[_list: Books from Korea] Vol.26 Winter 2014

A Literary Quarterly

Vol. 26 Winter 2014

Featured Writer

Yi Mun-yol Special Section

North Korean Defector Literature

ISSN 2005-2790

The New _list www.list.or.kr ď˝œ Mobile Application Our new multimedia platforms bring interactive content you can watch and listen to beyond the pages of the magazine.

new_list

Foreword

I

t takes a left wing and a right wing for a bird to fly.

Finding Freedom on the Wings of a Writer

Such is the profound truth of the natural world, but it may sound entirely implausible in the realm of the human world, where completely divergent and opposing ideologies coexist in a single place, like the Korean peninsula. It is nearly impossible for writers on the Korean peninsula to fly with both wings—a communist wing on the left, for example, and a capitalist wing on the right. In the current issue of _list we encounter writers who fly with only one wing in turn.

In his novel Our Twisted Hero (see _list Vol. 24, Summer 2014), Yi Mun-yol, the featured author in the current issue, gave a vivid description not only of the formative process and collapse of absolute power, but also of the petit bourgeois obedient to that absolute power, set in the background of an elementary school in a small city. Many of the youth of those days who dedicated themselves to fight against the military regime, found in Yi’s novel a reason why they had to redress the social injustices fatally committed by those in absolute power.

But Yi, as paradoxical as it may seem, bore witness to the totalitarian tendencies characteristic of those struggling against the totalitarian regime, and so tried to keep a distance and free himself from having to choose a side. In The Poet (1991) Yi described the free, aged artist as one who does not belong to any order or regime, but must “forever wander until the very last moment of his life.” At last, in 2014, by completing the 12-volume epic novel The In-between Periphery, written from 1986 and published from 1998, he seemed to have completed his literary journey of becoming a “truly free, aged writer.” It was under the unique circumstances of Korea, located on the periphery of “two major imperialist powers of the 20th century, the U.S. and USSR” that the three protagonists in this epic came to their physical, mental, and social maturity by “wandering between the ruler and the ruled, the old and the new order, and the desires of the masses and the individual.”

Under somewhat different circumstance, there are writers who were transferred from one side to the other, not only in the geographical sense, but also in the ideological one. In the “Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature,” we can hear the voices of North Korean defectors writing about their lives in the North as well as about their escape. Yi Gayeon expresses the hope and wish that her childhood friend will not starve again in the next life (p. 40). Do Myeong-hak informs us of the fact that even a one-eyed man is valuable in North Korea as long as he can shoot a gun (p. 42). Shedding bitter tears of regret after phoning his daughter whom he left behind, Lee Ji-myeong ruminates on his life as a writer in the North and the resulting confusion about his identity in the South (p. 43). Kim Seong-min sings the praises of freedom only after learning its true meaning, which was deprived of him from his birth (p. 44).

What is the true meaning of freedom for these writers? If it means a spiritual wandering without settling oneself on one point of view or in one particular place, then the writers in this volume of _list have found it in reality and in name. True Freedom!

by Park Jangyun Editor-in-Chief

Vol.26 Winter 2014

1

Contents 04

The 12th Korean Literature Translation Award

24

ㆍEnglish Division: Suh Ji-moon ㆍRussian Division: Maria Kuznetsova ㆍPortuguese Division: Im Yun Jung ㆍArabic Division: Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar

09

Special Section

North Korean Defector Literature ㆍEssay: Significance of North Korean Defectors in Fiction ㆍPart 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction ㆍPart 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center ㆍPart 3. North Korean Defector Poets

Featured Writer

Yi Mun-yol ㆍWriter’s Profile: A Writer of Hard Truths and Keen Insight ㆍWriter’s Insight: A Letter to My Readers Around the World ㆍInterview: Tumultuous Era, Songs of Violent Passions ㆍEssay: About Yi Mun-yol’s Novels ㆍExcerpt: The Poet ㆍTranslated Works

55 61

2

_list : Books from Korea

LTI Translation Academy ㆍCelebrating Seven Years of Translation ㆍGrowing Out of My “Growing Pains” ㆍWalking the Tightrope of Translation

The Place ㆍForest of wisdom

Vol. 26 Winter 2014 A Literary Quarterly

In Every Issue

01 46 47 64

PUBLISHER

Kim Seong-Kon

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Kwon Sehoon

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Jung Jin Kwon

EDITORIAL BOARD

Kang Gyu Han Kim Jonghoi Min Eun Kyung Park Hae-hyun

OVERSEAS EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Choi Kyeonghee Oliverio Coelho Jean-Claude De Crescenzo Grace E. Koh Michael J. Pettid Andreas Schirmer Dafna Zur

DOMESTIC EDITORIAL ADVISORS

Brother Anthony Steven D. Capener Horace J. Hodges Jean-Noël Juttet Charles Montgomery Andrés Felipe Solano

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Park Jangyun

EDITORS

Kim Stoker Yi Jeong-hyeon James Godley

MANAGING EDITOR

Park Mill

TRANSLATORS

Cho Yoonna Choi Inyoung Agnel Joseph

ART DIRECTOR

Kim Aram

DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR

Kim Eunhye

REPORTERS

Sophie Bowman Lee Sewon Theodora Yu

PRINTED BY

Choyang AD Com Co., Ltd.

Foreword Poetry Reviews Afterword

Spotlight on Fiction “Evening Proposal” by Pyun Hye-young

Cover image and Contents photos by

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang Date of Publication December 22, 2014

All correspondence should be addressed to the Literature Translation Institute of Korea 112 Gil-32, Yeongdong-daero (Samseong-dong), Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 135-873, Korea Telephone: 82-2-6919-7714 Fax: 82-2-3448-4247 E-mail: list_korea@klti.or.kr www.klti.or.kr www.list.or.kr

Vol.24 Vol.26Summer Winter 2014

3

The 12th Korean Literature Translation Award

English Division

What Korean Literature Means to Me L

TI Korea honors seasoned translators with the Korean Literature Translation Award in recognition of their works that have enriched the quality of Korean literature in translation. Four titles were chosen for the 12th Korean Literature Translation Award this year from among 61 books published in 15 languages in 2013. Here, the award winners share their thoughts on Korean literature.

4

_list : Books from Korea

I

t may sound quite strange, but I grew up with Western literature, not Korean. My first acquaintance with the world of literature was through Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, followed by the same author’s A Little Princess. My childhood spanned the 1950s, which was the decade following the Korean War when so many necessities were scarce or lacking, so the Children’s World Literature series were the only books available to children hungry for the realm of imaginative experience.

And so I became early acquainted with Western culture and mores; the ways of life of the Western gentry, complete with its courtship rituals and social etiquette and dueling, were native soil to me.

By and by I picked up Korean short stories, novels and dramas, but they seemed drab and dreary in comparison to the colorful Western novels in which stakes were high and codes of conduct were clear and uncompromising.

It was when I was a graduate student studying in America that I was seized with a thirst to know what Korean literature was really like. This came with the realization that not history but literature bore the true record of a people’s life, not because history is dishonest but because history lacks the engine to capture an entire people’s thoughts, emotions, and yearnings that diverse eras, regions, and events give rise to.

So when I came back to Korea with my degree I looked up and read Korean literature hungrily, which was truly an eye-opener. It was really more through literature than through real-life contact that I met, understood, and participated in the life of my compatriots. I understood how hard life had been for Koreans throughout the centuries, and what excruciating burdens and torments they bore.

And I realized that it was nothing less than a miracle that Koreans survived the unrelenting trials of their

2014 Award-winning Translations

The House with a Sunken Courtyard

lives with their human kindness intact. And what a discovery it was that what enabled them to survive was their meekness! Truly, their meekness was their greatness.

It was the realization and the admiration inspired by it that made me want to make available to the whole world the story of how Koreans survived, without the loss of their humanity and with only their meekness as their survival weapon.

This gives Korean literature a cast very different from Western literature, which has come more and more in modern times to deal in close analysis of man as a helpless creature driven by irrational inner forces. So I am conscious of a great gap between the aim of Korean literature and that of the West. And I have misgivings of narrowly focused Western critics dismissing Korean literature out of hand because it is unlike the literature they are used to. But I have faith that true literary minds will recognize the value and greatness of a literature reflecting the unique sensibility and attitude of a people who have borne the unbearable.

Korean literature has changed a great deal in tenor since the early 1970s, as indeed it must and ought to with the fundamental changes in the Koreans’ condition of existence over the past several decades. I delight and marvel in the new generation of Korean writers’ wit and insight and their way of grappling with the problems that confront them. But I believe that Korean literature will always reflect, if only in part, the historical crucible of their parents, grandparents, and forbearers and that this will enhance and strengthen it, to the great benefit of readers all over the world.

by Suh Ji-moon

Kim Won-il Translated by Suh Ji-moon Dalkey Archive Press, 2013, 229 pp.

ISBN 9781564789136

Тайная жизнь растений Lee Seung-U Translated by Maria Kuznetsova Hyperion, 2013, 189 pp.

ISBN 9785893321944

A Vegetariana Han Kang Translated by Im Yun Jung Devir Livraria, 2013, 189 pp.

ISBN 9788575325726

‫لويس ىلإ ةلحر‬ Kim Kwang-Kyu Translated by Cho Hee Sun and Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar Kalema, 2013, 246 pp.

ISBN 9789775322227

Vol.26 Winter 2014

5

Russian Division

The Wonderland of Korean Literature K

orean literature is my passion—the dream of my childhood. Seriously. When I was a child, I dreamt that my adult life would be somehow connected with the world of literature. I was a bookworm. I practically lived in books. Literature was my personal Wonderland, which I found through books, as Alice found through the looking glass. I am rather lucky because my dream came true. Now, as a translator, I can legally stay in my Wonderland, tasting author’s ideas, savoring the game of words, absorbing the development of a plot. What is Korean literature for me? The bridge to another culture? Yes, and much more than that.

For me, translating these books from Korea is no less than being a part of the beauty, complexity, and greatness created by a human mind. It is luck and honor.

The writer Lee Seung-U grew a garden where I could walk while translating The Private Lives of Plants. The trees, the bushes, and the grasses all come together, each with their own character and destiny. People recognize themselves in the plants.

This is the garden of human feelings, passions and sins, self-sacrifice, and true love—the garden, where every character in the novel finds their true selves. Life can turn into nightmare, but the one who has passed their way in darkness will stop looking for benefits and find peace in a sacrificial love. Korean literature is rich with philosophical ideas and contemplation. It teaches us how to stop and think. However, at the same time Korean literature does not ignore reality. The Private Lives of

6

_list : Books from Korea

Plants calmly reminds us of the historical development of the country, as the author seems to be interested in the influence of history on the private lives of people.

Everyday details are also in front of the reader. Here is life in Seoul: its cafés, restaurants, libraries, motels, squares, and parks. Here is a Korean family, gathering at the table to eat traditional Korean food.

Books for children also deserve attention. Harry Potter lives in England and you will scarcely meet him in Korea. But in the novel The Secret of Flora written by Oh Jin Won, lives Maro, a boy from a fantastic planet, who will fight with evil and win. Later I will read this book to my daughter hoping that she will join me in the Wonderland of literature someday.

No matter how much is different between people of different cultures, I know that sometimes, while reading a Korean novel, a foreigner can be surprised or shocked or confused, but in a couple of minutes will think: “Ah, I know this. I’ve felt the same. This is life.”

At that moment, the reader, no matter how far from Korea, will become much closer to the culture, which had theretofore been unknown. Being a translator, I feel happy to take part.

by Maria Kuznetsova

Portuguese Division

Transcreating Language

P

aulo Leminski, the Brazilian poet who had a special appreciation for the Korean poet Yi Sang, once said: “Did you ever imagine the misfortune that it is to write in Portuguese? Who knows this language on this planet other than Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Macau? You are already born with a historical fate. [...] Then, if somebody says that the greatest poem of the 20th century is an incredible epic poem written in Basque? What language? Written in Basque! Nobody will get acquainted with the poem, this guy won’t have a chance. He must have to write the poem in English, Russian, Chinese, or something with a higher value in the international market. [...] This is a work that is the history. The artist alone, artists cannot solve it, we are already born in a peripheral language, writing something in Portuguese and being worldly mute is more or less the same thing.”

Ironically though, Leminski himself was a translator, not by choice, but out of necessity, having to translate four books a year in order to survive. Maybe he did not realize that, in the bigger picture, we translators— especially translators of peripheral languages like Korean or Portuguese—can be seen as a small army of ants capable of operating an upheaval over this “historical pedigree.” I wonder if by transposing line by line, we, translators of Korean literature, may not be carrying on a silent and slow revolution, a cultural revolution in which the dividing line between the center and the periphery is slowly blurred. In this scenario, Korean literature shall be great, not because it is “Korean,” but because it gives an international voice to a specific vision of the world. As Andrei Tarkovsky,

the noted Russian filmmaker said, “Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.” Korean literature will democratically take part in this big show-window of the human spirit— the reunion of all poetry—ready to be appreciated by anyone who is willing to participate in this change.

And, to achieve this, I’ll always gratefully remember the teachings of Haroldo de Campos, the greatest literary translator of Brazil, for whom “translator, traitor” was an equation outrageously wrong. From philosophy and theory through the methodology and praxis of translation, he left precious translations in Portuguese of English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew works. Through his journey, “translator, traitor” was his new, revolutionary proposition for the impossibility of translating poetry. Yes, translating poetry is impossible, so let’s transcreate it! And a lesson especially dear to me is that, to transcreate poetry we must break the limits of the target language by bringing the foreign language into it. By doing this, we will be enriching the target language through a diverse mode of expressing its reality. My job in translating Korean poetry into Portuguese has been pursuing what de Campos taught: bringing a Korean mode of expressiveness into Portuguese.

Vive la difference!

by Im Yun Jung

Vol.26 Winter 2014

7

Arabic Division

My Story with Korean Literature B

efore I had a chance to visit Korea, honestly I had no interest at all about its history or literature, but I always respected Korean people for what they did to become one of the top 10 countries in the world. Regarding this point, I can say that Korean literature has completely changed my entire life and opened a new gate that I had never imagined. How did this happen? Let me tell you that short story.

By chance I came to Korea several years ago. And as I always say to my friends, good opportunities come when you do your best: “Luck comes to the one who looks for it.� I was teaching Arabic language and literature at Cairo University as a lecturer, and I was also teaching Arabic language for foreigners at Cairo University Center for Arabic Language and Culture. I was doing my best for over six years, and I taught many foreigners from all over the world including Koreans. At that time, as my Korean students were getting ready to return to Korea, they would start talking about me to their departments and were recommending me to go to Korea to teach Arabic. Then a Korean university offered me a scholarship toward my phD in comparative literature – that was how I got my chance to study Korean literature. Before then I had opportunities to go to Europe or to the U.S., but I was not eager to do so since those places were where my colleges usually went to get their PhDs, while I wanted something different and new.

I have been so lucky to have had such an opportunity to study Korean poetry and be a pioneer in researching Korean poetry for Arab people. And honestly, I love this country and have felt it as my second home. And this is why I have to tell my people about the culture and the literature of this great nation, and because Egypt and Korea

have almost had the same struggles under colonialism in the 20th century.

Since I believe in happy endings, I will continue to do my best to translate Korean literature, because it is a way of giving back to that field of studies that has opened new doors in my career; therefore, my next step is to complete my dream by establishing a Korean language department at Cairo University. That way Egyptian students can study the Korean language and culture and earn degrees to become translators and Korean language teachers. Also, I will continue to translate Korean poetry into Arabic as long as I am able.

by Mahmoud Ahmed Abd Elghaffar

8

_list : Books from Korea

Featured Writer: Writer’s Profile

A Writer of

Hard Truths and Keen Insight

Y

i Mun-yol was born in 1948. He made his debut as a writer in 1977. Yi’s works were enriched by the classics of East Asia that he had naturally become familiar with during his childhood and the Western literature that he had voraciously devoured in his young adulthood. In The Son of Man, Yi questioned the relationship between man and god; in A Portrait of Youthful Days, he portrayed the struggle and anguish of his youth. The Golden Phoenix was an exploration of the ontological meaning of art using calligraphy, a traditional art form in Korea. Yi also has consistently published works that are critical to the nature of political power. Our Twisted Hero is an allegorical depiction of the mechanism of how political power operates. Homo Executants portrays the process through which political ideology suffocates humanity. Aside from these, his works include Hail to the Emperor, The Age of Heroes, Choice and Immortality. The recipient of Korea’s highest literary prizes, Yi has been published in over 20 countries including the U.S., France, Great Britain and Germany; over 60 titles of his translated works are available.

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

Vol.26 Winter 2014

9

Featured Writer: Writer’s Insight

A Letter to My Readers Around the World T

o my unknown co-inhabitants of Earth who aren’t able to read my books in the original language: I am Yi Mun-yol, from South Korea, an East Asian country. I was born in 1948 and have devoted all of my life to writing novels. My last name “Yi” comes from the Chinese character 李 which signifies the tree, and “Mun-yol” is a compound Sino-Korean word of which “mun (文)” means letters or literature and “yol (烈)” means hot or ferocious.

However, the name given to me by my parents and recorded in the family register was the single character “Yol,” thus “Mun-yol” was a penname I began using when I became a writer. The meaning of “Mun-yol” is “writer Yol” or “hot and intense writing” and the Romanization of my name “Yi Mun-yol” is also my registered trademark that is used in the international literary market.

The reason I am providing an extensive explication of my name is that it indicates the process by which I ended up living a life of letters.

As a son who was abandoned by a man who defected to North Korea in search of his ideological homeland in the midst of the Korean War, I spent a desolate childhood in the ruins of the aftermath of war. I had from early on adopted literature as my haven of seclusion and soon enough was intoxicated by the appeal of words and, after dedicating my younger days to disciplining myself with a passion I didn’t know I was capable of, I at long last shaped my identity as a writer. But then the intentional direction (of the name my father had given me) differed from that of a person who chose to practice writing. I felt burdened by my father’s wish inscribed in my name, therefore I added “mun” as my penname to confine the passion to the domain of letters.

In 1977, I began my career as a novelist after winning a prize in a contest by a provincial South Korean newspaper. Two years later, I made my debut in the Korean literary establishment with the novel, The Son of Man, which borrowed the motif of the “wandering Jew.” Starting from then until now as I am writing this letter, I have written about 50

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

10 _list : Books from Korea

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

â“’Seo Heun-Kang

short stories and novellas in six volumes, 18 novels in 20 volumes, and two epic novels in 22 volumes. In addition, I have written two volumes of essays, one travelogue, and compiled and annotated a total of 20 volumes of Chinese classics, as well as 10 volumes of short and medium-length masterpieces of world literature.

Around the end of 1970s when I became a novelist and began communicating with the world, Korean literature was already recognized as part of world literature. However, world literature was still in the phase of a one-way reception in Korea. This was because of the parochial nature of the Korean language vis-Ă -vis the Indo-European languagedominant world literature. Then, toward the end of the 1980s when industrialization began making its progress in Korea, Korean literature too embarked on a very active dialogue with world literature.

Driven by such a phenomenon, in 1989, beginning with French, I had nearly 70 books published in 18 languages in 25 countries. Among them, Our Twisted Hero was published in more than 15 countries and The Poet, in over 12 countries. The Son of Man, The Golden Phoenix, A Portrait of Youthful Days, and Hail

to the Emperor! were published in more than five countries and I am most eager to know how many of these books have reached the readers who are now reading this.

Communing with one another signifies that we are getting better acquainted with each other.

For a novelist, like myself, and you, the reader, what it means is that we are getting to know each other through literature. Yet, the reason why I am presenting myself through a somewhat detailed literary profile on our first encounter is that without a way of communication or a medium it is impossible to send something to others or receive because of the differences in our languages.

Perhaps this letter might come to you before any of my works, which have been finely translated, have a moving encounter with you. Therefore, in order for me to herald that day, I have prepared a rough summary of me and my oeuvre in this writing. I look forward to meeting all of you soon through my books.

by Yi Mun-yol

Vol.26 Winter 2014 11

Featured Writer: Interview

Tumultuous Era, Songs of Violent Passions

Y

i Mun-yol resides at the Buak Academy in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do Province, where the surroundings offer mesmerizing scenery with the changing colors of the autumn foliage. The interview was conducted in the author’s study and can be summarized into three themes: Yi Mun-yol’s views on the role of the novel; discussion about The In-between Periphery, his epic novel which was published in the middle of this year; and his personal thoughts on the globalization of Korean literature.

Views On the Novel Hae Yisoo: You made your debut as a writer in 1977 and have been writing for 37 years. Has there been a change in your view of what the role of the novel should be?

Yi Mun-yol: When I was a reader, a novel was like a haven where I could escape from reality. After I became a novelist, I began to think about what role my novels should serve. To elaborate, I thought about a writer’s sense of mission or redemption. In those days, I had vowed not to write about the present-day issues. For example, I wasn’t going to be obsessed with certain values and thought it better not to get involved in the political debate. But, as time passed,

Visit www.list.or.kr to watch video highlights of this interview.

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

12

_list : Books from Korea

I couldn’t simply avoid the problems of reality. After experiencing so much, this is what I believe. In short, that too much is worse than too little. I don’t think it’s a good literary philosophy to dedicate one’s novels to some cause.

Hae: Your works, which have won literary and popular acclaim, have been published in textbooks, staged, and adapted for cinema. What do you think is the most important aspect of writing that hasn’t changed since you began writing?

Yi: In the past, I did have an idea but I’m not sure anymore. Although my works have not necessarily been failures nor have I written an insignificant number of books, nonetheless, as time passes, they have begun to lose their vitality and popular appeal and began to tilt toward one side. In terms of relevance and popularity, I need to demarcate my works into two periods, before and after 2000.

First of all, before 2000, what I considered most important about my writing was not to forget that I myself was a reader. As a youth enamored with literature, I always had high expectations of the novels I read. Thus, I tried to affirm my identity through them and also learn about history and culture while enjoying reading. During this period, I didn’t forget what I, as a reader, wanted from literature and strove to instill that in my works.

But from 2000 on, the direction of my purpose shifted to: “What is it that the readers need?” I came up with subject matter and themes that I thought the readers of today need and should read about. And yet, because I decided it unilaterally, and such an intention was in operation, there consequently began to be a

Hae Yisoo (b. 1973) debuted with the novella “The Kangaroo in the Desert” (2000) in the literary magazine Hyundae Munhak.

He has published the short story collections, The Kangaroo in the Desert and Jellyfish. He is the recipient of the Sim Hoon Literary Award (2004) and the Han Moosuk Literary Award (2010).

distance between the readers and myself.

Hae: When would you say you were happier?

Yi: It’s an altogether different issue to feel regret over it or think I did the wrong thing. Even if I were to go back to that period, I might have made the same decision.

However, I was happier in the former days, but because of that, it led to the latter period.

Hae: The literary market has become greatly reduced in size compared to the past. What do you think is necessary to bring back readers?

Yi: Whether or not that’s possible, I can’t even guess. At a lecture I gave recently, I was asked why I don’t engage in SNS. I replied that I’m not sure that I’d be good at that mode of communication, not to mention that I don’t think too highly of it. There are two characteristics of SNS. One, it is a form of instant reply, where a questioner is allowed the necessary time and effort to formulate an argument that one can agree with, whereas no such time and space are granted to the person asked to make an instant reply to counter-argue. Because there is not enough time permitted to verify the legitimacy of a question or enough space to provide a counter argument, it’s easy to be caught in the snare of the questioner’s predetermined rhetorical web.

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

Hae: Are you pointing out how SNS, purportedly a form of mutual communication, is more akin to a one-sided debate?

Yi: This method of communication is less about sharing opinions and more about someone imposing their prejudiced views on others. Questioners who can take advantage of this type of communication will usually only acknowledge those people who will give a speedy reply of “yes” or “no.” Furthermore, he will deem only those who quickly agree with him as someone they can talk to, whereas those who say “no” will be seen as people who are incapable of a dialogue.

It could be said that the number of victims from biased SNS communication has diminished compared to before, but in some ways it means both sides have become accustomed to a similar method of attack and defense. One should not overlook this aspect before SNS can be regarded as an advanced means of communication. Instead of a brief response from the respondent that is induced by the questioner, there should be a time of reflection for a questioner and sufficient time for counter-argument.

The novel could perhaps be an alternative solution to overcome this flawed trend, for it provides enough time to both the writer and the reader to ponder and contemplate. For people who are used to a quick reading and reaction, this salutary adjustment can Vol.26 Winter 2014 13

occur, and there can be a recovery of sufficient time for self-reflection; and thus perhaps lost readers can be recalled to the land of the novel.

The In-between Periphery Hae: The In-between Periphery is an epic novel that recounts a tumultuous period in Korean society starting from the 1950s to 1972, when the Yushin Revitalizing Reforms were set in motion. You began writing it starting in 1986 and the first volume was published in 1998, and, 16 years later, the 12-volume set came out this year; hence, it’s a closure to a 28-year time span. What motivated you to write this epic?

Yi: Through the story of a family, the novel depicts the transformation of Korea, which is situated at the edge, so to speak, of two major imperialist powers of the 20th century, the US and the USSR. During this time, the Korean peninsula was divided into the North and the South and became an arena of propaganda for the two nations, western (the U.S.) and eastern (the USSR). While the two are mutually at odds and are reliant on each other, North and South Korea are subjected to a unique experience; it is under these circumstances that the story of the three siblings and their physical, mental, and social maturity takes place.

Hae: You have painted a massive mural with a comprehensive portrayal of Korean life against the backdrop of a political, economic, social, and cultural setting that is the outcome of the tumultuous period of the 1960s. What was the most difficult aspect of writing during the long period you worked on this epic?

instead of what I had originally planned, it looks like I’ll have to reduce the second set to eight volumes. I am going to write about the other side, which wasn’t so conspicuous, of the cultural and political transformation of the 1980s. Then, broadly speaking, The Age of Heroes published in 1984 will serve as the prologue, The Inbetween Periphery will be the main body, and what I am currently working on will be the epilogue.

On His Works in Translation Hae: Thus far, 65 of your works have been published in 18 languages in over 20 countries. While you’ve been on the front line of the translation of Korean literature, how do you assess foreign readers’ experience of reading Korean literature?

Yi: I have received information about their response indirectly through translation, interpretation, or reviews in the media, but I have not had a chance to personally hear from a reader. It is fortunate that the younger generation of writers is actively engaged in communication in a domain I have not had experience in. Writers like Shin Kyung-sook, Lee Seung-U, and Kim Young-ha appear to be writers of a different type in regard to the subject matter or their communicative aspects. If it was my role to open a gate to the international literary market, then I believe these younger writers will do well in what needs to be done next.

Hae: You must have thought about the role of the novel for a long time; exactly what aspect of it do you think stands the test of time and transcends national boundaries in order to effectively move readers?

Yi: The story is a very crucial element in my novel. Some

Yi: It was most difficult to write the part having to do with Marxism. Fortunately, around the time I began working on this novel, the ban on socialist theory books was being slightly loosened and I was able to get hold of some pertinent books. But Das Kapital by Karl Marx was a banned book until the end of the 1980s. Therefore, I barely managed to get the requisite permission to go read it in the library of a government institute. The edition I read then was an edition that was printed in Seoul in 1946.

Hae: Do you have any regrets since the publication?

Yi: My original plan was to complete a set of 12 volumes and then to work on another set of 12. But 14

_list : Books from Korea

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

Yi: Foreigners might be unfamiliar with these places and therefore curious about them. It could be misconstrued as an institute where writers are fostered, but it is actually a scholarly center where one can study and discipline oneself. The Buak Academy operates, at present, a residence program and is used as a writers’ space. The Gwangsan Literary Center is where I would like to pursue scholarship on the East Asian literary principles that have exerted a profound influence on modern Korean literature.

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

do not consider storytelling very important but I believe in the power of the story. There are many examples of narrative force in the novel and the power of characters, like in the tale of a man who knew the King’s secret and felt compelled to disclose that the King had donkey-like ears, if only to bamboo trees, otherwise he might have gone mad; or the desperation of Scheherazade from The Arabian Nights.

Hae: You have had diverse experience in the international literary scene; what have you gleaned from that experience and what is the task at hand for the globalization of Korean literature?

Yi: A writer must decide to whom he ultimately wants to tell his story. In other words, foreign readers can understand my stories only with footnotes and explanations. In this vein, Haruki Murakami has succeeded with his strategy. He tells stories that are familiar to all American, Japanese, and Korean readers.

For some of his books, if you cover the author’s name, then it’s impossible to identify whether an American or a Japanese wrote it.

If you tell a universal tale by passing over the stories that are familiar to only Koreans, then it might be possible to reach out to international readers. Once I tried writing a novel for readers outside of Korea, without adding any footnotes, and it took five to six months to complete it.

But the stories I wrote for English readers, for whom footnotes were not necessary, conversely, required footnotes for Koreans.

Hae: You have established the Buak Academy in Icheon City and Gwangsan Literary Center in your hometown of Seokbo. Could you tell us what these places are for?

Hae: What are you working on now?

Yi: I am preparing what could be viewed as the epilogue to The In-between Periphery. It will cover the 1980s, a period that is important to Koreans in many ways. It will be possible to understand the present only when we analyze that era properly. The turbulence of today could have resulted from not construing this time period in an appropriate way.

An approach to interpreting this period has become even more complex because the 1980s are referred to in confusing words, often on SNS, a relatively new mode of communication. I am working on trying to elucidate the cultural hegemony of that era.

Hae: Your novel, The Poet, has been translated into 11 languages to high acclaim. In addition to the evaluation of critics and the publishing industry, how is the book culturally significant to you?

Yi: I started writing this book in my mid-40s, reflecting on my life up to then. I was able to tell in one volume all the disparately expressed aspects of my life in different novels. My family was subject to much suffering for the longest time as a result of my father’s defection to North Korea. And because of a guilt-by-association system, we were restricted from being part of mainstream society. Consequently, the resulting fright led me to remain mute or compliant to the political circumstances of the early 1980s— that has been a big burden on me. At the same time, as I got older and acquired a political consciousness, I began to ask myself what was the best position for me to take about that time period. The Poet was a book in which I tried to resolve all these issues.

by Hae Yisoo

Vol.26 Winter 2014 15

Featured Writer: Essay

Dreaming to Be Free from the Periphery:

About Yi Mun-yol’s Novels Y

i Mun-yol is an “author of the periphery” who has been attracting more international acclaim with the publication of his short story in translation, “An Anonymous Island” in The New Yorker. The reason why Yi is an “author of the periphery” is that in his novel, The In-between Periphery, he has clearly contextualized the history of Korea in the post-liberation period within the geopolitical boundary of the two empires, namely the U.S. and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War. Yi Mun-yol can also be considered a writer of freedom; in a totalitarian society in which the government has declared the divided country to be in a quasi-state of war and consequently dictates that its people need to live a prescribed life, Yi is one of few writers who urges such a society’s members to exercise their free will. In short, he is a “writer who dreamt of true freedom from the periphery.”

However, Yi was not always like that from the start. In the beginning, he was just “a free writer.”

In his early works, he presented the fundamental issue in South Korean society as the problem of an individual death that was triggered by the totalitarian order. In his debut work, “Saehagok,” he gives a detailed account of a few days in simulated wartime training and shows how South Korean society ceaselessly coerces the lives of its members into a war machine, thereby alluding to the nature of control in South Korea. And in “Pilon’s Pig,” he delineates a group of individuals whose memories have been subject to thought control and take on a mob quality to collectively execute a violent act.

However, some of his earlier works also tell stories of searching as well as adventures of characters that long to be free from surveillance and restriction. In The Son of Man and A Portrait of Youthful Days, the author epitomizes the searching and fervor of youth who reject the injustice of the world as the peak moment of one’s life. That is because he glimpses hope in the struggles of the young as a gateway to a more open society.

The author’s exploration of the possibility of 16

_list : Books from Korea

the autonomous existence of the youth, relentlessly struggling against an outdated system, goes through another transformation. He despairs over the forces of the democracy movement, who had rejected the totalitarian order, only to espouse an “iron discipline.”

Declaring that there exist two types of censors—the totalitarian government and the totalitarian forces of the democracy movement, he wages a fight against both.

ⓒSeo Heun-Kang

He does this in two ways. The first approach is to criticize the superego of the two ideologies that do not allow members of their society to live a subjective existence; examples of these kinds of works are The Age of Heroes, Miro Ilji, Our Twisted Hero, and Guro Arirang.

In The Age of Heroes, the author zeroes in on the life of a man who strives to topple the existing outmoded system. He shows how a man who started out with good intentions to innovate an archaic order ended up as a person who forces everyone to become an obedient entity, and intricately delineates how good intentions can inevitably result in the oppression of people’s freedom. Furthermore, Our Twisted Hero presents a persuasive description of people who are endlessly fleeing from freedom, going back and forth between the two censors, and how these powerful censors turn everyone into shamelessly servile human beings.

The second approach Yi Mun-yol takes in his fight against the two censors of South Korean society, is his quest for a subjective existential form that can deconstruct the double oppression. Hail to the Emperor!, The Poet, and The Golden Phoenix exemplify such an approach. Through the works, The Poet and The Golden Phoenix, Yi discovers the possibility of this subjective existence in the “portrait of an aged artist.”

In the aforementioned two novels, he ascribes great importance to the existential ethos of the artists who cannot but drift and wander until the very last moment of their lives. In particular, the author majestically describes the final moment when the souls of the artist protagonists reach fruition. This is what Yi Mun-yol believes: that in order to become a truly free subject, one must not be part of any order and that one should forever wander like a nomad and live the life of an aged artist searching until the moment of death.

After The Golden Phoenix and The Poet, Yi evolved once more as a writer. He finally completed The Inbetween Periphery and became a “writer who dreamt of true freedom from the periphery.” The In-between Periphery extensively depicts the unique circumstances of neo-liberalism that was introduced to South Korea (perhaps earlier than other countries) as a result of geopolitical factors in that Korea is a peripheral country to the two extant empires. According to The In-between Periphery, in order to secure South Korea, which is its crucial border, the U.S. persistently imposes Western capitalism. The South Korean government, which is in pursuit of absolute authority, implements American capitalism as the sole socio-economic system. As a

result, South Korea becomes a society where the only “freedom” allowed is the pursuit of money; and the dreaming of a better society or individual life is banned. Thus, various entities, which want to be freed from this evil axiom, spring forth. However, their good intentions are soon distorted. They turn antagonistic toward those who do not have faith in their good intentions, while demanding absolute obedience from those who believe in their good intentions.

Hence, The In-between Periphery contextualizes South Korea where neo-liberalism, which arrived too prematurely during the Cold War, is at odds with the socialist forces it triggered shortly thereafter. And it does not stop short here. The novel is in search of a path where one can become an authentically free self under these circumstances.

The In-between Periphery discloses a path of a subjective existence that is the “freely-floating intellectual,” which is found between the spaces of neo-liberalist totalitarianism and repressive socialism, as suggested by Karl Mannheim. The Inbetween Periphery tells one to wander between the ruler and the ruled, the old and the new order, and the desires of the masses and the individual. That is how one can be free and at the same time rupture the neo-liberalist totalitarianism. In short, The Inbetween Periphery is a work that comprehensively re-enacted Korean history in the Cold War after its liberation from Japan, yet remains within the framework of world history. Moreover, at a time when neo-liberalist totalitarianism is oppressing the lives of South Koreans in many aspects, the book points to a direction where “I” should stand in the world and points to the path where one can become a truly free person.

The writer, Yi Mun-yol, who has given Korean readers greatly moving and ecstatic experiences, is now going to engage in dialogue with readers from around the world. As a reader who has been deeply moved by his writing, I have high expectations for such an encounter.

by Ryu Bo-seon Literary Critic and Professor of Korean Literature Kunsan National University

Vol.26 Winter 2014 17

Excerpt

The Poet Visit www.list.or.kr to watch readings of this work by the author.

23

N

The Poet Yi Mun-yol Translated by Chong-wha Chung and Brother Anthony of TaizĂŠ Harvill Press, 1995, 207 pp.

ISBN 1860460119

18

_list : Books from Korea

ot all nonconformists are poets. But all poets are nonconformists. Some poets have absolutely none of the usual characteristics of a nonconformist. They are faithful to the normal order of life, laughing at its joys, weeping at its sorrows.

Yet they too are nonconformists. For if a person is a poet at all, he is bound to deviate from the norm at least in the use of language. Language can rise to the heavenly realms of high poetry only when it transcends the muddy ground of practicality.

If such acts of deviation are the universal fate and true characteristic of all poets, then he was at every moment a poet, from the time he left home at the age of twenty-four. Whatever the Old Drunkard meant for him, and no matter how great the attraction of the safe normality of daily life, in the end he did not return to his wife and children, and to the routine life of his time.

There is a moving story told by an eyewitness of the moment when his act of deviation was finally decided on. According to this story, on returning from his first visit to the Diamond Mountains he actually came as close to his home as its hedge. It was an early winter evening and the first snowflakes were beginning to fall, the light shining through the paper windows seemed exceptionally bright and warm. From inside he could hear three-year-old Hak-kyun muttering in his sleep, while Ik-kyun was crying, he had just been beginning to smile when he left, and he heard the occasional sighs of his young wife. Standing there, he had a vision of becoming a nameless farmer and he was actually about to push open the brushwood gate to go in, when he

hugged himself and emitted a long moan. Then he shuddered, as if struck by some thought, shook his head violently, and turned away.

Just as he was leaving the outskirts of the village, he spat a clot of blood on to the snow, which was already beginning to pile up white on the ground; the villagers never knew what sad, lonely creature had left that blood behind. There is no telling which was the more decisive factor, his failure of nerve before the bleak daily routine of life which had unfolded before his eyes, or the Old Drunkard’s suggestions which had begun to affect him; whichever it was, in the end he did not return home. [‌] He wandered from place to place, never settling. In cold weather and hot, come rain come snow, he went about in thin clothing, with a bamboo hat on his head and a bamboo cane in his hand. From the time he first left home until the day he died, his dress never varied. No one knows from what moment he became known as a wandering poet, he was all the time writing poems. That too never varied from the time he first left home until the day he died. Likewise his begging. For most of the time, from the moment he left home at twenty-four until the day he died in some small village down in the southwestern region of Honam, at the age of fifty-six, he begged clothing to wear and food to eat from unfamiliar people in unfamiliar places.

Does that mean, then, that those remaining thirty-two years were a mere accumulation of units of time, always with exactly the same colour and meaning? No. Not at all. Although his attire did not change until the day he died, the soul they wrapped

was not always exactly the same. Likewise, he invariably wrote poems, but their meanings varied according to the time they were written, and though in his deviation he moved endlessly through the world’s peripheries, the eyes with which he viewed the world varied with time. In other words, his life can be divided into several distinct stages.

Certainly, there are many possible ways of dividing his life into different stages, and as many possible disputes as to which is right or wrong.

Some may try to divide his life according to the different geographical areas he visited, others may draw lines at thirty and forty and divide his life according to the decades, while yet others may attempt to make a classification by reference to the various social events of the time. But he was undeniably a poet. Seeing that poetrywriting was the most vital activity for him, it may well be that a division of his life according to the kinds of poetry he wrote will prove to be not too far wrong.

24 If the different stages of his life are divided according to the characteristics of his poetry, the first stage will cover the seven or eight years between the age of about twenty-five, when his wandering really began, and the visit he made to Dabok Village when he was thirty-two.

During this period he chiefly moved around such places as Tongchon, Hamhung, Hongwon and Tanchon in Hamkyong Province as well as

Vol.26 Winter 2014 19

Poetry This novel portrays a nineteenth-century Korean poet’s life. Yi Munyol traces the course of his hero’s destiny, filled with pain and marked by numerous deviations, from early childhood, through the various stages of his poetic career, until he finally walks out into the night leaving his son gazing after him. […]

-Chong-wha Chung and Brother Anthony of Taizé

neighbouring parts of Pyongan Province; regional characteristics seem, however, to have exercised no great influence on his poetry.

The main formal characteristic of his poetry at this time is the classical new form based on the solid rhetoric of the poems written for the government service examinations. Some say that the main pleasure obtained in reading his poems comes from the skill with which he deviated from the norms of classical style, but that is more a hallmark of the poems written later.

He showed no special preference regarding subject matter. He liked to display vigorous, intense emotions and avoided writing on topics that were easily prone to sentimentality or frivolous malice.

The techniques he enjoyed using at this time give prime place to pomp and opulence, not unrelated to the rhetoric of the government service examination style, on which his poetic craft was based. Wit and humour may also be characteristics of his poetry at this time, but what distinguishes this from later periods is the effort he still makes to maintain his dignity as a high-class intellectual.

In the background to these features is his nomadic life in those years. He had become a wanderer but he had not been on the road very long, so naturally for a while he had mainly to rely on the patronage of a few old acquaintances.

When he went to visit them, nine times out of ten they turned out to be heads of local government sent down from Seoul, or the sons of local landed gentry he had got to know during his time in the

20 _list : Books from Korea

capital.

Cho Un-kyong, the magistrate of Anbyon County who took such good care of him, is a good example.

He had come to know Cho vaguely when he was once staying as a guest of Shin Sok-wu; now he made him welcome when he came to visit him. Thanks to the kindness of such people he did not suffer from poverty in the early stages of his nomadic life, and he was able to maintain his former sentiments more or less unscathed.

A second thing that may underlie the characteristics of the poems of this period is the class of the consumers for whom the poems were destined. As we saw above in considering the shape taken by his wandering, he chiefly frequented the rural upper classes or people close to this class, such as kisaeng girls*, and these formed the main consumers of his poems. Invariably what they liked was the culture of the capital city with its formal clichés; the popular style of poetry that he produced later could not have found congenial ground among them.

The process by which he mastered the poetic craft and also his youth offer other background factors that underlie the characteristics of the poems of this first period. These were precisely the kinds of poetry that he had previously mastered, while his aesthetic *The kisaeng were young women who entertained men of higher class as they drank and relaxed either in special kisaeng houses or during excursions. They had skills in music, dance, and poetry, and might also grant the men sexual favors. A few exceptional women achieved an enduring reputation as poets.

sense, which had not yet fully developed, to some extent made him readily content with merely conventional forms of expression and techniques.

At the same time in his youthful pride he tried to conceal his true state of beggardom under a cloak of bluff and bluster, which was also not unrelated to the characteristics of his poetry at the time.

Above all, one feature that cannot be omitted from this list of background factors is the weakness of his social consciousness. The bitter frustrations that he had tasted had made him so politically indifferent that he almost intentionally turned his eyes away from the political reality and social situations of his time, and clung instead to his own inner world. As a result, his poems naturally sought their themes in Nature and in subjective emotions, for which the most effective form of expression was bound to be magnificently opulent ornamentation and exaggerated emotion.

It would perhaps be meaningful at this point to look at two poems that exemplify relatively well the main characteristics of this period.

Hermits’ ways are distant as clouds; At nightfall a traveller’s thoughts grow darker.

Changed to a crane, the hermit flies off, no knowing where.

News from Pongnae Mountain is faint in my dreams.

A kisaeng in my young embrace, a fortune seems like straw; With a jar of wine in daylight, everything’s like

clouds.

Wild geese flying on high follow a river’s course; Butterflies passing green hills cannot shun the flowers.

Both poems are written in seven-character lines, the first is entitled “Pyoyon Pavilion in Anbyon” and the second “On shunning flowers”.

The first was written for Cho Un-kyong, who was the magistrate for Anbyon County; the second was composed together with a kisaeng girl in Tanchon, the two of them composing alternate lines. Both feel like poems written by some vigorous man of taste, betraying no trace of a vagabond’s weariness.

The success he scored with this kind of poetry in the first few years was a surprise even to himself. In the reception rooms of the landed gentry, local magistrates and dignitaries, or very occasionally in the room of a culturally vain kisaeng, his youth was consumed in a final blaze of poetry and wine.

Sometimes he assuaged their sense of inferiority with regard to the culture of the capital, sometimes he frankly prostituted his talents to their low cultural tastes, while he spent those few years intoxicated by the cheap admiration and applause he received from such great luminaries, forgetting for a time his own resentment and bitterness. (pp. 124-130)

Vol.26 Winter 2014 21

Featured Writer: Translated works

Praise for The Poet “A

work of broad sweep and intricate texture… Yi Mun-yol’s work evinces an emotional charge, an impact that throws the reader off balance.”

Andre Velter, Le Monde

Ελληνικά

Svenska 22 _list : Books from Korea

Deutsch

Français

Čeština

Nederlands

Türkçe

Español

中文

English Vol.26 Winter 2014 23

Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature

Significance of North Korean Defectors in Fiction

Part 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction

27 28 30

Jeong Do-sang, Drawing a Map of Sadness Excerpt: Brier Rose Cho Haejin, The Journey to Meet Lo Kiwan

Part 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center

32 33 34

Introduction

24

In 1960, Choi In-hun expressed his longing for a square that would serve as a truly open space for individuals and groups to communicate in The Square, the story of a character named Lee Myong-jun who gets a taste of the two regimes during the Korean War only to become a casualty of both. This square never actually materialized, but it did leave an indelible mark on Korean literature.

Fifty years after The Square and 60 after the Korean War, Lee Eung Jun’s The Private Life of a Nation (2009) imagines a reunified Korea (the South having absorbed the North) that has become “a ship about to sink in an endless sea of desire.” It is true that nearly 70 years of division bodes for a murky, chaos-ridden future when the two Koreas are finally reunited. Nevertheless, there is really only one option. It is impossible to discuss the future of Korea without assuming that it will become a unified country.

North Korea remains the most isolated country in the world, and chances of the regime surviving into the distant future look to be slim. The massive rise in this past decade of North Koreans defecting to the South supports this. But what kind of country do they find in South Korea? Is it, as The Private Life of a Nation claims, “a ship ridden by desire, drifting in a sea with no place to drop anchor”? The gaze of North Korean defectors who have experienced life in the North and have made the drastic choice of escaping from that regime to live in the South, therefore, may very well serve as a barometer of the present and future of Korean society. It is from this perspective that North Korean defector literature is such a fascinating subject.

The Letter to North Korean Writers A Conversation with North Korean Writers in Exile

Part 3. North Korean Defector Poets

40 42 43 44

The Future As a Unified Country

Lee Ga-yeon, “Rice Urn” Do Myeong-hak, “One–eyed Person Passes the Test” Lee Ji-myeong, Phone Call with My Daughter Kim Seong-min, “Freedom”

_list : Books from Korea

Diaspora and Minority North Korea’s economy plummeted in the 1980s, influenced by a mixture of both internal and external factors. Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994 marked the beginning of a great famine that claimed countless lives. The North Korean regime responded by launching the “Arduous March” campaign, so-called after an apocryphal exploit of Kim Il-sung’s. According to legend, Kim Il-sung, braving starvation, marched for 100 days in freezing

conditions during his fight against the Japanese in the late 1930s. By the time the new century rolled around, however, it became clear that the campaign had failed.

North Koreans were fleeing the country for South Korea in greater numbers than ever before, preferring to take their chances rather than starve to death. As of September 2013, the number of recorded North Korean defectors in South Korea stands at 26,483, with the majority having defected post-1990s.

This mass defection is symbolic of South Korea’s absolute dominance in North-South relations and may be viewed as circumstantial evidence that the North Korean regime is crumbling. Defection has kicked off various debates in favor of reunification, marking a noted decline in old, separationist points of view. This shift of perspective triggered by North Korean defection is not limited to the Korean peninsula, but influences the power relations of Northeast Asian politics and beyond. In this age of globalization, with national boundaries being redefined, the transnational population, or diaspora, has become a subject of lively discussion.

North Korean defection is a specific phenomenon that allows us to posit the dissolution of the North Korean regime within the realm of probability and to extrapolate upon the future of a reunified Korea.

It might also be interesting from an international perspective as an example of redefining territorial boundaries in a globalized world. From this point of view, it is worthy to note that North Korean defectors are both a diaspora that have left their former country and are in the process of being assimilated into a new one, and a minority group that suffers from second-citizen status in their new countries, including but not limited to South Korea. As North Korean defectors become a more visible presence in South Korean society, they are increasingly depicted in more varied and sophisticated ways in comparison to the earliest portrayals, which

were limited to their immediate plight.

Defector Fiction North Korean defectors first appear in South Korean literature from the mid-1990s in such short stories as “Deer Hunting,” “You Tremble from Loneliness Even When You Are Together,” “Three People,” and “The Woman Who Reads Children’s Stories.” The struggles these characters face adapting to life in South Korea highlight the contradictions and pitfalls of South Korean capitalism while also showing defectors as guinea pigs of a reunified Korea. Following this initial stage in the 2000s, North Korean defector fiction began to diversify in terms of characterization and setting.

Jeong Do-sang’s short story collection Brier Rose (2008) depicts the trials of a young woman named Chung-sim who is trafficked out of North Korea and subjected to seemingly endless abuse as a woman and as a stateless person. The collection is notable in that it draws attention to the real life problems of North Koreans being subjected to human trafficking and other human rights abuses in the burgeoning cottage industry known as the “North Korean defector trade,” run by brokers and religious organizations.

Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Princess Bari (2007) also depicts the human rights abuse inflicted upon a North Korean defector, the eponymous Bari, who finally finds a home with other migrants in England. As a stateless person and a woman, Bari is a minority twice over. In Kang Young-sook’s novel Rina (2006), 15-year-old Rina is separated from her family while escaping from North Korea to a country called P. After being kidnapped, she survives rape, forced labor, prostitution, human trafficking, drug trafficking, the slaughterhouse, and near murder. In Cho Haejin’s novel I Met Lo Kiwan (2011), the titular character and his mother are escaping North Korea

The gaze of North Korean defectors... may very well serve as a barometer of the present and future of Korean society.

Vol.25 Vol.26 Autumn Winter 2014 25

when the mother dies. Lo Kiwan uses the money from selling his mother’s body to go to Belgium, where he struggles to gain refugee status.

From Minority to Owners of the Ghetto To categorize North Korean defector fiction by period, works from the 1990s explore North Korean issues from a South Korean point of view, while those from the 21st century tend to incorporate more international experiences and points of view.

Another way of categorizing these works would be by setting, with some concerning characters who have escaped North Korea but are still on the run, and others featuring characters who have settled down in one place, usually South Korea. Brier Rose, Princess Bari, Rina, and I Met Lo Kiwan feature characters that have escaped North Korea but have not yet found a permanent home. Kwon Ree’s novel Left-handed Mr. Ri (2007), Kang Heejin’s novel Ghost (2011), and Jeon Suchan’s novel Shame (2014) depict the isolation of North Korean defectors who have settled in South Korea. It is likely that this second type of North Korean defector fiction will flourish in the future, highlighting how North Korean defectors are already present in South Korean society yet continue to be marginalized.

In this light it is particularly interesting to note

the open ending adopted by some of these works. In Princess Bari, for example, Bari ends up in a ghetto of capitalist London, where she and other migrants build a community of their own. In Rina the protagonist is left in limbo, excluded from both her country of origin and P, her hoped-for destination.

What is noteworthy is that these outcasts, living in marginalized and impoverished enclaves, go on to establish tightly-knit and freestanding communities through their own power.

In conclusion, if North Korean defector fiction focuses on the minority status of its characters, it is not to wallow in the hopelessness of a tragic situation. While the myriad of problems associated with North Korean defection can only be truly resolved through reunification, on a more immediate note it is necessary for North Korean defectors to shed their ghetto mentality and feelings of inadequacy. Princess Bari ends with Bari carving out a multicultural, deterritorialized place for herself in an immigrant enclave of capitalist superpower London. In Rina, the ever-marginalized Rina is reborn through life-defining experiences and claims ownership of a ghetto of her own.

by Park Dukkyu Professor, Dankook University

Hardship Lack of skills, inability to adapt South Korea / government facility Culture shock

Author Park Dukkyu

Title “Deer Hunting”

Genre Short story

Protagonist Sex Residence Park Dang-sam M South Korea / culinary school

Short story

Yeom Jeong-sil F

Jeong Do-sang

“You Tremble from Loneliness Even When You Are Together” Brier Rose

Chung-sim

F

Hwang Sok-yong

Princess Bari

Short story collection Novel

Bari

F

Kang Young-sook

Rina

Novel

Rina

F

Kwon Ree Cho Haejin

Left-handed Mr. Ri I Met Lo Kiwan

Novel Novel

Mr. Ri Lo Kiwan

M M

Kang Heejin Jeon Suchan

Ghost Shame

Novel

Ha-rim

M

Novel

Won-gil

M

26 _list : Books from Korea

Northeastern China South Korea / karaoke Northeastern China UK / 3rd country 3rd country (en route to country P) South Korea / inn Belgium / detention center, restaurant South Korea / Internet café Pyeongchang, South Korea

Casualty of North Korean defector trade Victim of human trafficking Victim of human trafficking Inability to adapt Statelessness Marginalization Bullying

Part 1. North Korean Defectors in Fiction

Drawing a Map of Sadness I

didn’t plan to write Brier Rose. At the time, all I wanted to do was go on a long trip or an adventure.

I was waiting for something, an adventure that I could throw myself into wholeheartedly—the kind that would find me wading through swamps with leeches sucking the blood from my thighs and chest, after which I would get lost in a deserted grassland, and when I finally threw off my soiled clothing, a few driedout leeches would fall out. I wanted to spend the winter in Harbin or Jiandao, the temperature below minus 30 degrees Celsius cutting into my flabby body. Finally I got my wish and found myself in Shenyang, China.

There, at a foot massage parlor, I met a small woman.

I later called her Soso in my book. Soso introduced herself as Joseonjok (Korean ethnic minority in China).

That was a lie, however. After a while Soso told me how she had been trafficked from her hometown in North Korea to a remote Chinese village. I was shocked to learn that her defection was not her choice, but that she had been trafficked against her will.

And with this I came face to face with humanity.

Inside the people I met, I saw landscapes and scars, hypocrisy and treachery, jealousy and madness, purity and baseness, excess and deprivation, sadness and joy, chaos and purpose, desire and prostitution, truth and falsity.

With Brier Rose’s Chung-sim, I wanted to depict a protagonist whose body mapped out the course of her existence. However the task was not as straightforward as I had anticipated. With each sentence I wrote, I would take glimpses at the landscape outside the sentence and then shake my head. I found that rather than drawing a map of existence, I was drawing a map of sadness.

In order to visit the site of human trafficking, I took a bus from Harbin to the Mudan River, a long, fourhour ride without any heating in the minus 40 degree weather. I accepted the pain as part of the tension and terror of the story.

The days I spent in Manchuria to meet trafficked North Korean women and their traffickers were brutal. I struggled on, looking at the dingy streets outside my shabby hotel in Shenyang, or walking in the dog-meat street where the red carcasses of dogs were hanging, their fur singed off, beaten to death.

And finally Brier Rose was born inside me, of the bones of existence, sadness, and language.

Sometimes the truth is far more destructive than fiction. People who are outcasts or runaways tend to build distorted, fragmented, selective narratives of their hometown. It is not easy to survive as an outsider otherwise. This truth should not be wrapped up in words like freedom or human rights.

The drama of North Korean defection is always connected to money. Those who paint themselves as heroes smuggling North Korean defectors outside of China are usually the most suspect. No matter what they tell you or the media of the world, to these professional brokers, North Korean defectors mean money. The number of North Korean defectors determines the size of their income. I know, because I was there. Of course what I saw is not the whole truth, but I know that it does exist. Brier Rose is a testament to this outrage.

by Jeong Do-sang

Since 1987, Jeong Do-sang’s (b. 1960) works have relentlessly explored the organizational violence and social mechanisms that suppress free will and the conditions of life. He won the Yosan Literary Award and the Beautiful Writer Award in 2008 for his serial novel Brier Rose.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 27

Excerpt

Brier Rose

W

Visit www.list.or.kr to watch readings of this work by the author.

Brier Rose Jeong Do-sang Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2008, 244 pp.

ISBN 9788936433666

28 _list : Books from Korea

e had lunch at a restaurant by the river. She was ugly, but her face held a certain charm.

Talking to her about this and that, I found out, to my surprise, that she wasn’t a Korean Chinese, but an overseas Chinese from North Korea. She said that she had Chinese citizenship now and often visited Manpo across the river.

“How is that possible?” I asked her, unable to believe that she could go back and forth freely between the North and China.

“It’s easy when you have a pass,” she said, grinning. I had so many questions for her that I felt no interest in the ruins of Goguryeo. The woman and I went to a pub nearby. I found out that she was thirty-eight years old. I was quite surprised, because I had thought she was close to fifty. True, the cold winds of Manchuria had left their marks on her face, but when I took a closer look, I found that she didn’t have that many wrinkles on her face. I asked her questions, and she answered.

When she was living in Manpo across the river, she fell in love for the first time at age fourteen with a volleyball player who was thirteen years old. The thirteen-year-old boy was tall and handsome, just the way you would picture a volleyball player. They met stealthily like stray cats, and after two years, they made love for the first time among the reeds of the Amnokgang River. The woman pointed to the field of reeds, smiling awkwardly. She smiled again, saying she hadn’t known how good a man’s body was. Both of them were so healthy that whenever they came out of a field or the woods or a barn, she would be with child. They bribed doctors time and time again to have an abortion.

After three abortions, she became pregnant again, and they got married when she was twenty.

As her belly began to swell, the young husband of nineteen wandered out. He began eyeing girls in the

next town, even before the baby was born, and that was the beginning of his unending series of affairs.

He acted like a bachelor the moment he stepped out of the house. Being a volleyball player, he was popular with the girls.

“How do you have an affair in North Korea, when there are no hotels or inns?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter whether there’s rain or snow or wind, you find a way as long as you want to do it.

It’s not the place that matters, it’s the heart. There are barns, mountains, fields—empty classrooms, and of course, the reeds,” she said. We both laughed.

She patiently endured through his affairs, but she couldn’t take the beatings, so in the end, she filed for divorce. She smiled bitterly, saying that it would have been quite difficult to get a divorce if she hadn’t been an overseas Chinese, but that it had been easy because she didn’t have North Korean citizenship.

She had two boys from the marriage, which had been like hell. She smiled a hollow smile, saying she came to Jian because it was too much for her to live in Manpo by herself after the divorce. She was a woman who could smile even when talking of sad things.

“Have you been to South Korea?” I asked.

“No. I don’t want to,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Korean people are bad. The missionaries, especially. They give you a video camera, saying that they’ll give you money if you go to Manpo and take videos of poor people. They also tell you that if you tell people you’re a defector from the North, they’ll give you money and a house, and they tell you to take videos of defectors in Jian. They’re real lowlifes. I’ve met a lot of people like that. They talk about human rights, but it’s all just lip service. This place was crawling with people like that at one point.

My mother still lives in Manpo. She’s poor, but she likes it better there. She says Jian’s too crowded and suffocating,” she said.

The woman told me her sole pleasure was crossing over to Manpo and seeing her children and mother on holidays with the money she saved up doing odd

jobs at a restaurant on the riverside. I asked her how much her salary was, and she told me it was about four hundred yuan a month. That would be only a little over sixty thousand Korean won. I pictured her going to Manpo, carrying a bundle of clothing and food she had bought with that money. Life seemed so dreary.

“What about your husband?”

“He’s remarried, and well.”

“Do you see him when you go to Manpo?”

“I have to, if I want to see my kids.”

“Don’t you hate him, because he’s living with another woman?”

“Hate him? He was my first love…I don’t hate him.”

I felt a lump rise in my throat. Suddenly, I felt a sort of affection towards the woman. She showed me different places in Jian, reminiscing on the days she spent up north.

I was getting more and more absorbed in her story, when Pak called me from Shenyang. He said he felt terrible that I had gotten off the bus and left so suddenly, and told me I had to come back to Shenyang right away. I told him it was too late, so I’d see him the following day, but he insisted that I had to come back to Shenyang, no matter how late, and have a drink with him, since he was going back to Pyongyang on the early morning train.

I wanted to spend more time with the woman, but there was more I wanted to say to Pak. Before he went back to Pyongyang, I wanted to tell him things buried deep within my heart, things that would bleed like raw liver when I pulled them out. I had no choice but to take a taxi. The woman cut the fare down to eight hundred yuan, with the help of an acquaintance. When I got in the taxi, the woman gave me a piece of paper with her name and number written on it, saying I had to come back sometime. (pp. 18-21)

Vol.26 Winter 2014 29

The Journey to Meet Lo Kiwan I

Met Lo Kiwan is my second novel. It tells the story of three principal characters: Lo Kiwan, who leaves North Korea for Belgium and applies for refugee status there; South Korean writer Kim, who goes on a wild-goose chase after Lo Kiwan in Belgium, and later, England; and Park Yooncheol, who aids Lo Kiwan and brings Lo and Kim together. What connects these seemingly random characters is their pain. Each suffers from the guilt that they owe their lives to another’s sacrifice, or the feeling that they are somehow responsible for another’s death. United by this shared guilt, the three characters find ways to heal each other. At least, that is what I hoped for when I wrote this novel.

Lo Kiwan is a North Korean defector who goes to Belgium by way of Yanbian. After losing his mother in Yanbian, Lo suffers from survivor’s guilt, only to find that he must battle again for his survival, this time against social exclusion and the language barrier as a foreigner. After many trials and a lengthy wait, he finally gains refugee status and leaves for England in hope of a better life.

Kim, the other main character, is the head writer for a popular, human interest-based television program that relies on viewer donations. She quits her job one day after discovering that one of the program’s subjects has met a terrible fate because of her good intentions. Leafing through a weekly magazine, Kim chances upon an interview with Lo Kiwan. His paradoxical pain at having chosen life after his mother’s death resonates deeply with Kim, and she decides to go search for him to hear now he found an answer to pain. Kim’s journey 30 _list : Books from Korea

to meet Lo Kiwan is, in this sense, a journey of selfdiscovery.

Park Yoon-cheol is a former doctor who left South Korea for political reasons during the military dictatorship, and acts as an interpreter for Lo Kiwan during his refugee application process. Park also provides vital information about Lo Kiwan to Kim when she comes looking for Lo in Belgium. Haunted by his wife’s secret euthanasia, Park helps Lo because he identifies with Lo’s survivor’s guilt.

What I’ve explained above is why I do not consider I Met Lo Kiwan as a political novel, but rather as an attempt to answer the question of whether we can truly understand another person’s suffering, or to what extent solidarity is possible. I believe that there is a Lo Kiwan in all of us in the sense of feeling like a lonely outsider, and I wanted to highlight this human side of Lo Kiwan. Ultimately, I wanted to explore the possibility of forging a true connection that goes beyond mere sympathy through the solidarity of the three characters.

by Cho Haejin

Cho Haejin (b. 1976) debuted in 2004.

Her notable works include the short story collection City of Angels and the novel An Infinitely Wonderful Dream. She won the Shin Dongyup Literary Award in 2013 for I Met Lo Kiwan.

Special Section: North Korean Defector Literature

I Met Lo Kiwan Cho Haejin Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2011, 200 pp.

ISBN 9788936433857

In Search of Consolation I

Met Lo Kiwan is the second novel by young writer Cho Haejin, who is attracting attention with her delicate, profound phrasing that is both sympathetic and affectionate. This story about North Korean refugee Lo Kiwan and the narrator who traces Lo’s life unfolds impressively and beautifully against the vivid backdrop of Brussels.

Every character in I Met Lo Kiwan struggles with pain and despair. The narrator Kim brings despair to the people around her as she tries to escape from her reality. Lo Kiwan is excluded from any form of protection or responsibility and stands at the crossroads of life. From the sorrowful story shared by the characters at different ages and occupations, and in different circumstances, author Cho recounts how challenging and precarious it is to try to live humanely as independent individuals.

The characters, however, do not remain buried beneath their misery. The narrator comes to learn how to sympathize with others through the journal written by Lo Kiwan even though she has never

seen him. Lo Kiwan regains the will to live from a connection with Park. The narrative features the persistent process of the narrator and Park slowly healing their wounds as they reflect upon one another.

I Met Lo Kiwan speaks of life’s fundamental sorrow, and emphasizes the sympathy and hope founded on intimate relationships. The process of how the characters overcome challenges and handle conflict is deeply inspiring.

We live in a generation in which everyone wants heartwarming consolation. Yet how is consolation made possible? And with what? Just as the narrator questions the nature of sympathy for others, we may have to reconsider the role of literature in this generation. I Met Lo Kiwan is a novel that approaches the reader in the same way.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 31

Part 2. North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center

Introduction of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center T

he PEN Center for North Korean Writers in Exile was formed in February 2012. At the time there were already some 20,000 North Koreans living in South Korea, a number of them writers. The PEN Center started out as a dozen or so of us discussing our creative plans for the future. Our meetings mostly consisted of us discussing literary works and how to promote existing publications.

Only a few of our members had actually been published in North Korea. But as word spread, the group began to attract people who had longed to write in the North but had never been able to as well as those with heartbreaking stories of escape.

And so the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center was formally launched on August 4, 2012, and ratified at the 78th International PEN Congress held on September 14 that year.

Of course, not everything went smoothly in the beginning. We had been recognized by PEN International, but we lacked everything else. Not many of our members had any training in writing, and even those that had been published in North Korea had only been exposed to socialist realism and propaganda glorifying Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. It was a struggle to keep up with or understand the trends of international literature in an open society.

In the two years since then, however, our members have overcome these limitations to an astonishing degree, immersing themselves in the literature of South Korea, and striving to leave their mark upon it.

It would be amiss not to celebrate some of

32

_list : Books from Korea

their notable achievements. Already some five or six North Korean writers in exile have been accepted as members of the Korean Novelists Association, and this September our member Kim Jeong-ae received the Newcomer’s Award. As for works published by our members during this period, Lim Il published Kim Jong-il and Hwang Jang-yop; Chang Hae Seong published Tumen River, and Lee Ji-myeong’s Woman of God is slated for publication after the success of his Where Is My Life? Last but not least, newcomer Lee Ga-yeon has published her first collection of poetry, Missing Dinnertime, to great acclaim.

In addition to publishing, the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center has adapted a popular North Korean radio play for a South Korean audience and broadcast 15 episodes since this July. The radio play, Cheon-bok and Man-gil, ran for 37 years in North Korea before it was canceled. Our version of Cheonbok and Man-gil is currently broadcast on North Korea Reform Radio, Radio Free Chosun, Open Radio for North Korea, and Far East Broadcasting, to the delight of the North Korean community.

To return to the subject of our writers, our ranks have grown substantially since the Center’s formation. At first, we only had a handful of published writers, but now the number is closer to 30, with many others eager to begin writing. We have also published the second issue of our magazine, North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature, which shows a vast improvement over our first issue. Works published in this issue include many short stories, most notably Kim Jeong-ae’s “Rice,” two poems by Yoo Jin, namely “I Love Myself Most” and “The Last Virgin,” and Hyun Inae’s critical essay “North Korean

The Letter to North Korean Writers

From the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center […]

To those of you who are entirely deprived of the freedom of expression, always having to pretend to hear and see nothing under the hereditary dictatorship of the Kim family, you are always in our thoughts. […]

We, the exiled writers from North Korea, know from our own experience how painful it is to write in praise of the dictator against your will. Now, it is we who will write for you.

We will write about what rests deep in your hearts, the words you want to share with the world.

We, the exiled writers from North Korea who achieved freedom by escaping from the North, still do not have much power, but on our side we have South Korean writer-colleagues and writers from PEN International around the world. Together we will do whatever is possible for you to have freedom of expression and for the imprisoned writers in the North.

However deep is the night, the dawn will surely come. Although the reality in North Korea may seem dismal, a new world will one day arrive. Until that day, both you from the inside and we from the outside, need to work together to win back the pens we have lost.

With Best Regards, The Members of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center adapted from North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (2014 1st Issue)

Literature and Fantasy,” all of which boast a high level of writing while relentlessly exposing North Korean reality.

Of course, these are not the only landmarks the PEN Center for North Korean Writers in Exile has celebrated. Looking forward to the day that the North and the South will be reunited, however, there is still so much work to be done. When that day comes, we must have something to show for the time we have been in exile. We must be able to say that we wrote not just for ourselves, but also for those stuck in a living hell, weeping and beating at their chests because they cannot write what they want.

We have many tasks ahead of us if this is to be

achieved. We must hone our creative skills and write even more works decrying the North Korean regime, as well as recruit and train young writers.

We must work harder on our ongoing radio play, and also on Letters from North Korea scheduled for next year. Of course, none of this will be easy.

Looking back upon our achievements over the past two years, however, it is far from impossible if all of our members work together towards this goal.

by Chang Hae Seong President, North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center

Vol.26 Winter 2014 33

Special Section: A Conversation with North Korean Writers in Exile

Home, Where Is Home?

L

iterature on North Korean defection can be divided into two categories. The first kind is authored by professional South Korean writers exploring North Korean defection as a phenomenon linked to reunification and changes in international relations. The second kind is by actual North Korean defectors writing from experience about their escape and tortuous journey that finally brought them to South Korea.

This conversation was conducted with novelist Chang Hae Seong, literary critic Hyun Inae, and novelist Lim Il, members of the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center who write to raise awareness on North Korean human rights. It was hosted by Professor Park Dukkyu of Dankook University, who has written extensively on the subject of North Korean defection in South Korean literature since the late 1990s and is a published author of short stories in the same genre.

Park Dukkyu: The number of North Korean defectors has skyrocketed from the mid-1990s onwards. Out of the approximately 26,000 North Koreans in exile here in South Korea, most of them escaped during this period. North Korean writers in exile are now a visible presence in South Korea. How many North Korean writers in exile are there in South Korea and what kind of works are they writing?

Chang Hae Seong: Those of us defectors who are writers formed the North Korean Writers in Exile 34 _list : Books from Korea

PEN Center. We have about 30 members. Not many of our members used to write in North Korea. Most of our members include those who wanted to be writers but were obliged to take on different jobs for various reasons, or those who feel strongly about sharing their experiences of defecting or other atrocities they have suffered.

Lim Il: I worked in construction and accounting in North Korea. This is my 18th year in South Korea.

When I first got here I didn’t think I would write fiction.

Chang: I wrote scripts in North Korea. Since I came here, I have published one novel and seven short story collections. I have the impression that there are more novelists than poets among North Korean writers in exile. The most common genre is memoir.

Chang: The General Federation of Korean Literature and Arts Unions oversees the Dramatists’ Union, the Filmmakers’ Union, and the Writers’ Union.

What’s unique about the Writers’ Union is that it has its own agency, the Korean Literary Production Unit. All North Korean writers belong to the Korean Literary Production Unit. Writers belonging to this unit are called “affiliated writers” (hyeonyeok jakga). Then there are writing studios affiliated with Korean Central Television, the State Security Department, the Ministry of Public Security, and Kim Il-sung University; if you belong there, you are called “employed writers” (hyeonjik jakga). I was an employed writer with Korean Central Television.

Hyun Inae: I went to an exhibition of books by North Korean writers in exile. There were over 100 memoirs, also quite a few poetry collections. Novels were the fewest by number. There are more memoirists because memoirs are the easiest to write—you write about your own experiences.

Hyun: Affiliated or employed, they are all professional writers. They are full-time writers employed by the government. And then there are those who work as laborers but who also write in the field; they are called “literary correspondents.” But if they show promise, they are summoned to become professional writers.

Park: Could you briefly sum up the course of North Korean literature since the division of Korea? This is generally known to those who have studied Korean literature, but I’d like to hear from someone who actually studied literature in the North.

Lim: North Korean writers are paid in rations from

I wrote personal essays in the beginning. I wanted to raise awareness about the situation in North Korea and writing seemed to be the best way. I started writing fiction later. I’ve had a number of books published now.

I know that many people started writing fiction because they felt the same way—that it is their duty to raise awareness about the realities in North Korea, how the people are suffering.

Chang: Critical realism was the mainstay of early North Korean literature. After the Russian army arrived, North Korean literature turned to socialist realism and this trend continued until the mid-1960s. In 1958, I think on March 24, Kim Il-sung gave a speech to the 324th Army Unit of the Korean People’s Army called “The Korean People’s Army Is the Successor to the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle,” and after that everyone had to write anti-Japanese literature. And from 1967 onwards, it was about glorifying the two Kims. All writers had to write literature glorifying Kim Sr. and Jr., whether they wanted to or not.

Park: I heard that North Korean writers all belong to an association and are assigned a certain rank. Could you give a brief explanation of that?

Lim Il is a member of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. Lim previously worked at the Ministry of People’s Security, the Council for the Promotion of Foreign Trade, and a North Korean construction company in Kuwait. He defected to South Korea in 1997 and has been writing since 2005. He is the author of the essay collection Shall I Go Back to Pyongyang? and the novel Kim Jong-il, among others.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 35

Hyun Inae is an Associated Research Fellow at the Ewha Institute of Unification Studies and member of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center. Hyun defected to South Korea in 2004 and has since earned a doctorate in North Korean studies from Ewha Womans University. She contributes to the radio drama Cheon-bok and Man-gil.

the government, so there is no need to write anything other than what the government tells them to. The only acceptable subjects are the Party, the Great Leader, and loyalty. They are not forbidden from writing about other things, but no one would ever acknowledge them if they did.

Park: I understand that any information on South Korea is banned in North Korea. Did you have any chance to read South Korean literature in North Korea?

Chang: Writers have access to the so-called “100-Copy Collection.”

These are books with a print run restricted to 100 copies that are offered to a select number of people, such as writers. I don’t think there were many South Korean books in the collection.

I remember Jang Gilsan (multivolume saga by Hwang Sok-yong) and Dongui Bogam (novel by Lee Eun-sung). Kim Ji-ha’s “Torture Road—1974” and “Five Bandits” were held up as examples denouncing the depravity of the South Korean regime.

but here in South Korea there are too many other distractions, so I don’t read as much. I’m used to socialist realist literature, but South Korean literature is abstractionist. It was completely new to me and made me wonder why people would want to write things like that. Personally I don’t enjoy it. South Korean writers seem to think they are promoting diverse ideas and ways of life by writing about people in unusual situations.

North Korean writers use archetypes to contribute to the revolution and development of the country. I don’t think North Koreans would be interested if you showed them South Korean books.

I cannot stop writing because I feel I have the duty to represent the comrades I left behind, if only on the page.

Park: What subject is most important to you, as writers in South Korea?

Park: What do you think of South Korean literature?

Lim: At first I published three memoirs focusing on the cultural differences between North and South Korea. After I turned 40, however, my ideas and beliefs changed a great deal, and I became more interested in North Korean politics. Politics is what dominates the North Korean regime, culture, and society. Society exists because of politics.

For my novels Kim Jong-il (2011) and Hwang Jang-yop (2013), I did a lot of research on executed defectors and the corruption of the Kim Jong-il regime and consulted various specialized South Korean publications. In my books I mixed real names with made-up ones, fact with fiction. My greatest strength is that I lived in Pyongyang all my life and know what it feels like, so hopefully my books will reflect that. I cannot stop writing because I feel I have the duty to represent the comrades I left behind, if only on the page.

Hyun: I was very fond of novels in North Korea,

Hyun: It’s about what we want to share with North

Hyun: I snuck as many copies of the “100-Copy Collection” as I could, too. I wasn’t a professional writer so I wasn’t supposed to have access. I only read the American ones. I remember reading Gone With the Wind and Stairway to Heaven.

36 _list : Books from Korea

Chang Hae Seong is President of North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center and a former reporter and writer for Korean Central TV. Chang defected to South Korea in 1996 and has since worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS). He is the author of the novel Tumen River and numerous short stories, and also writes for the radio drama Cheon-bok and Man-gil.

Koreans through the genre of literature—that could be our experiences in North Korea or in South Korea. You could say that we are more realistic than South Korean writers in that way. If something is written by a North Korean writer, it must be about North Korea and North Korean defectors.

Chang: Human rights is an inevitable subject when writing about North Korea. More than 80 percent of North Korean writers in exile write about human rights in North Korea, regardless of genre.

Park: The North Korean regime is not very happy about North Korean writers publishing books in South Korea, are they?

Lim: They’re not just unhappy, they’d have us executed by the firing squad! I published my first novel, Kim Jong-il, in August 2011, and Kim Jong-il died that same December. Just before that, in November, the North Korean government named me in a statement saying, “Puppet Traitor Lee Myung-bak Meets Traitor that Blasphemed the Great Leader’s Dignity through Fabrication.” The National Intelligence Service and the police were calling me because I received death threats.

I had to be put under protection for a while after that.

Park: Before we wrap up, is there anything you’d like to say as a North Korean writer in exile to the South Korean or international community?

Chang: The North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center is still very new, and we are a small association without a lot of influence. But cultural and ideological infiltration is more important than any nuclear weapon. Literature matters, which means we have an important task as writers. We will strive to write books we can be proud of after the two Koreas are reunited, so we can say that we did our part in South Korea.

Hyun: Literature has power in South Korea. I would like to see more works by South Korean writers spreading awareness of North Korea and reunification.

Lim: I went to the 80th International PEN Congress as a representative of North Korean writers in exile.

We need more people to listen to North Korean writers in exile. Ours is a voice that cannot be heard in North Korea. We represent the people of North Korea, the truth. Our voices need to be heard. edited by Park Dukkyu

Chang: I’ve been called “human garbage” by the North Korean regime, but I take it as a positive sign that I’ve accomplished something here in South Korea. If I had kept quiet, they wouldn’t have any reason to attack me.

For me, it’s a badge of honor.

Hyun: The North Korean regime denounces all defectors by name, not just writers. But they’re making a mistake.

They’re only giving defectors more attention.

Visit www.list.or.kr to watch video highlights of this interview.

Park Dukkyu is a Professor of Creative Writing at Dankook University. Born in 1958, Park is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of numerous short story collections including You Tremble from Loneliness Even When You Are Together (2012), which focuses on North Korean defection.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 37

Part 3. North Korean Defector Poets

Poetic Expression in North Korean Defector Culture Significance of Defector Poets

M

ass migration prompted by the great famine of the 1990s has transformed the status of North Korean defectors in South Korean society from that of a strategic tool in the ideological wars to a social minority in need of assimilation.

The unofficial count of North Koreans crossing the border ranges from 100,000 to 300,000, with the number entering South Korea now well over 10,000. In these numbers, defectors have not only lost their ideological influence as living proof of the superiority of the Southern regime, but are now reduced to a cultural minority whose past existence is rarely if ever acknowledged.

This article is an attempt to examine North Korean defector culture through examples of North Korean defector poetry. Key examples of this genre published to date include Jang Jinsung’s I Am Selling My Daughter for 100 Won (chogabje.com, 2008), Kim Ok-ae’s Rice Porridge Incident (Sam Woo Publishing Co., 2005), Kim Daeho’s Confessions of a Naked Poem (Living Books, 2003), and Kim Seong-min’s Why Are Songs about Home Always Sad? (Dashi, 2004).

Multi-Layers of Defector Psychology The two major themes in North Korean defector poetry are defection and migration. In North Korean defector poetry, this refers to the poet’s thoughts on defection, the specific circumstances that prompted the poets to defect and why they chose to go to the South. On the surface these thoughts fall into a clearly pro-South, anti-North category, but the underlying thought process of North Korean defectors appears to have changed little from the indoctrination expected to come out of the North Korean regime.

38 _list : Books from Korea

To take the poetry of Jang Jin-sung as an example of pro-South, anti-North sentiment on a surface level, it can be argued that North Korean defectors antagonize the North and idolize the South in that they did in fact make the dangerous escape to the South and typically have no problem justifying this choice to themselves. They are strongly against the North Korean regime and for the ideals of liberty and freedom in the South. While the practical reason of hunger is usually their direct motivation for coming South, the choice of South Korea implies an affirmation of the South and a rejection of the North.

This psychology is readily observed in North Korean defector poetry.

In a footnote to his poem “Palace,” Jang Jingsung notes: “The Kim Jong-il regime exhausted the nation’s coffers to build Kim Il-sung’s mausoleum at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun while three million people starved to death. If they had used that money to buy rice, they could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.” From this we can infer that “Palace” refers to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun and that the poet disapproves of the political and economic repercussions of its construction. The poet emphasizes that North Korean starvation is directly linked to the political choices of the party in the lines, “Three million starved to death / To bury one dead man.” This idea that the people of North Korea starved for political reasons, and that most of the poems in this collection deal with starvation, indicates that the North Korean defector poet is strongly anti-North.

Surface declarations of absolute affirmation towards the South, as in the poems of Kim Ok-ae, reveal an interesting twist. Kim’s poem “I Was So Surprised” shows the boundless enthusiasm toward the South, which is doubtless familiar to those who have studied North Korean literature. The poet is infinitely grateful to the government for she is living

in “a place where a perfect life is possible” and “the home of my dreams, like in the movies.” She said the facilities are like a vacation home provided and waiting for them. This idea is strikingly similar to the underlying notion of North Korean literature that everything the people enjoy in life is provided by the Party and the Great Leader.

This implies that the poet is still used to the ideological way of thinking acquired while living in the North. On the surface level, North Korean defectors profess to praise the South and denounce the North, but on a deeper level they have merely switched the South for the North in their ways of understanding and adapting a regime’s ideology for their own use.

Migrant as Cultural Minority The instant that North Korean defectors migrate to South Korea they become cultural minorities. Viewed as a group to be assimilated into South Korean society based on ideas of ethnic nationalism and brotherhood, they accordingly receive assistance from the government and various religious groups and non-profit organizations. In the process, however, they experience othering in the form of covert discrimination and violence by the cultural majority.

This aspect of the migrant’s reality, being othered as a cultural minority, is well documented in North Korean defector poetry.

Kim Dae-ho uses disrobing in his poetry as one way of responding to discrimination and violence against North Korean defectors. Kim Dae-ho’s poem “Disaster,” for instance, is accompanied by a nude photograph presumably of the poet. Nudity is a symbolic performance. Considering that the majority of poems in the collection refer to the pain and hardship of living as a migrant in South Korean society, the act of disrobing can be understood as an intention to be seen as a naked human being, that is,

not as “the other” that needs assimilating, but as a human being.

Another way that North Korean defector poetry responds to discrimination is by revealing a longing for home, a universally relatable sentiment. Kim Seong-min’s poem “Potato Village Girl” shows that North Korean defectors also view their ancestral home with nostalgia, countering the cultural majority’s gaze that persists in viewing North Korea as a purely negative place. The hometown of migrants is no different from the hometown of the cultural majority in that it is a place that belongs to their past but remains their point of reference when explaining their background or origin.

This goes beyond nostalgia in the sense that it is directly connected to one’s being-in-the world. The line “Now that I’m of marrying age” from “Potato Village Girl” is noteworthy in that the narrator looks to his hometown to explain his desire to get married. The poem’s narrator concludes that he wants to get married because the “gal” from his hometown who is “getting ready to be married” “raising potatoes” appears in his “dream from last night.” This is the attitude of one who connects his motivation or reason for being with memories of his hometown. In other words, the North Korean hometown functions as an ontological space to explain and understand one’s identity.

by Kang Jeong Gu Professor Kyung Hee University Research Institute of Humanities

This essay has been adapted from the author’s article: “Poetic Accommodation of North Korean Immigrants: Focusing on the Conception and Characteristics of Their Poetry.” Foreign Literature Studies 35 (2009.8): pp. 9-28.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 39

Part 3. Lee Ka-Yeon

C

ountless North Koreans died in the “Arduous March” of the mid-1990s, truly a death march if there ever was one. It is said that over three million people starved to death. I saw people dying every day in my hometown, so on a national scale it cannot be

by Lee Ka-Yeon said that this number has been exaggerated. My poetry translated by Jack Jung collection, Missing Dinnertime, is my attempt to work through this trauma I experienced in my hometown.

I believe that by doing so, I am also doing my duty in Yeon-hee’s family next door telling the world about the atrocious conditions of life all starved to death. in North Korea.

My hometown in Hwanghae Province is known Their names were as the breadbasket of North Korea. When I say that buried in rice urns. people were starving to death even in this area, you can imagine what it must have been like in the rest of On earth, they starved to death. the North. The entire nation was gripped in the vice of It worried us they may starve again. starvation, and more and more people were dying in my hometown every day. I had a friend who was three years We buried them in rice urns. older than me, the girl next door who was my playmate from childhood. She grew thinner and thinner, and the day I heard that she had been taken, I was too crushed to even cry.

It was when my mother came to the funeral with two kilos of rice she had managed to borrow that I started to cry. It hurt all the more because I thought that if Mother had come with the rice when my friend was alive, she could have saved her life. After the funeral, we talked with my friend’s family and learned how she passed away.

She died clutching a ssaldok, a large earthenware jar used for storing rice. How hungry she must have been, to die hugging that big jar! This is a memory I cannot put out of my mind. I will remember my friend’s ssaldok forever.

Years have passed since my friend died, but countless people continue to starve in North Korea. Every so often I would shed a tear thinking of her, when I was eating delicious rice made in my Cuckoo-brand rice cooker.

Then one day I thought of writing my friend’s story as a poem, as a tribute to her soul. I was an ordinary woman who was working in a factory in Haeju, South Hwanghae Province, straight out of high school. I had never learned to write poetry nor had I ever written anything in North Korea.

As for my poem, “Rice Urn,” it would be more accurate to say that it was written by my friend’s voice guiding me from beyond the grave. Every day in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, more girls are ending up like my next door friend. But not many people know this. Even worse, those who do know don’t care. They speak of human rights, but they don’t want to listen, they don’t want to see. I will continue to write poems that bring attention to the human rights crisis in North Korea. And in my next poem they will be your next door neighbors.

Rice Urn

by Lee Ka-Yeon

40 _list : Books from Korea

Look At Us! 1 / Sunmu / oil on canvas / 2010 / 60 x 72 cm

Vol.26 Winter 2014 41

Part 3. Do Myeong-hak

One–eyed Person Passes the Test

by Do Myeong-hak

Though I’m one-eyed and unable to go to the army my lot is better.

Classmates who used to mock me for being one-eyed are being tortured in the army.

I do business, have love affairs, enjoy my life as it is.

Why has the party secretary called me suddenly?

They say a one-eyed guy like me can go to the army.

Hey, these are strange times.

Though I have no left eye, I can shoot all right.

If I had the right eye, I’d just pass the test!

They eyeball is like a bullet for a regular army.

One must dedicate to Kim Jong-il even the one eye left.

Now my lot is that of a dog without eyes. adapted from North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (2014 1st Issue p. 94)

* At the beginning of 2000, North Korea could not fulfill the needs of its armed forces so it lowered the standards for its recruits. Those with only a right eye passed the test because they could still shoot a gun.

42

_list : Books from Korea

Part 3. Lee Ji-myeong

Phone Call with My Daughter I was born in North Korea and lived there for 52 years. It has now been 10 years since I left, long enough, one might assume, to miss and pine for my native land. But I feel nothing to this effect at all. If there’s anything that I do feel, it is hate, anger, and despair. I once had a family there, although we were poor, and 52 years’ worth of bittersweet memories. What happened, then? Perhaps it is because now I feel that I have no identity, no soul. Maybe my identity will return when my broken country is whole again, but now that seems very far away.

O

ne day in October last year, I spoke with my daughter in North Korea over the phone for the first time in years. Using my contacts, I was able to summon her to the Chinese border from her married home in Cholsan County in North Pyongan Province.

My daughter had never responded to any of my attempts to reach her before, but for some reason that day she had decided to come. The border is a maximum security zone under constant radio surveillance, and to speak for too long would be to endanger my daughter’s life. So I said hello and was trying to control my tears, knowing we had only two minutes, when I had to catch my breath at my daughter’s next words.

“Why won’t you leave me alone? I have no father.

Don’t contact me again.”

“Daughter,” I cried out, afraid she would hang up.

Fortunately she did not.

“Is that the first thing to say to your father after nine years? I didn’t raise you to be so cold.”

“Sure. You always said that a person should think of their country first, and to never waver in their loyalty to the Party and the Great Leader, no matter how hard the conditions. That was what you wrote in your work, too. But then you were the one who betrayed your country first. Didn’t you even think what would happen to your family here when you left?

I’m hanging up. I don’t even want to talk to you.”

The signal was gone. When I called the number again, the line on the other side was turned off. I had never felt such despair in my life as I did then.

My daughter had rejected me. My only daughter. She was my world, the light of my life—and the first time we spoke in nine years, she disinherited me over the phone. My world crashed down before my eyes. I must have looked like the unhappiest father in the world as

I staggered outside in the wind. I walked along the Han River for a long time.

The shameful details of my life swim in front of my eyes and drift down the flowing river. It was the only world I knew, a life of which any sort of ownership or claim as an individual was renounced.

And only by leaving the country did I learn what a wretched life that was for any person to be born into. If I had been the only person to live such a life, I would not have had half the regrets I have now. But unfortunately I worked hard to produce such works as the Party demanded. When I was glorifying the wisdom and grace of the Great Leader with unabashed loyalty, I had no thought to the regrets that haunt me now. Or rather, I had no thoughts at all. That was the only way I could have existed. Life under the state doctrine of Juche meant to serve the Party and the Great Leader, to bring joy and satisfaction to them. The works I wrote under this principle were nothing but tools to brainwash not just myself, but countless others. I, the selfsame writer that preached total sacrifice towards the Party and the Great Leader, had become a traitor the day I decided to throw everything away. I, who told my readers to live and die for the Great Leader, had been the first to flee the country, betraying them all. My daughter was one of my readers. And so I have no right to mourn over her refusal to see me again.

by Lee Ji-myeong Writer and Vice President of the North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center

Vol.26 Winter 2014 43

Part 3. Kim Seong-min

I

Freedom

by Kim Seong-min

Mine, essentially, yet at the same time something we never had from birth.

Not an object, yet something our parents took away.

Not only the sorrow of the hungry, not the muffled sigh of those who wish for much.

Without it even alive we die, freedom, life!

Living with us, though we die, freedom!

originally published in North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Literature (2014 1st Issue p. 91)

44 _list : Books from Korea

used to have a certain idea of freedom.

When I was living in the North, I thought that freedom meant being loyal to the Party and the Great Leader, and that there could be no other freedom outside of that loyalty.

I truly believed that to live freely meant to obey the Party in every way, doing only things I was told to do and not doing things I was forbidden to do, giving myself up entirely.

If freedom is defined as “the state of being able to exercise one’s free will without any outside constraint,” the only way to avoid such constraint was to be loyal.

It was only after coming to South Korea that I realized, looking back, that my brethren in the North never knew the true meaning of freedom, or rather, that they were born into a state without it.

This unalienable right that was denied to us by birth—that is why I treasure my freedom all the more today.

by Kim Seong-min

Even with Two Wings, Birds Can’t Fly / Sunmu / oil on canvas / 2009 / 91 x 116 cm

Vol.26 Winter 2014 45

Poetry

Blue Sky

by Kim Soo-young translated by Peter H. Lee

Once a poet envied The freedom of a lark, Its rule of the blue sky.

The Silence of Love: Twentieth-century Korean Poetry Edited and with an Introduction by Peter H. Lee The University Press of Hawaii, 1980, 348 pp.

ISBN 9780824807320

One who has ever soared For the sake of freedom Knows Why the lark sings Why freedom reeks blood Why a revolution is lonely Why revolution Has to be lonely.

46 _list : Books from Korea â“’Kim A-Ram

ⓒKim Byoung Kwan

“Evening Proposal”

by Pyun Hye-young translated by Park Youngsuk and Gloria Cosgrove Smith

K

im’s friend ordered the funeral wreath. It had been more than ten years since Kim had seen this friend, who now recognized his voice on the phone. Perhaps he was an inconsiderate person, or merely acting like one, as he completely neglected the formality of greeting Kim or inquiring about his well-being. Without introduction, he simply described the condition of an ill, bedridden man. Only after listening for a few moments did Kim realize that the person on the phone was a friend from long ago and that the ill, bedridden person was an elderly man whom Kim had often visited during the period when he used to correspond with this friend.

Kim paid little attention to the friend’s incessant chattering on the phone. Instead, he wondered how the man had obtained his new phone number, since Kim had taken over the florist shop only quite recently. He was also struggling to determine just how old the elderly dying man would be now.

He would have been surprised to hear that he had already died, but hearing that he was still alive was also quite surprising.

He did not mention this to his friend, not wishing to seem unsympathetic especially at this moment when they were talking to each other again after such a long time. Kim could not remember exactly, but he felt the elderly man must have reached an age at which no one would be surprised at his passing.

“He’s unconscious, breathing with the aid of a respirator as unconscious people do, and exhaling slowly,” the friend reported. “Every time he exhales, I nod my head cheering him on, but then I look at the clock.”

Kim was unable to tell whether his friend’s voice was expressing grief or disappointment. “The doctor said it was unlikely that he would still be alive this afternoon.” The friend paused for a moment. It seemed as though he was waiting for Kim to say something, possibly to ask the location of the hospital so he could visit, to express sympathy, or perhaps to provide some words of comfort. But Kim said nothing. The

friend sighed.

“Please do me a favor with the wreath,” he said. Kim agreed somewhat reluctantly, as though he had no choice. He was thinking that doing this friend a favor quite likely meant he would receive no payment, and it was not as if they were really friends. Their relationship was so tenuous that they could easily be considered to be strangers. However, it seemed mercenary to be dickering about money when the elderly man was dying.

Without mentioning anything about payment, the friend then asked for Kim’s mobile number and gave him the name of the funeral home, which was located in a town Kim was not familiar with. Merely to continue the conversation, Kim was about to ask why the mortuary was located in that town, but he changed his mind. In a telephone conversation such as this, suddenly taking place after more than ten years, there was really only one thing Kim wanted to know: How had this person obtained his phone number? Their only connection was that they had worked for the same company for a short time. It would even be difficult for them to recognize each other in a photo that had been taken at a company event. In any such photo, they would have been standing quite far apart, and their relationship had definitely not changed over these past ten years.

“You are coming to the funeral, aren’t you?” the friend asked. Kim hesitated and before he could answer, the friend added, “Of course, you are. In any event, who else should we contact?” His tone of voice indicated that the matter was not open for discussion, nor was he talking to himself. Kim was about to explain that he was out of touch with all of their acquaintances from ten years ago, when this friend, not waiting for a response, and as though he was thoroughly displeased with Kim’s reluctance, suddenly raised his voice.

“Never mind, I’ll do it!” he said. He then gave Kim the

name of the organization that was sending the wreath. It was an organization Kim had never heard of. Feeling that it would be rude not to inquire, Kim forced himself to ask what this organization did. But the friend abruptly hung up on him, saying that he had to return to the hospital. There were no goodbyes just as there had been no greetings at the beginning of their conversation.

Kim wondered if he was somehow responsible for this friend’s cold and rude behavior or if it was merely his personality. He reflected on long past events until he was eventually reminded of some letters his friend had written. It was during the period when Kim decided to resign from their company, which was under legal management as a result of severe financial pressure caused by the company’s inadequate expansion. The employees had voluntarily accepted a wage reduction in order to stabilize the company’s situation, when Kim was recommended for a position in another company in another city. The person who recommended him was the same elderly man who was now dying, and this friend had criticized him for taking the new position. He claimed that Kim had no sense of comradery and accused him of being selfish and calculating.

Kim was told about this criticism by another person with whom he’d now had no contact for a long time. Criticizing a person for being selfish makes no sense, Kim thought.

Everyone is selfish. If his friend had been recommended for the position, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take it. But his friend was hurt by what he felt was Kim’s uncaring attitude. He sent letters to Kim’s new company citing several mistakes Kim had made. The result was that Kim was talked about behind his back for a time, until the whole matter gradually blew over. As a result of this experience, Kim concluded that friendship had nothing to do with a degree of affection, but was a feeling that was valid only when it was dedicated to, and reaped benefits for, one of the persons involved. He calmly recalled the event

and the scars it had inflicted, but the process of remembering did leave him sad and resentful about his long forgotten past.

He wrote the name of the funeral home on the upper part of a memo where orders for items and their places of delivery were haphazardly scribbled. He would have remembered these without looking at them, but seeing them now reminded him that he also had other orders to attend to. Not that they had to be attended to before doing anything else, but certainly they did have to be taken care of. Also other urgent events might arise at any time if not today, then tomorrow, or even in the next five minutes. It was impossible to predict. That is what self-employment is like.

He tried to find someone who could deliver the wreath and the condolence money that he would donate for the funeral expense. Considering the elderly man’s age, even though Kim didn’t know exactly what it was, his funeral could take place at any moment. So it was appropriate to be prepared for mourning. According to the friend, the elderly man had been unconscious and not recognizing anyone for a long while. Even if Kim hurried to get to the hospital, he might not be able to arrive before the man died. Realizing this filled him with compassion for dying humanity in general, but his feelings were not at all personal. After transferring to the other company, Kim had felt an obligation to the elderly man and expressed his gratitude with greetings and gifts. One year, it was a box of apples for the Harvest Moon holiday, and for the Lunar New Year holiday, a basket of dry shiitake mushrooms. Another year, he gave a box of pears of superior quality for Lunar New Year’s and a box of Hallabong oranges for Harvest Moon. And now, now there would be the wreath for which he would surely not collect any remuneration. His gratitude had been great, but not great enough to remember after all this time. *

The funeral home was located in a town three hundred and eighty kilometers to the south. Kim was annoyed.

“The news of someone’s death should not be sent out to those who have been out of touch for over ten years,” he proclaimed frowning. He tried hard to think of someone to call, but everyone he phoned was occupied with other matters.

They had important appointments or responsibilities that couldn’t be postponed.

“No, the news of a person’s death should be sent out far and wide to everyone,” said the man who ran the florist shop next door to Kim’s, “because it too often happens that someone who has not heard of a friend’s death will come up to you and ask about him as though he is still alive. This happens you know. I lost my high school buddy of thirty years. He was physically the strongest among us. Some friends still don’t know he’s gone, and they ask after him. When I tell them he is dead, I realize all over again that he’s gone.” He swallowed his words as he remembered his dead friend. “I wore this to his funeral,” he added sorrowfully as he handed the black jacket to Kim. Kim nodded.

He did not really understand the man’s sorrow, but after hearing this story about his having had this buddy for thirty years, he was able to fairly precisely guess the florist’s age.

Previously he had thought of him as being much older than he actually was because of his graying hair.

“But this jacket is too big for you and too old,” the man said to Kim. “It’s okay. It really doesn’t matter with this kind of jacket,” Kim replied despite the fact that the long sleeves completely covered the back of his hands.

“You’re right. It’s not as if you are going for an interview,” the man said, nodding his head, but he advised Kim to fold the sleeves back twice.

Kim was about fifteen centimeters shorter than the

average man. He recalled that he had stopped growing when he turned fourteen. His father had passed away then, and for some time, Kim believed that he stopped growing because of the emotional shock of his father’s death. It wasn’t until years later that he realized he was wrong. One day as a grown man, he went to see a traditional doctor about unbearable pain he had in his shoulder. In the doctor’s office, he happened to see a poster on the wall that read: “How to Estimate the Maximum Possible Height of One’s Growth.” The method involved using the heights of both parents and going through several steps of simple calculations. He used his father’s height based on his mother’s dim memory of his being one hand-span taller than she was. Although it wasn’t supposed to be exact, the result of his calculation showed Kim’s maximum possible height as only four centimeters taller than his present height. Kim smiled sadly remembering this.

He recalled his childhood when his father’s sudden death forced his mother to work three shifts at a nearby factory leaving him home alone. His friends teased him about being short, and he often got into trouble because he had too much time to kill. He also blamed his father’s death for the disorderly path his life had taken and mercilessly accused his father of abandoning his family and leaving him with nothing but this meager height. He realized now how wrong he was about all of this.

As he started his car and was about to leave, Kim remembered his dinner date with the woman. He could postpone the date for one or two hours, but even then he still wouldn’t be likely to get back on time. He had already broken this date with her twice. He apologized to her for his carelessness, and she, as usual, said she understood his situation. Kim sensed that she was concealing her disappointment behind her carefully articulated response, and this displeased him. Instead of being angry she expressed curiosity about what he had for lunch and

how he had spent his weekend. She often wanted to talk about incidents in her daily life and to discuss matters that required choices.

Each time she attempted such conversations however, Kim suddenly had a customer to take care of and would have to immediately hang up. A few days later when she called again, it seemed as though she had hesitated before picking up the phone to ask how he was. Then she became embarrassed at Kim’s unfriendly response. At a loss, she began to spew out words that were far from courteous. When he had a customer and needed to hang up, she hurriedly bid him goodbye in an ambiguous tone of voice that expressed both relief and sorrow for his having to hang up and her not having time to make amends for what she had said. Later when he was busy or even in his free time after hanging up like that, he would be reminded of her face. It was expressionless, her mouth remaining closed as she sat among a group of people on social occasions. She was a quiet woman who would now and then suddenly make some inane comment which elicited ridicule.

She would inappropriately tell jokes relating to topics that people had already stopped discussing, jokes which confused everyone and at which no one laughed. Then she would put on a serious face, as though she had never meant them as jokes at all. Observing all this, Kim would be initially nervous.

Then gradually he became displeased, but he felt totally helpless. This was the behavior he often manifested when he felt embarrassed, when he lacked confidence because of being conscious of his short stature.

She also frequently gave him gifts. It was obvious that she had spent considerable time carefully selecting each of those ordinary, inexpensive items, so they would not feel burdensome to him. There were books he had mentioned in passing that he wanted to read, a handy suitable wallet or some useful item for his florist shop. She carefully wrapped

each of these gifts for him. But this attention that she paid to his needs was lost on Kim who consistently unwrapped and received her gifts with utter indifference. He even gradually grew to dislike her smell. It likely came from her perfume, or shampoo or possibly the conditioner that she used. Whatever it was, it spread like the odor of mixed flowers. The fragrance that Kim did like could hardly be called a fragrance at all. It was a complete lack of smell. It wasn’t until after he took over the florist shop that he realized that even the best fragrance could easily become an unpleasant odor when flowers mingled their fragrances. * He had an easy drive traveling south for about a hundred and twenty kilometers when he suddenly approached a congested area where he was forced to stop. Unlike most drivers, Kim seldom listened to traffic reports on the radio and often found himself in situations like this. He had not heard the news flash, but when the person ahead of him stepped out of his car to smoke a cigarette, he informed him that the road was blocked off for several hours because of a marathon. Absolutely nothing was moving in the closed off area. There were no runners in sight. It appeared that they had either already passed the area or dropped far behind. Kim stared blankly at the road.

He remembered a sports announcer whom he’d listened to during one of these marathons. The announcer explained that marathoners usually breathe in twice when inhaling and breathe out twice when exhaling. Kim consciously tried to breathe in and out this way. The air coursed through his body and returned to the atmosphere. He had never before taken notice of this delicate and ordinary phenomenon that regularly took place in his body, as though it was irrelevant.

When the road reopened, he continued driving south. After

some time, the cell phone in his pocket rang. It was an unfamiliar number. He suspected it was the friend, who had ordered the wreath he was delivering, and that being anxious, he was calling to urge him to hurry. Perhaps the elderly man had just died and the mortuary looked empty without the wreath that had not yet arrived. Kim did not bother to answer the phone.

Customers were forever calling to complain about deliveries being late and insisting that their orders be delivered more quickly. So when a customer demanded to know when his order would arrive, Kim would respond, “It will certainly be there in about 10 minutes.” He assumed that the customer would understand that traffic and road conditions could change within that time period. If the customer called again, Kim would say he was in the vicinity and pretend he had a wrong address. The customer would then hurriedly give him the correct one.

Providing a wrong address for an invoice was actually a mistake that occasionally did occur. Fortunately, however, there were also times when a delayed delivery did not matter.

Those were times when unexpected events occurred for either the customer or the recipient of the flowers. It might happen, for example, that a person would receive a message from a departing lover while waiting for the arrival of a bouquet that was meant to accompany a marriage proposal. The opening ceremony of a new business might suddenly be disrupted by criminals appearing on the scene. A mother might faint after delivering a stillborn baby. These were the fortunate occasions when it was of no consequence if flowers arrived late.

Driving past a tollgate as he was exiting the highway, Kim was abruptly confronted by the huge signboard of the funeral home.

Below the signboard, tossing and turning in the wind, was a banner announcing its opening. The stark, square building stood in the middle of a farming area. The harvest season was

over. The fields lay fallow. Kim was late, but considering the distance he’d had to travel from another city, he considered his arrival time quite acceptable. The mourners would not come in flocks until late evening. As for the wreath, it was not the time of its arrival that was important. It was the sender’s name.

Just as Kim was about to enter the funeral home’s curved driveway, his phone rang again. Without slowing down, he reached for it and almost hit the guardrail. His tires squealed as he barely managed to pull onto the shoulder. His heart pounded, and the phone continued ringing as though it were cheering for him. It was the friend who had ordered the wreath.

“Where are you?”

“Almost there.”

“At the funeral home, you mean? Come to the hospital first.”

“Why?” “He’s not dead yet.” “. . . . . .?”

“He’s still alive.”

“What do you mean he’s still alive?” he asked then immediately realized this was an improper response. He should have responded as if it was fortunate that the man was still alive. However, that response would have been just as inappropriate as the other. When confronted with death, the wisest thing is to avoid lighthearted language and say nothing.

“I’ve asked you, you mean he’s still alive?”

It sounded as though the friend was sighing or searching for words with which to reply. Perhaps he was restraining himself from saying anything, because telling the truth would make him appear to be unsympathetic. Then to Kim’s bewilderment, his friend continued to speak as though he was answering his own question even though it was the same question Kim had asked.

“He is not going to last long. Let’s go to the hospital and watch his passing together.”

But instead of going to the hospital, Kim headed downtown. He was not hungry, but he felt the need to kill time so he entered the first noodle shop he saw. He was determined not to go to the hospital. He had no desire to observe the man’s death. Similarly he had never wanted to watch the moment of a bloody birth. As far as he was concerned, birth was an event in his past, and death existed only in his distant future. He wanted nothing to do with either of them at this point in his life. When the funeral started, he would deliver the wreath as any delivery person would be expected to do and return to his own city. On returning he would have to save face by compensating for lost hours and failing to fulfill his other obligations.

The atmosphere in the restaurant was leisurely since it was not a regular mealtime. Nevertheless, they were extremely slow coming to take his order, bringing water, and preparing and serving his food. He didn’t try to hurry the owner, though. It was only forty minutes ago that he had received the call from his friend. Time was moving so slowly. Perhaps it was also moving slowly for the elderly patient as he awaited his death.

Kim considered those forty minutes. He had never before waited forty minutes for someone to die. He wondered what it meant to have one’s life prolonged by forty minutes. As the death watch continued, his feeling of sadness lessened.

He spent most of the time blankly staring out the window.

If he had had several other deliveries to make in this general area, as he usually did in most places, he could have gone on to deliver those flowers and spent his time more efficiently while waiting for the funeral to start. He might have attended an opening ceremony of a new business delivering a standing wreath of orchid blossoms and even been given some of their red bean rice cake. He could have gone to a maternity ward to deliver a basket of flowers sent by her husband’s coworkers to a mother holding her newborn whose eyes were not yet

opened. He could have delivered a boxed bouquet of red roses to a man who was about to propose marriage. He could have delivered a wreath to the mortuary for someone who had died earlier. But there was nothing else for him to do in this town except to keep this deathwatch. He went outside after having slowly eaten his noodles. Fifty eight minutes had passed since receiving the call from his friend. He had still more time on his hands as he waited for the man’s death.

He drove along through the small downtown and stopped in front of a grocery store that reminded him of the canned fish cakes someone had brought him from this town some time ago. Canned noodles and canned fish cakes were the specialties of this town. The person who had given them to Kim thought of them as humorous gifts, and had not known that they were in fact emergency provisions to be used in case of a disaster.

According to old records, the town was located in the vicinity of two geological faults, and some long time ago it had experienced a notable earthquake. This happened shortly after Kim was born, and the residents were reminded of it every time there was a need to warn them of any kind of danger.

Unreinforced electric lines, water pipes and gas lines had been destroyed. There were sporadic fires. Old wooden houses were badly shaken before completely collapsing. When the earth trembled, buildings with more solid walls quickly collapsed.

Cars and people were crushed among piles of debris. Roads and bridges were damaged. Following the earthquake, strict construction regulations were enforced. All kinds of buildings were constructed to endure a certain level of earthquake. A quake-proof tunnel was built to protect all the pipes that went through the town so that delivery of electricity and water could be quickly resumed after a possible future quake. Evacuation drills were conducted for students, and to this very day, maps designating safe routes out of town still sold like hot cakes. A pessimistic scientist appeared on television.

“Although we have suffered great losses, this earthquake cannot be compared to the one yet to come. The real fear indeed is that we cannot predict when or where the next one will occur,” he stated. His opinion differed from that of most scientists who believed that earthquakes could be predicted by measuring certain features of the earth’s movement. But this bearer of ill tidings stared directly out from the television screen and warned, “At this very moment the earth on which you are standing could split wide open.”

Despite this specialist’s warnings, Kim was not afraid. For him, the possibility of an earthquake was the same as stories of wars ceaselessly occurring in faraway places. It was like a tsunami story that brought disaster to some other country or the story of global warming that melted some glacier. No, for him, the real disasters, disasters far worse than earthquakes or tsunamis, were the occasions when the flowers in his shop faded before he could sell them or when some miscreant threw a stone and ran away after smashing his florist shop window.

He felt no fear of an earthquake or a tsunami that might at any moment devastate thousands. The misfortune he feared was the misfortune which affected only him while the rest of the world was safe and well.

The cans of fish cake that Kim had received had eight years to go until their expiration date. Out of curiosity he had tasted one of them and discovered the liquid was salty and the fish cake was swollen to the shape of a tennis ball. It tasted so awful that one would never be tempted to eat it except in an emergency.

These days it was said that after an emergency, food could be supplied to isolated areas within two days. So this leather-like fish cake was what people would have to survive on for two days.

Kim asked the owner of this grocery store for canned fish cakes or canned noodles. The owner, whose eyes were focused

on a television program, responded briefly that he didn’t have any such a thing in the store. Kim explained that somebody brought him a gift of them from this town. The owner firmly replied that he had never seen such canned goods in his sixteen years of business. But seeing that Kim was unconvinced, the owner told him to look through the stock in the back of the store where several types of canned foods were kept. Kim wanted to see what sort of canned food was sold there. He went back to look. Passing by several shelves he came to the stock of cans, a variety from different regions. There were cans of whelk, tuna, jack mackerel, mackerel, chrysalis and some fruit, cans that were commonly seen everywhere. The owner came and stood beside him and told him that they didn’t have fish cake or noodles in cans, but they did have a variety of fast food packages that he could purchase. Kim did not respond. He returned to his car. On the way to the funeral home, he stopped at a few more stores, but no one sold the cans of emergency provisions he sought. * He entered the dark underground parking lot of the funeral home and carefully parked his truck, precisely parallel to the line drawn on the ground, exactly the way a casket would be placed. He decided to take a nap in the driver’s seat, but then remembered that the cargo bed was almost empty. Only the wreath was back there now, shimmering in the dark like a daytime moon, exuding the faint scent of chrysanthemums.

Kim climbed into the cargo bed and lay down next to the floral tributes. The cold quickly penetrated his body, and lying there in the dark he felt as though he was a corpse waiting to be shrouded.

If the elderly patient’s life continued to drag on like this, Kim would not be able to keep his date with the woman tonight at all. The man’s death presented itself to Kim as a problem

of stagnant and prolonged time that was far removed from a serious and sad world. He hesitated and then decided to call the woman. Without even asking him what had happened, she assured him that she understood. She seemed too disappointed to talk. Kim explained that he was about four hundred kilometers away and not yet done with his work. In a hesitant voice she asked when he would be done.

“I wish I knew, but it is not for me to decide,” Kim replied. The woman said nothing. She was perhaps hurt by his curt reply, and Kim was annoyed that he always had to be so cautious about his responses to her trivial questions.

Nevertheless, he repeated that his work was not yet finished, and he did not know when it would be. The woman began to talk about other matters as if she hadn’t been affected at all.

As their conversation continued, Kim became anxious about possibly receiving a call from his friend announcing the elderly man’s death.

“Are you listening?” the woman asked.

“Yes, I am,” he halfheartedly answered. She continued to talk, and he started to listen. She was upset about the untidy attire of a customer who visited the Customer Relations Office. It seemed she had been telling this story all along.

She complained with angry sighs that the customer had demanded a refund for underwear which had been worn several times. She sounded fatigued. Her sighs made Kim remember how she had helped him through difficult times, but for whatever reason he suddenly felt he could no longer endure this. Although he still received comfort and warmth from her, he was convinced these feelings would not last much longer, that they would quickly dissipate. He felt foolish for not having acted on the decision he had already made. For some time he had only been maintaining a distance, but now listening to her complaints he felt edgy and wanted to be even further removed from her. She stopped talking. Or perhaps she had been silent all this time while Kim’s thoughts had

traveled elsewhere.

“Did you hear me?” she asked again. This time Kim honestly answered no, he had not. She sighed again, another long sigh.

Merely wanting to end the conversation, Kim promised that he would come to her home when he returned to the city. He made this promise only to comfort her because she had been left downcast on other such occasions. He knew if he hung up on her without this promise, she would be sad once more, hesitant and confused for some long time before phoning him again. Delighted with his response, she asked what time he would come. He responded that it would be about four hours after a certain person died. Then for the first time during their conversation she burst out laughing. Obviously she thought this was a joke.

After concluding their phone conversation, Kim made his way upstairs into the funeral home. There were thirteen parlors spread out on four floors. All but one of them was empty. In this first floor parlor the portrait of a deceased person had been placed on a marble altar. Without a chief mourner, guest mourners, fruits, flowers or incense, the lone portrait looked strangely out of place. It was as though an impetuous bereaved person had set the portrait there before the man had passed away. The man in the portrait had neatly combed gray hair, but even though a long time had passed, Kim could tell that this was not the elderly man with whom he had been acquainted.

The man portrayed here had beaming, playful eyes and was smiling slightly as if he thought it mildly interesting to be early for his own funeral and waiting to greet the mourners even before he passed away. This lone person in the portrait, in this otherwise empty funeral parlor, reminded Kim of himself. Yet he was alive, and the person in the portrait was dead or about to die. Kim realized that he had never thought seriously about death. He was living. He did not want to think about death.

Not yet. Not until the time came, far, far off in the future.

Darkness was slowly descending. The elderly man’s life was slowly ebbing away. Kim stood in front of the funeral home looking at the desolate farm field as it gradually dissolved into the shadow of darkness. A man in a black suit approached him and asked for a light for his cigarette. Since the funeral home was empty, Kim guessed that this man was also dutifully waiting for someone’s death. He didn’t know that this man who was wearing a badly creased black suit, black tie and a shirt spotted with red food stains, had come to the same conclusion about him.

“My uniform got stained again. I had to work today before coming here. They gave me spicy beef stew despite my strong objections. You know, I have been fed that stew day after day, over and over again,” he explained conscious of Kim’s staring at the stains on his shirt. A slight smile appeared on Kim’s face when he heard the word ‘uniform’ but it disappeared as he vaguely remembered seeing a car from the Mutual Aid Company in the parking lot.

“Where are you from?” the man asked and Kim replied that he was from the florist. The man asked if the person was not dead yet. Bewildered, Kim nodded his head. The man in the black suit smiled. He understood Kim’s situation.

“I am in the same predicament,” he said. “Could it be the same person we’re waiting for?”

Wishing to avoid any further conversation with the man from the Mutual Aid Company, or, more to the point, wishing to avoid any further conversation about waiting for someone to die, Kim decided to take a walk. But he took a longer walk than he intended and had come all the way from the funeral home to the state highway. Still he had not received a call from his friend. Now standing by the state highway, he looked back toward the funeral home. Mindlessly staring at the huge, lit-up sign board, he heard himself murmur, “It seems he hasn’t died yet.” Surprised by his own unfeeling words, he fell silent.

At that instant his phone rang. If it had been his friend calling just then, Kim would have felt responsible for causing the elderly man’s death.

“You’re still not finished?” It was the woman’s voice. Kim felt both relieved and anxious. His anxiety made him once more realize how much distance there was between them. He knew that from now on there would be fewer conversations.

Their times together, which were even now so infrequent, would become more and more boring. The tone of their voices would become less friendly, and they would find fewer and fewer things to laugh about. As all of this happened the woman would call more often trying to understand Kim’s negligence and indifference. There would come a time when she would explode with anger, and then be overwhelmed with regret and loneliness. Soon after that she would apologize for having been angry. After more time had passed, and she had repeated this scenario several times, she would start to regret not winning his heart in return. She would continue to waste her time wallowing in resentment and hatred. Finally, she would realize that she didn’t love Kim enough to continue any longer, or perhaps she would decide that she hadn’t really loved him to begin with. Then she would feel empty and relieved. Kim could think of nothing to do except to wait for that moment. Then at last, he might feel something like a deep affection for her.

He lowered his voice and said, “If you push me, I will have to pray for the elderly man to die quickly.” She laughed, and that made Kim nervous again. He feared it would take too long for her to sense the truth in his heart. He blurted out the word, “Enough!,” interrupting her laughter.

Not hearing this clearly, the woman asked, “What do you mean?” Kim’s first inclination was to say, “That’s enough joking.” But it didn’t feel right to him to say goodbye in that dark field where the only light was coming from the sign board of a funeral home. Besides, although he had been thinking of it for some time, he still wasn’t sure if he was now being

impulsive and superficial. He feared he might be in his current state of mind because he was exhausted from his long, four hundred kilometer drive to the south and this interminable waiting.

“What do you mean by enough?” the woman asked again.

“Us. Us being together,” he replied to her persistent pressure.

She paused for a moment. Then she said, “My team manager is looking for me, I must go. Please drive carefully on your way back. I will pray for the man to die quickly.” She hung up. His heart felt suddenly heavy and not at all liberated as he had thought it would.

The end of the state highway disappeared into the darkness. Kim squatted there at the side of the road with a cigarette in his mouth. A large car passed by, shaking the surface of the earth, creating a gust of wind, and exuding black smoke. Then the road was calm again. Having chain-smoked three cigarettes, Kim was about to stand up, when he noticed something in the distance. A small white dot was approaching him and growing larger. As it drew closer it assumed the form of white sportswear. It was a marathon runner with numbers on his shirt. As he passed by, Kim clearly heard the sound of his breathing. It was a ‘hu hu ha ha,’ inhaling and exhaling in even intervals through his mouth and nose. Kim watched as he gradually entered the hidden highway of darkness. The shifting white dot grew smaller and smaller until it completely vanished from sight. Ironically, its extinction brought about an awakening in Kim’s mind. It occurred to him that the road continued beyond the dark place where it became invisible. As though in a trance, he moved toward the darkness that had so completely enveloped the white dot.

Walking on a short way, he heard the low sound of a whistle behind him. He stopped. A truck appeared out of the darkness, the same type of truck as his own. Strangely there was no sound of wind or wheels, no rattling of anything in the cargo bed. He thought he might have somehow missed hearing

these sounds, but then once more he heard the passing truck give off the clear whistle. It seemed that the driver, hidden in the darkness, was whistling. Kim stared vacantly at the truck. Then as though it was startled by Kim’s gaze, the truck accelerated, turned into a curve in the road and slid along the surface. In the next instant, it hit the guardrail and overturned.

Before he had time to react or express his shock, the truck burst into flames that instantly enshrouded it. The driver was nowhere to be seen. It was impossible to tell whether he had been fortunate enough to escape or if the flames had already devoured him. The flames engulfed the truck. They lit up the state highway.

Kim stood there transfixed. Then he reached for his mobile phone. But instead of calling the police, the emergency rescue team or the emergency center of a hospital, he called the woman. She didn’t answer. She might have been busy listening to a customer’s complaints or perhaps she was angry. Kim stared at the flames. He let the phone continue ringing. After some time, the woman picked up the phone but remained silent. The sound of her shallow breathing reached his ears. It was a calm, rhythmic sound that calmed him. He imitated it, inhaling and exhaling, and breathing faster than usual to keep up with her.

Then after several attempts and still finding it difficult, he abruptly confessed his love for her. The woman remained silent. He feared this silence of hers, but he also feared what she might say if she spoke. He continued talking, frantically thinking of things to say so as not to give her a chance to respond. He spoke of the joy he experienced when looking at her for a long while, the strange, unreal feeling he had when he held her hand for the first time, her soft breathing that was so calming for him. He spoke of his fear of not winning her love and the thrilling moment he experienced when he realized she loved him. He was saying things to her that he had never thought about before. He was hearing his own words, but he

felt as though they were words he had heard someone else speak or words that he had read somewhere. They were too conventional, too banal for him to believe they were true, but then again that was exactly why they did sound true.

He didn’t understand why he was talking this way.

Perhaps it was because he was standing there alone on the state highway with only the funeral home signboard and the flames illuminating the area around him. The signboard was so brightly lit up it was visible from a long distance, as though it was a sign shining in the dark for the whole town to see. It might be because it was located in this town where the students had regular drills in preparation for an earthquake, and the residents kept maps like amulets which would help them return safely to their homes after an earthquake. It might be because it was a town where canned noodles and fish cakes were sold at stores unbeknownst even to store keepers who had been running their businesses there for so long. Or it might be because of some elderly man on the verge of death who was not dying. If Kim had been in his home city, with no such problems or fears, he would have continued to treat this woman in an unfriendly manner.

If he had occasionally been warm to her, he would have panicked in fear of her misunderstanding him.

Now the woman spoke. She asked him what had happened. It was such an ordinary question that Kim had no idea if his confession of love had made her happy, excited, displeased or angry. Kim was like a stranger to himself while speaking these words to her. Yet, because he had these feelings, he thought his confession might have some truth in it.

Regardless of the truth, regardless of her feelings, Kim obviously knew that he was soon going to be ashamed of the confession that heaven-sent fear had

forced him to make. He would be angry because nothing he had said could now be taken back. He could not change the situation or the feelings his confession had caused. Nor could he fathom what was at the core of the emotions that arose inside of him. He became lost in the midst of these thoughts and simply hung up the phone. He thought she might call back. If she did, he wondered if he should answer. She did not call. The truck continued to burn fiercely, and Kim stood motionless, silently watching the brilliant conflagration burn like a bright lantern light for the funeral parlor.

Pyun Hye-young (b.1972) debuted on the literary scene when she won the Seoul Shinmun New Writer’s Contest in 2000 with the short story “Shaking off the Dew.” Her major works include the short story collections Aoi Garden, To the Kennels, Evening Proposal, and Night Passes and novels such as They Went to the Forest in the West and Ashes and Red. She won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and the Dong-in Literary Award.

Evening Proposal Pyun Hye-young Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2011, 257 pp.

Reviews I Must Be the Wind, Moon Chung-hee The Republic of Užupis, Haïlji The Square, Choi In-hun Le Quartier chinois, Oh Jung-Hee El Restaurante de Sukiyaki, Bae Suah 美しさが僕をさげすむ, Eun Heekyung 卡斯提拉, Park Min-gyu

Vol.26 Winter 2014 47

Reviews

Walking Through Fire

T

I Must Be the Wind Moon Chung-hee Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg White Pine Press, 2014, 123 pp.

ISBN 9781935210630

48 _list : Books from Korea

he home of one’s memory will never exist again in any time or space, therefore I think of home as loss and loneliness. “My first home, Mother’s womb / has become earth in Ilsan Park cemetery /… / my high school Jinmyung by the Blue House is now a government office, / the Sangdo village house of my college a grand hotel…” (“Where is My Home?”). Home, a nonexistent notion that frays the edges of life. Its nonexistence creates an inexplicable undercurrent of loneliness and loss that runs throughout all lives. When one realizes that they can never return home again there is a moment of utter loss and loneliness.

This moment is where Moon’s poetry exists.

This loss and loneliness spreads like an infection so that you cannot pinpoint the source but only know that it’s pervasive and unrelenting: loss of identity as a woman, as a person, as a poet. Such loss creates an impossible and inescapable loneliness.

Moon’s wifely responsibilities leave her lonely and absorb her identity. In “I Wish I Had a Wife” Moon writes, “I wish I had a wife. /… / A wife who cooks with what I’ve earned, / cleans my home and waits for me / while I work and drink in the wide world. / A wife who will bring some tea quietly / while I write poems or read papers on the sofa.”

She dreams of being husband to someone else’s wife and to have the space to inhabit her own identity, but no, she will always be a wife. Similarly in “Airport Letter” she writes, “Honey, please don’t look for me for a year. / I’m taking a sabbatical after years of marriage. /… / Even grim scholars / take a sabbatical to recharge themselves. /… / I’ll be back when I’ve found myself.” She has dedicated years to her husband and

neglected her other identities, now she must find herself again.

Out of this search Moon continually returns to images of fire and rebirth, strength and movement. The nacre of loneliness is filled with thin layers of sex, love, and body—all of these layers of life move towards a tumultuous, unsettled, undefined center.

The heart is torn flesh, but not the center.

The longing for home tears the fabric of brain cells, but it too is not the center, nor is the womb the center of this being. The storm is at the center, continually morphing into a different being with time: “today I scorch my body / in the flame.” (“Memories”). The center is the fire, the phoenix that comes out with little blazing wingtips ready to spark the tindered house and the tindered heart, to awaken the tindered flesh.

To embolden, to create and show to the new day that inside this lonely shell—this woman, this poet, is reborn into a new being.

She emerges out of fire but is not burned.

Even as she drowns in mud her wings are alight: “the scent of mud is everywhere, / the sunlight swells in every feather tip.” (“Dying Alone”). She is alive. She is no longer flesh, but shamanistic and reborn until engulfed in flame or drowned in mud, only to resurface again as a different being. However, no matter how many times she is reborn, Moon will never be able to escape “this loneliness and sorrow that will last beyond my life” (“Legacy”).

Although Moon Chung-hee leaves me with a pervasive sense of sorrow and loneliness, I am also on fire, my glowing wingtips emerging triumphant from the mud.

by Kim Koga Freelance Writer and Editor

In Search of a Forgotten Land

W

hen The Repulic of Užupis by Haïlji opens, Hal, a Korean traveling to Lithuania, is explaining the purpose of his trip to an immigration officer. He has come to bury his father’s ashes in his homeland—The Republic of Užupis, an independent state not far from Vilnius. However, whenever he states his destination, it draws blank faces and laughter from immigration control, his taxi driver, and some friendly Lithuanians he meets in a hotel bar. The place he speaks of does not exist.

But Hal persists.

The Republic of Užupis Haïlji Translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton Dalkey Archive Press, 2014, 300 pp.

ISBN 9781628970654

In a number of proceeding scenes, Hal regains his confidence when he sees the Užupis flag or hears its national anthem or hears people speaking Užupis. Despite not being able to speak Užupis, he can clearly understand it, and hears it often around the city, including being spoken by the mayor in a funny scene where a Lithuanian falsely translates the mayor’s Užupis, which she cannot understand.

Yet still, people deny the existence of this independent state.

It is Jurgita, a woman Hal meets on his first night in Vilnius, who confirms the existence of the Republic. In an intimate scene, Jurgita cooks him traditional Užupis soup, and tells him stories from her childhood: her lost love, memories of her dead father the practice of old traditions. When Hal asserts that he will find their fatherland, Jurgita says, “That’s exactly what my husband said. He promised he’d take me to Užupis. But he never came back.” Knowing the fate of so many Užupis men—killed by their own hand—Hal still decides to travel forth.

With the city blanketed in snow, he takes a trip out of Vilnius, where he meets his fate and an elderly woman with answers to some of his questions.

Sliding into a chapter out of Kafka, the reader is ultimately warned by Hal’s sad fate.

The descriptions of the snow-covered Lithuania are breathtaking, and add to the sense that this is a land both familiar and not. The translation by Bruce and JuChan Fulton is outstanding. This story lingers long after the pages are closed.

by Cailin Neal Marketing Director Dalkey Archive Press

Vol.26 Winter 2014 49

Reviews

The Square Choi In-hun Translated by Kim Seong-Kon Dalkey Archive Press, 2014, 160 pp.

ISBN 9781628970678

Finding a Home

I

n Choi In-hun’s 1960 novel, The Square, “the square” represents a place where “no one knows or wants to know who you are and what you are.” Torn between two countries, two ideologies, and two histories, the novel’s protagonist, Lee Myong-jun, must find in what country his square is.

When the novel opens, Myong-jun is a philosophy student in South Korea.

His mother died years ago and his father defected to the North. When his father starts to broadcast against the South on Pyongyang radio, the police take Myongjun in to ask whether he is an accomplice or shares the same ideology.

50 _list : Books from Korea

The interrogation and subsequent beatings compel him to reflect: the South was filled with greedy politicians and selfish citizens, while he longed for passion, revolution, and Communist paradise in the North. Myong-jun defects to the North, but soon finds that in this square, he cannot live truly as he is because it is the Party who “will do all the thinking, judging, feeling, and breathing for us while we are merely asked to repeat and follow.”

In the North, we quickly see that Myong-jun does not fit in: at his post as a journalist, he must falsely report in order to keep an equilibrium. He resists at first, but learns to keep quiet and to monotonously recite his loyalties to the Party. He finds love and comfort in a woman, but that love is often tested by her loyalty to the Party.

When the North attacks the South in 1950, Myong-jun fights for the People’s Army, but is taken prisoner in the battle of Nakdong. Three years later, the POWs can choose to either go back to the north, the south, or to a neutral country. Myong-jun wants to go to a neutral country: “I just want to be an ordinary man . . . Give me a small Square and a friend, that’s all I need.”

The Square is an up close and personal recounting of the time. For a time period and a war that seem so far from my own home, this book puts history into perspective, giving me a lot to think about, and go back and learn.

by Cailin Neal Marketing Director Dalkey Archive Press

Fantastic Grace

A

t first it is a special type of music, subtle and heady all at once, that seeps into all your pores and sweeps you into the mysterious and profound depths of the not easily captivated human soul.

And then, on a second reading, you discover other strata, other paths, other movements, other notes which cannot be perceived in a single encounter—just like when you need to get acquainted with someone to know them better, to love them better.

Likewise we find ourselves in Oh Jung-Hee’s precious and raw universe, whereby behind a sentence—through a soothsayer or a doll, through a very old grandmother or a violent and stubborn teenager—we discover a very realistic

Le Quartier chinois Oh Jung-Hee Translated by Jeong Eun-Jin and Jacques Batilliot Serge Safran Éditeur, 2014, 215 pp.

ISBN 9791090175242

depiction of human behavior, of the relationships humans cultivate more or less against their will, and we are sometimes led into a dimension that borders on fantasy.

Oh Jung-Hee eases with excruciating softness and extreme lucidity into the daily lives of the characters she portrays living in a port city, a working class neighborhood, or a house—often set in a difficult period following or somehow related to the Korean War. In so doing, she borrows the initially innocent eyes of a little girl or boy growing up in makeshift or blended families, battered by exile, marginalization, and poverty.

In “Chinatown (Le Quartier chinois),” the short story from which the collection derives its title, a nine-year-old girl from a very large family goes to a partly decrepit industrial port, where she discovers prostitution, “Yankee whores” fostered by the presence of the US military. With Ch’i-ok, her friend and accomplice, she takes on the challenges of life, having to steal to survive while taking refuge in reading romance novels.

In “The Courtyard of Childhood” (La Cour de l‘enfance), a girl, this time six years old, must bear life with brothers and a sister while their absent mother, a waitress working evening shifts at a restaurant, is sleeping out or coming home drunk. The elder brother, responsible for standing in for the father who is off at war, manifests unusual cruelty; at the same time she strives to learn English in the illusory hope of immigrating someday to the United States. And in a neighboring house, with a persimmon tree growing in the front yard, the young Pu-ne, sequestered by her father, is found dead. The return of the girl’s father does not necessarily guarantee that her

stability will be restored.

Finally, “The Fireworks (Le Feu d’artifice)” interweaves the stories of three characters on a single day that will end with a celebration. The father Kwanhi, the mother Inja, and their son Yŏngjo lead three lonely, independent lives punctuated by encounters and conversations in their present day lives and their past. The day ends with the old family rooster being sacrificed as fireworks are set off.

With great modesty and sensitivity, Oh Jung-Hee takes us into the picturesque world of little people without ever slipping into pathos or pessimism. She shows us the hardships of the have-nots in the face of violence, debauchery, or misunderstanding. A people who seem unable to communicate or love, who suffer in silence, get through life by hook or by crook, without ever figuring a way out. A lesson in courage, of a somewhat universal scope, which can also be called by a different name: grace.

by Serge Safran Director, Serge Safran Éditeur

Contemporary Love

J

ust when it seemed as though 20th century literature had exhausted the possibilities of choral narrative, along comes Bae Suah. In El Restaurante de Sukiyaki (The Sukiyaki Restaurant), the author, born in 1965, has invented a narrative machine that

El Restaurante de Sukiyaki Bae Suah Translated by Kwon Eunhee and Seong Cho-lim Bajo la luna, 2014, 256 pp.

ISBN 9789871803637

interweaves parallel stories in which the characters, their living conditions and economic difficulties in a hypercompetitive society, are relayed in a firm, objective, straightforward voice that sustains the novel.

All the stories, under the gaze of the same narrator, focus on the clash between the institution of the family—parents and children or husbands and wives—and the materialism of society. Often these relationships are under siege from the alienation generated by the acute demands of a consumer society. Bae Suah’s characters wander human and emotional wastelands where geographic and social marginalization takes a very human toll.

Vol.26 Winter 2014 51

Reviews

Early on, something about the characters’ poverty, unfortunate lives lived with grotesque coldness, are reminiscent of Italian neo-realism.

Ma and Dong Kiongsuk are an old couple: he’s unemployed, hungry, and bedridden with depression, still fighting with his ex-wife, Park Jeyon, and his son. She is a dominant character, unhappy with the man she is forced to support. The same matriarchal pattern is repeated in the story of Pyo Jyongchong and Bu Jerin but here the man of the house is absent and mother and daughter live a relationship of submission, guilt, duty, and denial.

In other stories, almost all of them related by the common element of the sukiyaki restaurant lurking in the background, love becomes a source of conflict. For example, Bek Duoin and Um Myunge, schoolmates of Ma’s, provide a means for exploring the nature of contemporary relationships, which are very different from traditional Korean courtship and perhaps have more in common with the love affairs of the West. In turn, each of these characters splits the narrative further: Ukyun, a man dumped by Um Myunge, crosses paths with Sewon, who is in love with Bu Jerin.

Yinyu and Songdo, another modern couple, start another branch of the narrative. Here, the author isn’t exploring the collateral effects of divorce, as was the case with Ma and Park Jeyon, but the possibility of not getting married at all in a deeply hierarchical society. In this case, issues of commitment and social imperative join the general sense of 52

_list : Books from Korea

economic suffocation. Once more, the story splits and follows the path of a friend of Yinyu’s, Be Iuun and her husband Kim Iojuan, who prototypically embody a marriage in crisis.

It’s not necessary to describe here the later stories that spring up from those that went before. The important point is that Bae Suah has an incomparable gift for using apparently discrete pieces to build a mural of contemporary life. Such a sociological project requires a clinical eye to identify the shifting grounds of power in contemporary Korea: matriarchal forces winning a place in a patriarchal society, work as a productive force whose drawback is alienation and conformity, marriages seen as dangerous unions in a materialistic society.

At the end of the day, Bae Suah seems, superbly, to be telling us that love and art are the territory of freedom and caprice; they are difficult to tame but nonetheless present in every one of us and for that we must stay aware of whatever twists life has in store.

and published in Japan for the first time.

The collection delineates the absurdity of our lives in the modern age through the protagonists such as a 34-year-old man who embarks on a diet regimen, and a keenly self-conscious girl.

The uncertain and perilous nature of our existence, our collective sense of loss, and the violence inherent in our daily lives are recurring motifs in Eun’s stories. However, unlike the dark themes, her writing is buoyant and humorous.

If you were to catch her in an interview on television or radio, you would be surprised how closely her voice, gestures, and expressions resemble the sentences and writing style in her stories.

Eun Heekyung debuted at the age of 35. “The social novels of the 1980s

by Oliverio Coelho Writer and Literary Critic

Inner Reflections

E

un Heekyung, born in 1959, is, along with Shin Kyung-sook and Gong Ji-Young, one of the leading female writers in South Korea.

Her short story collection, Beauty Despises Me, was recently translated

美しさが僕をさげすむ Eun Heekyung Translated by Oh Yeong-ah CUON, 2013, 301 pp.

ISBN 9784904855195

were not to my liking. I only started writing in the 1990s when novels with themes centered on the individual came into vogue” she said. In interviews, Eun always stresses her literary worldview that lays emphasis on the individual: “I frequently apply the technique of depicting the workings of the human mind through social problems or events. I don’t externalize the problems or events; rather, I internalize the individual’s problems through them. I think the role of literature is to reflect the unique nature of each individual.”

From Japanese readers: “This was the first Korean book I bought. I was drawn to the title and cover that reminded me of Yoshino Sakumi’s manga. I cannot forget this feeling of being lifted a few inches above reality.

This cheerfulness that is not easily visible among Japanese writers is truly urban and stylish. But at the heart of Eun’s writing lies a solemn philosophy. It’s the kind of philosophy that can only be felt, not understood.”

“The title piece of this collection is the story of a man who starts dieting.

The writing is crisp and concise. The writer contemplates the dilemma between humanity’s instinct for selfpreservation and modern man’s desires through the theme of dieting. The lack of emotional expression also seems to be a characteristic of this writer. Without rejecting modernity, she portrays our mindsets as we reflect on our lives in the modern age.”

Korean readers have enjoyed easy access to the 16 books published by the author during her 20-year career.

However, in all these years only one of her books has been translated into

Japanese. Despite this, how has reader reaction to Eun’s work in both countries been so similar? Is it because the Japanese are discerning readers? Or is this, perhaps, a sign of the author’s brilliance?

by Kim Seung-bok CEO, CUON

卡斯提拉 Park Min-gyu Translated by Park Jeong Weon and Fang Xiao Xia Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press, 2014, 250 pp.

ISBN 9787560997926

The Soul of the World

through a faint sense of pantheistic existence. In Castella, Park Min-gyu portrays his version of metamorphosis and pantheism. Simply put, it is the hope of finding miracles in this plain world, a belief that there is always some force that transcends our present life, that will arrive from out of the blue to save us from the insipidness of everyday existence.

Park Min-gyu’s fridge is empowered with humanity. Everything in the world can be put into this container and turned overnight into some warm, flat and soft castella sponge cake, which is able to forgive and embrace all. With the help of the author’s imagination, we find that the world and the soul become interchangeable.

The world is the soul’s projection and the soul becomes a self-dependent world that encompasses all things.

In the stories in Castella, we see, in silhouette, a child’s desolate loneliness, refusing to accept the world as it is and deciding, resolutely, to see and to create with the soul’s eyes. He roams among the mundane and the divine throughout this miraculous adventure. Just like the castella itself—we live on it, and yet it contains the world.

by Luo Yaqin Editor Huazhong University of Science and Technology Press

F

ranz Kafka searched for his connection with the world through metamorphosis and Murakami Haruki looked for his orientation in this busy world Vol.26 Winter 2014 53

20th Century Korean Literature Now Available in E-book Format Featuring works of short fiction by prominent Korean writers such as Kim Yu-jeong, Kim Dong-in, Ch’ae Man-Sik, and many others.

In the second installment of its modern Korean literature series of downloadable e-books, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) introduces 30 short stories by 18 prominent Korean writers. Thirty short stories spanning from the Japanese colonial era to the beginning of the Korean War are now available for free download from the Apple iTunes App Store, “20th Century Korean Literature,” or by visiting the LTI Korea website: ebook.klti.or.kr.

LTI Korea has carried on the e-book project since 2013 in order to provide a wide-ranging selection of Korean literature for e-book readers around the world. Twenty works by 13 writers were published last year and more works by the same authors, including nine additional ones such as Kye Yong-muk, Yi Ik-sang, and Choi Seo-hae are included in this more diverse selection of titles.

LTI Korea strives to continue to bring Korean literature to the rest of the world.

54 _list : Books from Korea

LTI Translation Academy

Celebrating Seven Years of Translation

O

n October 18th, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea held a gathering for all former and current students at the Translation Academy called the “Next Generation of Translators Translation Training Camp.”

The event took place at the Literature House Seoul, a charming venue nestled in the quiet foothills of Mt. Namsan. As LTI Korea President Kim Seong-Kon said in his opening speech, the event was a “homecoming” to unite past and present students and reflect upon how far the Translation Academy has come since its first group of students back in 2008. The teachers in attendance, with bright purple and white flowers pinned to their chests, were introduced to great applause and their hard work and dedication to the academy was praised.

To quantify the success that the Academy’s pupils have had over the past seven years, a powerpoint presentation was shown boasting of the 85 graduates that had earned translation grants, along with the impressive number of former students that had received the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators in their respective language category.

Following this presentation, six of the teachers received awards for their contributions to the Academy’s success.

President Kim presented them with plaques and large bouquets of green, white, and purple flowers.

Once the awards were given, the event took a more festive mood as wine was uncorked and attendees went out into the garden patio area to fill their plates at the buffet. After the guests had made their way through their first plate or two, the afternoon’s entertainment started. Literary critic Heo Hui took over as emcee and introduced current and former students from the

Academy to give speeches, present their talents, and share personal photos from literature-related trips with the Academy.

Of the graduates who talked about their memorable and funny moments while attending the Translation Academy, Sora Kim-Russell and Agnel Joseph have now continued their association with LTI Korea. Kim-Russell, an active translator with several well-known titles under her belt, is currently an academic adviser at the Translation Academy and Agnel Joseph has taken up a post at the Institute.

Highlights of the talent portion were the masterful Taekwondo display by Kim Jin Ah and a piano performance of Chopin by Park Jihyun. The festivities were rounded off with a Korean Literature Quiz, with questions provided by the current teacher of the Translation Academy’s “Understanding Korean Literature” course, Ryu Boseon, and a raffle that saw five lucky guests receiving prizes. As the event ended with students new and old trading contact information, it seems that the Translation Academy “Homecoming” was having the desired effect; to loosely quote what Sora Kim-Russell said in her speech, “The point of the Academy is not only to teach translation, but to create a community of translators so that translation no longer remains a solitary profession, but one that has a network of trusted peers to rely on.”

by Victoria Caudle Graduate Student Department of Korean Language and Literature Seoul National University

Vol.26 Winter 2014 55

LTI Translation Academy

Growing Out of My “Growing Pains” W

hile I was working in Seoul as an intern in 2012, one evening I decided I needed to have a think about the future, and so it seemed like a good idea to walk all the way home from my office—around three hours of urban hiking. When I was about halfway, the LTI Translation Academy course came to mind. I had seen posters for it in the Korean section corridor at my university back in London, but had never imagined then that I would ever have the Korean language skills to give it a go. I looked up all the details on my phone and found that applications for the next session would be closing in a couple of weeks. When I reached the junction where I would have to make a turn to head up to my neighborhood, I decided to carry straight on, right into the large bookstore in Gwanghwamun, to buy the book from which applicants had to complete a sample translation.

With book in hand, I hurried home and set about trying to read the story. I’m not sure when I fell asleep but it couldn’t have been long afterwards; even so, I had highlighted about a hundred words that I didn’t know with yellow pencil—it was going to be a long shot.

The two semesters I spent at the Translation Academy were hard. I often felt stressed and nervous and even had nightmares about suddenly being unable to speak Korean in my classes. It felt like I was reliving

56 _list : Books from Korea

the growing pains of adolescence, and with hindsight, “growing pain” seems a fairly accurate description. That year of study transformed me from novice of the Korean language to translator of Korean literature, and I will be forever grateful for it.

The support offered to students at LTI Korea is second to none.We had an eclectic group of teachers, but they were all great translators and when they taught us they spoke from experience. They were caring and always happy to think things over with us, helping us make our ideas work. The role of the other students was important too; we became fellow travelers, navigating the wide space between two languages, vying to find the best way to write a certain sentence, and taking pride in each other’s successes.

Our main translation exercises were done working in pairs. Each pair would produce a translation of the same pages of a short story every week and submit them to our professor who would give suggestions and comments; then we would compare them all in our weekly classes.

After the class we would consider the corrections, suggestions, and comments that had come up in discussion, and revise our translations, which meant that by the end of the term each pair had a translated version of the same story, all finished to a high standard.

At the end of the first term I sent the short story we had worked on in class, “Arpan” by Park Hyoung Su, to my

parents. The next morning I had a reply from my father saying that he could not remember the last time a work of fiction had touched him so deeply. For me, the very moment I read those words was like an epiphany—this is what it’s all about—I now understood why translating literature was worth all the time and effort.

After starting out tentatively as a translator in my own right, I began to realize the significance of our translation exercises. Being edited, having people pick your work apart, having to admit something could be improved, and defending words and phrases that you want to keep are all things that translators need to be practiced in. When my first professional translation came back from the editor and I began to read through it, my heart sank: Where did my translation go? As I began to look more closely, I was able to see that it was not a question of my work being smeared with red pen: the translation had been polished, the traces of me as translator had been smoothed out, and the essence of the work was now shining through. I was fortunate to have met the very best kind of editor.

In one class we compared different translated versions of the same text, identifying strategies and solutions, and referred back to the Korean. In another class our teacher introduced us to some of the greatest challenges we would face when trying to translate Korean culture and history for English readers—things like spatial description, familial terms of address, and comedy. Knowing that these challenges exist and that there is always more than one way to translate something, has been a great source of confidence for me in my work since.

The dynamic between the international students in our language group was quite amusing. There were four of us: one American, one Indian, and two Britons.

Funnily enough the other British student and I were both Londoners, and had grown up just a couple of miles apart, yet we disagreed on the nuances of English words, and more often than not agreed more with our fellow students from different countries.

There were also a few times when my Korean language skills slipped me up. Like someone who is lost and refuses to turn back, when I read something wrongly

I would go to great pains to make my interpretation plausible. I once thought I was translating something very poetic when a narrator talked of her dream to become “weightless in a long, faded skirt.” I realized in the class however that the English word, written as it sounds in Korean, was in fact “waitress” and my imagination had taken me along a very strange path indeed. Such mistakes became a simple yet important lesson: If the sentence seems totally out there, read it again.

Thinking about the significance of my time at the Translation Academy, it’s hard to express what a formative experience it was. Not only did the training I receive equip me with a skill that I can live by— Google Translate isn’t there yet!—but spending a year in the company of other budding translators and surrounded by the staff of LTI Korea meant that I became part of a very unique community.

When I was working on the sample translation for my application to the course, looking up words in the small hours of the morning, and trying to make a picture out of the puzzle, I began to feel how lonely the act of translation could be. While studying at the Translation Academy, the times when I struggled were the times when I lost sight of the fact that I was surrounded by kindred spirits and people that could help. Now I know that while the practice of translation may be solitary work, being a translator is something very social—enabling communication, negotiating between languages and cultures, and bringing people together.

Holding my first translated book in my hands and thinking about all the people that were part of its journey from Korean to English—and all the people that I want to share it with—I wonder whether it might have been more than a coincidence that LTI Korea suddenly came to mind during my night time walk across the city all those years ago.

by Sophie Bowman Translator

Vol.26 Winter 2014 57

LTI Translation Academy

Walking the Tightrope of Translation T

here are two translation classes offered in the Intensive Course Program at the LTI Korea Translation Academy: Translation Practice of Literary Texts and Practice on Translation Styles. The class I have been teaching for the past four years is Practice on Translation Styles, which is offered in the program for all five languages in the Intensive Course. With an aim for students not only to improve their translation skills but also to discover their own voice and translation style, the curriculum for the class is designed as a translation practice class as well as a translation studies course in part. Unlike the class of Translation Practice of Literary Texts where students are required to translate short stories that have never been translated, students in the Translation Styles class are asked to translate literary texts that have been previously translated and compare their translation with the existing translations.

The stories not only have important literary value in Korean literature from the 1930s to the 1970s but they are also important stories in understanding Korean society and culture during that time. Students are required to read the works in the original Korean first, then produce their own translation and compare it to the existing ones. In class students share their views and interpretations of the stories, the difficulties they had in translating them, and the differences they found in other translations compared to the published ones. Students are encouraged to try and experiment with different word choices and see the effects on characterization and the overall themes of the stories.

In the spring semester, the emphasis is on recognizing the responsibilities of a translator and coming up with different translation strategies depending on the literary genre. For example, in translating a classical text, the important issues are how to translate Chinese characters as well as how to emulate the tone of 17th or 18th century

58 _list : Books from Korea

Korean. By translating television dramas, students are asked to think about the question of readability and performability of their translations, the difficulty of translating dialects often used in dramas and films, and the possible substitutions for the loss of dialects in the translation, the slang and idiomatic expressions and jokes in Korean—most of which are based on the phonetic usage of Korean words, and the difficulty in controlling the tone of profanities to match the tone in the original Korean.

The challenges and difficulties in translating a Korean literary text can vary given whether one is an inbound translator, a translator who needs to improve his or her understanding of the source text, or an outbound translator, a translator who needs to improve his or her understanding of the target language. In the class, which usually has a good balance of inbound and outbound translators, they share their knowledge of Korean and English in order to find solutions to difficulties that students often encounter while translating Korean literary texts into English. Students may confront problems involving postpositions in Korean, the difficulty of translating onomatopoeic expressions from Korean to English without lowering the general tone of the text, the sudden switch of verb tense, which is prevalent in Korean literary works, and the ambiguity that is embedded in the Korean texts due to the unspoken subjects in sentences. By comparing their translations to published translations, students can learn from translators as well as from fellow students.

Designed as a seminar class, students are also encouraged to share their understanding of words in order to discover and become more aware of their own idiolect of the English language and to become more sensitive to slight differences in the nuance of words in the original Korean as well as in the language of our translation, English. Because students in the class often come from different English speaking countries such as India, the UK, Canada, and the U.S., they find out how

even simple words can have different connotations or usages depending on where the language is spoken.

Although the class focuses on teaching, learning, and sharing of translation skills needed to transfer and rebuild a literary work from Korean into English, the underlying emphasis is to contemplate the unique problems involved in translating the literary quality of Korean short stories, novels, or dramas into English.

Translating any literary text into a different language begins with the goal of wanting to share the work with more readers, which always demands translators to do the impossible task of walking on a tightrope by finding the balance between being faithful to the original text while rendering a perfectly readable translation. While finding one’s balance on that tightrope is a task for every translator, students in the Translation Academy are asked to ponder their contribution to the translations of Korean literary works not only as an expansion of Korean literature among international readers but also as a contribution of re-conceptualizing what constitutes a literary work and literary language. Edith Grossman states in her book, Why Translation Matters, that “the influence of translated literature has a revivifying and expansive effect on . . . the ‘target language,’ the language into which the text is translated.” Translations expand the boundary of literature not only in the source language but also in the target language, and breathe new life into the target language and its literature, for translations present readers with different evocative potential in their own language. Therefore, the act of writing and the act of translating is to contribute a line or, as Walt Whitman said, to “contribute a verse” to what we know as literature, and the Translation Academy of LTI of Korea has its door wide open for anyone who is willing to learn the joy of walking on the tightrope of literary translation so that they, too, may “contribute a verse.”

Fall Semester Author Hwang Sun-Won Yi Sang Kim Seungok Lee Hyoseok Kim Dongin Yi Chong- Jun Park Wansuh

Translator(s) Peter H. Lee, Kevin O’Rourke Kim Se-yong Walter K. Lew and Youngju Ryu Wings Peter H. Lee Journey to Mujin Kevin O’Rourke Shin Dong-wook When Buckwheat Kim Chong-in and Bruce Fulton Peter H. Lee Flowers Bloom Hong Myong-hee Kevin O’Rourke Potato Peter H. Lee The Snowy Road Hyun-jae Yee Sallee Julie Pickering Hyun-jae Yee Sallee Winter Outing Marshall R. Pihl Title Cranes

Spring Semester Author Kim Young-ha Shin Kyung-sook Lady Hyegyong Lee Kiho Hwang Sok-yong

Title I Have the Right to Destroy Myself Please Look After Mom The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong At Least We Can Apologize The Old Garden The Guest

Park Geun-hyeong In Praise of Youth Burning Mountain Cha Beom-seok

Translator(s) Chi-young Kim Chi-young Kim JaHyun Kim Haboush Christopher Dykas Jay Oh Kyung-ja Chun and Maya West Lee Hye-kyoung Janet Poole

by Alyssa Kim Translator

Vol.26 Winter 2014 59

The Place

60 _list : Books from Korea

Forest of Wisdom

J

Area: 2,446m2 Total Bookshelf Length: 3.1 km Number of Seats: about 300 Number of Books: about 200,000

ust a few kilometers from the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea, Paju is a somewhat surprising location for what has become the center of publishing and book culture in Korea.

Paju Book City is a city dedicated to books— their printing, publication, and promotion. It aims to become the “book-hub of Asia.” In this book city nestled among publishing offices, online bookstore warehouses, and printing presses sits the “Forest of Wisdom,” a huge concrete building with three massive sections. Forest of Wisdom is currently home to over 200,000 books and before too long it will accommodate another 100,000. The books are mostly donations from publishing companies and some of them gave copies of every book they had ever published. Organizations and notable individuals have contributed as well. Traditionally, buildings that house such a large number of books have either been libraries or bookshops, but Forest of Wisdom is neither. The books there are not for sale, they cannot be loaned out, and they are not catalogued. Forest of Wisdom is something else entirely.

In the last few years there has been a book café craze throughout Korea, where the walls of a coffee shop are filled with bookshelves laden with interesting books. Some book cafés are operated by well-known publishing companies like Munhakdongne or Changbi Publishers, Inc., who use them as a space to display and sell their books. Others are simply decorated with books that create an atmosphere where customers can sit with their coffee, relax, and spend some time with a book that catches their eye. With a coffee Vol.26 Winter 2014 61

shop in its central hall, on first impression Forest of Wisdom seems like it must be the biggest book café in Korea, perhaps even the world—but in fact it is more akin to a vast interactive artwork.

Explaining the rationale behind this forest of books, Kim Eounho, the chairman of Bookcity Culture Foundation, begins by talking about the beauty of books as artifacts, and how that beauty has a cumulative power, so that when books are displayed together they create the harmony of a choir, and an indescribable fragrance that transforms a space. Thus when lectures are held in these halls the content sounds more inspiring, and when musicians perform among the books the melodies are more beautiful. Over 100 events have already been held in Forest of Wisdom this year alone, including a performance by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra as well as evening classes and programs as part of the Book City’s Open University. The Paju Book Sori Festival, a meeting point for publishers, editors, and authors from all over Asia, is also held among the books in the Forest of Wisdom, creating the perfect hub for learning and exchange.

Kim Eounho says that rather than being a mere library, Forest of Wisdom is a book utopia, creating a new way of approaching and enjoying books. We go to libraries to track down specific books, looking them up in a database and hunting them down in the stacks, ignoring all the books 62 _list : Books from Korea

around them. In Forest of Wisdom you cannot help but explore, browse the spines of books from shelf to shelf—reading titles, experiencing colors and textures, and taking out and opening up the ones that pull at your imagination. In this book utopia all books are equal before the reader, and on every shelf a myriad of worlds sit ready to inspire, just waiting to be opened.

In all three halls books line the walls from floor to lofty ceiling. Even on a weekday there are plenty of people around, some browsing books, some studying or working at one of the many desks while others chat with friends over a cup of tea. On weekends the place is filled with families, as children and their parents line the stairs to the second floor, reading books and sharing new stories.

The first hall is filled with books donated by different scholars. The idea is that visitors can find out more about these great minds by browsing through their book collections, thus they are kept together and each section is labeled with the name of the person who donated them along with their area of study. Looking through these personal collections, amassed over the course of the donor’s career, it is easy to see that successful scholars do not stick to just one kind of book. Among the volumes donated by a professor of English literature you can find books on philosophy, geography, music, and translation. As Kim Eounho says, children who read books are our hope for the future. This does not

mean children who just “study hard� as the Korean saying goes, but for children who read widely and enthusiastically; because while school textbooks teach us that everything relating to a subject can be found in one place, the book collections of talented scholars demonstrate that those who have a wide understanding and interest in many fields are the ones who create new wisdom and advance the knowledge of humanity.

Books, things themselves that have been created, are the start of other forms of creation. They are the greatest inheritance left to humankind. In Forest of Wisdom they have been brought together to be read, to be enjoyed, and to make their presence felt in a space which creates a new way of interacting with books and is sure to inspire generations of readers, writers, and thinkers.

Kim Eounho: Kim founded Hangilsa Publishing in 1976 and Hangil Art Publishing in 1998. He is also head organizer of Paju Booksori, director of Hangil Book Museum, and chairman of Bookcity Culture Foundation.

Chairman Kim Eounho

Vol.26 Winter 2014 63

Afterword

Reflections from SIWF 2014

L

ook, I’ll be perfectly honest. The thought that stuck in my mind the first morning of the writers’ festival, as I joined two dozen other novelists and poets milling about in front of the bus that would take us to lunch and then to Olle Market in downtown Seogwipo, was a line from a short story by the American author Ben Marcus: “Writers in the sun. Just asking to get shot.”

I don’t mean to sound jaded, much less creepy, though it’s probably a little late for that. What I mean is that I have a vague baseline distrust for large gatherings of writers, who tend not to have become writers because they thought literature would afford them more opportunities to display their sophisticated social graces. En masse, I told myself on the way to Jeju Island, writers can be tedious company: obnoxious, preening, needy. Which wasn’t anything against any of the writers themselves, surely—just a blanket indictment of us as a species.

Imagine my grateful surprise, then, when I discovered, only a few hours later, that I was actually enjoying myself. (Okay: 85 percent grateful, 15 percent disappointed.) Imagine my relief to report, two months hence, that the 2014 Seoul International Writers’ Festival was a lively, engaging, thoroughly rewarding and generally lovely experience. And frankly I’m still not really sure how they did it.

Though I am certain no effort was spared in order to do it. The organizers—the aides and guides and translators and interpreters and directors and performers—must have worked tirelessly for months. I find it astonishing, for instance, to think of the trouble taken to translate a short story of mine into Korean, adapt the translation into a play, cast it and stage it and compose music for it and rehearse it for a month, and then perform it once. (Brilliantly, I suspect: my interpreter assured me it was “very faithful.”) And if that’s astonishing, then it’s utterly baffling to think that the team did the same, in one medium or another, for 27 other texts by 27 other authors with very different styles.

And yes, of course, among those 27 other authors I found virtually no tedious company.

More importantly, though, this didn’t feel like a lucky coincidence. There was a care built into the festival that made such risks irrelevant—a camaraderie that, over the week we spent talking and listening and eating and drinking together, came to feel inevitable. By design—I have to assume so, given how little overall was left to chance—the festival made it impossible for us to remain estranged from one another, by language or age or politics or aesthetic allegiances. By design, that is, it turned us from a group of writers into a group of people, whose ideas about literature and language, about poetry and music and love and food and geopolitics, had no choice but to cross-pollinate freely.

To wit, one memory that will likely stay with me forever is that of an evening spent in our hotel’s courtyard with a Brazilian and a Mongolian, drinking makgeolli from a can—I do not recommend this—casually discussing the world and everything in it. What I will hold onto is how it both made me feel small, in a sublime way, and made the world feel enormous.

by Daniel Levin Becker Writer, Translator, and Critic

64 _list : Books from Korea

279002

ISSN 2005-2790

9 772005

_list: Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine published by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

44

Copyright Š 2014 by Literature Translation Institute of Korea