critique Korea’s national division and its process of modernization under an authoritarian regime. His short story collections include Burying the Scent, Business of Crossing Borders and Wolf. He has also written a novel, The Female Barber. In 2005 he spent six months in Mongolia, where his story ‘The Korean Soldier’ is set.

JANG JIN-SUNG is a graduate of Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang. He worked as an official writer for the Workers’ Party and earned special recognition from Kim Jong-il for his poetry. In 2004 he defected to South Korea. He has since published a collection of poems, I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won, and a memoir describing his escape from North Korea, Crossing the Tumen River with Poetry in My Heart.

213

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

JEONG I-HYEON was born in Seoul in 1972 and is the author of numerous works of fiction. She has been honoured with the New Writers Award, the Yi Hyo-seok Award and the Hyundae Literature Award. Her works include the short story collections Romantic Love and Society and The Lie of the Day, and the novels My Sweet City and What You Never Know.

MIN K. KANG is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Louisiana State University after graduating from Texas A&M University and San Francisco State University. She has previously worked with English language students as a tutor for America Reads. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

CHI-YOUNG KIM is a literary translator based in Los Angeles, and is a recipient of the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize for her translation of Shin Kyungsook’s Man Asian Prize-winning novel, Please Look after Mother. Kim’s other translations include Kyung Ran Jo’s Tongue, Lee Dong-ha’s Toy City, and Kim Young-ha’s Your Republic Is Calling You and I Have the Right to Destroy Myself .

KIM HYESOON is one of the most prominent poets of South Korea. She lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Kim’s poetry in translation can be found in When the Plug Gets Unplugged, Anxiety of Words, Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers, and All the Garbage of the World, Unite!

KO UN is Korea’s foremost living writer. Born in 1933, he became a Buddhist monk during the Korean War. His first poetry collection was published in 1960.

He became a leading spokesman in the struggle for freedom and democracy in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, and was frequently arrested and imprisoned.

He has published more than 150 volumes of poems, essays and fiction, and his work has been translated into twenty languages.

LUCIA SEHUI KIM is a writer from New York City, where she worked as a teacher and book scout. She was also the poetry editor for Storyscape Literary Journal. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College; her work has appeared in Lumina and the anthology Dance the Guns to Silence. She currently works as a freelance writer in Hong Kong and is working on a collection of poems.

214

Contributors

KIM YOUNG-HA is one of the most talented and prolific Korean writers of his generation, with numerous novels and short story collections to his credit, including his acclaimed debut, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself. His novel Black Flower will appear in English in October 2012.

SORA KIM-RUSSELL teaches at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, South Korea. Her translations include fiction in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture and Words without Borders; a non-fiction work, A Journey in Search of Korea’s Beauty by the actor Bae Yong-joon; and the forthcoming novels I’ll Be Right There by Man Asian Literary Prize-winner Shin Kyung-sook, and Ashes and Red by Hyundai Literary Award-winner Pyun Hye-young.

LEE SANG-WHA is a professor in the English Department of Chung-Ang University, Seoul. She has published six volumes of translations of English literature, including two prose works by Gary Snyder.

JOSEPH LEE is a literary agent at KL Management and represents Korean writers including Shin Kyung-sook, Jo Kyung-ran, Han Kang, Gong Ji-young and Hwang Sun-mi. He worked at the Imprima Korea Agency for seventeen years before becoming an independent agent. He is also the author of A Man Selling Novels.

SHIRLEY LEE, a composer and musician, is studying Persian at Oxford University. She has read at the Man Hong Kong and Orient-Occident International Literary Festivals and has had poetry and translations published in various journals and anthologies. Lee is currently working on her first book and as co-writer of a progressive opera about the life of Nina Simone.

LIU JIAJU was born in 1931. In 1949 he joined the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and rose through the ranks as a writer. Liu worked as an editor at the People’s Liberation Army Literature and Art and after retiring from the military was executive editor in chief of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu.

215

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW

DANIEL LEVITSKY teaches modern Russian history and film at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of several articles on Soviet cinema and is currently working on a book, Soviet History in Post-Stalin Cinema: The Making of New Myths and Truths.

He lectures and broadcasts regularly on Korean revolutionary history and film, and has travelled to North Korea seven times since 2001, accompanying tourist groups as a guest lecturer and historical consultant.

SUE LLOYD-ROBERTS is a television journalist who works as a foreign correspondent for BBC World Affairs. Over the course of her career she has produced reports from states such as North Korea and Syria, highlighting environmental issues and human rights. In 1995 she was awarded the European Women of Achievement Award.

MARTIN MERZ was raised in Australia, where he studied Chinese language and literature at Melbourne University before moving to Asia. After working in China for two decades he earned an MA in applied translation from Hong Kong’s Open University. He has translated the folk tale Mulian Rescues His Mother and co-translated, with Jane Weizhan Pan, Wang Gang’s novel English, Li Yu’s opera Ordained by Heaven and Li Er’s short-story collection The Magician of 1919.

CHARLES MONTGOMERY teaches in the English Interpretation and Translation Department at Dongguk University in Seoul. He has been published in LIST magazine, Acta Koreana and Education about Asia, amongst others. He has edited translations for LTI Korea, Ewha University, Daesan Foundation and others. He presents weekly radio programmes about Korean literature on Arirang Radio and TBS EFM in Seoul. He also blogs about modern translated Korean literature at www.ktlit.com.

ED PARK is an assistant professor of the Korean language and a translator who lives in Salinas, California. He has been published in Acta Koreana.

PARK MINGYU was born in South Korea in 1968. He is the author of Legend of Earth’s Heroes, The Sammi Superstars’ Last Fan Club, Ping Pong and Pavane for a Dead Princess. His short fiction includes Castella and Double. He is a winner of the Munhakdonge New Writer’s Award, the Hankyoreh Literary Award, the Yi Hyo-seok Literary Award, the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award and the Yi Sang Literary Award.

216

Contributors

ROBERT RICARDO REESE graduated from Santa Clara University with a BA in English. His writing has appeared in Drunken Boat, Poems against War, Santa Clara Review, Poecology, Monterey Journal and his poetry is forthcoming in the latest issue of the Blackbird Literary Journal. A Cave Canem Fellow and a student in the MFA programme at San Francisco State University, Reese has taught poetry as a writer-in-residence at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.

CLARISSA SEBAG-MONTEFIORE is a contributing editor and books editor for Time Out in Beijing. She has lived in China since 2009; her numerous interviewees have included literary figures from Amitav Ghosh to Yan Lianke.

She has written for publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, the Observer, New Statesman, Prospect and the South China Morning Post.

WON SEOUNG WON studied fine arts in Seoul, Dusseldorf and Cologne, obtaining her BFA in South Korea and her MFA in Germany. Her works have been on exhibit throughout Germany as well as in Paris, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere in Europe and Asia. She is known for her complex photographic montages, which often resemble paintings.

DAFNA ZUR received her PhD in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia. She teaches courses on Korean literature and visual culture in the Korean Language and Literature Department at Keimyung University and will be teaching at Stanford University in autumn 2012. Her translations of Korean fiction have appeared in Words without Borders, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Korean Short Stories, Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture and Waxen Wings.

217

ASIA LITERARY REVIEW Subscribe!

Write to us at the address below or call, email or visit our website.

ALR Subscriptions 2401, Winsome House 73-75 Wyndham Street Central Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2167 8929 Email: subs@asialiteraryreview.com Visit us online asialiteraryreview.com/web/en/subscribe Visit our Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages and register for access to exclusive online material, back issues and more.