Korean Short Stories
SHIN YONG-MOK Mixing Noodles, Crimson-Faced 붉은 얼굴로 국수를 말다 Translated by An Seonjae
Information This work was previously published in New Writing from Korea . Please contact the LTI Korea Library. library@klti.or.kr
About SHIN YONG-MOK Shin was influenced by older-generation activist poets, so-called "poets of the masses" (minjung shiin), such as Kim Nam-ju and Shin Kyeong-nim, and genuinely anguished over the problem of the path literature should take in society and history. The quintessential "new poet", Shin's poems avoid overt ideology. Shin's clearly spells out messages of love for the community in soft, easy lyricism, and this is based in his own firm belief in the value of "co-existence with one's fellow man" over "self-happiness.". Even amid the wave of neoliberalism in which competition among writers is considered a necessary evil, Shin sees meaning in even the smallest of hopes, in order to protect the dignity and liberty of the human being. As in the lines "Every hour given me / I take my flashlight and go check the reins / to see if there is any damage" (selected passage from "Jeong of the Guard"), he places himself in the position of a "guard" responsible for "positivity". Shin's work argues that the value and importance of the spirit will never fade, even in the materialism of capitalist society.
LTI Korea eLibrary: http://library.klti.or.kr/node/204
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Mixing Noodles, Crimson-Faced Under the shoes that water wears and the footprints water leaves on water, the water on the water's back and the water embraced by water. Under the red pavement that is water's foundation and the pavement outside the water, 2 noodles are being mixed. In the bowl where hunger rises wearing a body of pale vapor are noodles that are rain's white hairs; what labor hangs on each chopstick? At the Gung-dong Bus Terminal, foreign laborers wait with red faces for the far side of the earth. Rain falls, nail marks of the void that longing scratches in the prison of life! Rain gathers. In the bus terminal at Gung-dong foreign laborers with red faces fritter away this part of the globe. In the bowl where memories are wrapped and raised in strands of pale noodles are streaks of rain that are the mind's white hairs; whose names are drawn up on each chopstick? Noodles are being mixed in the vestige of faces surfacing on faces and the shadow of faces remaining on faces, the faces submerged in faces and faces overlapping with faces, and the minds that are faces' foundation and memories that lie outside the faces.
Copyright 2009 Literature Translation Institute of Korea
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