Asia Literary Review No. 30, Spring 2016 Sampler

SPRING 2016

This issue is published in association with

No. 30, Spring 2016

No. 30, Spring 2016

Publisher Greater Talent Limited Managing Editor Phillip Kim Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Senior Editors Kavita A. Jindal, Justin Hill, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Special Acknowledgement Ilyas Khan, co-founder of the Asia Literary Review Production Alan Sargent Front cover image Detail from ‘Untitled-15019’, 2015, mixed media on canvas, 160x250 cm. Courtesy of the artist, Kangwook Lee, and Arario Gallery www.arario.com Back cover image ‘ROK Passport On Blueprint’, 2016. Published with kind permission of the artist, Jesse Chun www.jessechun.com The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited 2504 Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong asialiteraryreview.com Managing.Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Subscriptions and Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Charlesworth Press ISBN: 978-988-14782-3-8 (print) ISBN: 978-988-14782-4-5 (eBook) ISSN: 1999-8511 Individual contents © 2016 the contributors/Greater Talent Limited This compilation © 2016 Greater Talent Limited Published in association with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea

Contents Editorial

5

Fiction My Uncle Bruce Lee

8

Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Susanna Soojung Lim

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

29

Ae-ran Kim, translated by Chi-Young Kim

from ButterFlyBook

50

Apple Kim, translated by Sunny Jeong

Speeding Past

81

Han Yujoo, translated by Janet Hong

Snowman

97

Seo Yoo-mi, translated by Soyoung Kim

Wang’s Whole-Chicken Stew

114

Kim Yi-seol, translated by Eun Kyung DuBois and Nathan A. DuBois

from Seven Cat’s Eyes

138

Choi Jae-hoon, translated by Yoonna Cho

Children in the Air

157

Kim Seong Joong, translated by Stella Kim

Wonderboy Kim Yeonsu, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

173

Essay Korean Literature Comes of Age

187

Deborah Smith

Poetry Heavy Snow, a Rented House, a Letter

72

Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine

The House Where Someone Was Born

74

Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine

Synopsis for the Theremin

75

Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine

Finale

134

Min-jeong Kim, translated by Won-Chung Kim

To Red: A Declaration

136

Min-jeong Kim, translated by Won-Chung Kim

Contributors

193

Editorial Edit orial

Edit orial

Waves. They form somewhere far off, build momentum, then rush in and break in a wall of mist. Soon afterwards, they’re gone, leaving only evanescent scatterings of foam.

When the hallyu Korean pop-culture wave first crashed onto the shores of neighbouring Asian countries at the turn of the millennium, many observers saw it as just that – a rapidly rising and then receding event much like previous hip trends (such as Cantopop and manga) that had splashed onto the international pop scene. This one came in the form of irrepressibly danceable, karaoke-able tunes sung by impossibly beautiful people with either perfectly pouting lips and sleek figures or the most rock-solid packs of abs this side of Bruce Lee. K-pop softened hip-hop’s rough gangsta edginess and made it accessible to a more demure continent. Meanwhile, a number of K-drama series and films caused Japanese women to swoon over Korean men and Chinese kids to dress in hanbok. Korean food whetted everyone’s appetite. Korean online video games spread chronic insomnia to students whose wee hours should have been spent asleep or buried in books rather than in fantasy warrior guilds.

However, even after almost two decades, hallyu has yet to slide back into the abyss of spent hipster fads. In fact, it is a stronger force today than ever before, now established as the go-to source of entertainment across much of Asia and spreading its influence ever wider through the Middle East and the West. It ranks with Samsung, LG and Hyundai among Korea’s most important and recognisable brands. Psy is known universally, while only the most international can tell us very much about any other South Korean figure. Ban Ki-who?

Editorial

Because writing (and literature) is the foundry for so many of the performing arts, the enduring popularity of hallyu can beg a question: what about Korea’s contemporary literature – K-lit, so to speak? Why is it not better known internationally? What does it look like? How does it compare to or contrast with the wop-dancing, binge-watching appeal of its K-pop cousins?

This special issue of the Asia Literary Review (produced with the generous support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea) spotlights contemporary Korean literature written by or about younger Koreans – more specifically, the under-forty set who drive the country’s youth culture and represent its future. The writing itself about this generation is vibrant and original, as one would expect from creative and well-educated minds.

However, the stories are also disquieting reflections on a contradictory society which at once offers and demands so much to and from the young.

As such, contemporary Korean writing stands in sharp contrast to the slickly-synched choreography and surgically-sculpted looks that are de rigueur for hallyu singers or TV stars. The stories and themes in this issue plunge deep below the glossy surface of the pop brand to explore the lurking undercurrents of modern Korean life.

We begin with a piece set in 1973, when Korea was far from being the first-world nation it has become. In My Uncle Bruce Lee, a group of Korean teenage boys scramble after their own identities cloaked in the reflected glory of the eponymous Asian God. We conclude with Wonderboy, the story of a newly orphaned boy who is propped up as a figurehead (Korean, this time) for a hero-hungry society. ‘You are now the mascot of hope for this country’, the reluctant boy is told. Between these two pieces are works that explore the fragile teen years, the difficulties in scratching out a living as an independent adult and, finally, the various manifestations of disillusionment. Two teenage parents search for meaning while bringing up a son stricken with a disease that ages him prematurely. A young woman would rather speed around the motorways of Seoul than address her failure to connect with other people. A typical salaryman desperately digs his way through a snowdrift to get to his office. A mother turns to whoring in a chicken-stew restaurant to support her family. Members of a serial-killer website experience real-world horror when they gather in a secluded lodge

Editorial

owned by ‘the Devil’. Two children’s lives are up in the air (literally) when they find themselves the last humans on Earth.

The poets we’ve included offer new ways of seeing red and examine the peculiar miracle of the theremin’s music.

Despite the differences in these stories and poems, all at their core ask the same searching question: if the prescription for success in Korea is homogeneity and synchronisation, how can people be themselves? As the lead character laments in ButterFlyBook: Those who no longer played in the water were called adults. Adults were the people who worked in the city. They were the people who didn’t watch the sky. They were the people who no longer thought of clouds and stars, and seagulls and the ocean. It was very depressing to think that someday I, too, would be an adult.

The issue also includes an essay written by the UK’s Deborah Smith, a leading scholar and translator of Korean writing, which succinctly frames contemporary Korean literature in the context of recent Korean history.

Whether or not K-lit will achieve success internationally on a similar scale to Korean pop offerings is unknowable. More fundamentally, such runaway success, though welcoming, is not the defining aim of literary achievement. Writing is not a collaborative affair involving formulaic content, mass production and green-lighting corporate committees. Instead, it involves individual minds toiling in solitude to enlighten themselves and others. And good writing – in any country – reveals universal truths rather than reinforces mass illusions.

In this way, the contributors to this volume have been true to their calling. They and their peers provide evidence that hallyu is only the shiny surface of a much deeper creative force. And thus, we find ourselves at the widening shore of a profound ocean. Yes, the splashy waves provide a good frolic. But the waters are much more than merely a playground of spray and foam that washes up and back. This sea produces swells both light and dark.

It contains souls that struggle ceaselessly against death. It churns with real life.

Phillip Kim and Martin Alexander

My Uncle Bruce Lee My Uncle B ruce Cheon Lee Myeong-kwan

Cheon Myeong-kwan translated by Susanna Soojung Lim

T

his is not a story about Li Xiaolong, also known as Bruce Lee. And I’m not saying that my uncle is Bruce Lee. My uncle was simply one of the countless ordinary people who admired Bruce Lee. At that time, we were all fans of Li Xiaolong. Was there ever a boy who hadn’t hit himself on the back of the head while having a go with those nunchuks? We wanted to have a fist as fast and powerful as his, and back muscles as broad as a straw floor-mat. In other words, in the process of becoming a man, trying to be like Bruce Lee was – like masturbation – a compulsory requirement, not an optional one. My uncle was one of those Bruce Lee followers, but for him Bruce was more than just an object of adulation. He idolised Li Xiaolong so much that he wanted to follow him in every way, and Uncle truly sought to go far. Like Bruce, he sought to reach for the heavens and become a star.

But dreams are bound to be shattered. And hope? Crushed. A fast and powerful fist; muscles as resilient as a rubber band; a body that, kicking the earth, charges up, fresh and resplendent, with cool-headed ease; and the confidence of the strong! This is the dream for all of us who seek to transcend our human weakness. But the greater our desire for transcendence, the heavier the gravitational pull of despair presses on our shoulders and the more acute becomes the frustration of the body. Our hearts feel as if they’re about to burst, we’re short of breath, our legs give way under us. The moment we realise our bodies are softer than tofu and more fragile than

Cheon Myeong-kwan

glass – and, what’s more, that the spirit encased within is even less trustworthy – our timid souls duck into dark and solitary hiding.

My uncle was like that, too. He never fulfilled his dreams, never achieved love, never managed to remove the curse of illegitimacy hanging over his head. If he had died young, would he have become a legend like Bruce Lee? Of course not. Li Xiaolong rose up like a flame and disappeared like smoke, thereby becoming a legend; but my uncle was never able to fly that high.

An imitation is fundamentally different from the original, and what separates a fake from the real thing is what separates the earth from the sky.

You don’t live for something. You just live.

Bruce Lee said that. He also said the meaning of life was in simply living.

Which means even if you break and fall, no matter where it may be, you get back on your feet and plod on. That was how it was with Uncle.

Li Xiaolong died in the summer of 1973. It was of course Uncle who first told me the news. Since Li was a world-class star as famous as Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, his death was big news. There was also wide speculation on the cause of his death. One theory claimed suicide; another suggested murder. There was talk of substance abuse and drug addiction.

One story had him poisoned, while a bizarre rumour floated around that the cause was a mort d’amour while the star was making love to the actress Ting Pei. Some theories were more outlandish, like the one involving the triads or the yakuza, or the one that had the high priests of Shaolin Temple eliminating Bruce through psychokinesis in order to protect China’s traditional martial arts. But whatever the rumours, the inescapable fact was that Bruce Lee was gone.

On that day, Uncle took me and my older brother up a neighbourhood hill for a memorial ceremony. He put the dried pollock and wine glasses he had prepared in a bag, and I took down a full-length poster of Bruce Lee to use as a funeral portrait. The poster was from a photo book of film stars included as a supplement to a magazine we had bought. It was a photo of Bruce with nunchuks tucked in to his side, his left hand stretched out as if he were about to confront an opponent.

On our way we met Jong-tae. He was a neighbourhood friend, a big lad with a perennially good-natured smile on his face. He was catching frogs

My Uncle Bruce Lee

between the rice fields, but he ran toward us as soon as he saw us. With his characteristic, slightly foolish smile, he greeted my uncle eagerly. Attached to Jong-tae’s waist was a piece of wire on which a few frogs were skewered through their mouths, all of them dead, and with their tongues hanging out. Without hesitation, Jong-tae followed us. Although he asked where we were going, I kept my mouth tightly shut. I didn’t think Jong-tae would understand if I told him we were holding a service for Bruce Lee, but it was also because I felt for some reason that I had to be careful with what I said that day.

Coming out of the village we passed a field of bellflowers on the side of the hill. The flowers, white and violet and in full bloom, festooned the hillside. Maybe it was because of Bruce’s death, but on that day they seemed melancholy and sorrowful, even though I had seen them many times before.

Sensing the solemn mood, Jong-tae gave up his questioning and silently followed us. Every time he took a step, the dead frogs shook at his waist.

We had just started secondary school; we hadn’t even grown pubic hair.

We made our way through the forest and climbed up the hill. Suddenly, there appeared before us a snug clearing encircled by tall pine trees like a folding screen. This was where Uncle polished his martial arts every morning. Various pieces of equipment – concrete weights and dumbbells – were scattered haphazardly around. Uncle placed Bruce Lee’s portrait at the base of a pine tree and put the dried pollock in front of it. Then, pouring the wine with great care, he offered the cup to his dead hero. Following Uncle’s example, we bowed down to Bruce. No one said a word, and this made the occasion all the more solemn. Even the cicadas that had been chirruping loudly seemed to have sensed the mood, for all of a sudden they stopped their noise and the clearing became deathly quiet. Although my family, the Kwons, were known throughout the neighbourhood for our lavish ancestral rites, the memorial service we were holding for Bruce couldn’t have been shabbier, consisting as it did of a single glass of clear wine and a piece of dried fish.

As I bowed, I looked up at Bruce’s face. His characteristically arrogant expression, with the chin held high as if mocking you, was full of confidence, and his sharp eyes betrayed no doubt or fear. His muscles, formed over a long time with great effort, were pulled taut like a bowstring, and it

Cheon Myeong-kwan

seemed as if his fist would strike out at any moment with his familiar cry, ‘Hiyaaaah!’ In short, as in any photograph of anyone still alive, you could tell that he’d never once thought of death. I wondered, why had he died?

As far as I knew, Bruce Lee was the world’s strongest person. At the time, we were obsessed by the question, ‘Who is stronger?’ Starting with the elementary question, ‘Who would win, the lion or the tiger?’ we’d proceed to wonder about such matters as ‘What if Muhammad Ali and Antonio Inoki had a match?’ or, ‘What would happen if Uncle and Dochi had a fight?’ or even ‘What if America and the Soviet Union went to war?’ Such infantile obsession is bound to turn, briefly, to the questions, ‘What looks good?’ and ‘What is right?’ before finally settling on the question of ‘What is safe?’ And yet there are those who bypass the question of ‘What looks good?’ altogether, while some never make it to the point of ‘What is safe?’

Still others lack any interest whatsoever in ‘What is right?’ And out of these different perceptions are born the artist, the criminal, the politician and the thug of the future.

We were then at an age when we hovered awkwardly between the questions of ‘What is stronger?’ and ‘What looks good?’ – in short, between ignorance and romanticism; and, in our eyes, in terms of looks or strength, neither one-armed Jimmy Wang Yu nor Ali nor Inoki could hold a candle to Bruce. He was simply the strongest. And the most beautiful. No one gave truth to the words ‘strong is beautiful’ as clearly as Li Xiaolong. He was the first to show the world that the male body was beautiful, and the body of an Asian male at that. And it was this Bruce who had died! The saddest part was that we wouldn’t be able to see any more films starring Bruce Lee. But I gathered that Uncle’s sadness was ten – no, a hundred – times greater than ours. And so we didn’t dare ask him why Bruce Lee had died. Throughout the ceremony, Uncle’s face was as heavy-set as a rock. Awed by the expression of grim resolution on his face, we shut our mouths and followed his instructions in silence.

When he had offered the wine and paid his respects to the star, Uncle stood still for a while and continued to look at Bruce Lee’s picture. And then suddenly, as if the thought had struck him, he turned to Jong-tae and said, ‘You-you-you offer a glass, too.’

My Uncle Bruce Lee

As if Jong-tae had been called out by the teacher in class, he threw me an uneasy look, then knelt awkwardly before of Bruce’s portrait. Pouring the wine into the glass Jong-tae was holding, Uncle said, ‘B-b-b-bow t-t-t-two and a half times only.’

After offering his glass, Jong-tae, anxious not to offend Uncle, managed to perform a clumsy bow. I found myself feeling slightly hurt. I mean, when it came to being Bruce Lee’s follower, I was second only to Uncle; it should have been me who was asked to offer a glass after Uncle. Or, if it were according to age, it should have been my older brother. Yet neither of us was asked to offer a glass. Why did Uncle give that honour to Jong-tae? Was it because he somehow already knew that Jong-tae would walk a different path to ours? Or perhaps he foresaw that Jong-tae would become a disciple and go down the same road that he had followed? After bowing with a serious face, Jong-tae looked awkwardly at Uncle. That’s when my brother asked straight out, ‘By the way, Uncle, why did Bruce Lee die?’

Uncle’s eyebrows wriggled. I was annoyed at my brother. To be so callous as to ask Uncle such a cruel question! My brother was always like that. Once, when the family had gathered for dinner, he’d disconcerted everyone by asking, ‘By the way, Uncle, they say you’re a bastard. Is that true?’ Whether he was extraordinarily insensitive or terribly curious I don’t know, but my brother was the top student in the whole school and the hope of the Kwon family. I was afraid Uncle would get angry, but he just gave a deep sigh and said, ‘Th-th-th-th-that’s because. . . .’

Uncle was stuttering badly that day. This was a habit he had developed after he came to live with us.

‘I-I-I-I-I don’t know.’

Other than announcing the fact, the newspapers were silent on the exact cause of Bruce Lee’s death. I suppose that even someone who knew as much about Bruce Lee as Uncle couldn’t know what had happened in Hong Kong only a day before.

At that time, Uncle was in his second year of secondary school. He was five years older than me and just three years older than my older brother Dong-gu, and it wouldn’t have been at all strange if we looked like brothers.

We were in fact inseparable and always went around together, just like brothers. In the summer, we’d go swimming in the reservoir and look up at

Cheon Myeong-kwan

the night stars as we talked ourselves to sleep in the melon field hut; while in the winter, we’d go around with torches under the edge of the eaves trying to catch sparrows.

I saw my first Bruce Lee film with Uncle in the local cinema. Of course, my enthusiasm couldn’t compete with Uncle’s, but I too was instantly captivated by Bruce’s charisma, which filled the giant screen. He shone even when surrounded by countless enemies; his smallest movement had the audience holding its breath. To think we would never be able to see him again!

I was sorry that the memorial service was over so quickly. Other than offering a glass of wine and bowing, there was really nothing more we could do. It was a meagre ritual and did not do justice to our tragic mood. But did Uncle think so, too? Looking down at the shrivelled pollock, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, Uncle called to me.

‘Sa-Sa-Sa-Sang-gu.’

Sang-gu’s my name.

‘What?’

‘I-I-I-I-I think we’d better catch a s-s-s-snake.’

‘A snake? Why?’ ‘We-we-we need a s-s-s-sacrifice, and the p-p-p-pollock won’t do. B-BB-Bruce’s sign was a dragon, so a s-s-s-snake would be good. S-s-snakes turn into s-s-s-serpents, and serpents turn into d-d-d-dragons.’

Uncle was probably thinking of some sort of a scapegoat. I thought it made sense. After all, our hero had died; it seemed that a worthy memorial service called for, if not a serpent or a dragon, at least something similar.

‘But where would we catch a snake around here?’ my brother asked.

‘Th-th-th-there are lots of snakes here, but n-n-n-now it’s hot so they’ve all gone to their c-c-c-c-caves. We-we-we need some bait.’

Uncle looked at the frogs dangling from Jong-tae’s waist. Realising what Uncle meant, Jong-tae quickly hid the frogs behind his back.

‘Th-th-this is for the ch-ch-chickens. . . .’

For some reason Jong-tae, who normally did not stutter, was stuttering now.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ll catch some more for you later.’

My Uncle Bruce Lee

At my words, Jong-tae gave up his frogs in resignation. We threw the dead frogs in various spots in the forest where we thought the snakes might be. Then, hiding behind a tree and holding our breath, we waited for a snake to appear. The cicadas began to sing noisily again. It was hot, and the mosquito bites itched furiously.

‘But snakes don’t eat dead frogs,’ my brother said, after we had waited for a long time.

‘Still, they’ll come out when they’re hungry.’

‘There’s food everywhere these days. Why would it want a dead frog?’

‘Let’s w-w-w-wait a little more.’

At Uncle’s words we fell silent again and continued to wait for the snake.

How long was it going to take? The mosquitos attacked our arms and legs with renewed gusto.

‘Don’t think it’s going to come out. Let’s just go, Uncle,’ my brother said.

Uncle turned to Jong-tae.

‘J-J-J-Jong-tae, if you were a s-s-s-s-snake what would you do? Would you just sleep in a c-c-c-cool cave, or would you come out to eat a f-f-f-f-frog?’

‘Um, I guess I’d just sleep in the cave.’

‘Oh. O-o-o-okay. Let’s just go down.’

Jong-tae didn’t look too happy when Uncle said that, but we nonetheless gathered our things and began to go down. Suddenly, Jong-tae peered into the forest.

‘It’s a snake!’

We followed him into the trees and, sure enough, there was a big viper coiled up under a small white oak tree. No doubt Jong-tae had an eye for these things. The viper raised its head high and flicked its tongue, and a diamond pattern was clearly visible in the centre of its triangular head. We surrounded the viper so it wouldn’t escape, but we really couldn’t handle a venomous snake with our bare hands. In our rush we had left all of our sticks behind. I felt my legs shaking. I had touched a captured snake once while hanging out with the local boys, but I had never caught a snake with my own hands.

‘We need a s-s-s-stick. . . .’

Cheon Myeong-kwan

Not daring to approach the viper, Uncle attempted to break off a branch from a nearby hazel tree, but the branch refused to yield. Just then, the viper uncoiled itself and crawled rapidly in my direction.

‘S-s-s-stop it!’ shouted Uncle, but in my panic and fear I screamed, and tripped backwards over a tree stump. The viper slipped past me in a flash and made for the scrub. After waiting for a whole hour, we were on the verge of losing the snake. At this moment, it was Jong-tae who rose to the occasion. He ran after the viper and quickly grasped its tail. Then, whoosh! he swung it in the air and flung it to the ground. The viper lay stretched out and was still. It was then that Uncle, having patted Jong-tae on the shoulder with a sheepish grin, took hold of the unconscious viper’s neck and twisted it.

We took the snake to Bruce’s portrait. As if he were performing a ritual before a Greek temple, Uncle lifted it up to the sky with both hands. It was a huge snake, nearly a metre long. Taking out his pocket knife, Uncle cut the snake’s throat. We all felt very proud to be taking part in such a solemn event. The snake’s blood spilled onto the soil and we bowed once again.

Uncle nodded, satisfied at last. The sacrificed viper was handed back to Jong-tae.

‘You-you-you can give this to the ch-ch-ch-chickens.’

Jong-tae grinned and was about to take the snake when my brother noticed his hand was bleeding.

‘Isn’t that snake blood?’

When Jong-tae wiped his bloody hand on his trousers, we saw there were bite marks on the back of his hand.

‘I-I-I-I think you were b-b-b-b-bitten by the snake,’ Uncle said. Although no one had realised it, the viper had twisted back and its sharp teeth had sunk into Jong-tae’s hand when he grasped its tail.

‘Oh! No wonder it was so itchy. . . .’

Calmly, Jong-tae put his hand to his mouth, sucked out some blood and spat it on the ground. Is he being stupid or is he being brave? I wondered.

I could only marvel at Jong-tae’s nonchalant attitude.

‘J-J-J-Jong-tae, quick! B-b-b-bite the snake,’ said Uncle.

‘Why?’

My Uncle Bruce Lee

‘W-w-w-when you’re bitten by a snake, if you bite the snake the p-p-pp-poison will go back to the snake.’

‘Really?’

They say ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, but it was hard to believe what Uncle said was true. Jong-tae looked at the snake with distaste, then suddenly bit its middle.

‘H-h-h-h-harder!’

Jong-tae shut his eyes tightly and sank his teeth into the middle of the snake. Crunch! We could hear its vertebrae break. I couldn’t bear to watch Jong-tae bite the snake, and turned away.

While we were absorbed in the excitement of it all, the sun began to sink in the western sky, colouring it red. Thinking about it now, though it was only a memorial service, for some reason we felt drained of all our strength.

We were hungry, too. We packed up our things and walked down the hill.

Instead of the frogs, the snake now dangled at Jong-tae’s waist.

The day after Bruce Lee died, Uncle stopped his martial arts training. He said this was a period of mourning. When he came back from school, he would spend the rest of the day holed up in his room without uttering so much as a single word, and the expression on his face was so reverent and solemn that I was afraid to speak to him. It turned out that martial arts training was not the only thing Uncle had stopped doing; he had also stopped going to school. We found this out when Uncle’s friend Gyeongshik came visiting. Although Uncle left home every morning with his schoolbag, he’d walk around town instead of going to lessons, then return home when school finished. Uncle wasn’t home at the time, so even father found out about it. When Uncle explained that it was because ‘B-B-B-Bruce Lee d-d-d-died,’ Father hit the roof and said, ‘Are you nuts? Who is this Lee, anyway?’ The next day, Uncle was back at school.

Uncle was not the only one who missed school. The day after the memorial service Jong-tae was absent. We later learned that the marks from the snake bite had swelled up so badly that his wrist became as big as his thigh and he suffered all night from a high fever. Jong-tae went to the clinic the following morning, but when we saw him three days later his eyes were sunken and his swollen arm was as thick as Popeye’s. In the end, the index

Cheon Myeong-kwan

and middle fingers of Jong-tae’s right hand were crooked, and they stayed that way for the rest of his life. Granted, it wasn’t a serious handicap, but Jong-tae was bound to be misunderstood every time we played ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’, and every time he wanted to point at something straight ahead of him, his finger would bend ninety degrees to the left, to the confusion of those of us around him. Later, he was categorised as disabled and barred from military service, but he never once blamed us. He told us that now that his finger was naturally bent, it was easier to write, and he smiled his good-natured, simple smile.

The village of Jipseong, where we lived, was made up entirely of members of the Kwon family. It was a quiet farming community about a thirtyminute bus ride from Dongcheon-eup. Since there were relatives in every other house, simply working out our relations and getting them straight in your head was a challenge. For instance, I could never figure out whether the uncle in the house with the persimmon tree across the river was my father’s first or second cousin, and it always felt strange to think that Seon-mi, who was my age, was actually my aunt on my father’s side, according to the family tree. Confucian customs were strictly observed back then; we even had a few elders who still wore the traditional horsehair hats.

So as not to hear anyone tut and say, ‘So and so’s children are no good,’ the adults kept a close watch on their children. The Confucian rule that forbade boys and girls from sitting together after the age of seven was not questioned, and women in particular behaved with caution, lest they become the subject of village gossip.

Uncle had appeared in our village ten years before, in the autumn. I was too young to remember, but they say that a dark-skinned and shabbily dressed boy came knocking one day, a little past lunch time. Wiping his runny nose with his sleeve, the boy asked whether a gentleman bearing a name made up of the syllables ‘Kwon’, ‘Sun’, and ‘Jo’ lived here. Kwon Sun-jo was the name of my grandfather, who had passed away a few years earlier. When my mother asked him who he was and why in the world he was looking for a family elder who had passed away, the boy, looking greatly disappointed, turned to leave. Feeling a strange presentiment, mother invited him into the house and fed him. He was so hungry that he wolfed

My Uncle Bruce Lee

down in an instant the mountain of rice she had heaped up for him in a large bowl. Once the table was cleared, mother calmly interrogated him, as a result of which, after much hesitation, the boy finally began to speak. His story was thus: after his mother remarried he lived with his grandmother.

Before the old woman died, she told him to go find his father and gave him a piece of paper with the three syllables of my grandfather’s name written on it.

Mother nearly fell back in astonishment and at once ran to tell my grandmother. A great uproar ensued, and then the boy was brought face to face with my grandmother in the main room of the house. Outside, family members strained their ears to hear the fateful conversation taking place behind the closed door. A quiet exchange was audible from time to time.

But no matter how hard they tried, no one could hear anything much, apart from Grandmother’s deep sighs. Finally, Grandmother opened the door and called for Mother. Then more words were quietly exchanged and from that day on the boy lived with the family. Uncle was eight years old.

In our village, my grandfather had been a highly respected man. Although he lived in a remote hamlet, he could hold his own when it came to writing and reciting poetry and, thanks to his dedication to preserving the traditional proprieties, his words were taken seriously. Moreover, the relatives looked up to Grandfather since he was always willing to help out in difficult family affairs. But within three years of his death, Grandfather’s secret life was exposed.

A long time ago Grandfather got by chance into the ginseng business.

Until then he had occupied himself solely with farming and reading and, as a staunch believer in the traditional rules of segregation pertaining to the four social classes (scholars, farmers, artisans and tradesmen), he felt it was not fitting for a nobleman to work as a profit-seeking middle-man. But a few patches of rice paddy were not enough to feed hungry mouths, and in the end Grandfather began working as a peddler. He would go around the countryside and buy high-quality ginseng, which he then sold to herbal shops in the big city. Whether he had a knack for the business or whether it was out of pure luck I don’t know, but the money he made was not bad.

Naturally, Grandfather’s handling of big money led him to money’s good companions: drink and women. He met Uncle’s mother at a restaurant. She

Cheon Myeong-kwan

was a widow whose dark-skinned face presented a peculiar charm for men, and before long Grandfather set up house with her. They had a child whom they named Do-un, after the syllables meaning ‘road’ and ‘cloud’. It was a fitting name for a child born out of Grandfather’s wanderings on the road.

A few years later I was born, and in that same year Grandfather died of a sudden heart attack. Because he had been so meticulous during his lifetime, no one ever suspected he had left behind a second family. For her part, Uncle’s mother did not know he had died. And in the following year, she left Uncle in the care of her mother and went off to live with a man from a neighbouring village who ran a poultry farm. I suppose that if grandfather hadn’t died so suddenly he’d have managed to make some arrangement for Uncle, but as he died without leaving a will, Uncle was left with nothing in the world except for that family name, that great name of Kwon.

In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for a family to take in the child of an affair, but raising an illegitimate son after the father had died was unheard of. All the kinswomen in the village took turns paying my grandmother a visit, telling her that it just wasn’t the thing to do and that no good would come of raising another woman’s child, but Grandmother simply shook her head and told them they were ‘cold-hearted bitches’. Even swallows nesting in the eaves were not chased away, she said; it was all the more reason to take in a helpless child.

My eldest aunt, who had married a man from the neighbouring village, voiced her suspicion about whether Uncle was really Grandfather’s son. She wondered whether this was a scheme cooked up by someone who knew our family. At her words, everyone looked closely at the boy’s features and, sure enough, he didn’t seem to have anything in common with the men of the family. The Kwon males were in general tall and fair-complexioned; it was hard to believe that this small, dark-skinned boy was Grandfather’s son.

Although it caused a stir in the village, Auntie’s argument was immediately dismissed by Grandmother, who swore that the dent on the end of Uncle’s pointed nose was sure proof that he belonged to that damned Kwon family.

Admittedly, her claim was no different from saying that our toes looked alike, but it was also true that my father, my brother and I all had a slight dent on the ends of our noses and that this was a distinctive feature that the

My Uncle Bruce Lee

Kwon males inherited from my grandfather. And so, for a while, when the grown-ups of the village met my uncle, they would touch his nose to see if he had a dent.

Although Grandmother readily accepted the homeless and helpless Uncle into the family, this did not mean that she was particularly affectionate toward him. The reason she did not send him away was because she wished to take Grandfather’s karma upon herself, thereby preventing any misfortune from befalling their descendants. It was also likely that she wanted to help Grandfather cleanse his karma in the other world, which would make his stay there a little more bearable. While the prospect of having a brother young enough to be his son was embarrassing for my father, it was my mother who found herself in the most awkward position. All of a sudden, there was now a brother-in-law close to her children’s age whom she had to look after! Although on the whole affectionate, the members of the Kwon family could also be thoughtless and indifferent, and no doubt they must have unwittingly hurt Uncle from time to time. This was generally true of my mother, whose treatment of Uncle was characterised not so much by any bad intentions, but by a simple lack of attention.

In winter that year, during the memorial service for Grandfather, Grandmother called Uncle out in front of the whole family and had him offer a glass of wine to the deceased. This caused a stir among the elders of the Kwon clan, but Grandmother stood her ground. Would a rough-andtumble eight-year-old have understood the significance of that act?

The Kwon family was known in the whole village for carrying out elaborate and extravagant ancestral ceremonies. At times, the sheer number of males who had to pay respects was such that, unless they belonged at the top of the family hierarchy, even men with greying beards past middle age were sometimes unable to step into the main hall. As for us little urchins, we were lucky if we could squeeze through and set foot on the straw mat on the floor. We had so many ceremonies throughout the year that we’d often take a share of the food and drink after the offering table was cleared without even knowing which ancestor was being commemorated. On this occasion, intimidated by the solemn atmosphere, Uncle glanced anxiously at the clan elders, awkwardly stepped into the main hall, and, following the instructions of the relative who was directing the rite, knelt before Grandfather’s

Cheon Myeong-kwan

portrait. Uncle had not seen the face of his father since he was five years old. Did Uncle remember the father who, like a guest stopping by at a humble inn, would appear from time to time to stay for a few nights? As if searching for an answer, Uncle stared intently at the portrait, but all he could see was the vague brush-drawn image of the dead man; there was nothing he could know for sure.

At first, the confused boy did not leave his seat. Then, at the urging of a relative to hurry up and offer the wine and pay his respects, he managed to get to his feet. But since he had never seen an ancestral ceremony, let alone participated in one, he simply stood clumsily with the glass in his hands, not knowing what to do. All he wanted then was to get out of that uncomfortable situation as quickly as possible. And so it was that the soul of a bastard, having experienced confusion and fear at an early age, taking fright at the decisive moment and tempted to flee, glimpsed the dark curtain of fate hanging over his head.

Was the situation too much for a nine-year-old boy to handle? Uncle passed out on the spot. The offering table was upset and the sacrificial food tipped onto the floor. In the midst of the commotion his body became stiff, the whites of his eyes rolled back, and his arms and legs began to shake.

They carried the child into the next room, massaged his hands and feet and prepared a compress. It was following that incident that Uncle began to stutter. For some reason, even the simplest of words got stuck in his throat.

As if he were starting the engine of an old cultivator, Uncle would s-s-s-sstutter the first syllable several times; the remaining sounds would then come stumbling after. He had never been talkative, but from that day on he spoke even less. The curtain hanging over his head was now heavier than ever.

In the winter that Li Xiaolong died, his film, Enter the Dragon (Yong Jeng Ho Tu), opened in cinemas. To think that just when we were sure we’d never see Bruce again, he had left behind a posthumous work! And with a title of Enter the Dragon to boot! It may be difficult to understand, but titles made up of four Chinese characters, such as The Big Boss (Dang San De Hyeong) or Return of the Dragon (Meng Ryong Gwa Kang), held for us a peculiar charm back then. We were unenlightened schoolboys who had not even mastered the Thousand-Character Classic, and we had no idea what

My Uncle Bruce Lee

these Chinese titles meant. And yet those symbols, written in imposing brush strokes at the centre of film posters, never failed to excite us. In a fight between the dragon and the tiger, who would win? Of course, we knew that it was the dragon who’d win, but even so we couldn’t wait for Enter the Dragon to hit our town’s cinema.

At last, the day of the premiere arrived, and all the students, restless from the boredom of a winter holiday and sporting identical buzz-cuts, gathered in the cinema. The entrance was jam-packed with boys from all the schools in our district. In high spirits, they took out their nunchuks and messed around, emitting shrieks in imitation of Bruce Lee. Uncle took me, my brother Dong-gu, and Jong-tae to the cinema, even buying a ticket for Jong-tae – he must have felt guilty about the snake-bite at the memorial service. Jong-tae said it was the first time he had ever been to a cinema and kept grinning out of sheer excitement. Jong-tae’s family was so poor they couldn’t even afford to buy school bags, and Jong-tae carried his books bundled in a piece of cloth. A trip to the cinema was something he hadn’t even dreamed about.

Filled with the heat of raging hormones, as well as all the smells and gasses emitted by male students in their puberty, it seemed as if the cinema were about to explode. Unable to get seats, we found a spot on the steps of the middle aisle. As if hanging from a loaded bus, the rest of the children barely managed to squeeze into the aisles; they had to stand there for two hours with their bodies twisted in an ‘S’ shape. Finally, the lights went out and the Warner Brothers logo appeared with the music. Oh, what a moment! Our pupils expanded, our breaths quickened, and our hearts overflowed with emotion! In our whole lives, how many more times would we be able to experience a moment as electrifying and heart-pounding as this? We clapped, cheered, and whistled.

Indeed, Bruce Lee had become stronger and faster. His nunchuk skills were even more dazzling and his movements presented a model of perfect simplicity; there was nothing superfluous nor lacking in them. We didn’t dare blink for fear of missing a single move. It was Jong-tae’s first time at a Bruce Lee film and, like Uncle, his soul was at once captivated by Bruce.

He stood there as if mesmerised and became so completely immersed in the film that he didn’t seem to realise his eyes had lost focus and saliva was

Cheon Myeong-kwan

dribbling from the corner of his mouth. The audience was spellbound as it watched the scene where Bruce faced the chief villain in a room full of mirrors. Not a sound could be heard from the huge number of people packed into the theatre; all we could hear were Bruce’s strange screams. The scene in the cinema was in itself a spectacle.

During the film, I turned to look at Uncle next to me. His face was filled with sorrow, as if he were about to cry. For him, watching the posthumous work of Li Xiaolong was probably like listening to the requiem of a departed hero. Even when the audience shouted and cheered in awe, Uncle continued to watch Bruce’s last work without a word, a heavy and desolate expression on his face.

When the film was over and the lights came on, people looked as if they were still dazed by the brilliant action of the show.

‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ my brother said, frowning as he came out of the toilets.

‘What?

‘Bruce put a snake in the guard’s office. But why did all the guards break the windows and run away just because of one snake? Aren’t they all grown-up men? And why is Bruce unharmed even after he caught the snake with his bare hands? He wasn’t bitten like Jong-tae. Isn’t that strange?’

In the film, there’s a scene where Li Xiaolong chases the guards away with a snake and gets in to the villains’ den. I suppose that what my brother said wasn’t completely wrong. But to think he had the nerve to say that just after seeing the film! No respect! That was like sounding a Buddhist gong right after coming out of a church service! Being a fervent follower of the church of Li Xiaolong, I wanted to punch my brother’s big mouth.

‘And since the cops are going to come anyway, he can just hide and wait.

I don’t know why he bothers to risk himself and fight.’

Smart-arse, always acting like you know everything! I grumbled to myself as I dragged Jong-tae, who still hadn’t recovered his senses, out of the cinema. Then, as I looked around for Uncle, I noticed a group of people making a racket and moving to the alley at the back of the cinema.

Wondering what the commotion was about, I went round the back of the building and saw five or six gang members surrounding a student in uniform. I pushed my way through the crowd to look: the student was none

My Uncle Bruce Lee

other than Uncle. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but it looked as if a fight had broken out between Uncle and the gang.

One of them, a squat fellow who looked especially tough and stood out among the gang members, was familiar to us. Standing barely five feet four inches tall, his nickname was Dochi, and he had a reputation among the students for being a vicious fighter. Having dropped out of high school early on, he now made the rounds of the cram schools, stealing from the children and all the while nurturing the ambitious dream of becoming a member of the town’s one and only gang organisation, the ‘Comeback’ gang. Dochi was the same age as Uncle, but it was hard to believe he was still in his teens since he had already mastered the look of a veteran thug, one who ‘ate his rice mixed in with blood’.

‘Uncle. . . .’

Frightened by the threatening mood of the back alley, I called out to Uncle. He looked at us and waved his hand as if to say that it was all right.

‘You-you-you-you go home first.’

Although he had said that, I stood there, not sure whether I could leave Uncle in danger. But then my brother pulled my hand.

‘Hey, what are you waiting for? Uncle told us to go.’

My brother’s face was full of fear. But I shook off his hand and elbowed my way into the crowd of students to take a look at Dochi and his gang.

Stamping out his cigarette with his shoe, Dochi stepped forward.

‘Hey, you ssipsae, motherfucker. Didn’t I tell you to wait for me after school? Why did you leave? You arsehole, don’t you understand what I say?’

Coming up to Uncle, Dochi flicked Uncle’s chin with his fingers. It seemed that he had encountered Uncle before.

‘You ran away because you were scared I’d beat the shit out of you, didn’t you?’

Dochi continued to threaten Uncle by poking his fingers into his cheeks, but Uncle’s face showed no emotion.

‘Will you look at this motherfucker. You’ve done some fighting, eh?’

Uncle shook his head silently.

‘What you lookin’ at, punk? I’m going to rip your eyeballs out. How about it, you and me, right here?’

Cheon Myeong-kwan

I should tell you at this point that ssipsae (motherfucker) is not the name of a bird. It’s short for ssip saeki. Of all the swear words deriving from the root ssip, Dochi had a fondness for the word ssipsae, and the savage gusto with which he pronounced it sent chills up your spine.

While Dochi was harassing Uncle, more and more students came out of the theatre and began to crowd the narrow alley. The area was soon jam-packed with onlookers, all of whom, however, appeared to be too scared to intercede in the fight. After a while, Uncle finally opened his mouth and stuttered, ‘I-I-I-I don’t want to f-f-f-fight with you lot.’

‘W-w-w-why don’t you want to fight?’ As Dochi mimicked Uncle’s stuttering, his gang burst into laughter. At this, Uncle’s brows began to twitch. It was not a good sign.

‘I-I-I don’t fight with n-n-n-normal people,’ said Uncle, as if forcibly restraining himself.

‘You don’t fight with normal people? Then what are you? A freak?’

Dochi’s words generated another round of laughter, this time from the crowd of students who, happy to have chanced upon another entertaining show in addition to the Bruce Lee film, now looked at Uncle, the day’s scapegoat, their faces filled with excited anticipation. Uncle paused for a moment, then said, ‘I-I-I-I’m a follower of the martial arts.’

‘A what? Follow what?’

‘Yeah. I-I-I-I don’t fight with normal people. That’s b-b-b-breaking the rules.’

Dochi thought a minute about what Uncle said, then smirked. ‘What the fuck? Can you believe what this ssipsae just said?’

Dochi turned as if to look at his gang, then all of a sudden swerved and lunged at Uncle. It was a pre-emptive strike no one had anticipated. But with a light move of his body, Uncle expertly dodged the attack, and Dochi was sent sprawling forward.

‘You’re dead!’ Humiliated in front of the crowd, Dochi sprang back like a rubber ball and, clenching his teeth, lunged toward Uncle again, this time aiming a more accurate punch. But he was no match for Uncle, who had spent years honing his martial arts techniques on that hill. As Dochi charged, Uncle’s lightly extended fist hit him full on the nose, and he was soon stretched unconscious on the floor. It was just like the action in the

My Uncle Bruce Lee

Li Xiaolong film we had just seen! Cries of wonder erupted from the crowd of onlookers. I had, of course, seen Uncle practise his moves many times on the hill, but this was the first time I had seen him knock down an opponent in a real fight. Unbeknownst to him, Jong-tae was clapping and cheering wildly.

With Dochi felled by a single blow, the rest of the gang now seemed to realise that Uncle was no lightweight, and they surrounded him cautiously.

But just as they were about to pounce, Dochi leapt up and screamed at them.

‘Hey, back off, all of you! I’m gonna kill any ssipsae that gets into this fight!’

At Dochi’s frenzied outburst, the gang retreated. He then picked up a Coke bottle and smashed it against a lamppost, sending pieces of broken glass flying. This terrified the onlookers, who retreated further. Uncle also looked tense, clenching his fists tightly. Wielding the broken bottle, Dochi slowly made his way toward Uncle.

‘You, ssipsae, you’re really going to get it this time.’

I felt that something truly terrible was about to happen; my heart beat like mad and my knees shook uncontrollably. Waving the Coke bottle around wildly, Dochi lunged at Uncle. Each time the sharp edge of the bottle narrowly missed him, the crowd let out a cry. Then, when Uncle was backed into a corner, Dochi seized the chance and aimed the bottle straight at Uncle’s side. It seemed to everyone that there was nowhere for Uncle to go: he was done for. But in a flash, Uncle, spun his body in a full circle like a top and struck Dochi with his foot. Dochi lost his balance and was sent sprawling. The roundhouse kick was as quick as a flash of lightning.

Exclamations of astonishment exploded from the crowd. The gang rushed toward Dochi as Uncle lightly brushed the dust from his hands and turned to us. Jong-tae and I were yelling like mad, more excited than we had ever been when watching the film. But then Dochi leapt to his feet once again.

‘Stop right there!’

Uncle turned and saw Dochi, spitting blood, coming toward him.

Considering the fact that Uncle’s roundhouse kick must have cracked his chin, Dochi’s tenacity was surely amazing.

‘The fight’s not over, you ssipsae.’

Cheon Myeong-kwan

Even with a swollen face and bloody lips, Dochi’s mouth was alive and well. And he was still holding onto the bottle.

‘You’ve done some fighting, huh? Watch me, ssipsae.’

Dochi proceeded to do something completely unexpected. Stripping off his shirt, he began to slash at his bare stomach with the broken bottle. Soon Dochi’s stomach was covered in blood, just like the wounds inflicted on Bruce Lee by the head villain in Enter the Dragon, the film we had just seen.

Many of the kids began to scream; some were even being sick.

‘Hey, ssipsae, it’s you or me today. Let’s see who’s really going to get fucked.’

As Dochi cut at his stomach with the bottle, I could see Uncle’s face stiffen with fear.

Then, as now, it was sheer guts, not superior fighting skills, that determined victory in a fight. It was common for fighters to try to establish dominance early on in a battle by such means as violently stripping off their shirts, chewing on razor blades, or, as in the case of Dochi, committing reckless acts of self-harm. On that day, Dochi had attempted for the first time a special technique he had learned from a highly respected senior member of the Comeback gang. However, such a strategy was intended for situations when you were facing several attackers on your own and found yourself at a serious disadvantage; Dochi’s slashing at his stomach showed a complete misunderstanding of this last-resort method. In other words, he had used the wrong technique in relation to the wrong opponent in the wrong situation which, given his inexperience, was perhaps understandable.

But more than that, this was too high-level a technique for the likes of Dochi to carry out in a real fight, and all the worse for not having had any practice.

Dochi’s attempt at dominance had ended up an utter failure.

Although he had succeeded in intimidating his opponent by cutting deep into the flesh of his stomach and drawing blood, Dochi had expected the flow of blood to stop after a while. But the blood continued to flow uncontrollably and was soon soaking the formal white trousers he had bought only a few days before at the local tailor’s. The gangsters watching nearby all wondered how dangerous it was for a person to lose that much blood. But although they wanted to stop the fight, they could only watch in concern, so fiercely was Dochi waving the bottle around and threatening to slash the stomach of anyone who dared to intervene.

My Uncle Bruce Lee

Uncle was also in an awkward situation. What could you possibly do with an opponent who was bleeding profusely and brandishing a broken bottle? For his part, Dochi wasn’t even exactly throwing himself at Uncle; he just kept repeating the words ‘It’s you or me, ssipsae,’ like a mantra and waving the bottle around. Soon the ground was spinning before Dochi’s eyes, and his legs began to give way beneath him. The blood had not only drowned his new trousers in a sea of dark blood, it was also soaking his shiny white shoes and forming a pool on the ground.

The onlookers were glued to their places, so fascinating did they find this bizarre horror show. Dochi began to stagger and finally collapsed in the pool of blood. Thus ended the fight.

Surprised at the unexpected result, the teenagers broke their silence. As for Uncle, he merely stood still, completely bewildered. As Dochi’s gang picked him up, his face was pale and he was clearly in a serious condition.

The last words he said, before he passed out and was carried to a nearby hospital, were addressed to Uncle. ‘Repeat after me: “You’re dead”.’

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child from The Youngest Ae-r an P aKim r ents with the Oldest Child

Ae-ran Kim translated by Chi-Young Kim

Prologue My mother and father were seventeen when they had me.

I turned seventeen this year.

I have no idea if I will live to see eighteen or nineteen.

That isn’t something I can decide.

All I can be sure of is: there isn’t a lot of time.

Children grow bigger and bigger.

And I grow older and older.

An hour in someone else’s life is like a day in mine.

And a month in someone else’s life is like a year in mine.

Now I’m older than my father.

My father sees his future eighty-year-old face in mine.

I see my future thirty-four-year-old face in his.

Distant future and unlived past gaze at each other.

And we ask: Is seventeen the right age to become a parent?

Is thirty-four the right age to lose a child?

My father asks me what I would want to be if I were reborn.

I respond loudly, Dad, I want to be you.

He asks why him when there are better people.

I say quietly, shyly, Dad, I want to be reborn as you and father me To know what you feel.

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

My father cries.

This is the story of the youngest parents and the oldest child.

Chapter One

W

hen it’s windy, flashcards create a small whirlwind inside me. Words are written on them: words with reduced body mass, like a fish dried in sea wind for a long time. I trace the names of objects, names I pronounced for the first time when I was young. This is snow, that’s night, over there is a tree, the ground is beneath my feet. You are you. Everything around me I learned first from its sound and then by copying the letters over and over again. Sometimes, even now, I’m surprised I know the names.

I picked up all kinds of words all day long when I was young. ‘Mum, what’s this? What’s that?’ I chirped, throwing everything into disarray. Each name was clear and light and didn’t stick to the object. Even though I had heard it the day before and the day before that, I kept asking as though it was the first time. When I lifted my finger to point at something, words with unfamiliar sounds fell out of my family’s mouths. My questions moved something, the way a wind chime danced in the breeze. I liked asking, ‘What is this?’ I liked that better than actually learning the names of those objects.

Rain is rain. Day is day. Summer is summer. I’ve learned a lot of words in my lifetime. Some words I use often and some I don’t. Certain words are rooted in the earth and others flit about like the seeds of a plant. When someone called summer by its name, I thought I could grasp it. I kept asking what it was, believing that I could. Ground? Tree? You? This and that overlapped and shook according to the breeze from my mouth. When I pronounced it as ‘that’, it reverberated as ‘that’, spreading out in concentric circles, and sometimes the word felt as though it were as large as my whole world.

Now I know almost all the words I need in life. The important thing is to gauge the width of the words, reducing their mass. When you utter the word ‘wind’, it’s to imagine a thousand directions from which wind blows, not simply the four directions of a compass. When you say ‘betrayal’, it’s to follow along the lengthening shadow of a cross under the setting sun.

Ae-ran Kim

When you call someone ‘you’, it’s to understand their depth, the flat part that’s hidden like a snow-covered crevice. But that has to be one of the hardest things in the world, because the wind keeps blowing and I have never been young. That must be how words feel.

When I conversed with the world for the first time, it was in a mountain village, graced with clear water. In that place, where a stream divided into several strands before they circled the village and ran into one, I learned my name and took my first steps. I began to babble, and three years later I started making simple sentences. During that time my parents lived with my maternal grandparents. The villagers usually raised or made everything they needed, so the words I learned would have had to do with our life, the way my cousin, who grew up in front of the TV, uttered ‘LG’ as his first word.

My slowness to speak worried my mother for a while. Concerned that I had some kind of problem, she asked her parents for advice. My father, on the other hand, claimed that kids were the cutest when they couldn’t speak and then he calmly went off to work. The Daeho Tourism District was being constructed nearby, and my father worked there. My grandfather, who had a head for numbers, built an extension in his front garden for the workers that swarmed in from other towns. It was a draughty house with concrete walls and a slate roof. A total of four families could live in that small, straight building. One of those rooms was for our family – a teenaged couple who still looked like kids, and their new-born child. The kitchen was that in name only, and the room was ridiculously small, but my parents say they didn’t complain at all because it was rent-free and my grandparents paid for their living expenses.

My grandmother had six children: five sons and a daughter. Once I asked, ‘Mum, you said Grandmother and Grandfather never got along. So why do they have so many children?’ My mother explained in embarrassment, ‘I know, I was curious about that, too, so I asked your grandmother. Well, they did it once in a blue moon and each time, she got pregnant.’ My mother was the baby of the family. Her childhood nickname was Princess Fuck.

Growing up around foul-mouthed men, she threw out swear words at every opportunity in a way that was at odds with her pretty face. When I imagine a small girl wandering around the village, cursing adorably, I feel close to her. My mother’s still feisty, but she must have toned down her vocabulary

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

when she understood that all the problems in the world couldn’t be solved by saying ‘fuck’. She must have realised that when she became pregnant and was kicked out of school, when my father was severely beaten up by my five uncles, when she had to listen to the younger customers at the restaurant complain about the smallest details and create a fuss, and when she stared at the hospital bills she couldn’t pay no matter how hard she thought about it.

From the very beginning, my grandfather didn’t like his son-in-law. The main reason was that my father, still wet behind the ears, had gone and made another kid who was wet behind the ears. The second reason was that my father didn’t have the ability to make a living as the head of our little household, even though that came with the territory for a seventeen-yearold high school student. When the two first met, my grandfather launched into a grumpy interrogation. ‘So, what are you good at?’ This was after a hurricane of tears and fighting had hit the house with the news of my mother’s pregnancy.

Kneeling before him, my father was unsure of what to say. ‘Father, I’m good at taekwondo.’

My grandfather let out a grunt of disapproval. It was true that my father had been accepted by the largest athletic high school in the province for his talent in taekwondo, but that skill wasn’t very useful in life.

My father, made anxious by my grandfather’s silence, added, ‘Would you like to see?’ He gripped his fist into a tight ball, and anyone who saw him then would have been forgiven for thinking that he was trying to strike my grandfather.

My grandfather involuntarily flinched before calmly asking, ‘So are you saying your fist is a money maker?’

‘Um, well, when I graduate I’ll look for work at a small taekwondo studio. . . .’ My father trailed off, knowing full well that he couldn’t return to school.

My grandfather hadn’t expected an impressive answer. So he decided to give him another chance. ‘And what else are you good at?’

Many thoughts flew through my father’s head. I’m good at Street Fighter.

But if he uttered that, his new father-in-law might punch him in the face.

I’m good at talking back to the teacher. But that didn’t seem to be the kind of

Ae-ran Kim

answer his father-in-law was waiting for. What am I good at? After a few moments of agony, he ended up saying to his father-in-law, who was glaring holes into him, ‘I’m not sure, Father.’

And then he realised, Oh, I’m good at giving up.

After his son-in-law left, my grandfather made a bitter remark. ‘He can’t do anything well. Other than breeding.’

My grandmother, who had lost her deference toward her husband as she grew older, quietly grumbled, ‘Well, that’s a talent, too.’

My mother, her straightened hair secured to one side with a hairpin or two in the style of the day, sat primly nearby without speaking.

Chapter Four

‘A

-reum!’

I came to my senses and looked around. My mother was leaning against my door. With her back to the dark living room, she asked drily, ‘Why are you so surprised?’

Her tired thirty-four-year-old face was blanketed with thick fatigue that she couldn’t erase, no matter how much she washed it.

‘Oh, I was just online.’ I quickly closed the document I was working on and opened an Internet portal.

‘Go to bed. We have to go to the hospital tomorrow.’

‘OK. Just a little longer.’

‘Did you take your blood pressure medicine?’

‘Yes.’ ‘And your pain meds?’

‘Of course.’

‘And your joint meds?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ ‘And your stomach meds? What about that?’

‘Mum, come on. I do it all the time. Don’t worry, I did everything.’

My mother hovered by the door, unable to come in freely, in deference to her teenage son’s territory. It was because I had once asked her to knock before coming in. I still remember the immense hurt that spread over her face when I uttered the word ‘knock’.

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

‘Mum.’ ‘Hmm?’ ‘Something wrong?’

‘No, I came over because your light was on. And I was having weird dreams.’

‘You look tired.’

‘Yes. I don’t know. It’s weird but I’m more tired on my days off.’

‘What was your dream?’

My mother hesitated. ‘About the water. The same thing I always dream about.’

‘Oh, that’s it?’

‘I should have saved you from the water before waking up. . . .’ my mother seemed truly regretful.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I’m planning to dream that I’m a star swimmer. If it’s OK I’ll swim over to your dream and show you how elegantly I can do water ballet.’

‘And you won’t float away?’

‘And I won’t float away.’

My mother smiled. ‘Someone like you. . . .’

I was quiet.

‘Shouldn’t be sick.’

I gazed at my mother with my eyebrow-less, sunken eyes. I didn’t know what to say in reply. I cautiously opened my mouth. ‘Mum, you know what?

Someone like me. . . .’

‘Yeah?’

‘Someone like me, who’s really a great kid?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can only create parents like mine.’

Wondering what that meant, she gave me a faint smile. ‘Go to bed. No more Internet. If you keep this up I’m taking away your computer.’

For a few months I’d been writing slowly, sometimes a page or even just one or two lines a day. What I was writing and what I was going to do with it was still a secret. My goal was to finish the manuscript by my next birthday. That was why I wanted a laptop. We already had a really old

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desktop in our living room but it kept breaking down and everyone used it. I never really got a chance to work on it. Once someone sat down at the computer they didn’t think to get up, so we had to wait our turn, looking as anxious as the poor slum-dwellers of the 1970s who had to wait their turn to use the public bathrooms. When my father was sitting there I was impatient, and when I was surfing the net my mother hinted that she’d like to get on. In all honesty, everything my father did on the computer looked useless. Of course, he would have thought that all of my clicking was pathetic.

I closed the document I had been working on and opened another window. My mother had barged in and interrupted my flow and I figured I should do something else since I’d finished what set out to do today.

Looking at the new document, I thought of a question I’d asked myself long before but hadn’t been able to solve. Giving myself homework and thinking about it was an old habit of mine. Because my homework was self-imposed, I was both the teacher and the student. Some problems I could solve immediately and others I couldn’t. Some had answers and others didn’t.

Sometimes it was more fun to formulate a question than to answer it, but even so, I was the only one who would answer it. Over the years I had assigned myself all kinds of useless things like memorising the constellations, drawing all of the underground lines in the country, investigating all the trees of the world. The most useless of all these was ‘writing’. There was no set format or rule but I had a habit of making a note of things I was curious about.

Why do people have children?

I gazed anxiously at the blinking cursor on my computer screen. I hadn’t been able to answer this question no matter how much I’d thought about it over the past few days. Would it be easier had I gone to school? I sometimes felt sad about missing out on school but it was better to shake off my lingering feelings and fantasies about it. I had the general idea of what happened in middle and high school. But I didn’t know exactly what children my age learned at school. And the fact that I didn’t know made me nervous from time to time. I felt that I should know as much as the other children so that I would feel that I was in the normal range, but I couldn’t tell from where to where was ordinary and how much I was supposed to study.

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

So I chose to study as much as I could. There was no system or coherence to what I did but I thought that it would be better to be excessive than fall short. Then, if I made friends, I would be able to hold my own in a conversation, no matter what topic came up.

I stared at the monitor for a long time with my arms crossed. I finally gave up on finding the answer and opened another document. I might as well do today’s homework. I typed my to-do list into the blank document.

Look at my parents’ pictures from when they were young and write down what I feel.

A picture I’d already removed from our family photo album sat on my desk. My parents had gone to the local photography studio and taken it not long after I was born.

Their hands look so young.

My parents were smiling awkwardly at the camera. I was sitting on my mother’s lap, not yet three months old, looking off to one side. I met my parents’ eyes from seventeen years ago and smiled plaintively. Somehow I felt that they weren’t smiling at the camera but at the time and space beyond it, at me right now. I typed my first sentence into the blank document. Why do parents have the face of parents no matter how young they are? That didn’t seem to be unique to my parents. A few days ago I’d had the same thought while watching television. During dinner we’d randomly caught a reality show that focused on a teenage couple who had just started a family. They were unaffected teenagers raising a new-born in a small room. They had become famous after the boy, who was my age, stole some milk-powder from a corner shop. Their story had been extensively written about and people had been very sympathetic to their situation. Their faces on the screen were like any other teens’. Their speech patterns and clothes were the same as other children my age, as was their taste for fast food and popular musical groups. Their innocent faces were exactly seventeen years old. But their eyes – the look in their eyes – were different somehow. In them were the fatigue and sadness and pride of those who were responsible for another life.

How should that be described? After giving it some thought, I typed, ‘I don’t know how to describe it; it’s just the face of a parent.’ A parent was an adult because he was a parent. You didn’t become a parent because you were an adult. And then I looked for a long time at my young parents in

Ae-ran Kim

the picture, at their young eyes, young necks, and young hair. They looked delinquent somehow, and also painfully youthful. I reached from one world to another to stroke their heads with my finger.

Of course, there were opposite examples, too, like Grandpa Chang’s family. Grandpa Chang lived with his ninety-year-old father and was scolded constantly. When Grandpa Chang stepped out of the house to avoid his father, his expression was like that of a seven-year-old.

I would go up to Grandpa Chang as he sat sadly under the cement walls.

‘Grandpa, you got in trouble again?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t even know. He just got angry with me.’

‘Grandpa, are you upset?’

‘Yeah. Actually, it’s fine when he does it at home. I just wish he wouldn’t do it in front of the others.’

The others he was referring to were the old men at the senior citizen’s community centre who were younger than him. He often spoke ill of his father to me, but he seemed to be relieved that someone still treated him like a child. Soon I discovered that his expression changed when he wasn’t with his father. Under the note I wrote down earlier, I wrote: Why does a child always have the face of a child no matter how old he is? And, to my surprise, I could grasp a clue to the answer to the question I was really struggling over: Why do people have children?

I typed quickly so that the brief ray of insight wouldn’t rush away. To relive the life they don’t remember. It really seemed to be true. Nobody remembered their early years, especially because the experiences from before you were three or four can’t be recovered perfectly, so you saw these through your child. You were re-experiencing that time. Oh, I nursed. Oh, I was able to hold my head up around this age. Oh, I looked at my mum with eyes like that. Seeing yourself in a way you weren’t able to see before. Becoming a child again by being a parent. Wouldn’t that be why people had children?

Then what would my parents have seen through me, a baby who started to age quickly around three years old? Soon I came to another question.

Why did God make me?

I haven’t been able to find the answer to that one yet.

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

Chapter Five

M

y father’s business was set up in town, about thirty minutes away by bus from my mother’s family’s house. In town, a lot of people wore nice clothes and were eloquent, especially in comparison to the farmers and fishermen. People didn’t call the area by its official name, referring to it as ‘the Market’ instead. It was merely a small town with a few government offices and cafés, a brewery, a piano school and a public bath, but the people who lived there felt superior to everyone else. That was the reality even if they didn’t show it; the puny superiority that a hick feels when he looks at an even bigger hick, the way a frog looks down on a tadpole.

My mother and father were both familiar with the Market. The girls’ high school my mother used to attend was there, as was the café where my father learned about her pregnancy. My grandfather made his fourth son, who was just hanging around after being discharged from the military, go and help my father. My grandfather reckoned his son would learn about business and get some experience. My uncles’ help ensured that the setup went smoothly. My uncles, who had settled in town, had sourced quotations and found accounts. The shop was in a small bustling area nicknamed the Rodeo Drive of the Market, at a crossroads where the rich and stylish gathered. My father’s favourite thing about his Nike shop was that it was clean. It had to be, according to the demands and guidelines from Nike headquarters, but not many shops were as nice. My mother didn’t mind becoming the boss’s wife either. The two were amazed that they were surrounded by so many expensive things they couldn’t even dream of owning for themselves. But they were more surprised by the fact that many people spent extravagantly, as though it were nothing. My mother often went to the Market, handing me over to my grandmother with the excuse that she was going to check up on the shop. She nagged my father who wished she would leave or go to meet Su-mi for some gossip. She didn’t have anything to talk about other than raising the baby or housework, but Su-mi listened carefully to her stories without getting bored. My mother proudly gave her a pink Nike jogging suit. Su-mi, smiling, gave a lukewarm reaction. ‘Wow, I think your hormones made you overrate our friendship.’

My mother giggled, satisfied with her friend’s unconventional reaction.

Ae-ran Kim

‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’ Su-mi asked, using blotting papers on her nose and forehead.

‘Absolutely not.’

‘What now?’

‘I didn’t know doing housework would be so hard.’

‘Idiot, you got married without knowing that?’

‘I didn’t realise it would be this bad.’ My mother looked at the cup of water on the table. ‘Just look at this water. At our house we make barley tea because Dae-su likes it. But think about how many steps I have to go through just to get a cup of water on the table. I have to boil the water, cool it, wash the kettle, clean the water bottle, pour the barley tea into the bottle and put it in the refrigerator. But then it doesn’t last more than two days.

Before, I never thought about this when I was drinking water. Life is hard.’

‘That’s true. I don’t think about that when I drink water.’

‘You see? So you can imagine how much more tedious it is to cook and clean. Su-mi, don’t you ever complain to your mum about what she makes for you, OK? On Sundays you should help her out, too.’

‘You sound like my form teacher.’

‘Yes, if I knew it was going to be like this I would have had more fun before getting married.’

Su-mi grinned at her friend as she sang the blues. Not too long ago, they had been studying together and going to karaoke places. ‘How’s A-reum doing?’

‘He’s fine. He’s a bit sensitive but he’s doing well. Did you know that babies don’t know that their arms are theirs?’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, it takes them a while. A-reum was like that too. He would be lying down and staring at his own arm like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, and move it around. Isn’t that funny? He kept doing it, as if to convince himself it was his.’

‘It’d be nice if in Home Ec. class they taught you stuff like that instead of stupid things.’

‘Yes, I know. I should teach it.’

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

‘I wish! You could give me good grades, too.’ Su-mi sucked some of her chocolate milkshake through the straw, creating a dimple on her cheek, and asked, ‘So, is he talking?’

‘He just says really simple things.’

‘It’s good though. You were worried.’

‘Yes, but he calls any male “Daddy”. He says that to his uncle and to the man who lives next door.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, but apparently they’re all like that at that age. Dae-su went on a delivery to a day-care centre and all the babies swarmed to him and called him “Daddy”, and he said it was the scariest thing ever.’

The two kept chatting for about an hour. A bit later, Su-mi said, with a furtive smile, ‘Mi-ra, I was wondering about something.’

‘What?’

‘Why did you fall for Dae-su?’

‘What? What’s this about?’

‘You never liked anyone, no matter how many boys followed you around.

You didn’t do anything when that boy from the agricultural high school took a load of pills because he was so in love with you. But with Dae-su. . . .’

My mother covered her mouth and smiled in embarrassment. ‘It’s just . . . we just started talking and. . . .’

‘Talking?’

‘I mean, I didn’t really like him at first, either. But we got to talking a lot.

About grades, about family. And one day he said he didn’t want to go back to school.’

‘Yes?’ ‘He said he didn’t want to be anything or do anything.’

Su-mi’s eyes popped out. ‘But you liked that?’

‘Liked what?’

‘You liked a boy who doesn’t want to be anyone or do anything? It doesn’t make sense.’

My mother looked down and swirled her peach drink with her straw.

‘Yes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I was like that too.’

Ae-ran Kim

Su-mi flinched. Then she tried to take my mother’s side. ‘No, you weren’t like that. There were things you wanted to do.’

‘Yes, that’s why I knew.’

‘Knew what?’

‘Um . . . how do I explain it? You hid in a wardrobe when you were young, didn’t you? Curious whether your parents would look for you?’

‘Yes.’ ‘At a certain point I was doing that with myself.’

Su-mi looked puzzled.

‘I started hiding for fun but no matter how much time passed I couldn’t find myself. In the wardrobe, I would be excited, thinking I was weird, anxious, depressed, and just stayed there because it would be really awkward if I came out.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Hey, don’t talk back to an adult.’

‘Since when are you an adult?’

‘Since I got married. Anyway, just listen to me. I didn’t fall in love with Dae-su because he didn’t have dreams, but because he pretended not to have dreams. Because I thought he might have a wardrobe inside just like me.’

Su-mi was silent.

‘I don’t know. Whatever.’ My mother stopped talking, embarrassed.

Su-mi asked impishly, ‘And? What else did you like about him?’

My mother looked up at the ceiling and blinked. ‘I don’t know . . . why did I like him? Well, once, Dae-su said he didn’t want to go back to school and I asked him why. Dae-su said it was because he got beaten up too much.

The teachers would beat him and the senior boys would beat him. If he was late he was beaten for that, if he was serious he was beaten for frowning, if he was cheerful he was beaten for being silly, if he did well he was beaten for being arrogant, if he didn’t do well he was beaten for being useless. He just got beaten up a lot. And one day he lashed out at a judge in a competition and he got really badly beaten by some senior boys who said that because of him they would be disadvantaged at competitions too. You know how in athletic high schools they don’t hit you in the face? But that day his face was bruised and bleeding and all that.’

‘Oh my god.’

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

‘So anyway, he limped back to his room. And his roommate was crouched on the floor with his pants down. He was a little slow, but he was a fast runner so he got medals at national competitions and stuff. You know how you see boys like that on TV? His mum was really pushy and forced him into an athletic school, and sent him to a normal middle school, not a special ed. one.’

‘So?’ ‘This boy really liked Dae-su. He would follow him around all the time.

And give him treats he’d hide from everyone else. You know, Dae-su’s such a good boy. So he was just nice to him. And that’s how they became roommates. But then when he got there after being so badly beaten up, that boy was having a wank. Without even locking the door! In the corner of the room! Like, grunting like an idiot. And Dae-su lost it. So he just beat the shit out of him. And the boy couldn’t do anything, he was pummelled with his pants down around his ankles.’

Su-mi drew in a shocked breath.

‘And after that he didn’t want to go back. I think it was the first time he’d told anyone that story. His voice was calm but he looked like he was going to cry.’

‘And?’ ‘And? And what?’

‘What did you do?’

My mother hesitated. ‘What do you mean, what did I do? I slept with him, stupid.’

‘Oh. . . .’

Chapter Six

C

rafting a story was harder than I expected. It was tricky to oversee characters and the scene and the sequence of events while also paying attention to the writing. At first I started with a simple desire to record what had happened but when I started writing I wanted to write an engaging, stylish tale. Writing was, at every moment, a series of decisions. But I wasn’t sure that I was doing a good job. The story kept stalling. And in those times I felt like a lone penguin abandoned at the North Pole. It was gloomy and

Ae-ran Kim

frightening. Each time that happened I went to my parents. I asked them again and again about the stories of their youth and begged them to tell me again.

‘Oh, so you wanted to be a taekwondo athlete!’ I said to my father.

‘No.’ ‘What? Isn’t that why you went to an athletic high school?’

‘No.’ ‘Then what did you want to be?’

‘I didn’t really know. That’s why I went to that school.’

‘You were good, though.’

‘Yes, I was. But really, the only thing I really liked about taekwondo was the uniform.’

‘Can you be good at something but hate it?’

‘Sure. There are lots of kids like that. My friend was at the top of the school in maths but he never liked it.’

‘Oh.’ ‘And it’s a little weird to tell you this, but there are a lot of people who are devoted to their parents without really liking them. So you should never. . . .’

‘Yes?’ ‘Never try to be good to me. OK?’ ‘Dad.’ ‘Yeah?’

‘What kind of talk is that?’

‘What?’

‘Please tell me something wise.’

‘A-reum.’

‘Yes?’ ‘Just because you’re older than me doesn’t mean you can look down on your father. Especially a father who went to athletic high school. People like that are very sensitive to that kind of thing.’

‘Yes, Dad.’ ‘And do you know who’s even more sensitive than people who went to athletic high school?’

‘Who?’

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

‘Fathers who were thrown out of athletic high school.’

‘Oh.’ It was a little better with my mother. My mother never stopped talking.

In my mother’s stories there were lots of adverbs and adjectives and exclamations. My mother didn’t bypass anything, even if it was very trivial.

My mother explained everything from her youth in detail, from popular fashion and songs, to school uniform styles, to the interior of a café and its menu. And she launched into all kinds of evaluations about all the people in her stories. It took almost a day to hear the life stories of my five uncles.

My mother’s stories were that long-winded. But I thought they could be even more lively and detailed. I made a point of asking for the information I needed.

‘Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘So, um, how did you . . . with Dad. . . .’

‘How did we meet?’

‘No, you talked about that earlier. Um, how. . . .’

‘What?’

I couldn’t think of how to phrase it so I asked in a roundabout way. ‘How did you think to make me?’

My mother paused. Until then she had been talking non-stop. ‘What?’

She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘You really want to know?’

I nodded.

‘Okay, well, then I’ll tell you this way. When I was huge with you, one of your uncles asks your grandmother, ‘Mother, how did she’ – meaning me – ‘do what nobody even taught her?’’

‘And?’ ‘And your grandmother says, ‘That’s something even an idiot can do.’’

Embarrassed, I laughed extra loudly.

‘Satisfied? I’m going to make dinner.’

‘But Mum?’ ‘Yeah?’

‘Was Dad your first love, too?’

My mother was silent.

‘Mum?’

Ae-ran Kim

‘What?’

‘I said, was Dad your first love, too?’

‘Of – of course, my love. Go away now. I’m busy.’

Their stories didn’t really match. The things they remembered were a little bit different and so was the way they interpreted their memories. My mother said that Dae-su pursued her, while my father said Mi-ra flirted with him first. My mother and father both remembered the moment that she sang in front of him for the first time, the moment they kissed for the first time, but in ways that were more favourable to themselves. As for my stance, well, I wasn’t on anyone’s side. I was on the side of the story so that later, when it was really necessary, I could take their side.

‘So then what happened?’ I asked my father.

‘What?’

‘Mum. Did she sing?’

‘Well, so. . . .’

‘Wait!’

‘What?’

‘Can you tell me the rest tomorrow? My eyes are tired and I’m so exhausted.’

‘Come on, son. It’s the climax of the story.’

I massaged my shoulder and sighed. ‘Dad, you’ll see when you get old.’

When I asked a question, my father gave short replies that focused on the event while my mother went on and on about her take on it. Their stories overlapped and went different ways and crumpled into me. I was going to make something out of it. Of course, nobody knew what that might be. Not even me. That way, beauty could become beautiful on its own, and it wouldn’t suffer the fate of a puppy dying soon after birth because humans had handled it. Then beauty could be born in health. Listening to their memories I wanted the stories to be over, and at the same time didn’t want them to be over. And? Really? What’s that? Why? Wow! I chirped, egging them on. They say that when you’re old you prefer talking to listening. From the way I bothered my parents, I was clearly a boy.

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

Chapter Seven

W

e always followed the same routine at the hospital, undergoing the planned tests in the planned order and dealing with the predictable disappointments. Listening to them say, ‘It’s got worse’ or ‘Let’s keep monitoring it’ or ‘I can’t guarantee it but. . . .’ Walking down the long corridor carpeted with curiosity and distaste, sympathy and deep sighs.

Enduring the look of relief on a sick person’s face when they saw someone sicker. Listening carefully to the trivial conversation and laughter between two healthy people. Responding to all the questions my body asked me.

Submitting to the fact that my body acted like it owned me. Staring at the prescription form inscribed with meaningless words like it was a love letter.

That was what we did in the hospital.

I was subjected to many tests. X-rays, clinical assessments, a heart ultrasound, bone density measurements, eyesight and gripping-power tests, urinalysis, electrocardiograms, and many, many more. I usually met with the paediatrician. But I also had to see the orthopaedic surgeon, thoracic surgeon, neurosurgeon, and oral surgeon. Sometimes I went to all of them, at other times only to a couple for intensive testing. I had a disease that made me age quickly but I knew that nothing in the world could treat old age itself. If old age were a disease, that was something man could never cure. Because that would be curing the world of death. What we could do, though, was to inquire about the symptoms that tagged along with the process of aging, and delay the speed with which my organs deteriorated. I was only seventeen, but if I learned one thing in my short life, it was that experiencing physical pain was incredibly solitary. It wasn’t anything anyone could understand or something I could share with anyone. So I don’t really believe the saying that the heart hurts more than the body. For your heart to be in pain you have at least to be alive.

I spent most of my life coming to the realisation that I had a body, the way you don’t ever think about your tongue until the moment you have a sore on it. I was conscious of all of my organs, in minute detail. When others called bones bones, I couldn’t. When others called lungs lungs, I couldn’t think of them simply that way. Like the hundreds of names medical students memorised on all-nighters, the words I knew passed through my suffering until they stuck to my body and hung from it. The fact that I had skin, a

Ae-ran Kim

heart, a liver, muscles, that I had to think about them so often – all of that was very tiring. No matter how close the body and spirit are, they need some time apart just as happy couples do. I was envious of the healthy who were naïve about health, the young who were naïve about youth.

I had long since folded away the hope that I could be cured. But I didn’t go around as though my life was over. We did what we could to lessen the pain, but not to get rid of it. That was why today, my mother and I were sitting in a corner of the examination room with our knees pressed politely together.

‘You have disciform macular degeneration.’

We exchanged looks, not knowing what that meant. When doctors used words we’d never heard before, we got nervous.

‘Here, on the right eye.’ The doctor looked at the computer monitor and my chart. ‘You must have a lot of headaches.’

I rubbed my yellowed nails and said, ‘Um, not really. Letters look a little blurry but I thought it was because I was on the computer too long.’

My mother interrupted, ‘What does that mean, doctor?’

‘It’s a condition the elderly often develop. The cells degenerate because there are aging deposits on the retina.’

‘Like glaucoma?’

‘It’s similar but glaucoma is caused by eye pressure. Many cases with this form of macular degeneration are caused by deposits. If it’s a wet form, we can block it somewhat with lasers but the dry kind is difficult to treat.’

‘What kind does A-reum have?’

The doctor took in a silent breath. ‘Dry.’ We were silent. As always, I tried to figure out what the doctor wasn’t saying through what he was saying. But this time, instead of figuring it out on my own I wanted to hear the doctor’s opinion from his mouth. ‘So what’s going to happen to my eye?’

The doctor looked at my mother as though to ask for her opinion. I looked at her too. My mother hesitated then nodded.

‘Your right eye will get quickly worse. Things will look foggy. And because of that you may get dizzy or feel nausea. The left eye may be in danger too, so you should take antioxidant vitamins and avoid UV rays when you step outside. I think that’s the best we can do for now.’

from The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child

My mother was quiet. The one question she couldn’t bear to ask was probably circling inside her. I was afraid, too. I felt that I could deal with my liver deteriorating and my stomach hurting. But thinking that I might go blind made me fearful. I couldn’t breathe; God was about to deal me true loneliness. It was as though I had spent my whole life in prison before being told that I was being sent to solitary as a reward for good behaviour.

‘Doctor, is my left eye still OK?’ ‘Well, let’s keep monitoring it.’

I couldn’t tell if that meant it was fine, if it would get better, or if it wouldn’t, so I just sat there, blinking, for a long time.

The thoracic surgeon had nothing positive to say, either. Neither did the orthopaedic surgeon nor the oral surgeon. All we discovered that day was the fact that you didn’t get used to bad news no matter how often it was repeated. The paediatrician, whom I’ve known for a long time, said that my physical age was estimated to be eighty, which meant that outpatient treatment was no longer possible. The thoracic surgeon, who looked like a bandit with his thick beard, blew up. He asked, ‘Do you know what condition his heart is in? He has to be admitted right away!’ He pointed out that someone could live without legs or eyes but not without a heart.

He insisted that I held a time bomb in my chest, that I needed to be admitted immediately because my heart might give out at any moment. He used all kinds of hard and frightening words. Since he was muscular and tanned, he didn’t look like a typical doctor to me. His diagnosis was fittingly energetic. From the internist I heard that my oesophagus and stomach had been damaged by my medications. The orthopaedic surgeon said I had shrunk two centimetres from my previous height of 130 centimetres, and that my bone density had diminished. My mother looked beside herself with worry, having been pushed around and scolded all day. But she couldn’t say to any doctor, with confidence, ‘We’ll admit him right away.’ We had an enormous amount of debt already, and there was a limit as to how much money my parents could raise.

Coming out of the hospital, I pulled on my mother’s sleeve. ‘Mum.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘People are looking at us.’

Ae-ran Kim

My mother replied nonchalantly, ‘It must be because I’m so pretty.’ She was wearing a haughty smile on her sun-spotted face. Caked-on foundation cracked along the wrinkles around her eyes like the bottom of a dry rice paddy. My mother grasped my small hand with her work-hardened one.

And with the attitude of, ‘What’s it to you? I’m a woman who had a child at age seventeen!’ she walked out proudly. When she was with me she never hurried, no matter where she was. She must have wanted to get away quickly from everyone’s gaze sometimes, but whether on the underground or in the old market, she always walked naturally, at her leisurely gait. In fact, I was the one who tried to hurry her along. I would tug at her skirt to lessen the difficulty my mother must have felt. Today, too, I asked my mother to hurry up and leave, saying I was starving. Maybe it was a little forced; my mother stopped and bent down, looking straight into my eyes. ‘A-reum.’

‘Yes?’ ‘When did you first get sick?’

‘When I was three. You’re the one who told me.’

‘So how long have you been sick?’

‘Um, fourteen years.’

‘Yes, fourteen years.’

I was silent.

‘So you’ve kept at it courageously this whole time. And now you’re going through test after test without giving up. Other people get bent out of shape when their glands are a little swollen. We’ve been dealing with this every single day for fourteen years. We’ve done a great thing here. So. . . .’

‘Yes?’ My mother lowered her voice and said gently, ‘We can take our time.’

Poetry

Kim Kyung Ju

Kim Kyung Ju translated by Jake Levine

Heavy Snow, a Rented House, a Letter

Isle of the Dead, Arnold BĂścklin, 1886

Within an electric kettle the roar of waves seethed.

For ages on the sea news couldn’t reach the deaf boats seeking the sound of water sent from a faraway land.

The eyes of a school of fish that pass through a deep abyss are frozen stiff, I thought.

Kim Kyung Ju

From a distant lighthouse, fire spilt into this room.

Whenever that happened, I bluely blotted my sea sickness down at the top of the page.

Peonies from the quilt rolled over my leg and the words within the letters I wrote began to wake.

Private lives that reached a critical state snowed heavily on the side of the page.

Uncompleted letters turned to misery.

Like bottles emptied one by one because the sad things disappeared, alone they swung a retired ship out of retirement and creakily returned.

In their loneliness, more letters were burned.

Like a furnace, the sea began to boil flakes of snow and if a hand were dipped under a hot tap inside a room inside the blood in the body, tears were silently bred.

It cannot end like this, I thought – a mass extermination of inner life.

Are there enough tears left in the insomniac’s body to descend into a dream?

Although one by one snowflakes disguise the lights of a town there is love, love, on the side of the planet we can see here, undiscovered, infinity. We divvy up our shares.

Poetry

To Red: A Declaration Red Shoes I put on the red shoes you bought for me for the first time.

I went into the game room with my lover whom you knew.

‘Dance Dance Revolution’ I dance a wrong step, and somebody lands painfully on my feet.

Why do you call my name endlessly?

You were standing there with a downcast glance; you were the hand exchanging coins at the counter of the game room.

Sorry, I am having an affair!

Red Panties You simply asked to hold my hand and sleep by my side.

It was after my lover whom I know had made his confession.

‘Eli Eli lama sabachthani!’

I thought you had fallen into a dream while snoring, but why do you call my name endlessly?

I wore a white wing-shaped sanitary napkin on my red panties and my hips were aching from sitting on the toilet for too long.

Sorry, I am having my period!

Min-jeong Kim

Red Radish You asked me, ‘What’s this desire blazing up?’

My lover whom you knew was good, for he was an impotent, married man.

‘A hundred miles, a hundred miles. . .’

To make five hundred miles, you need to call out at least three more times, but why do you call my name endlessly?

While I picked up the morning newspaper outside the door with no clothes on, I came across the man living next door; he was a red radish bitten by me.

Sorry, I am having breakfast!

Contributors Contribut ors Contribut ors

CHEON MYEONG-KWAN was born in Yong-in, South Korea, in 1964. Prior to becoming a novelist, he worked as a screenwriter. His literary debut, the short story ‘Frank and I’, earned the Munhakdongne New Writer Award (2003). His first novel, The Whale, received the Munhakdongne Award for Best Novel in 2004.

YOONNA CHO studied English literature at Yonsei University and conference interpreting at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies GSIT. Her translation of Youn Dae-Nyeong’s The Camel Pouch was shortlisted for the 2008 Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators. She has worked on numerous Korean novels and children’s books, as well as on subtitles for Korean films.

CHOI JAE-HOON was born in Seoul in 1973 and graduated from the School of Management at Yonsei University and the Department of Creative Writing at Seoul Institute of Arts. He made his literary debut in2007 with his short story ‘Baron Quirval’s Castle’. His works include the short-story collection, Baron Quirval’s Castle, and the novel, Seven Cat’s Eyes, The Butterfly Sleep. Choi Jae-Hoon received the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award in 2011.

EUN KYUNG DUBOIS is a Korean literary translator. She received translation grants from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea in 2010 and the Daesan Foundation in 2012. She studied at LTI Korea and earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Boston College.

Contributors

NATHAN A. DUBOIS is a seasoned editor of Korean literature and non-fiction.

He received a master’s degree in development policy from the Korea Development Institute, and a bachelor’s in political science from Boston College.

HAN YUJOO has written three short-story collections and the novel The Impossible Fairy Tale, which will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. She is a translator of Michael Ondaatje and Geoff Dyer, among others, and teaches at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and Korea University’s Department of Creative Writing.

JANET HONG’s fiction and translations have appeared in Words without Borders, The Malahat Review, Kyoto Journal, Azalea, and The Korea Times. She received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund for her translation of the novel The Impossible Fairy Tale by Han Yujoo, which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in March 2017.

SUNNY JEONG is currently studying media and theatre at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Having been raised in both Korea and the United States, she considers both Seoul Nowon-gu and Columbus, Ohio as hometowns. Apple Kim’s Butterfly Book is her first work of literature translation.

AE-RAN KIM’s literary debut, ‘No Knocking in This House’, a short story published in 2003, won a Daesan Literary Award. Her first collection, Run, Daddy, Run, was awarded the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award in 2005. In 2008, her short story ‘Knife Marks’ won the Yi Hyosok Literary Award and her 2011 novel The Youngest Parents with the Oldest Child was made into a film by E J-yong as My Brilliant Life.

Contributors

APPLE KIM’s first story, ‘02’, won the Changbi New Writers Prize and in 2010 she was shortlisted for the Munhakdongne Young Writers Prize. Kim has published four novels and two short-story collections. In 2016 ‘It’s One of Those the-More-I’m-in-Motion-the-Weirder-It-Gets Days and It’s Really Blowing My Mind’ became her first work published in English, in the collection The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women (Zephyr Press).

CHI-YOUNG KIM is a Man Asian Literary Prize-winning literary translator based in Los Angeles. She has translated works by Shin Kyung-sook, Hwang Sun-mi, Kim Young-ha, Kyung Ran Jo, and J. M. Lee. Forthcoming in 2016 are her translations of Hwang’s The Dog Who Dared to Dream and Lee’s The Boy Who Escaped Paradise.

KIM KYUNG JU is a Seoul-based poet and performance artist whose work has been widely anthologised and translated. He has written and translated numerous books of poetry, essays, and plays and received the Korean Government’s Today’s Young Artist Prize and the Kim Su-young Contemporary Poetry Award. Kim’s first book of poetry, I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World, sold over 15,000 copies in Korean. Black Ocean Press released Jake Levine’s Englishlanguage translation in early 2016.

MIN-JEONG KIM was born in 1976 in Incheon and majored in creative writing at Chung-Ang University. She won the Prize for New Figures in Poetry hosted

by Literary JoongAng, a quarterly magazine, with poems including ‘Black Nana’s Dream’. She was also the winner of the 2007 Pak In-hwan Literary Award. Kim has published two poetry collections, Flying Miss Hedgehog and For the First Time, She Began to Feel.

KIM SEONG JOONG was born in Seoul in 1975. She made her debut with the short story ‘Please Return My Chair’ in 2008, which earned her the Joongang New Writers Award. After her debut, she published two short-story collections: Comedian in 2012, and Border Market in 2015. Her first novel is currently being serially published in the renowned Korean literary magazine, Munhakdongne.

Contributors

SORA KIM-RUSSELL is a literary translator based in Seoul. Her translations include Shin Kyung-sook’s I’ll Be Right There (Other Press, 2014), Gong Jiyoung’s Our Happy Time (Short Books, 2014), Bae Suah’s Nowhere to Be Found (AmazonCrossing, 2015), and Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari (Periscope, 2015).

She teaches at Ewha Woman’s University and at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

SOYOUNG KIM is a freelance translator who translated Survival of the Sickest

by Dr Sharon Moalem into Korean. She also translated Korean literature into English, including Park Min-kyu’s bestselling novel The Last Fan Club of the Sammi Superstars and Kim Jung-hyuk’s short-story collection The Library of Musical Instruments. Currently, she is focused on translating Korean fiction and nonfiction into English.

STELLA KIM is an avid reader who works as a freelance translator and interpreter. She was awarded the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators in 2014 and has since translated a number of short stories featured in ASIA (Magazine of Asian Literature) and published in book form.

She is currently working on her first book-length translation.

WON-CHUNG KIM is a Professor of English Literature at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. Kim has translated twelve books of Korean poetry into English, and John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra and Thoreau’s Natural History Essays into Korean. His first book of poetry, I Thought It was a Door was published in 2014.

KIM YEONSU is a Korean novelist born in a small town where his parent ran a bakery. He ate a lot of bread. When he was twenty-three, several poems were published in literature magazines. The following year, he won a prize for his first novel, Larvatus Prodeo. In the past twenty years he has won additional literature prizes, and published some eighteen books. He is currently writing a novel about the early Christians in Nagasaki.

Contributors

KIM YI-SEOL was born in the small city of Yesan and studied creative writing at Myongji College. She has a chilling talent for depicting individuals trapped by society and made her literary debut in 2006 with the short story ‘Thirteen Years Old’. Her stories have an intimacy with reality that is rare among young writers.

JAKE LEVINE has translated Kim Kyung Ju’s I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World, Tomas Butkus’ God / Thing, and a chapbook of poems by Kim YiDeum. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including funding from LTI Korea, and Korean Government and Fulbright scholarships. Levine is also an editor at Spork Press, the author of two poetry chapbooks and is currently doing a PhD at Seoul National University.

SUSANNA SOOJUNG LIM is an associate professor of Korean Studies and Russian Studies at the University of Oregon. Her scholarly work on Russian Orientalism and East Asia, China and Japan in the Russian Imagination: To the Ends of the Orient, 1685–1922, was published by Routledge in 2013. She is currently working on a book on national identity in Pak Kyoung-ni’s multivolume novel Land (T’oji).

SEO YOO-MI majored in Korean literature at Dankook University. She won the Fifth Munhaksoochup Writer’s Award with Fantastic Ant Lion’s Pit and the First Changbi Literature Prize in 2007 with A Cool Step Forward. Other works include Your Monster and several books of children’s fiction.

DEBORAH SMITH’s translations from the Korean include two novels by Han Kang, The Vegetarian (longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize) and Human Acts, and two by Bae Suah, A Greater Music and Recitation. In 2015 Deborah completed a PhD at SOAS on contemporary Korean literature and founded Tilted Axis Press. In 2016 she won the Arts Foundation Award for Literary Translation. She tweets as @londonkoreanist.

ASIA PACIFIC WRITERS & TRANSLATORS PRESENTS

IDEAS & REALITIES (2016) CREATIVE WRITING IN ASIA TODAY

GUANGZHOU (CHINA) NOVEMBER 24-26 HONG KONG NOVEMBER 27 MACAU NOVEMBER 28 Find us - apwriters.org contact us - admin@apwriters.org join us - apwriters.org/apply-to-join

Poster illustration ‘Nomads 2015 (detail)’ by Mongolian artist Baatarzorig Batjargal, courtesy of the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art’s 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and Griffith Review.

Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing The Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing is the first and currently the only one of its kind in China for teaching and promoting creative writing in English as a second/foreign language. It combines the teaching of English with creative writing techniques to enable students to write about China from an insider’s perspective.

Under the Sun Yat-sen University Creative Writing Education Program, the Center organizes readings by international writers and a book club to promote the reading and writing of world literature. From October 2015, it will start the Sun Yat-sen University International Writers’ Residency, which moves from the campuses of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhuhai to Jiangmen in Guangdong Province and Yangshuo in Guangxi Autonomous Region, and gives between ten and fifteen writers the time and space to write as well as providing them with the opportunity to get to know Chinese people and culture. Contact: daifan@mail.sysu.edu.cn

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The hallyu Korean pop-culture phenomenon of music, TV and online gaming has been sweeping across the world for two decades. But what about its contemporary literature? This issue of the Asia Literary Review spotlights writing by and about Korea’s younger generation. The talent and content are vibrant, engaging and unflinching.

Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading Featuring: Fiction by Cheon Myeong-kwan, Choi Jae-hoon, Han Yujoo, Ae-ran Kim, Apple Kim, Kim Seong Joong, Kim Yeonsu, Kim Yi-seol and Seo Yoo-mi Poetry by Kim Kyung Ju and Min-jeong Kim Essay by Deborah Smith ‘The ALR fills an important gap. We’ve grown used to reading about Asia. But through a kaleidoscope of stories, essays, poems, polemics and photographs, finally we can hear Asians talking about themselves.’ – David Pilling, former Asia Editor, Financial Times asialiteraryreview.com