Special Edition Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of LTI Korea
Key Themes in Fiction & Children’s Book 8 Korean Writers’ Interviews: In Their Own Words
ISSN 2005-2790
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From the President
Ten Years of LTI Korea This year marks the 10th anniversary of the foundation of LTI Korea. The achievements of LTI Korea, established through the dissolution and development of the Korean Literature Translation Fund with the aim of spreading Korean literature abroad, may be summed up in the slogan, the “Globalization of Korean Literature.” The determination of LTI Korea to take Korean literature to the world, despite its limitations as a literature of a minority language, has made possible the globalization of Korean literature in the past decade. During this time, LTI Korea has undergone a rebirth as a government-affiliated public institution, with 24 regular employees and an independent structure (located in Seoul, Samseong-dong). We have also fostered the publication of 486 literary works in 28 foreign languages (as of August 2011) through publishers abroad. In addition, LTI Korea runs the KLTI Translator system in support of outstanding translators so that the quality of translation may be enhanced, and holds KLTI forums for the discussion of Korean literature by writers, translators, and publishers at literary hubs around the world. It also runs the Translation Academy in order to nurture the next generation of translators, through which nearly 300 translators have been trained and become active at home and abroad. The translators, though still inexperienced, promise a bright future for the translation of Korean literature. Some of the remarkable feats achieved during the process of developing LTI Korea include the launch of the Translated Literature Selection Committee as a legal organization, and of list_ Books from Korea (in English and Chinese), a magazine for the introduction of Korean literature abroad. Through such activities, the selection committee has dispelled the concern, both within and without LTI Korea, that major works of literature have been left out due to the narrow channel through which translators submit their works, which are then evaluated for translation grants. Today, hundreds of major works of literature, humanities, and children’s literature are being selected through a biannual selection process, which is expected to grow in its influence. And then there’s list, the magazine. Most of the 10,000 English and 2,000 Chinese copies of the magazine are sent to related institutions abroad, and received with great enthusiasm. The magazine, printed in full-color offset printing, is lauded for the introduction of works of literature, humanities, and children’s literature, as well as interviews with authors, and special reports on publishers and cultural issues, which allow readers around the world to get a good grasp on the trends and movements in the world of Korean literature. The magazine is the one and only source of information in Korea that contributes substantially to the foreign rights sales of Korean literature by providing detailed information on books and publishers. In addition, its novel design and editing contribute to the enhancement of understanding Korea. With the Korean Wave in full swing and contributing to the understanding and distribution of Korean culture in the global culture market, it is time that Korean literature, from which the Korean Wave originated, spread its wings. LTI Korea, as a public institution with tremendous responsibilities, seeks to embrace the love of Korean literature at home and abroad through a more sophisticated system, and to more effectively bring together foreign networks. The task of translation, the quality of which is difficult to objectify or measure, has always been an obstacle, but it will be accomplished, based on 10 years of experience. LTI Korea stands ever ready to carry out the task with pleasure through ceaseless reinvention, with the support of the government in all areas including budget and manpower. We ask all for deep understanding and warm encouragement. Kim Jooyoun President, LTI Korea
list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011 1
Contributors Cho Eunsook is a professor of Korean
Special Edition 2011 A Quarterly Magazine for Publishers
PUBLISHER _ Kim Jooyoun EDITORIAL DIRECTOR _ Kim Yoonjin MANAGING DIRECTOR _ Lee Jungkeun EDITORIAL BOARD Kim Inae Kim Yeran Park Sungchang Pyun Hye-young Yu Gina EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kim Sun-hye MANAGING EDITORS Cha Youngju Kong Min-sung EDITORS Kim Stoker Krys Lee ART DIRECTOR Choi Woonglim DESIGNERS Kim Mijin Lee Jaehyun Jang Hyeju Noh Dah-yee PHOTOGRAPHER Lee Kwa-yong PRINTED IN _ EAP Date of Publication 2011. 9. 20
list_ Books from Korea is a quarterly magazine published by the Korea Literature Translation Institute. All correspondences should be addressed to the Korea Literature Translation Institute at 108-5 Samseong-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea 135-873 Telephone: 82-2-6919-7700 Fax: 82-2-3448-4247 E-mail: list_korea@klti.or.kr www.klti.or.kr www.list.or.kr Copyright © 2011 by Korea Literature Translation Institute ISSN 2005-2790
Cover art © U-Ram Choe, Una Lumino (2008), 430x520x430cm, metallic material, motor, LED, CPU board, and polycarbonate.
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E d u c a t i o n a t C h u n c h e o n Na t i o n a l University of Education and a critic of children’s literature. Her published works include The Formation of Korean Children's Literature. She is also an editor of the quarterly Changbi Children.
Cho Yeon-jung is a literary critic. She made her debut in 2006 winning the Seoul Shinmun New Critic’s Award. Eom Hye-suk is a researcher in
children’s literature and a critic of illustrated books. She also works as a translator. Her major written work is Reading My Delightful Illustrated Books.
Kim Taehwan is a literary critic and professor of German Language and Literature at Seoul National University. He has published In Search of the Blue Rose: the Aesthetics of Confusion; From the Actantial Model to a Passion for Semiotics: a Study of the Narrative Semiotics of A.J. Greimas; Literary System: Problems in Contemporary Literary Theory; and The Structure of the Labyrinth: The Self and Other in Kafka’s Novels. Kim Yeran is a professor of media art at Kwangwoon University and on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.
Kwon O-ryong is a literary critic and
author of 5:57: Critical Essays by Hur Yoonjin. She is a contributing editor at the quarterly Munye Joongang.
professor of French Education at Korea National University of Education. He has published collections of critical essays called Rationale for Existence, and In Favor of Ambiguity. He was awarded the Hyundai Munhak Award.
Jeong Young-hoon is a literary critic and professor of Korean Literature at Gyeongsang University. He has published Writing and Identity in Choi In-hoon’s novels. He is currently an editorial advisor to a literary magazine, Segyeui Munhak.
Kwon Seong-woo is a literary critic and professor of Korean Literature at Sookmyeong Women’s University. He published Romantic Exile and The Fascination of Criticism. He was awarded the Kim Hwan Tae Literary Prize in literary criticism.
Jung Yeo-ul is a literary critic. Jung lectures
Lee Kwang-ho is a literary critic and professor of creative literature at Seoul Institute of the Arts. His works include Love, Anonymous and Of Political Insignificance.
Hur Yoonjin is a literary critic. She is the
at Seoul National University and the Korean National University of Arts.
Kim Dongshik is a literary critic and a
professor of Korean language and literature at Inha University. He has published Cynicism and Fascination.
Kim Inae is a children’s writer, critic, and
Lee Sanghee is a poet and writer/illustrator of children’s books. Her poetry books include Goodbye, My Youth and Lightning Patterns; and children’s books, Can, and Teacher, Foolish Doctor, of which she wrote the text only. Currently, she is the director of a small library called “Pansy Illustrated Books Bus,” which is a collection of illustrated books.
Kim Ji-eun is a writer of children’s stories
Park Suk-kyoung works as a translator and
Kim Kyung-yun is a translator and writer of children’s books. Currently, she teaches Literature for Children and Youth at Joongang University and Gyeonggi University.
Park Sungchang is a literary critic and professor of Korean literature at Seoul National University. His works include Rhetoric, Korean Literature in the Glocal Age, and Challenges in Comparative Literature. He is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.
Kim Mi-hyun is a literary critic and professor of Korean Literature at Ewha Womans University. She has published Beyond Feminist Literature and Gender Prism. She was awarded the Hyundai Munhak Award and the Palbong Literary Prize for literary criticism.
Pyun Hye-young has published the short story collections Evening Courtship, AOI Garden, and To the Cages, and the novel Ashes and Red. She won the Hanguk Ilbo Literature Award in 2007 and the Lee Hyoseok Literary Award in 2007. She is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.
Kim Min-ryoung is a children’s critic. She
Ryoo Bo-sun is a literary critic and professor of Korean Literature at Gunsan National University. Ryoo has published collections of critical essays, such as Wondrous Differences and Other Voices. He won the Hyundai Munhak Award as well as the Sochon Prize for Literary Criticism. He is currently an editorial advisor to a quarterly literary magazine, Munhakdongne.
translator. Among her works are The Cat with Two Feet and Across the River Tumen and Yalu. She is on the editorial board of list_ Books from Korea. and a critic of children’s literature. She currently lectures on theories of writing fiction for children in the Department of Creative Writing at Hanshin University.
won the children’s writing category of the Munhwa Ilbo New Writer’s Award in 2006 and the criticism category of the Changbi New Children’s Writer Award in 2010.
children’s literature critic. Park is a member of the editorial committee for the Changbi Review of Children’s Literature.
Uh Soo-woong is editor-in-chief of the Chosun Ilbo Weekly Magazine.
Yi Soo-hyung is a literary critic and a senior researcher at the Seoul National University Academic Writing Lab. He studied contemporary literature, and has taught at Hongik University, Seoul Institute of the Arts, and Korea National University of Arts. Yu Gina is a film critic and professor of film
and digital media at Dongguk University. Her works include Yu Gina’s Women’s CinePromenade and Find Yourself Through Film (co-authored with Im Kwon-taek). She is on the editorial board of list_Books from Korea.
Yu Youngjin is a critic of children’s
literature and a teacher at Ja-un Elementary School. He is the author of The Body’s Imagination and Fairy Tale.
Peter J. Koh is a freelance translator and interpreter who completed KLTI's Special Workshop in 2009 and Intensive Workshop in 2010. He currently resides in Seoul.
Cho Yoonna studied English literature at Yonsei University and earned her MA in conference interpretation at the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. She is a freelance interpreter and translator. Choi Inyoung is an artist and translator. She has been translating for over 20 years. She specializes in Korean literature and the arts. Christopher Dykas is a freelance
translator. He studied German Studies and Politics at Oberlin College.
Dafna Zur is a professor of Korean
literature in Keimyung University in Daegu. Her interests lie broadly in children’s literature and folk tales of North and South Korea. She has published both scholary work and literary translation.
H. Jamie Chang received her undergraduate degree from Tufts University. She is a Bostonian/Busanian freelance translator.
Jung Yewon studied interpretation and
translation at GSIT, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Jung is currently working as a freelance interpreter/translator. Jung received the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant in 2009. She is currently working on No One Writes Back, a novel by Jang Eun-jin.
Kim Ungsan graduated in German
Literature from Seoul National University and also studied at the Free University of Berlin. He earned an MA degree in Comparative Literature. Currently he is working on a PhD in English Literature.
Park Sang-yon is a PhD candidate in
Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently helping North Korean refugees settle in the UK. She has translated a number of books and papers on Korean Studies including Suwon Hwaseong: The New City of the Joseon Dynasty Built on the Spirit of Practical Learning.
Special Edition 2011
Sue Y. Kim received her BA in English
Literature and International Studies from Ewha Womans University. She currently resides in Los Angeles, and is working on a novel in the Creative Writing program at the University of Southern California.
Yang Sung-jin is currently a staff reporter at The Korea Herald, covering new media and books. Yang wrote a Korean history book in English titled Click into the Hermit Kingdom and a news-based English vocabulary book, News English Power Dictionary. His homepage is web.me.com/sungjin.
Yi Jeong-hyeon is a freelance translator.
Translators
Contents
She has translated several books and papers on Korean Studies including Korean Traditional Landscape Architecture, and Atlas of Korean History.
Editors Kim Stoker earned an MA in Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii. She is currently a full-time lecturer at Duksung Women’s University. Krys Lee is an editor, translator, and fiction writer. Her short story collection will be published by Viking/Penguin in the US and Faber and Faber in the UK, in 2012.
Cover Art U-Ram Choe is an ar tist who has
participated in many group exhibitions at prestigious venues such as The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art; ARCO Madrid; and Museum Basel, Switzerland. He has also had many solo exhibitions since 1998, including an exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and Bitforms Gallery, New York, and was awarded the grand prize for the Posco Steel Art Award in 2006. His homepage is www.uram.net.
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From the President
Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
History & Memory People Women The Avant-garde Family Love Society & the Imagination The City Religious Transcendentalism The Diaspora
Key Themes in Children's Books 24 26 28 30 32 34
Family Friends Animals History Fantasy Playing
8 Korean Writers' Interviews: In Their Own Words 38 41 44 47 50 52 56 59
Novelist Kim Won-il Novelist Yi In-seong Novelist Park Sangwoo Novelist Kim Yeon-su Novelist Kim Ae-ran Children's Books Illustrator Hong Seongchan Children's Books Illustrator Kim Dong-sung Children's Book Writer Kim Ryeo-ryeong
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Translator's Words
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LTI Korea and I
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index
81
Published Translations Funded by LTI Korea
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
History & Memory
What History Has Forgotten, Novels Have Remembered
What happens at the meeting of history and the novel? In the sense that both depend on memory and imagination to varying degrees, they tell the same story: a fiction. Memory and imagination play an important role as subjects and tools in historiography and writing novels. In formal historiography, fragments of memories are gathered together to become a collective memory. Putting together personal, fleeting memories to create a plausible story requires the judgment of a historian, but also imagination and ideology. Novels rely more on personal rather than collective memory. In this sense, perhaps the origins of fiction are forgotten stories; stories that have faded from the collective memory have a chance to be retold as personal remembrances, thanks to novels. Regardless of whether novels contain collective or personal memories, the moment these are recorded on paper, they become a fiction that can no longer be recreated by recollection alone. Novel writing is such a task. Therefore novels try to recreate the things that history— even time—has forgotten, by trying to recall these memories through the act of writing. It is an impossible and repetitive task. At a fundamental level, novels strive not to forget such things as personal, fleeting, and sensory memories. The key point is that history has forgotten the memories known as novels, while novels recollect what history has relegated to oblivion. Fiction challenges history to be more imaginative and to remember more. If that is the case, then what are historical novels? We often consider historical novels to be novels that freely borrow various historical elements as needed; however, true historical novels restore history without using it at all. When certain historical facts akin to fictional fixed truths enter a story, what is the author's intent and intended effect? Earlier we said that novels remember what history has forgotten, and this applies to specific historical events as well. Whether placed at a specific point in time or over periods of time, novels play a role of monitoring history's forgetfulness. When certain historical events continue to call out to us from the pages of novels, the implication is that we are not yet able to let them go because their scars have yet to heal. Some novels lend a voice to those who have suffered. By allowing the silent victims of history to speak on their behalf, by letting us hear their vivid voices, novels can serve to heal and enlighten. By picking at wounds stitched up before being properly treated, novels attempt to fully treat our pain. When some historical event is repeatedly conjured up in novels, it implies that a wound remains with us, one much too deep and grievous to treat. As novels redeem the past, they gain the ability to save our present as well as our future. When fiction evokes historical events, 4
list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011
however, it does not have to do so in a heavy and sober fashion. In some cases, historical fiction can be a literary detour or kind of laboratory. While surveying the rather short history of Korean fiction, one discovers the well-known fact that during chaotic periods in Korean history, many authors began writing historical novels. Although some historical fiction used the past as a medium for opining on the future direction of the present day, other works chose historical eras far removed from the present to avoid conflict with dominant ideologies. Writing history anew had been a way to reveal the fallacies of memory, but now this act has gone further, enabling people to enjoy the inventions of writing itself. While some novels redeem history, some parts of history serve as great fiction. What kinds of historical novels have Koreans read up till now? Yi Mun-yol's The Heroic Age (Minumsa, 1984) recounts the contemporary and modern history of Korea, including the Korean War, our most gruesome historical tragedy. In those pages, he gave voice to the fallen many. The tragedy of the fratricidal war befell the stateless and was brought about by neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union, but by the mirage of ideology. In this novel, Dongyoung, a strict adherent to socialist realism, sacrifices his widowed mother, wife, and four children to his lofty ideals. But who are the perpetrators, and who are the victims? At the end of the novel, Dong-young becomes enamored with the idea of death while his wife Jung-in falls into another notion known as religion. They are all just victims of ideology. Yi Mun-yol's The Heroic Age shows that the Korean War was a tragedy that ultimately caused people to cease being human on their own accord. More accurately, human history is one of humans sacrificed to ideology. Throughout all of human history, there has been but one hero: the illusion of ideology itself. In his youth, author Yi Mun-yol considered the Korean War to be the most visible example of humans sacrificed to ideology, and decided to write a novel about this period. While doing so, the author perhaps dreamed about an age when humans, not ideology, would become the real heroes. Kim Joo-young's autobiographical novels including A Skate Fish (Munidang, 1998) and Anchovy (Munidang, 2002), are concerned with a boy's recollection of simple individuals far removed from the grand narratives of history. These two novels contain accounts of a wife awaiting her husband's return, and a boy who longs to meet his missing sister and mother. The author himself says he wrote these novels from reflections on his childhood, so calling them personal rather than collective historical fiction is appropriate. How can one reproduce individual, rather than collective, memories? A Skate Fish opens with a somewhat dreamy atmosphere of
snow falling on a mountain village, focusing on the extremely confined space of a house with just a mother and son. Historical background is irrelevant in this cramped space, where time itself appears to have stopped. The characters in the story wait endlessly for someone to arrive. Kim simplified the temporal and spatial background, characters, and narrative events so he could focus in detail on the individual psychology of longing. The epic narrative known as history inevitably confuses chronological relationships with causal ones, leading to cases in which falsehoods are accepted as truths. At the same time, history makes the mistake of erasing personal, fragmentary, and sensory memories from our collective remembrance. The stories of the humble characters in Kim Joo-young's novels were written to combat such an epic version of history. What is the reason author Kim Hoon evoked Admiral Yi Sun-shin, who perished in battle? Kim Hoon began his career as a reporter on the Arts beat. His first novel, Song of the Sword, begins with the following lines: "I didn't feel that any contemporary values were worthy... I decided to get rid of all my pity for mankind." In April 1597, Yi Sun-shin was released by the High Crimes Tribunal to serve as a common conscript in the navy. Roughly two years later he would die in the sea battle of Noryangjin. Kim's novel covers this two-year period in Yi's life, focusing on a realistic portrayal of the battles and events narrated transparently from Yi's first-person perspective. Song of the Sword disregarded the historical background and ideological circumstances of the times to focus solely on portraying the chilly inner world of a man confined to the battlefield, constantly facing the meaning of life and death. Kim's distinctive style is characterized by a terse dry prose and impressive sensory depictions that reject all ideology and symbolism. Kim's first work reflected this worldview verbatim. By rejecting all contemporary values, Kim was able to comprehend the remarkable world of Yi Sun-shin, a historical figure who immersed himself in battle, the world of life and death.
The history that Kim evokes in the story, a history of war (Admiral Yi's and Kim Hoon's war), is an empty one. The novel doesn't rewrite history so much as it chooses not to write about it. Kim was able to penetrate to the essence of Admiral Yi's personal Nanjung-ilgi (Wartime Diary); the story he subsequently wrote was like his own personal diary. That the story of Admiral Yi Sun-shin was told by Kim is both coincidental and inevitable. One gets the sense that it was not Kim who sought out Yi Sunshin to present Kim's worldview, but Yi who sought out Kim. They were destined to meet and resemble one other. Kim Takhwan's The Banggakbon Murder Case (Minumsa, 2003) is classified as a historical mystery novel in which history and fiction meet as equals. This story, set during the reign of King Jeongjo of the Joseon era, recounts in the mystery format the attempts of the White Pagoda faction including Park Ji-won, Hong Dae-yong, Yi Deok-mu, Kim Hong-do, and others to join the Kyujanggak (Joseon Royal Library). The dreams, ambitions, and political limitations of the White Pagoda faction recounted in the story can be found in the politics of modern Korean society. The characters are all real historical figures that have been recalled to the present to create an entertaining tale, but at the same time the author raises thoughtful issues and stimulates interest in Korea's past through the use of the mystery novel genre. Novels use historical facts to create entertaining stories, but it could be said that historical fiction ultimately serves to reproduce history. What are historical novels? In the novels we've looked at, while historical fiction sheds new light on past events, in the end they illuminate the relationship between remembrance and forgetting, the meaning of human existence, and the role of novels themselves. By Cho Yeon-jung
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1. Le chant du sabre Kim Hoon, Gallimard, 2006 4
2. Sardellen Kim Joo-young, Peperkorn, 2007 3. 洪魚 Kim Joo-young, 上海译文出版社, 2008 4. The Heroic Age (2 Volumes) Yi Mun-yol, Minumsa Publishing Group 1984, 386p, ISBN 8937400359 (Vol. 1) 5. Les Romans Meurtriers Kim Takhwan, Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2010
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
People
A Beautiful Country Is a Community of the Imagination
One of the great challenges that Korean literature faces in the postmodern period is how to invent a meaningful community of imagination that can satisfy the following equation: people = state (or capital). This paradigm is deeply related to the fact that Korean history in the postmodern era progressed under the people ≠ state (or capital) model. Around the time that Korea was independently forming the idea that people = state (= capital), the Japanese Empire forced Korea to pursue the people ≠ state paradigm. Even after Korea's liberation, this paradigm continued unchanged, with the Cold War unavoidably perpetuating it, leading to the division of the peninsula under two different nations and political ideologies. Another problem, however, was that the people ≠ state model caused Koreans to become obsessed with the people = state paradigm as an absolute good, which they espoused and idealized. Therefore the people ≠ state paradigm has been the biggest cause of unhappiness in modern Korea. That is why literature, which has the power to reconstruct new worlds in a manner different from that of politics, had to conceive of a people = state paradigm completely different from political incarnations of this idea. As a result, Korean literature has been unable to put to rest its interest in what form the people = state paradigm should take. The first representative work of Korean fiction that focused on a sincere reflection of the sense of a meaningful community was Park Kyongni's novel, Land. This novel focused on Koreans' hardships from the country's colonization to liberation. However Land didn't focus solely on the ordeals of the people who learned through bitter experience what the people ≠ empire paradigm entailed. Park's novel reconstructed and reproduced the miserable people ≠ empire model from history, while at the same time uncovered a meaningful form of coexistence between the people, the state, and capital while also offering ideological roots to support this harmonious condition. A c c ord i n g to L a n d , pr e mo d e r n K or e a n h i s tor y w a s characterized by han, or “unresolved regret.” Before the people ≠ state paradigm emerged, Korea had been a hereditary class-based society. Each person's life was predetermined at birth, leaving only three kinds of lives to choose from: a life of greed, led by a powerful superego whose desires could control Korea’s class-based society; a life of denial of the superego's desires in favor of personal ones; or a life of built-up despair and anger caused by being able to neither give in to the superego's desires nor reject them. In the novel, most premodern Koreans chose the third kind of life, so they were people with a lot of han. Of course, people strove to become free souls. Just before Korea's modern efforts to implement people = state paradigm could bear fruit, Korea was colonized. Suddenly relegated 6
list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011
to colonial status, Korea became a society yielding to the individual along the lines of 'to hell with everything as long as I survive.' In this way, the pent-up han of the pre-modern era degenerated into deep resentment and revenge. Thus began countless dramas involving endless greed and betrayal. The sudden rise of an absurd paradigm in which people ≠ state ≠ capital fundamentally blocked any opportunity for han to be sublimated through individual free will. This is the view of the Korean colonial period espoused in Park’s Land. Yet this novel also contains a message of hope which arises amidst the crisis of the people ≠ state paradigm. The author believed that a powerful commitment to implement the people = state paradigm would inevitably be distorted into imperialism or totalitarianism. Therefore he urgently called for another form of this paradigm, namely one based on life affirmation, as depicted in Land. In order to overcome lives filled with unresolved regret, Koreans have had to recognize the need to get along with other creatures, people, and nations, all of which are precious living things. Simply put, the onslaught of Japanese imperialism brought utter misery to Koreans through the people ≠ state model, but instead of seeking vengeance, Park’s book urges them to forgive their transgressors. Only then can world peace and a future of promise become possible. The desire to take revenge for unresolved regret evokes the present-day world filled with cannon smoke, suggesting that Land may offer meaning to the current era as well. Even after Korean liberation from Japanese colonization, however, the status quo could not be replaced by the people = state paradigm. The Cold War following WWII essentially made Koreans themselves forgo the road to a new model of governance. After liberation, Korea was divided into three spheres of influence: two of these groups consisted of Koreans who supported the American or Soviet sides during the Cold War, while the third group sought to ensure Korean people's self-respect and survival amidst foreign influences. Due to the impregnability of the Cold War order, however, the Korean people became divided into two countries under the people ≠ state model after liberation. Furthermore, in its early days, the Cold War impasse was quite contentious, giving differing political groups the opportunity to jockey for power. This excessive conformity to the new order eventually led to the Korean War. Jo Jung-rae's Taebaek Mountain Range focused precisely on these historical circumstances, fictionalizing the most decisive trend in modern Korean history. Amidst the vivid backdrop of the town of Beolgyo (in South Jeolla province), Jo describes the period
1. Land Park Kyongni, Secolo Verlag, 2000 2. 太白山脈 Jo Jung-rae, Shueisha, 1999 3. されど Hong Sung-won, Honnoizumi, 2010 1
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in history from the Yeosun Incident (1948 rebellion in Yeosu and Suncheon against the Syngman Rhee government) up to the Korean War. Among the three forces mentioned earlier, Jo chose to focus on Korean nationalists fighting against “cold warriors” opposed to the implementation of the people = state model. His protagonists, in seeking to create a true people = state system, reevaluated all of Korean history in order to invent a Cold War counter-ideology. There were also the Americans and Soviets who aimed to make Korean national division permanent, as well as their proxies who, in a quest to grab power in Korea, played the role of loyal agents. Both the Cold War and those forces complicit with this new order soon become quite secure, without gaps in their proverbial armor. The forces in favor of pushing forward with the people = state paradigm came up against the powerful Cold War order which had embedded itself throughout the world. Although Korean nationalists tragically struggled against it, their gambit against fate failed. Ultimately, however, Taebaek Mountain Range was not exclusively despondent about the Cold War order and the proxies responsible for the division of Korea, as it maintained a ray of hope. The novel clearly showed that there were chinks in the armor of national division. By prying open and entering these gaps, human emotions could discover moral facets able to break the stranglehold of national division. The world assumes that people must be sacrificed to drive global capitalism, with capital itself personified by its mandate to further expand and reproduce itself. The characters in the novel suffer endlessly under the heel of foreign powers, capitalists, and landowners. Despite their alienation, they learn to realize the ego through caring for others. Jo suggests building a new community with such people at the core. Taebaek Mountain Range asserts that these humans must be the center of any people = state paradigm and serve as a blueprint for the future of humanity. In short, Jo's novel proposes a structure for post-capitalist globalism while also containing precious wisdom for creating a peaceful world. Hong Sung-won's However recounts the life and times of a contradictory character who spends the first half of his life in determined resistance to the Japanese Empire, but, tempted by love in the second half of his life, ends up betraying his comrades. The novel is written from the point of view of a well-known Korean independence fighter's biographer, who begins to write about the events from the great patriot's life. While gathering materials about his subject’s life, the biographer encounters a succession of unexpected events as he begins his investigation. He learns that the first half of the hero's life was spent in Korea, where he was clearly one of its most upstanding patriots. However, the latter part of his
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life was veiled in secrecy, with many deeds that were a far cry from his previous heroics. The biographer belatedly discovers that the patriot fell victim to the wiles of a Japanese woman who incited him not only to betray his comrades, but to also betray the Korean people. The one-time patriot fell in love with his treacherous mistress, who bore him a son and daughter. While digging into the patriot's later life, the biographer meets the hero's son living in China and his daughter living in Japan. The biographer becomes friends with them, even falls in love, and comes to some realizations from this string of experiences. Namely, that while the patriot answered the call of his country, he also pursued his personal desires. The hero was a free and mobile spirit, a Korean, and a world citizen all at the same time. From this point of view, the biographer reflects on past events and decides to acknowledge the parts which must be acknowledged, and to understand the parts which must be understood. The patriot of However embodies the differences between nations and also encourages Koreans not to return the hurt and pain of invasion with more of the same. The novel proposes a practical morality that can contribute to world peace while also attempting to find a better form of the people = state model. "I want my country to be the most beautiful in the world, not the most wealthy or powerful. As my heart aches from the wounds of invasion, I don't want my country to invade others... Therefore I want the people to create true peace in Korea that will also be realized throughout the world." These were the words of Korean patriot Kim Gu. Although he suffered horribly from foreign invasion, he urged forgiveness from a heart of magnanimity, calling for the establishment of a beautiful country that could contribute to world peace. Seen from this perspective, Land, Taebaek Mountain Range, and However have successfully restored Kim Gu's revolutionary idea of building a beautiful country, an idea which had almost floated into historical oblivion. Perhaps this is a better way to see things: only through the great literary achievements of these three novels was Kim Gu's idea able to be seen in a context of genuine historical philosophy. In any case, despite the cruel suffering of Koreans under the people ≠ state paradigm and the temptation to fall into the people = state model, Korea's grand tradition of continually seeking truth is alive and well. By Ryoo Bo-sun
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
Women
His-story, Her-story, Our-story
The turning point for women’s writing in Korea came in the late 1980s. Postmodernism had made its appearance along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, resulting in an increased scrutiny on the literature of the past written mostly by men about men, with a focus on ideology and reason. Now women writers in the 21st century are evolving in a direction that emphasizes the differences in rights over duty and power over disenfranchisement. Korean women’s writing stands out as a successful example of thinking globally and acting locally in the literary sphere, more so than any other subgenre of literature. Korean women writers stand not only for the empowerment of women but society as a whole in their criticism of the country’s traditional patriarchy, jingoism, and plutocracy. Oh Jung-hee’s “Evening Games” (1979) is a quiet yet chilling depiction of the war disguised as a game between an old, ailing father and his daughter that increasingly resembles him. The source of their conflict may be traced back to the absent members of the family: the mother, driven out of her mind by the father’s infidelity, the younger sibling that she killed, and the older brother who ran away from home to escape everything. It is no wonder that the games of hwatu the father and daughter play every night in the absence of these three family members are only peaceful on the surface. Even more dangerous than these, however, are the “evening games” the daughter plays every night by going out to have depraved sex with anonymous men. Her self-destructive, escapist decision, born out of despair and anger at her mother’s destroyed life, is also the ultimate act of rebellion against the patriarchy symbolized by her father. These acts of escapism subvert the submissive image of traditional women. Oh Junghee uses the uncanny as a means of exposing the dark side of women’s lives, in which the familiar dog may suddenly turn into a strange wolf. Her macabre, shocking images of depraved sex, child abandonment, infanticide, and arson serve to illustrate the unbending strength of the patriarchal order and reject any complacent idea of salvation or redemption in women’s lives. Gong Jiyoung’s Go Alone Like a Musso’s Horn (1993) caused a catalytic uproar in feminist discourse when it was published in the early 1990s. In the novel the unhappy marriages of the three protagonists Hye-wan, Gyeong-hye, and Yeong-seon 8
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1. Mongolian Spot (The 2005 Yi Sang Literature Prizewinning Stories) Han Kang, et al., Munhaksasang Co., Ltd. 2005, 378p, ISBN 9788970126746 2. サイの角のようにひとりで行け Gong Jiyoung, 新幹社, 1998 3. Zeit zum Toastbacken Jo Kyung-ran, Pendragon, 2005
paint a detailed picture of the inequality middle-class women face in their daily lives. Given that these women all had the potential to succeed and flourish on their own, their failure and despair cannot be chalked up to personal shortcomings but social and structural ones. The main character, Hye-wan, is the youngest of three daughters and bears the scars of having been continuously found lacking for not having born a son. After her own son dies she thinks she might get a job but her patriarchal husband forbids it, which eventually leads to their divorce. Her friend Gyeong-hye capitalized on her looks to land a good marriage, but sinks into self-destructive infidelity to get back at her cheating husband. Another friend, Yeong-son, sacrifices everything for her husband only to be betrayed by him and commits suicide. The unhappy marriages of these women expose how dominant the male hierarchy is in Korean society. Is it not even more chilling, the author asks, that the aberrant behavior of these husbands is actually considered normal? This is where Gong insists that it is imperative that women should be able to stand on their own feet “like a rhinoceros’s horn” in order to break away from this unequal hierarchy. In this sense the novel proposes that conflict and confrontation is unavoidable as a process towards the goal of “debating or fighting with men then finally being able to hold hands and move forward.” Women must become independent before they can stand side by side with men. Jo Kyung-ran’s Time for Baking Bread (1996) takes another approach to the problem of women’s growth. Often read to be as much about family as feminism, the protagonist of this novel searches through her family and personal history to discover her true identity on the occasion of her 30th birthday, all the while making sandwich bread, brioche, croissants, soboro bread, pies, and crepes. The reality of having an aunt who was actually her mother, a lover suffering from amnesia who does not remember that he was in love with his half-sister, a father who committed suicide a week after the day of her mother’s death, and an inverted nipple that made her feel like an unbalanced person forces her to undergo a familial, mental, and physical weaning. The problem, however, is that the pain that comes from her family, her relationships, and her body exist only as background noise. The unusual premise of this novel is that these kinds of pain are not special at all. The protagonist is already too jaded to believe that personal growth will lead to inclusion in a perfect world. There is no perfect world, and there is no way that the protagonist can grow satisfactorily. It is impossible to believe in personal growth with this knowledge. On the other hand, however, it is also childish to refuse to grow at all. Acknowledging the limits of personal growth but refusing to be discouraged by it, and using it to build a better understanding of the world, is what enables the protagonist to grow while not growing. Thus Jo Kyung-ran’s Time for Baking Bread departs from the conventional bildungsroman where the objective is to gain acceptance from society, moving through a linear timeline that goes from separation to development, opting instead for a different kind of feminist bildungsroman. In this case a cyclical timeline focusing on relationships and repetition shows how complete acceptance in society is impossible. This is because with women’s growth the problem is often not growth itself but what comes after, and because inner growth that enables a better understanding of the world is often more relevant than growth aimed at dominating the world. Masculinity is commonly equated with civilization, reason, progress, and death, while femininity is equated with nature, feelings, the primitive, and life. This can be taken further to
equate masculinity with the animal, and femininity with the vegetal. Of course this kind of binary opposition runs the danger of oversimplifying and antagonizing the relationship of the sexes. Notwithstanding this drawback, however, it is undeniable that the male-centric civilization of modern society has contributed to the dehumanization of humanity. Han Kang’s Mongolian Spot opens up the possibility of an eco-feminist discourse that focuses on how the animal nature of modern civilization destroyed primeval humanity and the vegetal quality of femininity from a broader human perspective than the conflict between men and women. This is where the author’s predisposition toward an escape from the isolation of civilized society meets feminism. Mongolian Spot revolves around the story of a video artist suffering from a creative block. He paints a flower motif on the body of his wife’s sister, who still retains a Mongolian spot as an adult, and then has sex with her. The sister-in-law’s Mongolian spot is what sparks the action. A vegetarian who dreams of becoming a tree, her vegetal sympathies are illustrated in the video artist’s words describing the spot as “not sexual at all but actually rather vegetal, evocative of something primeval, not evolved, a mark of photosynthesis perhaps.” The Mongolian spot of this story, then, may actually signal the recovery of humanity unsullied by modern civilization as the “photosynthesizing, mutant animal” known as man pursues life in its pure, unadulterated form. The vegetal utopia suggested as an alternative to the dystopian reality brought about by man’s animal instincts in Han Kang’s Mongolian Spot propounds a green morality that illustrates the universality in 21st century women’s writing. By Kim Mi-hyun
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
The Avant-garde
Contextualizing Korean Literature and Experimentation
The history of modern Korean literature has been one that identifies the writing of literature with the question of what is literature. On the one hand the rise of realism and lyric poetry put verisimilitude before everything else; while on the other hand they treated the question of what it means to write as the subject of literature. Realism and lyric poetry are similar in that both seek to identify reality (or emotions) with the language of literature. Avant-garde literature in Korea departs from this mechanism of identity by objectifying the language and subject of literature, seeking instead to examine the difference that lies between the two. The writers in this school are associated with a strong commitment to writing in the modernist tradition. This does not mean that their interest lies in modernism for its own sake. Questioning the identity of literature is also one of the most modern questions that can be asked about literature. The awakening of self-examination may be called one of the defining characteristics of modernism, and modern Korean literature took up that trend by writing about the question of writing itself. This involved proving in the most avant-garde language that the modern was the most realistic, rather than simply seeking out new experiments. In other words, these writers have avoided pitting modernity as a posturing against realism as an ideal. This aesthetic effort was made possible by the socio-cultural conditions of modern society that gave birth to a new generation of literary subjects as well as the cultural awareness that a freer literature could be the sharpest critic of reality. One of the most iconic stories of the colonial period, Yi Sang’s “Wings” (1936), stands out as a symbolic milestone of this literary trend. This story may be understood as an examination of modern identity in an urban environment constructed by the forces of colonialism. The first-person narrator lives off the earnings of his wife, a prostitute, in a colonial city where personal and social spheres are completely detached from each other. The central aesthetic motive of the story lies in the desire to save the individual from the numbing and powerlessness that arise when a market economy takes over one’s life. Formerly paralyzed by ennui, childish self-isolation, and dependence, an outing to the city reveals to the protagonist how everything is ruled by the market and how ironic life is for everyone who lives there. Irony is the only way the “genius that became a stuffed specimen” in the story may expose the modernity of the city. He is the keenest 10
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observer within the colonial city as well as an introspective, self-destructive outsider thinking outside the city. By taking this sensation of being simultaneously fascinated by modernity and repelled by the modernity ushered in by colonialism to the extreme, Yi Sang is positioned at the avant-garde of literary modernity. Suh Jung-in emerged in the literary scene of the 1960s. His novel Talgung (1988) weaves together a series of interlinked stories. Suh’s unique style is central to examining his work, and that style is characterized by an ironic affinity for wordplay, anadiplosis, and anastrophe. The objective of this style is to dismantle the identification of ideas and reality. This in turn results from a tireless examination of reality and language. The book is divided into 300 sections that defy any attempt to summarize the plot, as all the characters appear in episodes of equal weight. In what may be called the confessions of a woman orphaned by the Korean War, the characters spend years wandering and repeating the process of escapes and returns. Their vivid exploits and realistic conversations make up most of the novel, in which through myriad relationships, Suh captures the tragic irony inherent to human life and society. The narrator’s remarkable self-perception and reserved, intelligent gaze discourages casual judgment. The aesthetic strength of this novel rests on its refusal to sacrifice any object or character to a dominant value or gaze. Yi In-seong’s Seasons of Exile (1983) is a collection of interlinked stories by one of the most important writers of the 1980s in Korea. The stories of this ingenious collection may be read individually on their own merit or together as part of a novel. They follow the inner struggles of the first-person narrator on his way back to Seoul after being granted a compassionate discharge from the army because his father died. After visiting his father’s grave the protagonist is struck by guilt that his father’s death may have been his fault. He almost kills himself because of this, but eventually returns to Seoul with fresh resolve. The reason for the anxiety and suspense that accompany the main action of the collection is revealed only at the very end. The process in which this wound of love is revealed is a painful journey that traverses the very being of the protagonist, but clears the way for new questions and meanings in his life. Thus this collection of linked stories is both a kind of bildungsroman that records how the protagonist overcomes his suicidal urges and an experimental
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novel describing his innermost thoughts with excruciating detail. Breaking out of the accepted role of a narrator, the language of this work delivers nothing in a straightforward, linear manner but follows the every rise and fall of a troubled youth’s confusion and search for self. This singular example of experimental fiction from the 1980s sketches the inner life of a youth and an era in an intense, innovative style. Kim Yeon-su is one of the most promising writers in Korean literature today whose short story collection I Am a Ghostwriter (2005) may be considered a turning point in his work. This collection brings together nine stories that illuminate the many facets of human and literary truth that lie beyond official records. The author shows adept skill at reconstructing superficial facts overlooked by official history and records, drawing upon numerous texts from the humanities. All in all the collection shows off the writer’s serious yet multifaceted interests, attentive, deliberate style, and witty, graceful humor. The eponymous ghostwriter narrator reflects the author’s perception of himself as a writer. While the protagonist may be a creator of fiction, that space does not belong to him alone. He is a ghost-like figure who is compelled to write the stories of relationships in society that have yet to be turned into fiction. The author explores the stories untold in the accepted canon, reading between the lines of history and official records in search of figures hidden in the dark. Notwithstanding his many endearing attributions as an author associated with humanism, a deep understanding of generational angst, and an unmistakably romantic bent, what makes Kim Yeon-su a key figure in modern Korean literature is his piercing grasp of the self and writing as evinced in the title story of this collection. Park Min-gyu is another one of the most popular writers of the 2000s, writing with a light touch and levity about not-toolight subjects. His Legends of the World’s Heroes (2003) is a satire of American imperialism acted out through American comic book heroes such as Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman. The exploits of these American-born superheroes serve as the perfect vehicle for exposing the supremacist assumptions behind them. The protagonist Bananaman, named so because he is “yellow on the outside but white on the inside,” is forever doomed to remain on the fringes of a predominantly white society although
1. Flores de Fuego Yi Sang, Ediciones Bassarai, 2001 2. Legends of the World’s Heroes Park Min-gyu, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2003, 187p, ISBN 9788982816796 3. Talgung Suh Jung-in, Seuil, 2001 4. I’m a Ghostwriter Kim Yeon-su, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 255p, ISBN 9788936436858 5. Saisons d’exil Yi In-seong, L’Harmattan, 2004
he has managed to wrangle one of the superhero slots formerly reserved for white Americans. It is not too hard to read his role of perpetual sidekick to other, “real” American heroes as a satire of the Third World that is subjugated by the American heroes they idolize. Park’s treatment of an unusual subject for a Korean novel is ingenious to say the least, using comic book heroes to create a world where fantasy is indistinguishable from reality. It is easy to see what makes him so popular with his readers, from his humorous, wry style of writing to his fast pacing, unconventional spacing, ingenious interpretation of popular culture, and deep compassion for the so-called losers excluded from mainstream society. Most importantly, however, is the fact that this irreverent author still belongs to the tradition of modern Korean writers that consciously questions what it means to write literature. By Lee Kwang-ho
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
Family
The Decline of the Patriarch, the Rise of the Matriarch
Trauma, or the Mother as Origin I think it is no coincidence that the most notable Korean novels on the theme of family have the mother narrative at their core. A mother’s worldview and the values she instills in her children play a defining role in a child’s life. What is the image that comes to mind when we think of mothers? One who protects me, one who will stand by me to the end, one who will sacrifice everything for me. We have been harboring so many selfish prejudices and unjust fantasies of what a mother should be. People often forget that a mother is also a woman, a human being, someone’s daughter, and someone’s wife. People tend to seek relief from the duties of reciprocal relationships in this world by expecting to take and not give back in mother-child relationships. Our lives consist of being born into a family, creating a new one, and saying goodbye to each member as we grow older and die. The coining of the term, “single-person family” is a testament to how quickly the concept of family is changing today. As the institution of family begins to shrink and disintegrate, people develop and yearn for increasingly romantic and idealistic conceptions of happy families. While it appears as though the family is disintegrating, family is still the most basic building block of society, as well as a source of literature from which literature is born.
Kim Won-il, The House with the Sunken Courtyard Kim Won-il’s The House with the Sunken Courtyard is a story of a family that loses the father in war. Gilnam, who is forced to take on the role of head of the household at an early age, is groomed by his mother’s authoritarian childrearing. As a child, he must become class monitor or an honor roll student. As an adult, he must become a judge, a doctor, or a wealthy man. This pressure to follow the elite path all the way to the top is an obsession that fuels the success stories of postwar Koreans. All communication with the father is cut off, and the once left-wing father becomes a myth. The mother’s maternal instincts turn controlling and disciplinarian, revealing a healing and protecting nature in an extreme form. For the mother, the son becomes a male figure that rises to fill his father’s shoes. To teach his son that the city is a ruthless place, Gilnam’s mother sends her son on a paper route rather than sending him to school. She adds coldly, “I don’t care if you become hired help at a tavern or a peddler” if he cannot handle a paper route. It was a simpler time when “more pain, more gain” made logical sense. There was nothing more important in life at the time than eluding the grasp of poverty, so the mother naturally taught her son nothing other than survival skills. Gilnam’s mother habitually tells him, “You 12
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are now the eldest son of a family without a father. In this world, poverty is the worst sin of all. You know how cruel the world can be to people like us, don’t you?” The House with the Sunken Courtyard portrays the origins of the deep-seated Korean idea that being a classically filial son means being class monitor, valedictorian, and then judge or doctor.
Park Wansuh, Mom’s Stake Park Wansuh’s Mom’s Stake is set in the distant past when people bought into the idea that anyone who tries can succeed. We see a mother who sees her child’s success as her own success. The mother, who received no education herself and lost her son in the war, seeks to vicariously make all her dreams come true through her daughter. This novel depicts an uncanny portrait of motherhood as a symbol of control and oppression and well of frustrated dreams. The maternal instinct rears its head in the worst form as the mother forces her daughter to be an educated woman and marry a rich husband. One of Park Wansuh’s talents is her stark uncovering of the unexpected yet fatal wounds and filthy desires hiding behind the happy façade of the middle-class family. The ugly selfishness and materialistic desires lurking behind the perfect housewife façade keeps the tension taut in Park’s novels, which always revolve around the mother figure. Park seems to be gifted in depicting her ambivalent feelings toward her mother who grew up too soon in the throes of war and then lost her husband and son to yet another war. Her life as a lonely widowed mother and grandmother was much longer than her life as a free, young lady. Mom’s Stake is a story of a daughter who belatedly understands her mother by enduring the same pains, which only a mother can understand.
Shin Kyung-sook, Please Look After Mom Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom is the number one bestselling Korean novel of the past decade. A story about a mother who disappears one day after a lifetime of sacrificing herself to keep the family together, Please Look After Mom created a “Mother Syndrome” in Korea and put the issue of defining “family” on the table. Lately, Korea has seen an increase in the number of people who wage lonely battles to protect themselves as the societal safety net begins to disintegrate. Welfare has taken a turn for the worse, and a general anxiety that “no one is looking out for us” continues to rise. Fathers, to make matters worse, have proven unable to overcome obstacles in the face of various financial crises in recent decades, further disseminating the subconscious message that
“mothers are our only hope.” Though Please Look After Mom is a controversial novel that draws a moving picture of a sad, unsettling neo-matriarchal society, some pointed out that Please Look After Mom failed to break free from a hyper-mythologized and sanctified idea of motherhood. If everyone turns to mothers for help, whom should mothers turn to? Please Look After Mom reminds us of the fact that a woman who has spent her life sacrificing herself for the family has another life we do not know about, and that mothers also need mothers and someone’s tender, loving care. Even the most ardent critics of the traditional idea of motherhood confess that they read Please Look After Mom with a tissue in hand. The mother is still very much a figure of pathos and the only one we can count on in a world where no one is to be trusted. Please Look After Mom is one of the best novels of the 21st century to explore the limits and possibilities of the Korean family.
Kim Ae-ran, Run, Pop, Run! There are still many single mothers in Korea combating social prejudices and handling incredible workloads with superhuman patience and independence. Kim Ae-ran’s short story, “Run, Pop, Run!” is an interesting tale that opens with the first person confession of a girl raised by a single mother. The most refreshing difference between this story and all other stories featuring a single mother or, as a matter of fact, any mother-daughter relationship, is that the usual words associated with these scenarios—pity, sadness, loneliness, and pain—have no place in this story. When an unplanned pregnancy chases the frightened father away, the mother raises her child alone by driving a cab. In place of such emotionally draining commiserations, they have their sense of humor that bonds them and keeps them going. The mother teaches her daughter not to feel sorry for herself, and that there is nothing shameful about their relationship, just as “there is no shame in buying a standing room ticket.” Instead of using strict, educational rhetoric with her daughter, she communicates with her daughter like a friend or a girl next door, keeping the humor rolling between the two. Through this story, we dream of a family relationship that inspires creations, not one in which a child runs from her parents lest the sins of the latter taints her future, or a parent worries that her child will become an embarrassment. “Run, Pop, Run!” is truly a landmark work for it depicts the first motherdaughter relationship in the history of Korean literature that is not based on resentment or pity.
Toward the Liberation of Motherhood The economic crises have ushered in an era of neo-matriarchy where fathers have retired to the sidelines and mothers have had to summon superhuman strength to keep things running. In a society where it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve oneself, let alone take responsibility for a child’s development, education, future, and marriage, mothers have found a way to take full control and bring in change. Past forms of motherhood such as sacrifice and healing have given way to science and methods of commanding and control. Motherhood cannot survive on a mother’s self-effacing sacrifice and a child’s obedience alone. Related or not, both parties must continue to create new lives and challenges. From The House with the Sunken Courtyard to “Run, Pop, Run!”, Koreans have demonstrated their immutable desire to move to the capital of Seoul and to places more urban with greater cultural opportunities. The family has always been behind the desire to move up society’s vertical hierarchy. From the mother of Mom’s Stake who wants to educate her daughter and see to it that she becomes affluent, to the drama-free mother-daughter relationship in “Run, Pop, Run!”, the mother has been both a symbol of sacrifice and oppression. When we reach “Run, Pop, Run!” we encounter a mother figure who does not try to oppress or control, but is like a friend who wishes to discuss everything and meet her child eye to eye. It took 60 years to get to such a place. The key to the liberation of the family lies in the liberation of mothers. The new act of filial piety, then, is perhaps to liberate our mothers from the burdens of motherhood imposed on them. By Jung Yeo-ul
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1. Le piquet de ma mère Park Wansuh, Actes Sud, 1993 2. Das Haus am tiefen Hof Kim Won-il, Iudicium, 2000 3. Run, Pop, Run! Kim Ae-ran, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 268p, ISBN 9788936436902 4. Please Look After Mom Shin Kyung-sook, Knopf, 2011
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
Love
Reinventing Romantic Love
Romantic love is a historical phenomenon that appeared with the advent of modernism. Today, it is common knowledge that people get married because they love one another. But it was not until after the advent of romantic love that love became a condition for marriage and the causal relationship between love and marriage was established. Before romantic love became the social norm, people were often given the freedom to pursue romantic love after they had fulfilled the duty of marriage. Romantic love, no matter how you look at it, has a commanding influence on the concept and image of love today. Romantic love was a new freedom that emerged with modernism. An affirmation of individual freedom, along with romantic love, was more widely recognized, and a new order was built on the freedom of sentiments. People started to yearn for purely romantic relationships based on emotional connections, rather than class, power, or other external factors, and in the process a new theory of subjectivity called “affective individualism” emerged, giving rise to the passionate romance -> marriage -> home sweet home model. After romantic love, individual lives became open projects that allowed room for new desires and new anxieties, and love became a fateful process of enchantment on the way to a complete life. The novel played no small role in establishing romantic love as the modern myth. 17th century French writer François de La Rochefoucauld once said that people could not even have imagined falling in love if they had not read about love in books, and has argued that romantic love is a literary creation in many ways. As numerous stories of romantic love became popularized in the novel form, romantic love became a modern myth and the mass desire for romantic love became structuralized. Here is where we find the reason German sociologist Niklas Luhmann referred to the novel as a form of generalized media on love. If so, what forms of love do we encounter in novels of the 21st century? Let’s briefly examine the meaning of love in contemporary Korean society through a few novels published since the 1990s. A Gift from a Bird is Eun Hee-kyung’s first novel. In this book, Eun offers a scrupulous portrayal of Korean lives and customs in the 1960s when Korea first entered the era 14
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1. 鸟的礼物 Eun Hee-kyung, 人民文学出版社, 2007 2. Romantic Love and Society Jung Yi-hyun, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2003, 251p, ISBN 9788932014487 3. Voleur d'oeufs Yun Dae-nyeong, L’Harmattan, 2003
of industrialization. The novel opens with the scene where people are watching the moon landing in 1969. The first moon landing was a great scientific accomplishment, but it was also the end of mystified and romantic notions of the moon. The romantic belief that a rabbit sits under the laurel tree on the moon was shattered when man landed on the moon and discovered that it was a just a dry, rabbit-less, desolate place. Love in Eun’s novel is not very different from the demystified moon. The protagonist is a nice, average, 12-year-old named Jinhee who believes: “I don’t have to grow past the age of 12.” For the adolescent girl, life is just a joke. Why does she not feel the need to grow? Beneath Jinhee’s cool exterior are wounds inf licted by her mother’s suicide and her father’s absence. For Jinhee, life is just a succession of scars. If love is a part of life, romantic expectations will also someday become a scar. For her, romantic expectations of love are as clichéd as life is boring. As an adult, Jinhee lives with her uncle’s friend. They’re not married, and they don’t have children together. Jinhee does not see love as an object of desire or a fate she has to follow. It is nothing more than a show that involves coincidence, humor, and cynicism. Yun Dae-nyeong’s Beetle Woman is about love in the information and digital era. Yi Seong-ho wakes up at a subway station on Christmas Eve and realizes that he has lost his memory. He happens to meet a woman of short stature named Seo Hasuk who spends all day on the computer and moves in with her. Ha-suk recommends a memory transplant method for him that connects information by dots, resembling the movement of beetles. Seong-ho gets a memory transplant from a man named Yi Myeong-gu and as proof, he gets a beetle tattoo on his shoulder. Seong-ho is increasingly overcome with the desire to murder Cha Su-jeong, Myeong-gu’s ex-lover. Seong-ho had received Myeonggu’s memory of wanting to kill Su-jeong for being unfaithful. Later, Seong-ho finds a beetle tattoo on Ha-suk’s shoulder. She had bought Su-jeong’s memory. In Yun Dae-nyeong’s novel, love takes the form of salvation and fate. Why did Ha-suk buy Su-jeong’s memory when it could have killed her? What she bought wasn’t simply Su-jeong’s memory but also the possibility of love, which gives Ha-suk the sense of assurance that she has a destiny. She’s already too jaded to believe that love can be a fateful process of enchantment that brings one’s life to perfection, but the possibility of love will add new desires and anxieties to her life. The romance of love is gone, but love remains a subconscious desire. Ha-suk’s subconscious desire is that love will be her most basic salvation or destiny. “I don’t wear lace panties.” This is the first sentence in Jung Yi-hyun’s Romantic Love and Society. The introduction of Volkswagen’s new Beetle in the 90s symbolizes all the aspirations of Yuri, the protagonist. She desires money, fame, and style in life, but all she really has is her body—her virginity, to be exact. Laceless panties represent virginity in this story. She meets various men and allows them her hands, a kiss, or her breasts, depending on their status. She uses her sexuality like currency. But no one gets into her panties. She finally meets the man of her dreams, and they agree to buy her social status with her virginity. But for some reason, she does not bleed. The man gives her a Louis Vuitton bag and leaves the hotel, and she comes home wondering whether the bag is a fake. The message of the novel becomes clearer if you change the title to Romantic Love and Capitalist Society. Yuri strategically plans to satisfy her desires born of capitalism by taking advantage of the male-centered society. For Yuri, love is a process of cashing in her physical capital. Without capital to maintain it,
the romanticism of love falls apart. Romantic love is based on a purely sentimental relationship that is not swayed by factors such as money. But Yuri is aware that the continuation of romantic love and its perfectly happy ending is made possible through capital support. Love is de-romanticized and at the same time reromanticized by capital. If novels in the past functioned as a generalized medium of romantic love, novels today are mediums of de-romanticized love. On the one hand, we are continually inundated by TV shows that affirm and reaffirm the myth of romantic love and on the other hand, disillusioned by novels that speak of the impossibility of love in contemporary society. Love is constantly re-romanticized and de-romanticized. Love is fate, salvation, a big joke, and a means of exchange. There are likely many other faces of love. We live in a time when novels about disenchanted relationships are as pedestrian as ones that insist romance is alive. The symbolic chaos associated with love in itself reflects contemporary society. But one thing is sure: humans are incapable of living a life devoid of romantic entanglements. As long as novels continue to reflect human beings, the subject of love will continue to be fundamental to the novel. By Kim Dongshik
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
Society & the Imagination
Novels Testify to Their Era
Japanese literary critic Karatani Kojin once talked of the death of modern literature. Although literature used to deal with matters that politicians couldn't handle, he claimed that in the current era, modern literature had given up this role, thereby signaling its own demise. An interesting fact is that Karatani held up Korea as evidence of this decline. In reality, South Korean writers exposed various contradictions facing society, focusing their efforts on portraying the people's difficulties in navigating a paradoxical society. They accomplished many achievements big and small in visualizing these struggles. It is no exaggeration to say that the power of social visualization played a dominant role in the work of Korean writers. Due to this influence, we can see the various detailed facets of life from historical periods portrayed in fiction. On the other hand, to achieve a better understanding of Korean novels, one sometimes has to be informed about the social, political, and historical currents prevalent in Korean history. Choi In-hoon's novel The Square covers the period immediately after Korean liberation to the beginning of the armistice ending the Korean War in 1953. The protagonist is Lee Myong-jun, a college student in the South who is persecuted for having a father in the North. He returns home and participates in the Korean War on the side of the North. Lee is captured and after the armistice chooses to live in a third country. On his way to a new land, he flings himself into the sea. After independence from Japan, the most urgent task facing Korea was so-called nation-building. Discussions followed about what political system the new nation should have, whether it would be a bourgeois democracy or a democracy of the proletariat. The Worker's Party of South Korea proposed a third way, compromising between the two systems. In 1948, however, the South established its own separate government, making further discussion moot. After the Korean War broke out and ended in armistice, national division became an irrevocable reality. In The Square, Lee Myongjun's path through the South, the North, and finally a third country was an abbreviated illustration of this process. In Lee’s view, both the South and North had problems: the sole philosophy of bourgeois democracy in South Korea was that everything had to occur behind closed doors, while the sole ideology in the North was that of the public square. If so, we can imagine a third space that belongs to neither South nor North, but as Lee's suicide at the finale suggests, such a space for Koreans did not exist. This also meant that there was no third way that either side would have been willing to accept, a conclusion which corresponded with the 16
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historical realities at the time. Author Choi In-hoon once said that he wouldn't have been able to write this book had it not been for the April Revolution. During the Syngman Rhee regime of the 1950s, South Korean society was under the sway of anti-communist ideology. Freedom of thought was restricted and it was almost impossible to freely criticize realities in the South or praise the system in the North. This situation was resolved by the April Revolution (April 19th, 1960), which bestowed freedom on South Koreans for a short time. Although the revolution ultimately failed, ideologies from both the South and North as well as attempts to find a third way were openly discussed during this period, thereby influencing Choi. Yi Chong-jun's This Paradise of Yours is set in Sorok Island, a leper community, shortly after a military coup in South Korea. Hospital Director Cho Baek-heon envisions a plan to build a paradise for lepers on Sorok Island, but runs into trouble with his patients when he tries to carry out his plan. The novel details the events that transpire before the director's vision ends in failure. In this story, Yi asks readers whether it is possible for humans to build heaven on Earth. We have often seen in history that attempts to build utopias lead to human oppression, which is not too different from the events in Yi’s novel. As part of the hospital director's plans to create a leper's heaven, he wants to reclaim land from the sea to be used as fertile land for farming. This announcement is met with suspicious glares from the island's residents, who have seen similar plans proposed by others before the appointment of Director Cho. Although they accept his proposal to transform Sorok Island into a paradise, and are willing to make sacrifices to realize his plan, in the end obedience to authority is required of them. As the title of the novel suggests, a paradise built in such a way can only be “yours,” not “ours.” Even Director Cho cannot overcome this barrier. Eventually the director’s ill-fated attempts to use the apparatus of power give rise to a powerful idolatry. He then realizes the necessity of firmly choosing the values of freedom, love, and common destiny in order to build a paradise. Director Cho leaves Sorok Island, but returns to preside over the wedding of two residents free of leprosy. In this last scene, we can surmise that Cho will make another attempt to build a utopia, but in a different manner than before. Although this novel didn't directly describe the realities of contemporary South Korean society, it did obliquely criticize the dictatorship that ruled under the guise of modernizing the nation. The author poses difficult questions through the character
1. Le vieux jardin Hwang Sok-yong, Zulma, 2005
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2. La Plaza Choi In-hoon, Editorial Verbum, 2007 3. Ce paradis qui est le vôtre Yi Chong-jun, Actes Sud, 1993
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4. Der Zwerg Cho Se-hui, Verlag am Hockgraben, 1997
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Cho Baek-heon. Namely, can a prosperous nation as planned by its leaders be viewed by the people as a paradise? Can the good intentions of rulers truly be well-intentioned without the free consent of the governed? In this regard, we could say that the political nature of this novel is quite strong. Cho Se-hui's A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball is set in the 1970s during South Korea's rapid period of industrialization. Post-70s Korean literature revealed Korean society's moral dissipation, collapse of community, the deepening of the gap between rich and poor, and other problems that appeared during the process of industrialization. Most of the works from this period used these themes as their motifs, and A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball was one such novel. A Dwarf Launches a Little Ball consists of 12 independent short stories in serial form, with each story focusing on the same cast of characters, including the dwarf's son, daughter, and miscellaneous characters from diverse social classes with whom they interact. The narrative focus alternates between these characters who act as “focalizers” as their stories are told. In juxtaposing and connecting stories told from different points of view, Cho creates a consecutive narrative. (For example, the plot order recounts the dwarf's eldest son becoming a factory worker; trying to form a labor union to improve working conditions, but failing; in the course of events, the son stabs the factory owner's younger sibling to death; the son is sentenced to death; he is executed.) The novel also illustrates the effect that social class differences had on how Koreans perceived the world, and vividly portrays the difficulty of reconciliation. Author Cho Se-hui views the world in very simple terms. From his point of view, the poor, the wealthy, laborers, and employers are classified as either good or evil, with the only possible interactions between them being full-scale confrontation and conflict. In this context, we can understand why the dwarf 's eldest son had no choice but to commit murder. Unlike other similarly-themed novels from this era, Cho’s novel possesses a very strong anti-realist streak. Cho uses a succession of short sentences without conjunctions, mixes past and present tenses, freely juxtaposes fantastic and realistic elements, and uses powerful symbolism which makes his novel-in-stories uniquely aesthetic. The very fact that Cho took a very realistic story and wrote it using an experimental prose format was enough to make it a significant addition to Korean literature. Hwang Sok-yong's The Old Garden was set in the period from the late 1970s to the late 90s. These years saw a succession of major
events including the collapse of the Park Chung-hee dictatorship, rise of a new military government, the Gwangju democratic uprising, Chun Doo-hwan’s presidency, the June 1987 uprising, Roh Tae-woo’s presidency, the emergence of a civilian government, and the worldwide collapse of socialism. Hwang recounts the lives of characters living during those tumultuous times. The protagonist Oh Hyun-woo participates in a group opposed to the military dictatorship, thereby becoming a wanted criminal. He is arrested and spends many years in prison. His life itself is an atlas of the path that Korean society walked in the late-70s. In order to talk about the life he had lived, he had no choice but to call for social change, and in this sense his life could be called a public one. Instead of minutely reconstructing all the events that Hyun-woo experienced, the novel focuses on his reminiscences of the period before the late 90s. Hyun-woo's recollections of the past are not conscious, however. While on the run, Hyun-woo was aided by Han Yoon-hee, an art teacher in a rural village with whom he falls in love. Upon his release from prison, Hyun-woo reads the letter she left for him before she died. While reading, he naturally begins to reflect on the past, focusing on the pleasant memories they had shared. Up until The Old Garden, novels written about changing the world often left out the daily details of humanity and life, so the focus on Hyun-woo and Yoon-hee’s halcyon memories signaled an important change. Towards the end of the story, there is a passage describing Yoon-hee's trip to Germany where she witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and was greatly moved. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West, symbolized the collapse of two ideologies. If there is an alternative to the two, what might it be? That is the question posed to us by The Old Garden. By Jeong Young-hoon
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
The City
Modern Korean Literature Emerges from the City
City life is one of the most universal experiences of modern people, which is not to say that this experience represents all facets of modernity, but it is true that it does encompass its most problematic aspects. The city is a product and process, not to mention the driving force of modernization. It is axiomatic that modern Korean literature not only delves into the problems of the city, but also raises issues with modernity. The foremost tasks for studying modernity in Korean modern literature are analyzing how cities are constructed in modern Korean literature, and how much of the urban sensibility is manifested. Korean modern literature had its birth in the city. If industrialization and capitalism can be construed to be some of the most apparent factors for the changes in modern Korean history, then the city is a cradle of political and economic problems as manifested through its living spaces. A critical aspect of modernity in Korean literature is that the city is a complex construct and yet people still live there. Korean modern literature reveals how its aesthetics were formulated in the city context, by people of the city. The city shows that modernity is not some abstraction, but something tangible with specific images and experiences. In Korean modern literature the problems of the city do not belong to a conceptual or ideological domain, but are something that can be experienced through incidents discovered in specific texts. The urban experience in Korean society is different from that in the West and therefore the method in which it is expressed in literature is also quite different. Urbanization in Korea took place during the special ci rc u m s t a nc e s of c olon i a l mo der n i z at ion a nd a dictatorship; accordingly, its process can only differ from those in the West. The problems of the city were first written about in Korean literature in the modernist works of the 1930s. That was because, analogous to 20th century Western literature, it was most apparent that urban life was fraught with tension and complexities through the perspective of modernism. Just like how the city life centered in Paris, New York, London, and Berlin was “translated� into literature, life in the 1930s Kyeongseong (the former name of Seoul as well the capital city of Joseon 18
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1. Risky Reading Kim Kyung-uk Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2008, 293p, ISBN 9788954606752
4. Style Baek Young-ok Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. 2008, 355p, ISBN 9788959132959
2. Ashes and Red Pyun Hye-young, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2010, 260p, ISBN 9788936433734
5. Mujin im Nebel Kim Seung-ok, Peperkorn, 2009
3. Gente di Wonmidong Yang Gui-ja, Cafoscarina, 2006
during the early colonial era) was the focal point of Korean early modernist literature. In the novels of the 1930s, the city appears not only as a spatial backdrop but also as an arena where poverty, crime, and conflict are integral aspects of an urban experience. However, the city at that time was depicted as mostly a smaller version of a colonial society where freedom was repressed. It was only after the full-scale industrialization of Korea in the 1960s, when the population exploded in the capital city, that the urban novel became a full-fledged entity. The development of the city during the colonial era was subject to certain restrictions because of its special circumstances, whereas in the 1950s the restoration of the city from the destruction during the Korean War was far from complete. The main themes found in modern literature such as an individual’s loneliness, alienation, dissolution of society, and the breaking up of tradition were beginning to be dealt with in Korean novels of the 1960s. Kim Seungok represents one of the outstanding writers of this period who conveyed a new kind of literary worldview, sensibility, and writing style. Seoul, Winter of 1964 is a book by Kim Seung-ok that delineates fear, ennui, and the thanatos drive of the individual against the backdrop of a metropolis called Seoul, and is also written in a stylish manner. The three male characters in the book each live a distinctively different life but all share one thing in common. All of them are alienated from the all-powerful system, as dictated by urban civilization, and feel strong despair and inertia as a result of their alienation. They desire to live a happy life while contributing to the betterment of society, but have great difficulty fulfilling their dreams. In order for them to be active participants in society, they must forsake their own happiness and exist as non-entities, foregoing their identities and honor. Under such circumstances, the only choice that these three men can have is to endure their despair and listlessness. As the title of the book indicates, the novel aptly renders the meaninglessness of the three characters’ lives in an urban setting, while raising issues such as human alienation, ennui, and existential questions, as found in Seoul of the early 1960s. Since the 1990s, commercial popular culture has taken root in Korean society with the Internet and digital culture being widely disseminated. The stars of pop culture are idolized by the young, while pop culture simultaneously serves as a role model for life. Popular culture has instilled a new kind of sensibility; desire has become the dominant icon of Korean society. Koreans living in the metropolis have gladly become active consumers acquiring new desires and sensibilities, which results in emerging forms of relationships and pleasure. In short, the 90s was the start of a whole new world for Koreans, and the birth a new urbanite. Baek Young-ok and Kim Kyung-uk are two writers who most actively explored the relationship between popular culture and the problems of the city. In Style by Baek Young-ok, the author excavates the pleasures of a person who is concealed behind her glamorous job in the fashion industry. Following the worldwide popularity of chick-lit books like The Devil Wears Prada, Style provides Korean readers with an appropriate version of a female protagonist in their 20s and 30s who works in an urban setting. Through their passionate consumption of food, fashion, and sex, the author delineates a portrait of contemporary young women in the 21st century, with their lives ablaze in intensity and conflict. In contrast to the novels of the 1990s where the interiority of the characters was emphasized, in Kim Kyung-uk’s literary milieu, the character’s inner world is minimized and pop culture,
as represented in film, takes its place. In Korean society the novel critiques the meaning and direction of phenomena such as the rapid invasion of popular culture in daily life, and the information industry, as epitomized by the Internet, that plays an important role as a means of communication. Moreover, the novel stays free from borrowing the lexicon and grammar of popular culture and the more so-called lowly genres, and instead earnestly delves into the relationship between literature and popular culture, while exploring the illusions of modern individuals in this new media. When new writers are said to borrow language from popular culture, it does not necessarily signify that literature is being dissolved into the realm of popular culture. In this case, questioning the relationship between the visual and textual cultures, as well as the Internet and books, is crucial. In the end, a book is a source and medium of literature, and ultimately has the critical power to reveal the truth of life that is hidden behind the glamour of the visual culture. This is the reason why Kim Kyunguk deemed reading a risky endeavor. A new generation of novelists who began their writing careers in the 2000s has chosen as their themes to focus on the light and the darkness of modernity, and the abundance and impoverishment of Korean society, while rejecting all too traditional methods of storytelling in an attempt to create a new literary narrative with a subversive imagination. Representing this new generation of writers, Pyun Hye-young is a writer who looks for the madness of modernity, not in political oppression, but on the bleaker side of modernity or civilization. Pyun’s writing expresses not only the dissatisfaction and problems of modernity and culture, but also a meticulous dissection of the selfpropagating principles of modernity. In other words, the capitalist system excludes, if not exterminates, that which hampers its existence and development, and her works are reportage of those discarded things. In particular, motifs like excretion, waste, foul smells, nausea, and decaying corpses have heretofore not been dealt with in Korean literature, and therefore can be viewed as a special beginning in Korean literature. Things that appear often in her novels are manhole covers, the sewage system, and a decaying reservoir veiled by the delusion of progress, all of which illustrate the dark side of the achievements of Korean society. Moreover, the frequent display of maladies found in her writing is not so much an expression of a diseased self but rather, a manifestation of a dystopian culture. By Park Sungchang
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
From Fate to Free Will, a Continuous Tension
Religious Transcendentalism
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Human beings have a fundamental longing for the sacred. Religion is the institutionalized result of this longing. A culture without a systematic religion or faith probably does not exist on earth. Korean culture is no exception. Unlike Western civilization, which has been based on Christianity since its inception during the Roman Empire, Korean culture has leaned toward polytheism. Until recently, shamanistic tendencies have been predominant in Korean culture. A major turning point in the religious history of Korea came at the end of the 19th century when Christian missionaries from the West arrived in Korea. Christianity, as a monotheistic religion, rejected polytheism and naturally clashed with Korea’s indigenous shamanism.
A Minor Religious War: Ulhwa by Kim Tong-ni 2
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1. The Rainy Spell Yun Heung-gil, Jimoondang Pub, 2002 2. Ulhwa, La Exorsista Kim Tong-ni, Editorial Complutense, 2000 3. Les descendants de Caïn Hwang Sun-won, Zulma, 2002 4. The Reverse Side of Life Lee Seung-U, Peter Owen, 2005
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Ulhwa is a full-length novel written in a tragically lyrical style by Kim Tong-ni about the fundamental changes that took place in Korean culture between the pre-existing shamanism and the new religion, Christianity. In Ulhwa, which is an adaptation of a short story, “The Portrait of a Shaman,” the conflict between the protagonist, Ulhwa (who represents shamanism) and Youngsul (who embodies the Christian faith) is shown by way of a dramatic narrative. Ulhwa’s birth name before she was initiated into shamanism was Ok-seon. Ok-seon has a baby son, Youngsul, who is the result of her secret relationship with a young man in her village. After her son is healed through a shamanistic ritual, she is inflicted with a shamanist ailment (mubyeong). In the end Ulhwa is initiated as a shaman and worships a female deity called Seondosan as her house deity. In both names, Okseon and Seondosan, one can see a Taoist influence. Young-sul, whom Ulhwa sent away to become a Buddhist monk, returns home after undergoing a Christian baptism. He tries to proselytize not only to his mother, but also his stepsister, Weol-hee, who has a different father. Ulhwa, a guardian of shamanism and Young-sul, a Christian apologist, provide different explanations about Weol-hee, who cannot talk. To Ulhwa, her daughter is a princess who ascended from the Taoist heaven, and the fact that she cannot speak the earthly language is analogous to a foreigner who cannot understand the language spoken in an alien place. Young-sul, on the other hand, views Weol-hee akin to someone in the New Testament who has been possessed by an evil spirit. He insists that once she is freed from her bondage, she will then be able to speak.
What adds a theatrical element to Ulhwa is the shamanist ritual and the Christian method of prayer. The novel also provides a glimpse into a transcendental world that a reader can by no means perceive in its entirety. The novel is replete with episodes of a ferocious spiritual warfare, such as pictures of Jesus as a ghost all in red, which are done by Weol-hee, who can draw well with the help of her mother’s spell and Ulhwa’s shamanistic ritual in which she condemns Jesus and burns the Bible. When her son tries to stop her, she ends up stabbing him with a kitchen knife. The microcosmic religious feud that takes place within a family is but a fierce battle between the old world as represented by Korea and the new continent, as well as the warfare between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
The Shamanistic Reconciliation: Yun Heung-gil’s The Rainy Spell In shamanism, people endeavor to placate and supplicate a deity in order to obtain a desired goal. Fear of hardships is only natural, and therefore human beings try to appease the deity to avoid misfortune and attain fortune. Shamanism is close to mythology in that people have devised it in order to protect their fragile selves. The novella The Rainy Spell by Yun Heung-gil adopts Korean shamanism as a possible solution to a conflict. The paternal and maternal sides of the family of a little boy, who is the protagonist of this book, feud about their ideological differences. The boy’s maternal uncle is a highly learned and refined man who was a member of the South Korean army during the Korean War when he was killed. The boy’s paternal uncle, in contrast, is not very educated and has a volatile temperament. He worked as a forced laborer for the North Korean army during the Korean War, and then suddenly disappeared. The boy’s maternal relatives freeload off the paternal relatives, and the two parties have a tension-filled relationship concerning the survival of their sons. The boy’s paternal and maternal grandmothers, who are the actual heads of their respective families, both believe in shamanism. That is why the boy’s maternal grandmother believes her son has died after she dreams about it, whereas the boy’s paternal grandmother listens to a blind fortuneteller and prepares a feast for the return of her son. A large snake however is what actually shows up on the said day. If the milieu in which the story The Rainy Spell takes place was the rational modern world, then a snake would be viewed as a disgusting animal. But both grandmothers regard the snake as the reincarnation of a person. In this novel, the shamanistic worldview is delineated as an allencompassing faith that can even embrace the conflicting ideologies that have divided up North and South Korea. As the title indicates, The Rainy Spell has its philosophical roots in human virtue, which can resolve even a tedious and grueling internal feud.
Inclusion of Christian Motifs: Hwang Sun-won’s Descendants of Cain Hwang Sun-won’s novel Descendants of Cain takes its title from the name of the very first murderer in human history, according to the Bible. But the novel does not have a Christian message or explicitly express its tenets. As is well-known, Cain, who was a farmer, is enraged by God who does not gladly accept his gift, and he subsequently kills his younger brother, Abel, the shepherd. The murder shows the conflict between siblings who came from Adam and Eve. In Descendants of Cain, a similar situation arises in which normally amicable villagers suddenly turn against each other as a result of ideology. Their clash reaches its peak when the landowners are executed after a Communist people’s trial. That Cain was a farmer and the characters in the novel were involved in a battle over farm land is not a coincidence. In the
Bible, Cain relocates to east of Eden after murdering his brother, to a place called Nod, which in Hebrew means to wander, if not, to drift. Cain, who was uprooted and had to keep drifting, is also a portrait of the Korean people who after the Korean War lived lives much like the descendants of Cain. In the latter half of the book, the protagonist, who was the landowner, stabs an old man who was his sharecropper as well as the father of his lover. The protagonist’s life resembles Cain’s in that after he causes physical harm, he ends up wandering; in this case, it is a region that is now in North Korea.
In Search of Love: Lee Seung-U’s The Reverse Side of Life Lee Seung-U’s novel, The Reverse Side of Life, shows a transcendental awareness after Christianity took root in Korean society. The book is written in a unique manner in that an anonymous narrator seeks to investigate the life of a male writer whose name is Park Bu-gil. The book has the format of a meta-novel. A novel called Food for Earth, written by the character Park Bu-gil, is embedded in the book. Bu-gil believes himself to be an orphan and grows up as the adopted son of his uncle. A strange man who lives in the back of his uncle’s house catches his attention in a peculiar way. One day, this crazy man calls out his name very tenderly, and asks him to bring nail clippers. Not long after that, what the boy discovers is the body of the crazy man who had killed himself by slitting his wrist with the nail clippers. This man turned out to be Bu-gil’s biological father. That he killed his own father corresponds to the Christian doctrine of original sin. After this tragedy, Bu-gil departs from his village for Seoul. Bu-gil’s father is dead and his mother left him long ago to start another family, leaving him an orphan. Bu-gil, who witnessed during his school days the political repression of a dictatorial regime, questions what true salvation is and seeks redemption for his existence, which he finds in love. Bu-gil who could not tolerate the darkness within him so wished to find someone like him, encounters a woman who plays the piano at church. This much older woman is a devout Christian who graduated from a seminary. She wishes to be the wife of a minister, and to become the man she desires to marry, Bu-gil also goes to a seminary. He looks for salvation in her, and through their union, he tries to fulfill his existential yearning. But their relationship comes to a disastrous end as a result of a trivial misunderstanding and jealousy on Bu-gil’s part. When he catches her talking to a male professor and student at his school, which was also her alma mater, he is overcome with rage and strikes her, calling her a whore. He, who had so ardently yearned for salvation, comes to a realization that a human relationship is as frail as human existence—that eros is not something that can be a substitute for agape. After the failure of love, what saves Bu-gil is the desire to write. Ferociously working on a novel in a room that is even darker than his interior life, he at last finds the strength to live again. That Bugil becomes a writer instead of a theologian or a minister shows the transcendental relationship of Korean literature and religion. A writer is not simply an intermediary host, but rather someone who constructs a domain of love and pain with the freedom of unlimited language. There are no narrative events in a writer’s life that are devoid of meaning. The writer should not be afraid in the event of what might seem to be something like a curse or catastrophe. Veritably, Korean literature will be even more finely attuned to sin and evil, and rejoice in the realm of love because of Bu-gil’s passion that was essential to the maturation of his integrity as a writer. By Hur Yoonjin
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Special Section
Key Themes in Fiction
The Diaspora
Exploring Exile from the Homeland
It is lamentable that people have to leave their homeland due to political, religious, and financial difficulties. These people are victims of history, especially if they were forced to flee because of war or colonization. Literature about the Korean diaspora simultaneously exposes and heals the sufferings of those who left their homeland and were unable to return. But moreover, it proposes valuable lessons for those of us who have survived being part of the diaspora. Korea was not exempt from the difficulties of the past century. The Japanese occupation in the early 20th century, the Korean War in the 1950s that immediately followed independence from Japan, and the division of the Korean peninsula created a giant wave of departures. Hwang Sok-yong’s Shim Chong (Munhakdongne, 2003), Kim Young-ha’s Black Flower (Munhakdongne, 2003), Lee Ho-cheol’s Southerners, Northerners (Minumsa, 2002) and Ku Hyo-seo’s Nagasaki Papa (Edition Ppul, 2008) are four representative novels of the Korean diaspora that explore the lives of those who left the peninsula. Concerning the time period each novel takes place, Hwang’s Shim Chong comes first. It begins in the 19th century when modernization and westernization were sweeping the country. Shim Chong, a girl born in a small village on the Korean peninsula, is sold to Nanjing, China. From there she moves on to numerous cities in various countries such as Jinjang, Taiwan, Singapore, the Ryuku, and Nagasaki. She is called different names each time she moves to a new city: Lenhwa, Lotus, Renka. The different names show each new life she had to start in every new place and the difficulties that came with such changes. Shim Chong the novel is not only a narrative of the adversities of Shim Chong the character, but also a narrative of growth that does not pertain solely to the protagonist but also to a larger general populace. As a woman, Shim Chong illustrates the contradictions of modern society and embraces those who have been hurt by those same contradictions: “She thought about all of the places she would not be able to return to once she had left. They felt like a vanishing dream. Like yesterday or the day before yesterday, they were places in time that she could never return to. Chong turned to look at the ships heading northeast towards the horizon. The rising sun obliterated the middle of the horizon into whiteness. Her heart beat fast as she glanced at the sun glittering and breaking over the water. She was setting off for a new land.” 22
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Shim Chong’s goal was no longer to return to her hometown but to discover and actualize herself wherever it was that she went. Thus, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore do not remain as merely spheres of hardship, but locations of new possibilities. During the late 19th and early 20th century, the Korean peninsula was subjected to the rule of Japan. At this time, Koreans left their homeland for political and financial reasons and headed towards Manchuria and Japan, and even places further away across the ocean. Kim Young-ha’s Black Flower is a novel about the 1,033 Koreans who boarded the “The Ilford,” a British cargo ship headed for Mexico. The ship’s passengers are composed of fallen aristocrats, ex-soldiers, ex-priests, farmers, and vagrants. The passengers are disappointed when they finally reach Mexican soil and get scattered across the country. As a young writer Kim did not focus on the specific difficulties of the era, but rather on how the experiences of these Koreans demolish and reshape their traditional values: “Whenever the great waves pushed against the sides of the ship, the Koreans confined in the cargo compartment would become entangled with one another and be forced to forget their manners and decorum. The bodies of men and women, nobleman and peasants, collided unceasingly and inappropriately. Chamber pots were knocked over and shattered. Their contents of vomit, urine, and excrement spilled onto the floor of the boat. Cursing, sighing, reproach, and brawls were daily occurrences along with the ceaseless stench.” Such scenes from the British cargo ship crossing the Pacific demonstrate that the traditional values of Korean culture were no longer apt when it came to survival. Will modern values replace the position of traditional values that have collapsed? It seems as if the writer has projected values in his work that go beyond the traditional and the modern to reflect the postmodern. The freedom that Koreans tasted after independence from the Japanese occupation was short-lived. Soon the peninsula was embroiled in a civil war fueled by outside forces. Of the numerous tragedies that resulted from the Korean War, the greatest tragedy lies in the millions of people who were forced to f lee their hometowns, never able to return. Lee Ho-cheol’s Southerners, Northerners is a story about a boy who was drafted by the North Korean army at the age of 19. He is captured by South Korean soldiers and subsequently ends up living in South Korea, later becoming a writer. It
is the autobiographical story of the writer Lee and his own displacement. This veteran writer sharply yet calmly narrates the past of a boy who attends high school in the North Korean industrial city Wonsan, loves reading Chekhov and Dostoevsky, goes to war wearing a military uniform, and ends up as a prisoner of war in Busan, a city at the southern part of the peninsula. Eventually he ends up in Seoul where he lives the rest of his life. An unchanging faith for human kind, regardless of geographical location, is the premises of this sharp yet calm narrative: “Is this a newspaper for prisoners? One is a prisoner and the other a soldier in charge of the newspaper. But what is this? These random writers. Tolstoy? Chekhov? The tone of our voices, the atmosphere, and the words we exchanged—before we knew it we had become intimate friends. And in this, nobody was allowed to participate or invade.” Believe it or not what should have been a brutal POW investigation became a discussion about Chekhov. It is something of a miracle; we have gained a small seed of hope after discovering the possibility of human communication in an unfamiliar land with unfamiliar people. Starting from the 19th century with Shim Chong, Black Flower in the 20th century, to Southerners, Northerners in the mid-20th century, we finally come to Ku Hyo-seo’s novel Nagasaki Papa, based in the 21st century. While Ku’s book does not include a major event such as the Japanese colonization of Korea, he nonetheless captures the microscopic Korean diaspora through each character navigating their way through the fabric of
Japanese society: the protagonist who immigrates to Japan from Korea and works in the kitchen at a restaurant called Next Door, the indigenous Ainu cook who is isolated and lonely, the manager who is in love with a woman from the pariah community, and the 3rd generation Korean-Japanese son who is at odds with his father that insists on keeping their Joseon nationality. Of course the main character himself is also an exile who has been ostracized from his native Korea and forced to live in a foreign land: “Must boundaries be drawn and named? I thought of all the nameless items that filled Susuyi’s small room. It would be convenient to call people by names such as Korean, Japanese, and Ainu to differentiate them. But that is when the discrimination begins. Don’t keep telling Susuyi that he is an Ainu. He never says that. He is a 23-year-old talented cook working at the restaurant called Next Door. Of course, that’s not all of him. We don’t call him ‘Cook, Cook!’ He doesn’t want that. He is a cook but he wants to be known for something much more than that.” W het her t he y have lef t t heir hometow n litera l ly or figuratively, each character is scarred and must cope with pain. Yet, in this restaurant a possibility of a new community emerges: a community where no one is confined by another. This is the world Ku anticipates in the Korean diaspora of the 21st century. By Yi Soo-hyung
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1. Shim Chong, fille vendue Hwang Sok-yong, Zulma, 2010
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2. Nagasaki Papa Ku Hyo-seo, Edition PPUL 2008, 302p, ISBN 9788901079103 3. 南のひと北のひと Lee Ho-cheol, 新潮社, 2000 4. Fleur noire Kim Young-ha, Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2007
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
Family
My Family, My Universe
Family serves as the first protective fence and the final bastion for every child. The world is a dangerous place for young and vulnerable children who have no family. Without mom and dad's cozy bed to crawl into on stormy nights, without siblings by your side when the neighborhood bully stands in your way, the world is a cold and scary place. Our families remain faithfully by our sides to the very end; they guard us and support us. Nothing could be better than if all the children in the world could grow in the bosom of a healthy and warm family. But ju s t a s hu m a n b ei n g s a re c omple x a nd f u l l of inconsistencies, families, too, can be weak and replete with paradoxes. At times they can even leave scars and create pain for their family members. The conservative expectation that only a family with a mother and father is a normal family creates prejudices against single parent families or families in which children are raised by their grandparents. It is for this reason that children who do not grow up in traditional family structures suffer doubly. First, at the hands of their family members, and next, they suffer from the judgment of society. It is natural, then, that many works of children's literature in Korea take on the subject of family. Lee Geumyi's novel You Are a Korean Wheel Lily (2002) exposes the painful lives of three 13-year-old children: Miru, Sohee, and Bau, whose suffering is induced by separation and divorce. Miru lives separately from his father following his parents' divorce; Sohee is an orphan who lives with her grandmother; and Bau suffers in silence when he turns mute following his mother's death. Sohee and Bau understand the reason behind Miru's rough behavior, and Miru is comforted when he meets the other two because he realizes that he is not alone in his pain. Their friendship, in turn, supports each individual and helps them overcome their personal pain and suffering. The path toward recovery from a broken family seems less to be paved by haphazardly replacing its members and more towards the creation of a new normality and coming to terms with the existing family members. The three children learn to accept any situation that comes their way. If the definition of family can be extended to social relationships such as friendship and feelings of solidarity, then these children can be said to have overcome and prevailed. The novel reveals not only 24
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the inner world of these three children as told from their point of view, but it also traces in a quiet way the manner in which the children recognize each other's emotional scars and the ways in which they connect and communicate. Choi Namee's 13-Year-Old Worrywart (2006) addresses the issue of family as more of an external-based problem. In this novel, protagonist Sangwoo has a mother, father, and older sister. On the surface, his is a normal family. The problem is that his father has left. And Sangwoo has trouble understanding how his mother and sister can go on with their lives as if nothing has changed. He believes that he is the only one that has not lost his mind, and chooses not to share the news of his unusual situation even with his closest friends. Sangwoo becomes particularly conscious of the way he is viewed because he is concerned that people will accuse him of forging his father's signature on his homework, and because of the strange behavior he perceives to be taking place in his house. For Sangwoo, family is not a protective nest; on the contrary, it is a source of unhappiness and misery. But Sangwoo feels that it is beyond his power to resolve the problems in his family. He shares his thoughts only on an online discussion board. But the fake signature incident leads him to confront his miserable condition, and he realizes that acceptance is a better path than lies and denial. Despite the problems that exist, family members are there to understand and support each other. The solution, he realizes, can only be found in the family. Lee Seoung-sook's novel Miru from Mars (2006) takes on the issue of violence and oppression within the family. Because the book features the adventures of an alien from Mars it may be considered as science fiction, but the way in which it deals with the patriarchal tyranny of authoritative male figures makes it quite realistic. Miru comes to visit Kundae's home one stormy night. Father traps Miru in a glass case and insists on exposing the reason that Miru came to Earth, while Uncle goes in search of Miru's spaceship with the thought of making a quick fortune. While Father and Uncle's lunatic obsession grows, the ability of Miru and Kundae to communicate telepathically improves and Kundae learns a great deal. As it turns out, Miru has come to Earth to find out the true motive behind the earthlings' expeditions to Mars. As Miru deduces from his experience of being trapped in a glass case, humans such as Kundae's family are not yet ready for
space exploration. Father constantly makes comparisons between his children, which cause them great distress; not even Uncle is safe from suffering. But even this tyrannical figure is gripped with fear in his own workplace. Miru explains that everyone's suffering is a result of their inability to appreciate their value and worth. Both the universe and the family are governed by the same laws and order. This novel shares a particular approach with the previously mentioned novel, 13-Year-Old Worrywart, both of which have characters that speak of the order of the universe. Through his explication about acceptance, Miru is essentially urging Kundae's family to recognize each other's inherent value. The three novels mentioned here all feature a 13-year-old protagonist. For most, this is the time in life when puberty sets in and children begin to struggle to pull away from their family members. It is therefore a time when children are more susceptible to the pain and inner strife inflicted by other family members. But what of younger children? What of the way in which they view the family? The picture book Waiting For Mom by Lee Taejoon (2004) is a prime example. One frigid winter day, a red-nosed child waits for his mother at the tram station. Whenever a tram arrives, the boy asks, "Is my mother there?" and the driver responds, "Do I know her?" This scene repeats itself, and still she does not arrive. Finally, one kind driver chides the boy, saying, "Stay put, child. You'll hurt yourself.� He stays put and waits. This brief and moving text, written against the backdrop of the colonial period, was recently revived with illustrations that brought it back to life with haunting beauty. The red-nosed child looks small and weak next to the tram, and the contrast between the pitiful child and the busy, crowded tram station emphasizes the child's status in
complex visual metaphor. Most breathtaking of all, however, is the final scene in the book, which shows a child walking handin-hand with his mother against the backdrop of falling snow. While the text remained open-ended for decades, this illustration resolves the tension through this scene and provides the readers with closure through the enactment of their meeting. The child is finally safe and sound in his mother's arms! The mother figure is that for whom we all yearn and long, and with whom once we are united, we are filled with profound joy. That is the role that mothers play for their younger children, and the role that family plays is no different. Grownups, too, cannot forget their siblings and parents with which they shared warm embraces. This is the source of strength provided by one's family. Families can be destitute, can generate concern, and can even be emotionally and physically abusive. A child may be scarred by their families, and wish to escape them, but family members are the ones we think of in our most difficult moments. The comfort and security that only family can provide is perhaps what the authors had in mind when they spoke of the "order of the universe." By Kim Min-ryoung
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1. Miru from Mars Lee Seoung-sook; Illustrator: Yoon Mi-sook Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2006, 211p, ISBN 9788932017426 2. 13-Year-Old Worrywart Choi Namee, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd 2006, 153p, ISBN 9788958281528 3. You Are a Korean Wheel Lily Lee Geumyi; Illustrator: Song Jinheon, Prooni Books, Inc. 2002, 245p, ISBN 9788957981054 4. Waiting for Mom Lee Tae-joon; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd 2004, 38p, ISBN 9788935657124
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
Friends
Friendship Keeps Us Alive
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1. Separate but Together, Three Musketeers Kim Yang-mee; Illustrator: Oh Seung-min Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2010, 215p, ISBN 9788936442583
3. Invited Friends Hwang Sun-mi; Illustrator: Kim Jin-yi, Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2007, 92p, ISBN 9788901068701
2. Dear Mrs. Astrid Lindgren Yoo Eun-sil; Illustrator: Kwon Sa-woo Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 184p, ISBN 9788936442194
4. I Died One Day Lee Kyunghye, Baram Books 2004, 192p, ISBN 9788990878052
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I once read an article that asked the question: “How much is the worth of a friend, one that you’ve always been close to who you can talk to about anything?” I can’t remember whether the answer was 150 million or 200 million won, but I was grateful since I could think of three such friends which in turn made me think: “Wow, in that case, I have about five to six hundred million won!” Of course, I cannot be sure that I am a friend of such value to those friends. I can only hope that I am. However rich you may be, you cannot buy a friend with a single lump sum of money. Even if we live in a world where we can make hundreds and thousands of friends via SNS (Social Network Services) through the Internet and digital devices, we cannot just conjure up a friend to visit any time we want, somebody that we know is happy or sad just by looking at their faces, with whom we can share close feelings with. Today’s parents are willing to immediately satisfy their children’s every want and need but the issue of friends must be dealt with and resolved by the children themselves. Perhaps that is why there are a number of children and youths who find it difficult to make friends, even feel burdened by the thought, who nearly give up and prefer to be on their own. At a time like this, what kind of advice can children’s literature give? In Kim Yang-mee’s Separate but Together, Three Musketeers (Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2010) even the title itself is loaded. The term “three musketeers” immediately calls to mind an image of three boys getting into all kinds of mischief. It also has a feeling of exclusivity, as if to say that we three are the best friends in the world and no one else can be included in our group. But the words “separate” and “together” come before the three musketeers. Though they are the three musketeers, they don’t stay together all day long. Rather, they are a special, new form of three musketeers that reflect the changes in modern human relationships where individuality is acknowledged and other friends and neighbors outside the core group are welcome to join. The main character in Separate but Together, Three Musketeers is Eunu, a 12-year-old girl. She is at the age where she wants to have more time alone, but she dearly misses her best friend with whom she can share secrets, as
well as needs other friends to hang out with. After Eunu’s mother dies in a car accident, her father blames himself for her mother’s death and stops communicating. To make matters worse, Eunu’s one and only best friend goes to live abroad. But as one door closes, another door opens. Unexpected encounters bring new friendships to the lonely Eunu: an eccentric loner Changi who is crazy about observing animals, and Hyeongbin who is burdened by the responsibility of taking care of his autistic younger brother. Whether by accident or by necessity, the three come together to publish a village newspaper titled Separate but Together. With the newsletter, they can express their unspoken thoughts and feelings through writing, drawings, and cartoons. As such, the title Separate but Together, Three Musketeers suggests a comfort that comes from a loosely knit solidarity, a special relationship based on deep trust, and a new form of friendship among today’s children. They are comfortable to be “separate” but secure because they are “together.” It is pleasing to see that love and trust is not limited just to best friends but extends to family and neighbors. Reading Yoo Eun-sil’s Dear Mrs. Astrid Lindgren (Changbi Publishers, Inc., 2005) with “friend” as a key concept is also interesting. Unlike Kim Yang-mee’s book, this story does not explore the friendship itself but rather broadens the meaning of a “friend.” The main character Bi-eup is a bookworm, and as is the case with many booklovers, she also appears to be a loner. However, it would be hard to find someone who has as many great friends as she does. Devoted to Astrid Lindgren, a great writer of children’s literature, Bi-eup is always playing with the characters in Lindgren’s books. Bi-eup dreams of visiting Lindgren in Sweden when she grows up and always writes letters that begin with “Dear Mrs. Lindgren.” Isn’t the ultimate purpose for writers of children’s literature all over the world to become a friend to the children of the world? In this regard, Astrid Lindgren could be proud of having a friend called Bi-eup in Korea. This is because Bi-eup knows about Lindgren’s literary world and what she wants to communicate to children better than anyone else. But this does not mean that Bi-eup just buries herself in books all day while isolated from her surroundings. Rather, she uses Lindgren’s stories as a key to solving her own problems in everyday life such as conflicts with her mother and caring for a friend who does not have parents. Titles from Lindgren’s works are used as headings, and Yoo relates these works through minor incidents and solutions in Bi-eup’s daily life. Dear Mrs. Astrid Lindgren is complete on its own but it would offer a great deal more joy and meaning when it is expanded to the entire literary world of Lindgren. Young children of today, who do not know how to play, argue, and make up with the people around them, especially friends, should pay more attention as children’s books such as Lindgren’s include many hints about how to get along. The materialistic world of today makes it even more difficult to make friends for both adults and children. To those who have been hurt in this world and who do not know what to do about it, Hwang Sun-mi’s Invited Friends (Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd., 2007) will provide wisdom and consolation. The author says in the preface: “I wrote this story for any child who has been lonely even once, who has been made fun of for a scar on the face or for having curly hair, or who has never been invited to a birthday party.” In one interview, Hwang said frankly that this story was closer to her than any of her other stories because her second child was the inspiration. Minseo counts the days to his friend Seongmo’s birthday. He likes Seongmo very much and draws pictures of him in his
notebook, hoping to give it to Seongmo on his birthday. The notebook gets thicker with drawings but Minseo does not get invited to Seongmo’s party. The day of Seongmo’s birthday party, Minseo finds a card that says: “You are invited to my party. 2 PM, September 20 / Snack Bar” while going through his bag. He runs to the snack bar with his heart full of joy but to his surprise, he finds his mother waiting for him instead of his friend. Minseo realizes that it was not just Seongmo’s birthday but also his mother’s. After many incidents, Minseo finally gives his notebook of drawings to Seongmo with his mother’s help. However, Seongmo tosses it aside because it is not a gift that cost a lot. As Minseo tries hard to hold back his tears, he sees the new classmate Giyeong put the present he brought for Seongmo back in his bag because Giyeong doesn’t want to give a present to someone who doesn’t appreciate another’s sincerity. Minseo feels that he might become close friends with Giyeong and swears to himself: “From now on, I’ll draw Giyeong!” When the story is over, the author says again to children: “There is something you shouldn’t forget—to love yourself even if you are left alone, to sing for yourself, light candles for yourself, and have presents ready to give yourself. Do not give up on yourself and do not go on feeling bad for too long. There is always a friend nearby who can recognize you for who you are.” Lee Kyunghye’s I Died One Day (Baram Books, 2004) has been a steady seller and a must-read for Korean teenagers. One day, Yumi, who is in the third year of middle school, reads Jaejun’s diary, a classmate who was killed when a motorcycle hit him. The diary begins with a startling sentence: “I died one day. What does my death mean?” However, the contents of the diary reveal Jaejun’s positive attitude and affection toward life that seems to contradict the first sentence: “I spent a day as a dead person. It was such fun... When I woke up this morning, I thought to myself, ‘I’m already dead’ and the day ahead of me felt so much more valuable.” The book is a painful depiction of how those who are seen as immature rebels and problem children struggle inside and try to love the life they have been given. The youth suicide rate in Korea ranks very high, if not at the top of the table among OECD countries. The rhetorical question “What would you want to do if you were to die?” is much more powerful than an urgent “Please do not kill yourself!” Though the friend who wanted to live a meaningful life by playing dead died in absurdity, the life of the friend who reads his diary becomes more profound. In this sense, the pain and suffering of a friend, ironically, is also a priceless blessing. By Park Suk-kyoung
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
Animals
A New Take On Animal Stories
Animal stories have an origin that goes far back in history. The continuity of animal stories in the narrative tradition of Korean literature is reflected in the genres of animal fables and allegories. But the literature of animal stories has, by and large, grown weak in contemporary literature. There are exceptions, of course. These can be found in narratives for young readers. In fact, the tradition of animal stories has served as a foundation for children's literature. Children's literature today is a site that hosts a diverse array of characters including puppies, chipmunks, bunnies, foxes, raccoons, and bears to name just a few. For years, animal stories served the function of illuminating the complex and sometimes unclear relationship between people and society on behalf of young children; this wisdom, delight, and sentimentality was presented to young readers with clever wit. Today's creative fiction emerged from this fiction, and remains greatly indebted to the narrative tradition of animal stories. Contemporary children's literature in Korea seems to be departing from the more traditional narrative forms and making a concerted effort at reinvention. Perhaps the most visible example is the way in which the method of personification and the extent of its use have changed dramatically. Contemporary anthropomorphic novels present the subtle differences between man and animal through respectful, ecologically-oriented metaphors. Some animals not only speak on behalf of humans but go above and beyond human expectations; and some characters don't understand a single word of human speech. Some children's books do not anthropomorphize their animals at all, so that these animals remain as “other,” outsiders to human culture, something which causes the reader to question the relationship between man and animal. These changes, which occurred in the second half of the 1990s, can be attributed to the direct and indirect influences of postmodernism. Books such as Leafie, a Hen into the Wild by Hwang Sun-mi (2000), My Daltanyang by Kim Ri-ri (2008), Pride by Kim Nam-jung (2006), and The Barnyard Duck that Flew Away to the Sky by Lee Sang-kwon (1997) are representative animal stories that ref lect the changes that have occurred in Korean children's literature. Leafie, a Hen into the Wild by Hwang Sun-mi is a blockbuster that sold over a million copies and has been reinvented as a stage play and as a cartoon, attesting to its immense popularity. It has been recently incorporated into the elementary school curriculum, and has even come to represent a certain type of 28
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writing worth emulating. The protagonist of Leafie, a Hen into the Wild dreams of caring for its young and delicate offspring, so much so that she chooses the nickname "Leafie" for herself in referral to the delicacy she perceives in the offspring of chicken eggs. Leafie denies the fact that she is not an egg-laying chicken, and she escapes the chicken coop into the farm. But she escapes the farm when she realizes that it is the roosters that have patriarchal control over the structured and controlled space. Now out in the wild, Leafie is forced to scavenge for food and to fend for herself against natural predators. Despite these circumstances, Leafie manages to adopt a mallard duckling and care for it as if he was her own. Her dream of becoming a mother is realized. She finally sacrifices her life for her child by throwing herself in the path of her life-long predator, Weasel, leaving the readers with the powerful imagery of her ultimate sacrifice. This work has moved the hearts of children and adults alike because readers find it to alternatively be a celebration of the passion for freedom; a bildungsroman; proof of the transcendental powers of motherhood; a spiritual meditation on life and death; and an ecological statement about mutual respect between species. My Daltanyang by Kim Ri-ri features man's best friend, a dog. Daltanyang escapes a breeding farm. This white and now homeless dog is renamed Sad Eyes by the young boy Minho with a sad face. Insightful readers are quick to deduce that the entire book is narrated alternatively from the point of view of the dog and boy. The author establishes a first person narrative throughout the book which recounts the two protagonist’s experiences through each respective point of view. There are many occasions when the two points of view of Daltanyang and Minho diverge to the degree that no clear communication exists between the two, and yet they share the painful experience of physical abuse. It is this shared pain that creates a feeling of sympathy that cannot be expressed in words. Daltanyang is a dog that was never cared for as a pet, but he wasn’t a wild dog either, excluded from the company of humans. This homeless dog roaming the city streets has a tragic story to tell about what has been inflicted upon him—in an experience shared by many—by humans. Pride by Kim Nam-jung is a collection of seven stories. All seven are independent stories that deal with separate issues, but they share one common theme. As the title of the collection alludes, animals, as living beings, have a sense of pride which cannot be tamed and controlled by humans. In this book, animals
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1. My Daltanyang Kim Ri-ri; Illustrator: Lee Seung-hyun Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2008, 210p, ISBN 9788936442422 2. The Barnyard Duck that Flew Away to the Sky Lee Sang-kwon, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 1997, 206p, ISBN 9788936441616
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3. Pride Kim Nam-jung, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2006, 171p, ISBN 9788936442224 4. Leafie, a Hen into the Wild Hwang Sun-mi, Illustrator; Kim Hwan-young Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. 2000, 202p, ISBN 9788971968710
appear more vivacious and full of vitality than their human counterparts: the dog who maintains his integrity despite a stroke; the turkey who clings to his principles even in a cage; the goose, peacock, pheasant, and woodpecker that would rather starve than eat the live bait caught and thrown at them by humans; the fish being thrown about by the ocean waves; the snowy seagull whose proud wings catch the gleaming light of the moon; and the forest bird with the small round eyes that slowly shut for the last time as it succumbs to disease. The encounter with these magnificent and lively characters brings the reader face to face with human cruelty and arrogance. The Barnyard Duck that Flew Away to the Sky by Lee Sangkwon is also a collection of six short stories. As in Pride, the animals in this collection are not all anthropomorphized.
They don't speak voluntarily. But in the foundation of the stories is the common experience and ethics developed through sharing the lived space with farmers over a long period of time. This particular story collection sets up as its background the countryside and farming communities as they existed decades ago. Modernity objectified nature and turned it into a tool, and intimations of self-reflection can be found in the wisdom of the traditional ways of old Korea. Lee Sang-kwon suggests that all living things are intricately connected and are a part of nature's cause and effect, that in the past people and animals coexisted, and that this knowledge was gained from a kind of life wisdom. It is when humans compete with animals or try and colonize them that misfortune strikes. His works express the keen observation that humans, who seem to have lost the ability to communicate and sympathize with the natural world, must not fall into the traps set by modernization. By Cho Eunsook
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
History
Exploring the Recent and Distant Past
Located to the farthest east when viewed from Europe, Korea was plunged into the turmoil of world history upon entering the 20th century. In the early 20th century, it became a colony of Japan, geographically its closest country, and was exploited for almost 50 years. As is the case with most colonized countries, the colonial era of Korea was a time of suffering and a great number of people fought with their lives to regain independence against Japanese imperialism. After the end of the Second World War and Japan’s defeat, a civil war broke out on the peninsula, and about two million civilians and soldiers were sacrificed. Called the June 25 War or the Korean War, this war was not an ethnic or a religious dispute, which has often been the case among countries that gained independence in the 20th century; rather, it was purely a clash of ideologies. Korea was the sacrifice of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Various social issues remained such as not properly settling the issue of pro-Japanese collaborators, the remaining feudal order, class disparity, and the conflict between the pro-U.S.S.R. government in the North and the pro-U.S. government in the South. Such a combination of challenges led to incidents that were just as horrific as other prominent international incidents. The Japanese colonial period and the Korean War have become a record of historical trauma that has not been easy to erase. As a result, many Korean poets and novelists have written about, the ultimate cause of the war and its historical and existential meaning. Writers of children’s literature in Korea who value realism have not let go of such pursuits, either. In literature, they have tried hard to express how to convey the painful memories of Korean modern history to children, what significance can be found within, and how such local experiences could be expanded to universal movements such as anti-war, peace, and human rights.
1. Flower Granny Kwon Yoon-duck, Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. 2010, 35p, ISBN 9788958284826 2. My Grandpa's Clock Yoon Jane; Illustrator: Hong Seongchan NURIMBO 2010, 36p, ISBN 9788958761082
3. My Sister, Mongsil Kwon Jeong-saeng, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 1984, 270p ISBN 9788936440145
One should not, however, misunderstand Korea as a country that achieved independence for the first time in the 20th century after being a vassal state of China. The Korean people defended themselves from the invasion of various northern tribes and established a splendid culture under independent rule. That it has a lifestyle based on Buddhist and Confucian culture gives it an East Asian universality. However, the fact that Korea produced Hangeul, a unique writing system based on phonetic symbols,
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4. The House Where Books Dewell Lee Young-seo; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2009, 192p, ISBN 9788954607346 3
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while being part of the cultural zone of Chinese characters, and that it has a culture of food, clothing, and housing that values propriety and formality—makes the Korean people distinct from the Chinese and Japanese. Of the four books introduced in this article, two are directly related to Korea’s modern and contemporary history while the other two are related to Korea’s traditional and family history. Author Kwon Yoon-duck has published a number of picture books using a folk painting style. Her book Flower Granny is also a picture book based on the testimony of grandmother Sim Dalyeon who, at the age of 13, was forcibly taken by the Japanese army in 1940 to work as a military sex slave. Japan plundered Korea of its goods and human resources for their military use during the Second World War (also known as the Pacific War). Men were drafted and taken to the battlefield and a number of young women were taken away as “comfort women” to satisfy the sexual desire of the Japanese army. With their human dignity ignored, these young women became sexual sacrifices to the Japanese soldiers all over the Pacific war zone. Yet when the war ended, not only did they not receive any compensation, but they were also left without any care for decades to follow. Though it has almost been 70 years since the end of the Second World War, the Japanese government has yet to officially apologize about this issue, and some of the survivors, who are now all over 80, stage a demonstration every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul to demand an apology. In a language and drawings that children can understand, this picture book talks about a historical issue that is difficult to encapsulate. The intent of this picture book, however, has not been to arouse anger or hostility towards Japan. As a part of a joint project between the authors from Korea, China, and Japan, this book talks about the universal issues of humanity—anti-war, human rights, and peace—that all the children of the world can sympathize with. Kwon Jeong-saeng’s My Sister, Mongsil is set during the Korean War. Kwon is regarded as the Michael Ende or the Astrid Lindgren of Korea and is loved by a great number of Korean children. Kwon lived in absolute poverty and was ill in his late teens, so much so that he made his living as a beggar. This means that he never received a proper formal education. However, based on his experiences of living at the bottom rung of society, he found beauty and value in even the most humble and trivial things, and wrote about them. Though he later became a well-known author who made a lot of money through book sales, he lived in a hut with one room, practicing a simple life as espoused by David Henry Thoreau. In his will he asked all of his royalties to be spent on children in both the North and the South, and he came to be respected not only by children but also by many adults. My Sister, Mongsil portrays the war through the eyes of a child; that is, the aspects of war adults cannot help but miss because they are seen through the eyes of a child. The face of the enemy that is human, not a war machine, the tragedy that takes place as the North Korean and South Korean armies take over a village in turn, and the children who have lost their parents or who have been abandoned by parents are described affectionately, and sometimes heartbreakingly, through the eyes of innocent Mongsil. The virtue of this story is not simply that the sad contemporary history of the Korean War is depicted with verisimilitude through the young narrator’s eyes. It is the main character Mongsil, who endures and survives difficulties and suffering without losing her human dignity as she embraces others with love. The existence of the beautiful girl Mongsil cannot but mesmerize everyone, even those without any knowledge of Korean history.
If the two books mentioned above were set in Korea’s modern and contemporary history, the following two books are related to Korea’s own history and culture. Lee Young-seo’s The House Where Books Dwell is set in the Joseon era, the last dynasty of Korea, specifically, the early 18th century when Western civilization began to spread. Western books, thoughts and ideas, and even Christianity were secretly imported to Korea through the Qing, the ruling dynasty of China at the time. During the Joseon era, discrimination of status was a given and ancestor worship was one of the most important virtues. The Joseon rulers strongly oppressed the Christian doctrine that advocated equality between men and women as well as the abolition of the status system and prohibition of idol worship. Despite such oppression, Christianity spread quietly under the name of Seohak (Western Learning) among the lower classes and certain intellectuals. In The House Where Books Dwell, the main character’s father is a scribe who makes ends meet by transcribing a large number of books in both Korean and Chinese. One day, he is executed for transcribing a book on Catholicism, leaving his son Jangi all alone in the world. With the help from Choe Seo-kwoe, a bookshop owner who escaped death thanks to Jangi’s father, Jangi runs errands and learns to transcribe books at Choe’s bookshop. Gradually, Jangi makes his own way in the world of turmoil that faces the influx of Western civilization and thinking. With trueto-life descriptions on the scholar Hong who has doubts about the status system and dreams of an equal world, the book also inspires readers to think about what it means to lead a desirable life. As an added bonus, illustrator Kim Dong-sung’s drawings beautifully depict the traditional Korean society of the day. Illustrated with simple pen and ink drawings, My Grandpa’s Clock by Hong Seongchan, a well-known illustrator in Korea, took its motif from the song “My Grandfather’s Clock” written by Henry Clay Work in 1876. The story is told, through three generations starting from the early 20th century to the present, and depicts the changes in traditional housing, everyday objects, and clothing of an ordinary Korean family. By doing so, it offers us a glimpse into daily life in Korea. By Yu Youngjin
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
Fantasy
No Longer Hidden in the Shadows
Here is a family whose members are all incredibly busy—a father at work, a mother at home, and children at school and cram school. They are so busy that they have neither time to look at each other or at themselves. One day, the son discovers that something strange has happened. Their shadows have changed! To his surprise, he sees the shadow of his mother, one with long curly hair and a skirt, stuck to his feet rather than his own shadow with short hair and trousers. The shadows have been mixed up: his shadow has gone to his father and the father’s shadow is now with the daughter. This is not a coincidence or a miracle. It is a conspiracy by the shadows that are exhausted by their owners’ busy lives! After forming such a conspiracy in order to bring the family to their senses, the shadows begin to control their owners. They threaten the owners by saying that they will run away and turn them into shadow-less humans if they do not listen. And the result? A happy ending, of course. Having been left with no other choice but to live a slow life led by their shadows, the family comes to understand the happiness of slowness and leisure. This humorous fantasy A Busy Family by Kang Jeongyeon symbolically uses the characteristics of the fantasy genre that is being explored in Korean children’s literature. So far, fantasy in Korean children’s literature has been like a shadow. Despite the fact that the first creative children’s story in Korea was a fantasy, the genre had been abandoned for the past 80 years. Social factors such as Japanese colonial rule, ideological struggle between the right and the left wings after liberation, the Korean War, post-war poverty, an authoritarian regime after a military coup, the democratization movement, and the rapid industrial development hardly recommended literature to children, let alone fantasy. Children were to study hard and become judges, doctors, businessmen, teachers, military officers, or high-ranking officials. Their dreams had to be materialistic, realistic, patriotic, and ethical. Children’s literature also pursued a realistic, moral, and patriotic path, just like the busy family who has no time to ask each other where they want to go. Then came the revolt of the shadows; that is, the uprising of the fantasy genre. Upon entering the 2000s, Korean children’s writers began to take great interest in fantasy. One of the reasons is that an awareness of children’s storytelling as an art came about as the overall situation in Korean society stabilized. After all, didn’t Franz Liszt say that there is no art without fantasy? Another reason is the worldwide craze with the Harry Potter series. 32
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Having witnessed that children’s literature, fantasy in particular, c a n become mea ning f u l a nd successful cultural content shared by the world, children’s writers began to attempt the fantasy genre. On one hand were the authors who studied the grammar of Western fantasy literature and wrote their stories accordingly, and on the other hand were those who hoped to write a Korean fantasy while researching legends and myths of Korea and other Asian countries. In this way, Korean children’s literature that only followed the path of reality slowly began to view fantasy just like the busy family who turns around and looks at their feet, checking their shadows to confirm that they are who they are. Kim Hye-jin is one of the leading writers who has successfully combined the grammar of a Western fantasy with a Korean children’s story. She is a capable writer who has completed the three-part series Aro and the Perfect World, The Crane Race, and A Color No One Knows. A girl called Aro enters the world of fantasy through a book. She is ordered to travel to 12 countries, receive history books from the first beings of those countries, and complete a book titled The Story of a Perfect World. The readers of this book might be reminded of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story, or the Harry Potter series. But this book demonstrates a use of creative and refreshing storytelling methods, settings, and characters. What is unique is that Kim has superbly integrated the Eastern world view into the structure of a Western epic. In other words, her works are not established on the dualistic world of the West that stipulates a clash between absolute good and evil. Instead, it embraces the Eastern world view where all incidents and beings seek completion. It also incorporates, the characters, motifs, and incidents that remind readers of the well-known fantasies of the West. Kim Ryeo-ryeong’s The Child Who Brought Memory is an example of a fantasy combined with Korea’s shamanism. The main character of this book is a boy whose parents have divorced and whose grandfather has gone missing. He constantly feels anxious because he feels guilty about these events. He goes to a house in the mountain where his grandfather used to live and meets the daughter of a shaman living next door. With her he enters a new world through the wall in his grandfather’s
workroom. The new world is inhabited by those who have lost their memories, that is, those who have forgotten, or been forgotten, by the people of this world. The memories forgotten by the people of this world live together in that world, and are sometimes revived or terminated completely. Shamanism is a belief that bestows spirits to the natural phenomena of the world such as animals, rocks, and trees. Based on shamanism, the author takes a step further and breathes life into the memories that people have forgotten. The scenes where such personified memories are described can be regarded as some of the most unique and dynamic scenes in Korean children’s fantasy books. After meeting all those memories, and even his grandfather, the boy discovers that his grandfather did not go missing because he had forgotten about him, and comes back to this world with more confidence. One of the most basic elements of fantasy is that it is not completely unrelated to reality. Rather, it is a reconstruction of reality in the most original way. Faced with the reality reconstructed through the eyes of the author, readers are able to view the reality in a newer and more valuable way. The fantasy that shows this principle very clearly is Baek Heena’s The Moon Sorbet. This outstanding picture book is set during a hot summer night. The air gets hotter because of the fans, air conditioners, and fridges that push the heat from inside to outside. Unable to stand the hot air anymore, the moon starts to melt. Grandma Wolf gathers the melting moon and turns it into a cold, sweet sorbet. The villagers who share the sorbet are able to enjoy a good night’s sleep without fans or air conditioners. It seems to be a happy ending but the story does not end there. Rabbits have lost their home because the moon has melted (In Korean folktale, rabbits live on the moon and make rice cakes by pounding the rice-flour mill). For rabbits longing for their home, Grandma Wolf comes up with another solution. She makes a flower bloom from the remaining sorbet and makes a new moon out of it. Now the people on earth and the rabbits on the moon are both happy! Parents and teachers in Korea like to find a politically correct theme or a moral story from children’s tales. Perhaps they will respond to the theme of environmentalism from this picture book, but we must go further because that is the essence of fantasy. The author made a miniature set of the inside of an apartment building where its animal residents live. She cut, sewed, pasted, and drew all different materials such as paper, fabric, and trees, and completed a stage that is exactly the same as the environment in real life. Her amazing artisanship thus created a small world that is both extremely realistic and fantastic. While reading this book, we become aware of the fact that the ordinary world we live in can be a charming place. The author proves that reality becomes art through fantasy.
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1. Aro and the Perfect World Kim Hye-jin, Baram Books 2004, 528p, ISBN 9788990878113 2. A Busy Family Kang Jeongyeon; Illustrator: Jeon Sang-yong, Baram Books 2006, 139p, ISBN 9788990878311 3. The Moon Sorbet Baek Heena, StoryBowl 2010, 32p, ISBN 9788996478201 4. The Child Who Brought Memory Kim Ryeo-ryeong; Illustrator: Jung Moon-ju Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2007, 175p, ISBN 9788932017792
By Kim Inae
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Special Section
Key Themes in Children’s Books
Playing
Kids Delight in Enjoying Life
Education in Korean society has seen its fair share of light and shadows in the picture book publishing industry. The number of parents and teachers that consume picture books as educational tools has been growing and has affected both general interest and sales; at the same time, this phenomenon has also undermined the identity of the picture book, traditionally thought to be an artistic genre that can be enjoyed by people from all ages. Generally speaking, all books can be said to have an educational function. But this function must be a natural outgrowth of inspiration and purity. The publication of books that, rather than offer didactic lessons to their readers, tell playful stories about real lived lives is both welcome and delightful. The picture book Peek-a-boo with Twelve Animals by Choi Sookhee (2009) is a picture book for the very young, in which the 12 animals of the zodiac reveal their partially covered bodies with a delightful "Peek-a-boo!" The book mimics the peek-a-boo game that parents play with their children—hiding their faces with their hands, then pulling them away saying things such as: "Where's the squeaky mouse? Where's the growling tiger?" Children come to feel kinship with these animals that play the peek-a-boo role normally afforded to parents, and by extension the book itself becomes a toy and a site for playful interaction with animal friends. Wave by Suzy Lee (2009) is a picture book without text. The storybook opens with an image of a parasol-toting mother and her young daughter walking along the beach, the young girl poised to run into the sea. The child stares intently at the rushing waves. Lee draws the waves splashing on the sand like layers of lace. A powerful wave momentarily frightens the child, but she quickly recovers and tries to scare the waves back. She is a brave child, and shows the waves that no matter how strong they may be she will stand her ground. The wave retreats as if in concession to the child's authority, and, having established their relationship, the child then proceeds to frolic in the water. But when a sudden shift occurs in the water, the child quickly runs to safer, higher ground and teases the waves from a safe distance. In a single moment, the wave recovers its formidable strength and washes over the child, who is then forced to retreat again. Soaked to the bone, she stares at the sand only to discover the sea shells and starfish that the waves left behind. She rinses her hands off in the water as if offering the waves a handshake, storing the wave's gifts in the folds of her skirt, as she bids farewell to the waves and departs with her mother. Under her mother's careful watch, the child has 34
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experienced delightful play with the waves—the two confront one another, are wary of each other, meet, argue, play as one, have a misunderstanding, then come to a mutual understanding— their play that day will be engraved in the child's mind. These experiences will surely come alive in her mind later in life when she is confronted with similar situations. Another picture book tells the story of a child who does not simply visit the sea but lives by it. There Dangles a Spider by Kwon Yoon-duck (2003) describes in pictures a day in the life of a child that lives on one of Korea's islands. Siridongdong is an onomatopoeic expression that describes a spider hanging by its thread. For this book, the author researched children's songs from Jeju Island and chose a few "Tail Picking" songs. The child in the book is home alone and bored. He watches a spider spin its web while it hums a “Tail Picking” song. The boy takes some potatoes that his mother has steamed for him and steps out of his house, still humming the tune under his breath when the animals that appear in his song begin to appear and walk by his side. The animals and child walk according to the rhythm of the song, sit on the rocks, and share the boy's potatoes, flying through the broad sky and visiting the depths of the sea. But what the boy wishes for most of all is to be reunited with his mother and to be embraced by her. The boy and his friends come upon the dive spot of the famous Jeju female divers, and the boy calls out to his mother. Sapp emerges from the depths, spreads her arms out as far as the eye can see, and embraces the child and his friends. The final scene of the book takes place in the late evening, in a house barricaded not by a tall fence and gate but by a typical low stone wall surrounding a small, one-room house emitting soft, yellow light. On the front steps are the mother's white shoes alongside the boy's black ones. Inside, the two are surely feasting on the mother's catch from her day's dive. All along the child’s song is playing until this final moment of happiness surrounded by his mother and his friends. Cho Hae-ran's picture book Grandma, Where Are You Going? is part of a four-book series that features the child Jade, whose life is focused on having fun. Jade lives in the countryside with only her grandmother, separated from her mother who works at a beauty salon in a neighboring village, and her father, who works in an urban, faraway shoe factory. Jade's grandmother is a diligent and hardworking woman who works year round in the fields, the mountains, and the sea to provide for the two. She prepares delicious meals for her pretty Jade and sells food at the market
in order to have money to give Jade the things she needs. Her work is tedious and physically strenuous, but both Jade, who has no friends her age, and her grandmother, who finds joy in living for her granddaughter, the work is nothing short of fun. Each of the four books in the series focuses on one season, and includes three episodes that capture Jade and her grandmother's delightful adventures. In the first volume, Grandma, Where Are You Going? I'm Going to Pick Mugwort!, Jade's grandmother makes her rice cakes from mugwort one day in early spring. Jade participates in the entire process of preparing the food, from cleaning the vegetable to pounding it together with rice to prepare it into dough. She then joins her grandmother to go sell their products in the marketplace. The book is peppered with expressions of delight as Jade discovers the wonderful tastes of all the diverse foods. The other three volumes: Grandma, Where Are You Going? I'm Going to Pick Cherries!; Grandma, Where Are You Going? I'm Going to Gather Chestnuts!; and Grandma, Where Are You Going? I'm Going to Pluck Oysters! also contain three episodes each, and in each one, Grandma and Jade discover and delight in the seasonal representative foods of Korea. Together they find and collect the food, prepare it, sell it, and share it. Grandmother's wisdom and
knowledge of how to collect the gifts of nature all year round, and the way in which she uses her entire body to cook and prepare fresh and delicious food feeds Jade's growing body and mind. Most children that live in the city grow up not knowing how to play and have fun. They think that in order to play, they need to have toys or video games. Child’s play should, first and foremost, be spontaneous, and it therefore seems that modern children have grown very distant from the world of true play. In Grandma, Where Are You Going? Jade plays all day, from morning to night. She plays running around naked, with hands empty of toys and feet bare from shoes. Her fingers are stained from picking blackberries and sting from picking chestnuts. She tries with her bare hands to catch crabs without them pinching her. Her play is riskier, more exciting, and more absorbing than any video game. And best of all? She is rewarded at the end of her long day with delicious snacks and wholesome meals. Our children might not all be able to play like Jade, but the world of joyful play that is featured in all four volumes in the series Grandma, Where Are You Going? definitely merits our attention. It teaches us to play well and grow well. By Lee Sanghee
1. Wave Suzy Lee, BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. 2009, 34p, ISBN 9788949112053 2. Grandma, Where Are You Going? I'm Going to Pick Mugwort! (4 Volumes) Cho Hae-ran, Bori Publishing Co., Ltd, 2009. 3. There Dangles a Spider Kwon Yoon-duck, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2003, 36p, ISBN 9788936454036 4. Peek-a-Boo! with Twelve Animals Choi Sookhee, Borim Press 2009, 20p, ISBN 9788943304980 2
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In Their Own Words
Novelist Kim Won-il
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Novelist Yi In-seong
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Novelist Park Sangwoo
Novelist Kim Yeon-su
Novelist Kim Ae-ran
Children’s Book Illustrator Hong Seongchan
Children’s Book Illustrator Kim Dong-sung
Children’s Book Writer Kim Ryeo-ryeong
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Interview
A Glorious Openness Novelist Kim Won-il While writing Closely Reading Kim Won-il, I said the following: "While 20th century Korean history was harsh, it was doubly so for author Kim Won-il. He directly experienced the pain of war and national division, yet he was able to withstand this through moral integrity, channeling his energy into artistic will. As a result, he was successful in his life and literary work, becoming a cultural giant in the process." War, in particular, drove Kim into even more severe privation. War can decisively and continuously change one's destiny. His boyhood dreams of being a painter were snatched away by war. No matter how artistically talented he might have been, after the Korean War began Kim Won-il entered a desperate struggle against poverty in which painting was little more than a pipe dream. Then what about literature? Amidst such poverty, wouldn't 38
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literature be a luxury as well? Sartre once lamented, “What use is literature to a starving man?” Yet literature is different. When something within needs to be expressed, when my existence and life itself have fallen into the funk of meaninglessness, when I feel like I'd be better off dead, this desperation and urgency needs literature's succor. As György Lukács once said, literature proves the existence of one's soul... Around when did Kim Won-il become aware of a calling for literature? Kim said: "When I was 11-years-old, I first read one of Thomas Mann's novels. Before then I had been very introverted and timid, and because of our household's poverty I had an inferiority complex as well. After discovering the intense artistic and social exploration pursued in Mann's novels, I decided that instead of avoiding myself, I would look into my soul and discover
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went through, so in this respect it was relatively faithful to reality. The other parts of the novel, however, are complete fiction. Before the Korean War, I had never experienced any upheavals in my hometown like the ones described in my novel. Above all else, the father in Red Sky was totally different from my real-life father. Around the time that I wrote the book, Korea was under the yoke of President Park Chung-hee's Yushin reforms which were ferociously anti-communist. The mere act of depicting communists realistically, sympathetically, or, God forbid, openly praising them could result in being indicted. That's why in my book the violent communist character came from the lowest social caste." Because of political constraints when the novel was written, the father had to be described as a particularly violent man. We cannot say, however, that the author was free from any resentment against his own father. How did he reconcile with his real-life father? "When I was younger, I had great bitterness toward my father for putting us through such miserable poverty. It wasn't until after my marriage, however, that I was able to acknowledge that a man's life could turn out like that. While fathers who are model family men are necessary, fathers who dedicate themselves to their country, society, and posterity exist, too, and I came to understand this fact." Thomas Mann once said, “One must die to life in order to utterly be a creator.� The same holds true for revolution. Did Kim's understanding of his father contribute to his decision to make
1. Red Sky Kim Won-il, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 1978 (original pub. date); 1999 (revised edition) 372p, ISBN 9788932008813 2. Festival of Fire (5 Volumes) Kim Won-il, Kang Publishing 1997 (original pub. date); 2010(revised edition) 429p, ISBN 9788982181498 (Vol.1) 3. The Way of Love Kim Won-il, Kang Publishing 1998 (original pub. date); 2011(revised edition) 368p, ISBN 9788982181627
a path toward a more open Kim. By recording this process in writing, I was able to achieve enlightenment." This is how the road was opened and the beginning of his literary travels began. From his late teens to early 20s, Kim read Mann, Camus, and Sartre's works on existentialism and surrealism, the novels of William Faulkner, and the stream of consciousness works of James Joyce. He read everything he could get his hands on, which might explain the existential and experimental flavor of his novels when he entered the literary world. He was considered an avant-garde writer to watch. His novels, however, were somewhat rough and violent, failing to escape from a historical sense of victimization that also ref lected his bleak inner landscape. A groundbreaking change would come over this modernist, however. Kim said, "Not until I had completed Soul of Darkness did I decide to confront my fears, the things I had dismissed as childhood nightmares and had tried to avoid, such as my family history. I came to strongly feel that it was my duty to write a story about that. I wished to honestly describe my childhood experiences, and a strong resolve to wrestle with my demons." As a result of his personal commitment, in 1978 he finally completed Red Sky, an epic novel which served as the foundation for literature about the national division of Korea* in addition to being a grand literary spectacle: "The young protagonist of Red Sky, Gap Hae-ra, experienced the same poverty, humiliation, and inhospitality that I myself
novelist Kim Won-il and critic Kwon O-ryong
speaking, literature relating to the national division of Korea focuses *onSimply the Korean War itself, the background of the times, and political/ideological confrontation between the South and North in the postwar period. Instead of portraying the two sides as victim and aggressor or unilaterally condemning the Communists for their horrible victimization of innocent South Koreans, the new literature of national division was based on a more balanced view of the South and North, enabling attempts to search for reconciliation. In this sense, it was clearly different from the anti-communist literature of the 1950s. Perhaps author Choi Inhoon's The Square should be recognized as being the first of the new type of novels about national division. It was written during the relatively free period between the 4.19 April Revolution and the 5.16 May Coup d'État. In contrast to the staunchly anticommunist novels written in the 1970s and 80s under military rule, The Square is significant for staking out new ground concerning national division. In short, it is the representative novel illustrating the growth in Koreans' consciousness of national division, history, and ideological issues in the period from 1970 to 1980.
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Interview
writing his calling? The father that Kim remembers neglected the family, causing his mother to feel resentment her entire life; however, he was kind to Kim and his siblings while also being an extremely dedicated intellectual who supported revolution. On Sept. 28, 1950, the North Korean People's Army was forced to withdraw from Seoul under heavy UN assault. In the chaotic space of a few hours, Kim's family became divided forever. The boundary between friend and foe was unclear during this time. A U.S. military advance team had already identified the place where Kim's family was living as a den of leftists, and they stormed the shantytown, placing the entire family in great danger. Kim’s family narrowly escaped from that deathtrap. A few hours later, his father arrived with a car to pick up his family, only to find that they had already fled someplace else. He then quickly evacuated the area as well. Going back to the North, Kim's father was subsequently appointed to a key post in the government, although he experienced the adversity of being demoted and later reinstated. The chronic consumption he had suffered from his youth flared up again, and he passed away in a North Korean sanitarium somewhere in Gangwon province. While he
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tragically left this world from a sickbed, he was fortunate to have escaped the bloody purge of South Korean Workers Party members and fled to the North to stay true to his ideology, although he had to leave his family in the South. He felt some measure of pride and satisfaction about his life, and when he peacefully passed away, he was in the presence of his new family in the North: a wife, son, and daughter. Therefore the title, Red Sky implies the fading of “red rays.” The crimson rays in the sky, however, were still indistinct. The emergence of a true literature of national division required that one-sided interpretations of South-North ideological confrontation be resolved. For author Kim Won-il, this meant that he had to portray the memory of his father realistically: "That's why I based Festival of Fire on real events that I had directly observed or experienced, trying to convey these as objectively as possible to avoid any bias toward the South or North. I labored to transparently portray my father as he was. It was also an attempt to achieve maximum objectivity about the era my father lived in." After 15 long years of writing, Kim Won-il's novel and magnum opus on the Korean War, Festival of Fire, was completed in 1997. Can we say that the author, having completed his lifetime challenge as a writer, was now freed from the various burdens of the history that had burdened him? Could he now embark on a journey to a wider world that transcended history? For example, in his next work, The Way of Love, could the themes of religion and love serve as ideological alternatives and become a spiritual core for life? Kim said, "I didn't consciously plan to do so, but I realized that I had been focused on the Korean War and national division for too long, and wanted to extend my fictional world by writing a new book." Perhaps the author's childhood caution still remains, but Kim did not seem to be exaggerating. The Way of Love concerns love's transcendence of religious precepts and their limitations. This can be interpreted as the desire to pursue freedom despite the bondage of ideology. We can summarize and understand the story through his personal process of moving towards a glorious openness. Since Tristan and Isolde, the pursuit of freedom in literary works has resulted in tragic love that invariably ends in death, but this doesn't matter. If love lies beyond ideology, what lies beyond national division? Unification, of course. Now that Kim Won-il's father belongs to the next world, what are his yearnings for unification? K im sa id, "Today, Korea n unif ication is a n issue with various political variables, so it is difficult for me to make predictions. Someday, however, I am confident that providence and divine protection will help Korea unify. Above all, unification must take place on a foundation of freedom. Freedom without equality is nothing more than emptiness." By Kwon O-ryong
1. Домcrлyбoкимдвором:Роман Kim Won-il ИздательствоМосковскогоуниверситета, 2009 2. Evening Glow Kim Won-il, Asian Humanities Press, 2003 3. Le voyage de Monsieur Lee Kim Won-il, Éditions Philippe Picquier, 1993 4. 冬の谷間 Kim Won-il, 榮光敎育文化硏究所, 1996 5
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5. Wind und Wasser Kim Won-il, Pendragon Verlag, 1998
Interview Keyword and Fiction
Literary Experiments in Defiance of an Era of Upheavals Novelist Yi In-seong Yi In-seong, who made his debut in 1980, sent shock waves throughout the world of Korean literature with his first novel, Seasons of Exile, which experimented with a radical deconstruction of form. Since then, he has opened up a new horizon for novels through relentless linguistic experimentation. Such literary practices have always been anti-mainstream in the world of Korean literature. Yi did not align himself with the trend of politicizing literature, which spread extensively amid the maelstrom of antiauthoritarianism from the 1970s, and since the end of the 1980s, he firmly resisted the commercial tendencies of literature, which became common after the democratization of South Korea and the fall of the socialist states in Eastern Europe. Today, he stands as a symbolic entity of an uncompromising literary spirit, quite rare in the world of Korean literature. The following interview was conducted with a focus on how his radical works have developed since the 1970s amid the violent political and economic changes in Korea, and how they have responded to such changes. Kim Taehwan: Since early on, you have sought through your literature a freedom of spirit, unshackled by authority or custom. In the context of the era, it seems that you were publicly opposing and resisting the oppressive dictatorial regime of the time. What’s remarkable, though, is that with your attitude of opposition, you did not align yourself with the political resistance movements, but went your own way. Using the terms of the day, you rejected the escapist and conformist “pure literature,” as well as the realist “engagement literature” which had a rapid rise as the new mainstream, and sought to establish a world of literature that was your own. How did you come up with such ideas? Yi In-seong: Well, I myself have a lot of questions about how my literature has developed. All I know is that the dichotomy in seeing literature as only either “pure” or “engagement” didn’t appeal to me. I think I saw creating literature as an act that was fundamentally different from protesting in the streets. As a student, I myself participated in a number of protests, in an expression of myself as list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011 41
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Yi: It probably does. I think I was in search of freedom in a true sense, because I wasn’t free at all from such a reality. Another term that describes the era is “compressed modernization.” This attempt to quickly catch up with Western modernization inevitably brought on contradiction and confusion. Industrialization was not accompanied by democratization; there was even an oppression of freedom. We lived in a strange society that looked modern on the surface, but was feudal deep down. In that sense, we were fated to wander forever to establish true modernization—without even having an answer as to what true modernization was—and to be reborn as a “modern people.” Kim: It’s ironic, but don’t you think wandering around in confusion is the beginning of becoming a modern people? Yi: Yes, in the sense that the act of endlessly doubting and questioning and reflecting and seeking answers characterizes a modern people. We could, of course, talk about other things that characterize a modern people.
novelist Yi In-seong and critic Kim Taehwan
a member of society. I considered the role of literature to be something different, though. I believed that literature could be more meaningful and important as something other than social argument or ideological propaganda. I saw the act of writing literature as an attempt to target and change a more fundamental and complex reality that went deeper than the surface reality.
K im: It wa s a lso the modern people that created and systemized certain ideologies through such a process. The reason why I’m bringing this up is that even though your background provided you with advantages through which you could write engagement literature that could criticize and change the existing reality, you went your own way. I’d like to know if you have any negative thoughts on engagement literature.
Kim: Let’s get more specific, and go back to the 1970s, the era you grew up in, and also the era that serves as the setting for Seasons of Exile. To sum up, the era of the Park Chung-hee regime in the 1960s and 70s could be called an era of “developmental dictatorship.” The traditional society and value systems began to crumble with the industrialization that began under the dictatorship, and the establishment of a desirable civil society was postponed, while ideological conflicts due to the separation between the two Koreas grew even more intense. The lives of the Korean people became caught up in a political and social maelstrom. It seems that the world of chaos and confusion in your novels bears some connection to that.
Yi: I think the question of the attitude and method in writing has more to do with how the author personally copes with the world than anything else. But to answer your question, I’d like to point out two things. First, the engagement literature of Korea mostly encouraged a sacrificial heroism, which in my view is based on a feudal, not a modern, worldview (such as old nationalism, for example). On top of that, it was something that gave a weak individual like me nothing but a sense of inferiority. Second, it used a traditional narrative structure using a singularly linear logic, which I doubted could bring about fundamental changes. It could be a way through which another form of dictatorship was established.
1. Endlessly Whispered Breath Yi In-seong, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 1989, 348p, ISBN 9788932010717 2. Seasons of Exile Yi In-seong, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 1983, 366p, ISBN 9788932008790 2
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3. Waiting to Go Insane, Yet Unable Yi In-seong, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 1995, 232p, ISBN 9788932007748
Kim: How, then, does your method of writing relate to modernization in the true sense? What does your methodology advocate in respect to democratization, for instance? Yi: Whew… Questions like that always seem so overwhelming and difficult. But in an attempt to answer, I would say that if democratization is a process in which various opinions are expressed, conflicts arise, and consolidation is reached, literature should be the same. In other words, literature should also reflect various voices—there are various voices within and without myself as well. Then the structure of the work, and the structure of the language, will inevitably become complex.
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Kim: That helps me better understand the structure of different voices in Endlessly Whispered Breath. It’s a way through which social reflection is undertaken and experimented upon in a way that’s inherent in literature. Your works are original and independent, of course, but it seems to me that there could have been external factors that stimulated your spirit of experimentation. A certain cultural foundation, for instance. Yi: Of course. For us, there was college. After the 4.19 student revolution came the 5.16 coup and persecutions, but college back then was an autonomous place separate from reality—there was even the term, “college culture.” Things that weren’t permitted in reality were condoned to a certain extent in college, which led to various ideological and cultural experimentations. Social movement theories had their roots in such an environment, and various forms of radical cultures were experimented with as well. What made such things possible was that despite the regulations of the dictatorial regime, information and data from external worlds could be accessed within that place. We were able to reflect deeply on the idea of modernization, and the college culture of the day sought to go beyond the modern and merge with the contemporary global culture. The new literary explorations by Choi Inhun, Kim Seung-ok, and Yi Chong-jun in his early work were not unrelated to such an environment, and the same can be said for myself. Kim: Now that I think about it, college life today is much too different from the one back then. Colleges today are not separate from daily reality, as can be seen in the Starbucks cafes within college buildings. It often concerns me that what dominates colleges today is simply an adjustment to reality and consumerism. Yi: If colleges in the 70s were a place for intellectua l experimentation, colleges in the 80s were a place for social movements, and since the 90s, they have become a place for consumption. This phenomenon can be compared to the fact that literature today has become an object of consumption. Kim: When you think about it, such a cultural reality has its roots in the 70s, when televisions first appeared, leading to a spread of pop culture and so on. Yi: That’s an inevitable by-product of industrialization, but in part, the dictatorial regime encouraged it. What’s important, though, is that the qualitative value of culture was taken into consideration back then, but today, such distinctions in values are intentionally neglected through the strategies of capitalism. It seems that since the democratization in 1987, what has taken the initiative of reality is individual desire, and what controls it is capital.
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1. Hacia la hora ajena Yi In-seong, Emecé, 2009 2. Interdit de folie Yi In-seong, Imago, 2010 3. Saisons d’exil Yi In-seong, L’Harmattan, 2004
Kim: I remember how you once said that you wanted to deal squarely with the issue of desire in Waiting to Go Insane, Yet Unable, published in the 90s. You have maintained a literary view that’s consistent at its core, and such consistency seems to be taking on quite a different meaning with social changes today. Fundamentally, your works are an endless resistance against reducing novels to stories—do you feel a certain sense of despair in this digital era, this era of globalization, when the story itself is rearing its head high as “content?” Yi: I think that has something to do why I’m having a hard time wrapping up A Nightmarish Fiction, a novel I’m working on at the moment. I don’t think I would call it a hopeless despair I’m feeling, though, because such a phenomenon has always been in the mainstream, despite changes in the paradigms of the era. What draws my attention more, actually, is the fact that although it looks different on the surface, the mainstream literature before the 90s is the same in nature as the mainstream literature since then. I think it was around the end of the 80s that the term “leftist commercialism” was on everyone’s lips for a time, which implies that literature in such form cannot bring about fundamental changes, but loses value as literature. It won’t be easy, but it’s urgent that new literary explorations and experimentations be conducted for a new, third way. By Kim Taehwan
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Interview
Literature Transcending the 1980s Novelist Park Sangwoo
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Investigating how the 1980s affected the literature of the novelist Park Sangwoo is synonymous with delving into the political basis of his writing. Many critics have noted that Park is an author who has manifested the signs and novelties of the 1990s, which are quite different from the preceding decade. But upon a closer look, one can see that his literary themes are derived from his “double consciousness” of the 1980s. Park Sangwoo made his literary debut when he won a literary contest at the age of 30 in 1988, which means he was in his 20s during the 1980s. The two major historical events during that decade, the Gwangju Rebellion of May 1980 and the June Democratic Movement of 1987, were part of his experience. Perhaps the memories and scars from that time period turned him into a novelist. As I recall, I met him for the first time along with a number of other writers in Hyehwa-dong on the day of the final snowfall of the year, back in 1989. Since then, we’ve become literary buddies, discussing and debating literature and our times; I also wrote the critique for his first novel The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village, which was published in 1991. Twenty years have passed since then. In my critique that I wrote for his book, I had mentioned how the ethos of the 80s clashes with the trends of the 90s in his work. So then, what does the 1980s mean to Park Sangwoo? Not too long ago I had a chance to meet him in Gahoe-dong, and talk about how that time period had influenced his writing and what it meant to him. Park Sangwoo, of whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, had not changed a bit in appearance from when I first met him 20 years ago. Time had been kind to this boyish romanticist, who used to enjoy singing Patti Page’s “I Went to Your Wedding” whenever we went out drinking. Kwon Seong-woo: It’s been a while. I would like to talk about your writing in relation to the 1980s, which inevitably brings back the memory of our first meeting on a snowy night back in 1989. It was the very last snow of the 80s. At the time, I had been captivated by your romantic writing spirit. I wonder if you remember how we had formed a writer’s group with Yun Dae-nyeong, Ku Hyoseo, Ha Chang-su, and Yi Yong-beom; and after that meeting we all became close. I can’t believe 20 years have gone by since we first met. Irrespective of whether or not it’s positive or negative, the source of your writing seems to be tied to the 1980s. Park Sangwoo: Yes, I believe something like that happened. I vaguely remember how that club just fizzled away. (laughs) I understand that my work is interpreted by many as having successfully reflected a new literary trend and ethos of the 90s, but one can also see the disillusionment and nihilism that is seen in my work as a direct byproduct of the intense struggle and social events of the previous decade. Kwon: I just remember that our talk left a big impression on me. You spoke of an older friend who committed suicide, despairing over what happened in Gwangju May 1980—that you were deeply shocked by his death. I believe that experience lingers as a trauma and painful memory from the 80s. In fact, when one reads the short story “Concerning the Record that He Was a Schizophrenic” from your story collection The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village, the reader can catch a glimpse of this person you talked about. Park: I spent all of my 20s experiencing the heart of the 80s. It was an era in which those who failed to respond to its historical duties or obligations had to live with a guilty conscience. When I became a writer and started actively writing, I could not free myself from such a feeling. I sometimes even deplored my fate for having
critic Kwon Seong-woo and novelist Park Sangwoo
to live during such a tragic and repressive age. The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village, Doksan-dong Angel’s Poem, and Hotel California are the outcomes of my literary journey in the ensuing 10 years after the 80s. Then one day it crossed my mind that I was perhaps merely reflecting the 80s ethos in my books. When I received the Yi Sang Literary Prize in 1999, I began to think that I seriously needed a new approach to expand my literary scope. At any event, the 80s was the starting point of my writing, as well as a focal point of my life. You can see that my work is rooted in that era, and from there it has transformed itself as well as transcended it. And, yes, “Concerning the Record that He Was a Schizophrenic” is based on the older friend I talked to you about. Kwon: After listening to your stories, I have this personal question for you. Had there not been the suicide of this person, would you remember the 80s differently? Park: In some respect, his very existence and identity symbolize the 80s for me. And my memory of him is not just limited to that one person, but instead he encompasses a whole era of historical experience. I actually wanted to be a poet but since his death I could not bring myself to write poetry. That is because his death inf licted an irrevocable shock and irreparable change to my romantic literary sensibility. Kwon: Well, nearly 30 years have passed since the tumultuous historical upheavals of the 80s. At this juncture, what comes to your mind in terms of what you think we have lost and at the same time gained from that period? Park: A long time has passed but I do not believe myself to be free from that era in that I still cannot bring it to a closure or have an objective perspective. Once I complete my novel (which is in the planning stage) on the “internalized history,” perhaps then I will be able to say that I have come to terms with that era in history. But for now, it is still too soon for me to draw any conclusions. Kwon: I understand that you worked in the 1980s as a teacher in a mining town in Gangwon province. What was that experience like? Park: Five days after I completed my mandatory military list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011 45
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service, I was hired to teach in a mining town, and that experience accounts for my entire social life before I became a writer. I was able to develop and cultivate an insight into people and society. Watching the children grow up in a town of devastation, I asked myself in what ways can a novel embrace the world I live in. As a result of agonizing over the wretched social environment, I was unable to write a single sentence during the time I worked as a teacher there. Kwon: One can say that the 1980s was the apex of literature; in other words, it was an era in which the cultural climate and the status of literature were quite different from today. What do you see is the difference between then and now in terms of the writer’s mind? Park: Compared to the 80s, we live in an age of cultural pluralism where everything is out in the open. But at the same time, we lack a cultural focus. In some sense, writers were better off in the 80s when literature was deemed an inf luential art, and an important medium for social transformation. We currently live in a time period when literature is not at the center of things, but conversely that is why writers with lucidity and intelligence are much more in need. Only such writers in their unique ways will be able to adapt to our time and approach literature with creative methods, thereby expanding the scope of our literary purview. This era lacks specific henchmen; therefore the writer himself has to regenerate his creative introspection and esprit. Only writers who are capable of doing that will produce lasting work.
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Kw o n : T h a n k y o u f o r y o u r r e c o l l e c t i o n a n d reminiscences of the 80s. I hope you will continue to remain a cherished writer with a creative new spirit. While engaged in a dialogue with the novelist Park Sangwoo, I felt that perhaps we belonged to the self-same body of memory called the 80s for we both went through our 20s during that time, and went on to become a writer and a literary critic at the end of the decade. We made a vow to cherish our memories of the 1980s and to produce works that would come to terms with and do justice to that historical time period. The quaint streets of Gahoe-dong, where the rain had stopped for the first time in a long while, were filled with young people out enjoying a summer night. I wondered— what do all these young people think of the 80s?
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1. The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village Park Sangwoo, SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. 1991, 398p, ISBN 9788933800126 2. Doksan-dong Angel’s Poem Park Sangwoo, SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. 1995, 318p, ISBN 9788933800737 3. Hotel California Park Sangwoo, SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. 1996, 294p, ISBN 9788933800799
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A Man of All Interests Novelist Kim Yeon-su Kim Yeon-su is a man of habit. For an hour and a half every day he runs. He’s training. This fall he will be running the Chuncheon Marathon, all 42.195 kilometers of it. It’s his second marathon. For another hour or so he listens to music. He thinks it is lazy of classical music snobs to not take advantage of all the other good music out there. In high school he paid the DJ at the local bar and café for lessons on pop music. At one point in his career his byline carried the title of “popular music critic.” He spends an hour each day reading, sometimes he reads in print, sometimes on his iPad or Kindle. He checks out what his contemporaries in the Englishspeaking world have been writing, marveling at their carefree first-person narratives. Some say that Kim is the most serious and traditional among the young writers of his generation. They don’t know him at all. Kim Yeon-su, 41, has to be one of the most eager early adopters among his ilk. Whether it be writing, listening to music, reading, or running, Kim always gravitates to the latest and
coolest. His job is to make writing cool. Uh Soo-woong: When you and I were children, literature was still big but popular culture was just coming into its own. What’s the first book you remember from your childhood? Kim Yeon-su: That would be a comic book. It was in our nextdoor neighbor’s bathroom that was just a hole in the ground, and the pages in the back were gone. They ripped out pages for toilet paper, you see. It was about these kids named Cheoli and Yeonghee who shrank and went inside somebody’s body with this doctor, exploring. That’s the first memory I have of any book before I started school. I remember reading the Gyerim books and the Clover books and the Gyemongsa series books when I was in the third grade. They had these Sherlock Holmes books with black covers.
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Uh: That’s the feeling I got when Park Bumshin retired from teaching recently. There were politicians like Jeong Se-kyun and Jeong Mong-jun, and partners from Kim & Chang, the law firm, at his retirement party. Novelists commanded a certain amount of respect with that generation. (laughter) Can you think of any politicians or social figures who might show up for you at a party when you’re 60? Kim: (laughs) They wouldn’t even show up for Yun Dae-nyeong [who is older than I am], let alone me. Literature used to hold a special place in society but now its power is rapidly diminishing. There used to be a certain celebrity status to being a writer, and also a certain amount of power, like a politician. It was like being a lawyer or a judge, for example. But while the legal profession has kept its status, literature has not. That may not be such a bad thing, however—I think it might even be a good thing. novelist Kim Yeon-su and reporter Uh Soo-woong
Uh: Did you read them as literature? Kim: It was just for fun. The first book I remember reading as literature was a book of Hwang Ji-woo’s poems when I was in the second year of high school. It was strange. I thought it must be poetry because he said it was, but I didn’t know what to make of it. How could a bunch of newspaper articles from the Gwangju Student Movement be called poetry? I was shocked. It didn’t look like poetry, but it left you with something afterwards. Uh: Was there any overlap between when you decided to become a writer and your Hwang Ji-woo period? Kim: No, not at all. I didn’t get started on the book for any of those reasons. I was on the science track in high school and I just wanted to have a go at Hwang Ji-woo’s poems. It was only after university that I thought of writing poetry or novels. I never thought of writing before. Uh: What about when you wrote that “conditional suicide agreement” and did 1,080 prostrations at a temple near your house? That was when you were in high school, right? Kim: (embarrassed) Yes, it was. I was reading Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living and a lot of Jeon Hye-rin. I was very keen on living well, on making something of my life. You only live once, and that sort of thing. (laughs) I was young and self-important. I did the 1,080 prostrations with the rest of the Buddhist student club during summer vacation at a temple called Gsaeun-sa, which means “where the clouds roll back.” It was a nice experience—good exercise, too. Uh: Sounds like you were a bit of a loner. Kim: So is everyone, if you want to go down that path. You go to law school, med school, it’s still a lonely way. I think that my generation differs quite a bit from the generation in their 50s right now. A lot of the older generation thinks that anyone can write if they have the mind to. With my generation, though, it’s not easy being a full-time writer. It’s harder than it used to be, and people don’t read as much as they used to.
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Uh: Let’s talk about that. Why is it a good thing? Kim: I can tell you why it’s good for me. When I went to university in the late 1980s, there were only three kinds of ways you could write a novel [in Korea]. You could write a political novel based on the labor movement, in collaboration with actual laborers, or an art for art’s sake kind of novel like Yi In-seong, or a commercial novel. That’s why I couldn’t imagine writing one. I didn’t like any of the choices, and to choose one of the three was to make a statement in itself. It wasn’t like that with poetry, though. There were political poets, but it was understood that you still had to have an innate appreciation of beauty. That’s why I got into poetry first. And then I read Haruki Murakami for the first time in my second year of college and was bowled over. It wasn’t like anything written in Korea. The book was Hear the Wind Sing, and it wasn’t a commercial novel, it wasn’t experimental, and it certainly wasn’t about the labor movement. He was in his own niche and I liked that. It got me thinking, “I could do this.” Now people talk about how high literature and popular literature are crossing over, but this kind of novel simply didn’t exist back then. The older generation of writers in Korea enjoyed a certain social status practicing their art; they were writers and activists or writers and professors. But people whose whole identity is based on being a writer don’t have this kind of status. Now being a fulltime writer is more like being a technician. That’s where the trouble starts, though, because writing is supposed to be an art, there are readers who take issue with the idea of writing being a profession like anything else. They think that writers are born. That’s very romantic. We writers know, however, that writers are not born but created over a long period of time. That’s why you have to be even more professional, even more disciplined about writing. There’s a reason why I rebelled against poetry when I was young. I just couldn’t stand the poets I met when I first started out. They acted like writing poetry excused them from everything else. I don’t know where they got that attitude, but it was so widespread. They could be unethical and immoral and still believe it was all right because it was for literature. The funny thing is, though, that some of those selfish pigs still wrote good poetry. It wasn’t fair. But with novels it’s about how good you are on average. It’s the entire career of a novelist that matters when they give the Nobel Prize, not a certain work. You don’t achieve a respectable average by being a pig. That’s what I liked about novels. It’s part of the reason why I chose to write them. I have tried my hand at both, and I can say with authority that novelists are much nicer people than poets. (laughs) Uh: Let’s talk about popular culture. Do you consider yourself as part of a generation that was baptized by popular culture?
Kim: I can’t put this very eloquently, but I think that the generation born in 1968 that went to university in 1987, two years before me, was the first to depart radically from the generation before them. People who went to university after 1987 were the generation that was able to see something new and get all excited about it. I think that’s when we saw the first wave of early adopters. Popular culture is about always taking an interest in what’s new. Take people who went to university as late as 1985 and some of them are still listening to Jeong Tae-chun, Park Eun-ok, Nochatsa. I don’t, ever. There’s so much good stuff out there with good technique, too. I don’t understand people weeping over the music of their youth. I guess you could say there is that kind of difference. Uh: Isn’t Kim Yeon-su, the writer, a traditionalist as far as novelists go? I would think that among your generation you would be better accused of writing classically rather than jumping on the latest thing. Kim: That’s where you’ve got me wrong. The writers I’m most interested in are American and European writers born in the 1970s. Writers in the English-speaking world born after the 1970s are very different from their predecessors. Usually you have a very positive first-person narrator who has almost no emotional baggage. And you have a very strong story. This is all in the tradition of Marquez or Rushdie. That is, you have a very versatile narrator. More story than fact. I think Nicole Krauss is one of the best writers of her generation. The History of Love, of course. I also like Junot Diaz and Daniel Kehlmann. Uh: Here’s another thing. You are one of the early adopters of technology among writers your age. You were one of the first to use a Kindle or an iPad. What do you think literature can do in the world of the iPad?
Kim: I don’t think literature is simply text. The iPad turns everything into text. The context is gone. You only have the sentences. But you don’t always read just the text. For example, your father might toss you a book you wouldn’t have read otherwise. “You might want to take a look at this, it has all my notes.” Can literature be consumed on the iPad or Kindle? It could, in a redacted form. Film scripts, for example, with only dialogue and stage directions. I don’t think the entire experience can be replaced, though, not for my generation or even our children’s generation. At the very least, the generation over 30 will not find the iPad or Kindle capable of replacing print. So that leaves me where I’m not jumping on the E-book bandwagon, I’m going down with print books along with the people in their 30s. I guess we’re lucky, in a way. Uh: If I may repeat myself, what does a writer do in that kind of world? Kim: If I may repeat myself, you write every day. (laughs) Uh: You said you follow American and European writers born in the 1970s, I imagine you must be equally aware of the possibility of your work being read abroad. Let’s talk about translation. What do you think is most important when you’re trying to bring Korean literature to a wider audience? Kim: I mentioned this before, but you have to have an upbeat, positive narrator. The problem with Korean novels is that the narrators are very down. We had a tragic history. But if you only write about the pain and tragedy no one is going to listen. Western novels did have that kind of narrator in the past. Not anymore, though. You can’t get away with writing these tragic, historical novels like you’re speaking before the United Nations anymore. You can write about tragedy but you need to be humorous about it. And you need figures of speech. Creative figures of speech are a must. And your story should be a real page-turner. By Uh Soo-woong
1. The End of the World, Girlfriend Kim Yeon-su, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2009, 318p, ISBN 9788954608824 2. I’m a Ghostwriter Kim Yeon-su, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 266p, ISBN 9788936436858 3. Whoever You Are, No Matter How Lonely Kim Yeon-su, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2007, 392p, ISBN 9788954603980
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Interview
In Your 20s: Reliving the Most Painful, Brilliant Times Novelist Kim Ae-ran 50
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Prologue
In Korean culture, it is a compliment to be referred to as “precocious.” On the one hand, precocious means “mature beyond one’s age,” but it can also mean “being someone adults like.” Even though the label, “the youngest” always followed Kim Ae-ran around as she received numerous prestigious awards, adults become nervous when they hear her name. Their anxiety is attributed less to her reputation as a feisty novice or prodigy than to her being a young precocious writer. Readers who love her works report that they find Kim’s works surprising not because she is younger than they had imagined, but because she has “figured out things about life I don’t know.” Kim Ae-ran continues to make the older generation delightfully nervous as she, much to her embarrassment, continues to be an iconic figure in Korean literature in the 2000s. She is one the most influential young writers who speaks for 20something young Korean men and women. I met the young Kim at Café Yri in the trendy Hongik University area. Jung Yeo-ul: When you first debuted, critics reviewed your short stories “I Go to the Convenience Store,” “Paper Fish,” and “Always the Narrator” as great depictions of Koreans in their 20s. What were some things you had in mind as you worked on these stories? Kim Ae-ran: I was born and raised in the provinces, so everything I saw in Seoul when I moved here for college seemed new and surprising. It was the first time I had my own apartment. Many things about Seoul caught my attention because I wasn’t familiar with the lifestyle and living space. I wondered why certain things were placed in certain spots, and why certain spaces were expanded. What I yearned for the most when I was in my 20s was a room of my own, so I suppose the stories were naturally suffused with my personal motivations. Jeong: “I Go to the Convenience Store” was especially wellreceived as a great portrait of young Koreans and the peculiar nature of convenience stores. Kim: I was a little nervous when I first wrote that piece. I wasn’t sure if I could craft it into a story. It was probably because the main character of the story was a space, not a person. Jung: I think such close descriptions of spaces can accurately express the sentiments of a generation. The convenience store, for example, is a place that’s meant for young adults to work and shop. It’s the most familiar space for them but it is also fraught with painful memories. I’m also curious about your thoughts on the way society sees people in their 20s. If I were in my 20s now, I would be very uncomfortable with the label, “880 ThousandWon Generation.” Isn’t it also problematic that society sees them as lacking love, romance and passion, which is what the 20s should be all about? Kim: I think that, to a certain extent, each generation has misconceptions and fantasies about the other generations that often lead to disappointment. I thought it was interesting that the monikers for previous generations such as “4.19” or “386” came from political contexts whereas the names for our generation came from our economic circumstances. “4.19” or “386” sounds like an accomplishment or a result, whereas “880 Thousand-Won” seems to refer to our present circumstances. When I think of my friends while we were all in our 20s, I remember how the low pay relative to their efforts wore them out. The “880 Thousand-Won Generation” seems like one interpretation or explanation for people in their 20s, but I hoped to portray something beyond that in my
novelist Kim Ae-ran and critic Jung Yeo-ul
stories—people who aren’t satisfied with what they have and are in need of something more. I suppose I placed greater faith in the portrait of a generation that surfaces through the portrayal of one individual rather than the attempt to describe the whole generation. I also hope that what I say does not work against what I write by getting too far ahead. Jung: Kim Young-ha’s Quiz Show reminds us of just how difficult it is to be in your 20s in Korean society today. The current generation of people in their 20s is educated, cultured, and more fluent in English than ever before and yet their gateway to society is so narrow. Their trials were quite heartbreaking in this novel. How do you feel about this perspective on people in their 20s? Kim: I guess being the most privileged generation also means we are obligated to have reached a higher standard before we can be referred to as “average.” I think I’ve mentioned in a story that while for the previous generation poverty is a fond memory and a heroic tale, it is a secret and a shameful one for our generation. It is true that our generation is on the whole much more well off, but who’s to decide what’s “average?” Even when people are in the same biological age bracket, they lead vastly different lives depending on class and region. So I wonder to what extent the word “generation” can bind all those in their 20s together. Jung: At the end of the day, the generational gap inevitably has areas of convergence with the class gap. When I was in school, class trips were always some place within the country like Gyeongju or Sorak Mountain, but I hear traveling abroad is becoming more common. But not everyone can afford it, so children start to encounter economic and cultural marginalization from an earlier stage in their lives. In that context, your “Christmas Specials” really speaks to the generational and class struggles. I know quite a few people who teared up reading that story. The sufferings of people in their 20s who must endure poverty at their most carefree and dazzling age comes through very movingly in your story. Kim: It’s the most scandalous story I’ve ever written, too. (laughs) I’ve lived in university neighborhoods for a long time and have seen lots of love motels of different sizes. Every time one of those bright yet eerie signs caught my eye, I used to think, “Lots of people are ‘doing it’ today, too. They’re so sedulously going at it…” I found it somewhat poignant. (laughs) It’s one interesting phenomena in large cities, especially Seoul, where one can’t find a room on Christmas Eve. The story was inspired by the fact that all these young people want is to “do it” but they’re not even allowed that. list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011 51
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Jung: I feel there are too many events and “special” days these days. One prime example is Christmas. When I was young, people did not use to get so stressed over Christmas. I think the obsession with doing or giving something special on Christmas became far worse after 2000. The desire to consume has becomes greater than ever but few are capable of satisfying their needs, so people constantly suffer from a relative sense of loss. I think the 20s is when such a sense of inadequacy is most acutely felt. And I wonder if the sharp decline of patriarchal influence around the house has anything to do with the economic pain people in their 20s feel. Since the economic crisis at the turn of the century, it feels being a good father has become extremely hard to achieve. Your most acclaimed work, Run, Pop, Run! is a very meaningful, insightful testament to this power shift. Your story essentially looks at the fall or absence of the father figure from a child’s perspective and depicts the dysfunctional relationship like no story has ever done before.
Kim: For me, Run, Pop, Run! was the first story where I started to talk about the father figure. I started out with “Fathers are…” and then I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I summoned up the character and then couldn’t figure out what to do with it, so I guess I started making fun of it and inviting it to play with me. Jung: For our last questions, I would like to ask what advice you have for people in their 20s. Koreans in their 20s today tend to feel cornered. Their college tuition fees are astronomical, their debt from college is bound to restrict them with bad credit the moment they graduate, and they spend years after graduation not knowing when they will be hired, if they are ever going to be hired. No one needs more encouragement and help than they do, but it seems they are the most neglected. How would they make it in a world where they have so many wants and not enough means? What would you, as a recent graduate of the 20s, say to them? Kim: I don’t think I’m in any position to hand out wholesome advice. Not because they’re so lofty, but because advice often tends to turn a situation into one’s own fault. The moment you say, “cheer up,” it is as though their failure is attributed to their lack of cheeriness. I think that to give advice to people, you have to have the right aura. I’m not one of those people. I’m still swayed by my own petty desires. I get depressed because I can’t have something I want, and I am not free from the pressures of consumerism. So I can’t just tell people that it’s nothing. But I also have the desire to bring whatever lives inside of me to the surface, and maybe find and foster whatever healthy or wholesome being that lives there. I know this makes me happy, and I think it’ll be similar with other people. I chose the novel to express these thoughts because I couldn’t turn them into one neat sentence or unambiguously be defeated or encouraged by what I have. So I can’t give people in their 20s some heartfelt advice, “Do such and such” or “I hope you do this or that.” But I can say that I hope to continue the dialogue with my readers and the characters from my stories that keep looking back at me through the eyes of people in their 20s. I hope to remain a writer who contemplates the times we are living in.
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1. My Palpitating Life Kim Ae-ran, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2011, 354p, ISBN 9788936433871 2. Mouthwatering Kim Ae-ran, Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. 2007, 309p, ISBN 9788932018041 3. Run, Pop, Run! Kim Ae-ran, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2005, 268p, ISBN 9788936436902
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The older generation in Korea worries about the generation in their 20s more than ever. The older generation worries that 20somethings have no gumption, no passion, and no vision when they should be full of dreams, love, and passion. The awful label, “880 Thousand-Won Generation” is often a reflection of the older generation’s merciless judgment. But the young characters in Kim Ae-ran’s stories suggest that what these young people need is not pity or concern, but to be simply left alone. The labels such as “Boomerang Kids (children who move back in with their parents)” or “Yi Tae-baek (Isiptae taebani baeksu, or “half the twenties are unemployed”) are ones imposed on them, not how they see themselves. Young people, more so in their 20s than in any other time in their lives, have a right to be sensitive about what it means to “be myself ” and constantly, unabashedly search for a way to be who they are. Kim Ae-ran is a writer who knows how important it is to contemplate “how I can be true to myself in life.” It is always a pleasure to watch her as she finds her own path unaltered by readers, critics, or other writers, for her characters seem to put us on the right path through their journeys to find themselves. By Jung Yeo-ul
Interview
Remaking Realism Children’s Book Illustrator Hong Seongchan Nominee for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award Hong Seongchan is known as one of the best-known illustrators and children’s book writers of Korea. He has continued to do illustrations for over 50 years beginning in the 1950s, the genesis of modern illustration in Korea. It would be safe to say that every Korean person has seen his illustrations at one point or another. Hong was born in 1929 during the Japanese occupation and grew up during the Korean War, receiving no formal education beyond elementary school, and studied art on his own. Two key aspects that characterize Hong’s works are “traditional colors” and “realism.” Thus his true value is most apparent in illustrations dealing with Korean history. Korea has experienced a painful rupture in tradition as it underwent colonial rule, war, rapid industrialization, and westernization, and as a result, doing works of illustration that deal with traditional Korean culture, including historical works and works of nonfiction, poses difficulties. For this reason, Hong’s illustrations, are recognized
as having historical value, gaining Hong recognition as a top illustrator of children’s history books. K i m Ky u n g - y u n : I t ’s a n h o n o r t o i n t e r v i e w y o u . Congratulations on your nomination for the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Hong Seongchan: Thank you. I was surprised that I was nominated for this great award I’d only heard of. I feel like I’m wearing clothes that don’t quite fit.
How He Became an Illustrator Kim: You’re modest. You studied art on your own, didn’t you? Hong: I’ve always loved to draw, ever since I was a little toddler of three or four. I’d steal my older brother’s notebook and list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011 53
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Hong’s Emphasis as an Illustrator Kim: Talking about realism, why do you put so much importance on realism? Hong: I believe that all people, rich and poor, high and low, including children, should be provided with accurate information, whether through newspapers or magazines, or another outlet. Often, children are depicted in a way that’s different from children in reality, in their proportions and so forth. They don’t look like real children. I want people to be awake to reality and see realistic portrayals, not cartoon-like portrayals of children with open mouths and bleary eyes. Kim: In the same context, you’re known for being very thorough in your historical research. Was there something special that triggered your interest in the Korean culture and tradition? critic Kim Kyung-yun and illustrator Hong Seongchan
draw with a pencil, then erase the drawings. My brother would get furious, of course. Still, I kept drawing in secret, despite the scolding. My father didn’t want me to draw. He wanted me to study oriental medicine. In the year the Korean War broke out, he received some advice from a friend, and after the friend returned home, my father asked me what I needed in order to study painting. So I told him that I needed a teacher and some materials. I was able to get some oils and canvas and such, but the war broke out before I found a teacher, so I never got to actually use the materials. Kim: The experiences you had as a child had an influence on your works, didn’t they? Hong: They did in a big way. For example, I saw officers and soldiers of the North Korean People’s Army, as well as their uniforms, insignia, hats, shoulder coverings, and shoes. I even started digging a trench under orders… These things aren’t easy to forget. I did a lot of illustrations about North Korea for magazines in the 1980s, and such experiences helped a lot. Kim: I hear that you always had a great interest in Western painting. How did you come to be an illustrator? Hong: It was in 1955, when my oldest child was born, that I began to do illustrations. I was very poor at the time, and one day, I ran into a friend on the street. He said it was no use drawing and painting on my own, and introduced me to a publisher, saying I could earn a living doing illustrations for practice. At first I did illustrations for serialized novels or essays published in newspapers. I began to do children’s book illustrations in the 1970s. I did illustrations for elementary school textbooks, children’s magazines, and collected works of children’s literature. It was in the 1990s that I began to do illustrations for children’s picture books. The first was Jeongbae and the Baby (1991). The book was part of a collection, and I tried my hand at a style that wasn’t my own. Ironically, though, I received an award for the illustrations. Kim: What do you mean by a style that wasn’t your own? Hong: I feel the most comfortable with realism. For Jeongbae and the Baby, however, I portrayed the characters as extremely innocent, as many people do. That’s what won me the award.(laughs)
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Hong: In the 1960s, I began to do illustrations for a series of historical tales in a monthly magazine. As a result, publishers came to think that I did only historical illustrations, and made no requests for anything else. But I didn’t know that much about history—I had no choice but to meet experts, including folklorists, to collect data and do historical research. The work suited me, though, since I’ve always sought after realism. The things I saw and heard as a child helped a lot as well. I mentioned the uniforms of the North Korean soldiers earlier—it’s important to build lasting memories through observation. When I was living in the countryside, I saw a house being built. I went in and out of the house, taking a close look to see how the floor heating system was installed, the wooden floor laid, and the roof connected. The process includes laying lattice sticks across the rafters, placing dirt on top, then throwing straw over it. These memories helped a great deal when I was illustrating Building a House. Kim: When readers see your illustrations for tradition Korean tales and mythology, they feel a vivid sense of reality, as though the depicted events are taking place right in front of them, not in another world. Your pursuit of realism makes that possible, and led to the publication of the five volumes in the Traveling with Hong Seongchan in Search of Folklore and Landscape Paintings series in 2007. Hong: I think my job is to draw and paint what I know best, and do something that isn’t easy for other people to do.
His Favorite Piece of Work and Plans for the Future Kim: You’ve done countless numbers of illustrations, and published many picture books. Which one’s your favorite? Hong: I would say, Where Is Daddy? (2009) This is a new edition of The Ugly Donkey (1998), the first book I wrote and illustrated. A new edition was published because no one called me when the contract expired. I looked into it and found out it was no longer in print. So I tried to see if there was anything I did wrong. You know that a mule is an offspring of a female horse and a male ass, right? Donkeys are different from mules. I drew a donkey, based on incorrect data, when I should have drawn a mule. Even though I made a mistake, I had great affection for the work. Knowing this, a publisher by the name of Jaimimage suggested that we make corrections and publish it again. That’s how Where Is Daddy? came to be. I also liked the text of The Village Where the Fox Was Born (2007). I went to Manchuria for five days to see the building for
myself, and even ate frogs and bear, to prepare myself for the task of illustrating it. Above all, I have great affection for an illustrated tale I’m currently working on. It’s called The Trial by the Rabbit, and it’s about a scholar who saves a tiger in a trap, then nearly gets eaten up but is saved by a rabbit. I want to tell the story from a slightly different perspective. What harm are humans doing to the animals around us? What great damage are we inflicting? What do the animals think of us? Such are the questions I want to ask. I’m interested in topics such as nature, animals, the environment, and the meaning of companionship. I want to share with children stories that deal with these topics. I want to share old tales that haven’t been discovered yet, but are essential. Kim: So you’re writing and illustrating once again, with a new interpretation of an old tale. I’m looking forward to seeing it. You used pens, not brushes, for My Grandpa’s Clock (2009), another
work you wrote and illustrated. It was very unique. Was there a special reason why you used pens? Hong: I was doing some sketches with a ballpoint pen, and saw that the light and shade created by the pen gave the sketches a unique feeling. I originally used mainly brushes and pens. There’s something called a mapping pen, very nimble and light. You can draw thin lines with it, if you don’t put much pressure on it. Sometimes I sharpen or shave toothpicks to draw with them. I think precise and detailed drawings can show children how things really look.
For Younger Illustrators Kim: Lastly, is there anything you’d like to say to younger illustrators? Hong: I want to tell them that they should do as they want, but also be diligent, or in other words, do their best that they may be satisfied with what they do. I think an artist should have integrity. He must express things as they are. Drawings give a specific, visual form to things that aren’t expressed through words. Above all, history is a record. Children, in particular, see pictures as something they can believe completely. That’s why they shouldn’t be distorted. By Kim Kyung-yun
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1. My Grandpa's Clock Yoon Jane; Illustrator: Hong Seongchan, NURIMBO 2010, 36p, ISBN 9788958761082 2. The Folks in Fox-Lurking-Village Baik Suk, Illustrator: Hong Seongchan Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2007, 52p, ISBN 9788936454159 3. Jeongbae and the Baby Kim Young-hee; Illustrator: Hong Seongchan, Froebel, 1991
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4. Traveling with Hong Seongchan in Search of Folklore and Landscape Paintings (5 volumes) Won Dong-eun, Illustrator: Hong Seongchan Jaimimage Publishing Co., 2007 4
5. Building a House Hong Seongchan, Borim Press 1996, 46p, ISBN 9788943302146 6. Where Is Daddy? Hong Seong-chan, Jaimimage Publishing Co. 2009, 30p, ISBN 9788986565874
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Interview
An Evolving Vision Children’s Book Illustrator Kim Dong-sung I met with illustrator Kim Dong-sung, whose children’s book, Waiting for Mom (2004) has had great success among young readers since its publication. Beginning with his first work, Bike Trip with Uncle (1998), he has illustrated numerous picture books such as Echo (2001), Nightingale (2005), The Wildflower Kid (2008) and storybooks such as Dal from Binari (2001), The Firefly that Could Not Fly (2007), Flower Shoes (2008), and The House Where Books Dwell (2009). Kim is also working on stamps, posters, films, comics, and animated feature projects. Time flew as we discussed his work. We were able to have a meaningful conversation on everything from the identity of an artist to the relationship between artist and audience, text and illustration, the author’s role model, the matter of telling one’s story, and his future plans. Eom Hye-suk: Nice to meet you. I first encountered your work at the J’aimimage exhibit on Faces of Koreans. The ink paintings were warm and memorable, and then I saw them again as illustrations in Bike Trip with Uncle. How did you get involved in illustrating children’s books? 56
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Kim Dong-sung: Well, first off I’d like to clarify my identity as an artist. I studied oriental painting in college, but I wasn’t much into the fine arts confined to the galleries. I happened to discover illustration as an option, and I liked the close proximity between illustrations and audiences. Illustrations allowed direct and instant communication. Illustration projects naturally led to publications and picture books. Illustrations for publications afford communication with an audience while the author’s artistic complexity is offered as collateral, and the children’s book was my first step into that world. It has its charms because it’s such a unique medium. Half my illustration projects are ads and the other half are books. Eom: I’ve read somewhere that you were influenced by Charles Keeping and Lee Uk-bae, who have very different styles. Could you tell us about your influences? Kim: It wasn’t so much their style as their philosophy and attitude as artists that inspired me. Charles Keeping’s work
invalidates the notion that picture books are for children. His work is aesthetically picturesque without losing his style. He pushed the boundaries of what a picture book could be. Lee Uk-bae is another artist who staunchly sticks to his style and has achieved an admirable level of professionalism. His pictures have an element of wit. Both artists leave a particular, strong impression. I’m currently in the process of trying different things and finding my style, and they’re my role models. Picture books can be limited in expressions because they’re for children. But people forget that although picture books are mainly for children, adults read them, too. Of course, there are certain things that artists must keep in mind when illustrating for children. For instance, children take in the image they see as it is, so it is important to express the message or theme from their point of view. Eom: You’ve worked on quite a few projects. Do you have any favorites? Kim: I don’t have favorites, but I could name a few that I enjoyed working on. Waiting for Mom is one. This was truly my first picture book. Echo and The Wildflower Kid were picture story books where pictures themselves told the story. But in Waiting for Mom, I expressed the impression I got from the text. The text was short, but different emotions arose every time I read it, and the ending was memorable. I wanted to keep this open conclusion in the illustration. So the real world was done in monotone, and the imaginary world had color, so that the reunion with the mother could be imaginary or chronologically real. I left it to the readers to decide. I visually emphasized the child’s yearning for his mother as he waits for her on a cold day. The second piece I enjoyed was Nightingale. The text drew clear lines between East and West, the humble bird and the emperor, simplicity and extravagance, and the natural and the artificial. The project taught me the joys of putting all the elements together. Eom: Could you tell us a little bit about your illustration process? Kim: First, I think about the relationship between the text and the illustration. Illustration can offer something greater than the
illustrator Kim Dong-sung and critic Eom Hye-suk
text, enhance it, or depict exactly what it says. Sometimes, there are texts that do not need illustrations because the text says it all. The works of Hyeon Deok and Kwon Jeong-saeng, both wonderful artists, are such examples. For the artists, good texts leave holes here and there for the pictures to fill. In picture books, sometimes the picture plays the main role and the text plays the supporting role, or vice versa. So an illustrator has to understand the text and contribute his own ideas in the illustration. Eom: So textual analysis and interpretation is an important part of the process. It must be a challenge for the novice illustrator to decide whether to go beyond the text, emphasize it, or express things word for word. I imagine one would have to develop an eye for such things. You did the illustrations for Shin Kyung-sook’s “Blue Tears” (From the collection, Li Jin) when it was first serialized in a newspaper. What was your approach to that project? Kim: Keeping in mind that this was for a newspaper, I went for a flashy style. The illustrations were taken out for the short story collection. I don’t think the illustrations would have complemented the story in book form. Eom: Artists Yi U-kyeong and Hong Seong-chan were also involved in many newspaper and magazine illustration projects. Illustrators usually receive commissions. Could you tell us about the process? Kim: When I am offered a commission, I pick projects that move me in some way. I don’t work with texts that don’t suit me. I think an illustrator’s better off not working with texts that don’t inspire any feelings or images. I received an offer to illustrate a picture book version of the movie Old Partner, but I declined because they wanted to recreate the film in book form. Eom: What kind of projects would you like to work on in the future? Kim: I want to start telling my own stories. So far, I’ve been able to express myself indirectly through illustrations, but from now on, I would like to take a more direct approach, whether I’m meeting the audience through books or exhibits. I don’t have a style yet.
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Interview
Eom: What do you mean when you say you don’t have a style yet? When I see your illustrations, I can tell right away that it’s yours. K im: Well, I change the style to cater to the text. I go with whatever the text is trying to convey. In Dal from Binari, Cheongsongni was a special geographical location, and Father Jeong Ho-gyeong, is a real person. In such cases, I can’t draw them however I want. So I went down to Cheongsongni and met the priest and the three-legged dog, Dal, to use as reference points. The Wildflower Kid is an autobiographical tale, and I was drawn to the purity of the text. The text did not make superb literature, but it spoke to me, and I tried to convey that. With The Firefly that Could Not Fly, on the other hand, I focused more on the message and the lyricism of the text rather than the factual details. Eom: Isn’t it a good thing if the author is able to find an appropriate style for each text? Why is that something you need to fix? Kim: Artists such as Dick Bruna or John Burningham have their own distinct styles. They create powerful works by breathing narrative into their own characters. They tell stories only they can tell. Eom: So that’s what you mean by your style. But when I was translating John Burningham, a book on his life and works, I did some research on his early works and noticed that he used to have a completely different style and content. They gradually changed. I think that yours will go through similar changes. Whose career or works do you follow closely for inspiration?
Kim: Oh, many artists. I’ve been marveling at the directing of Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, and Woody Allen. As far as contemporaries go, I admire Baek Heena’s imagination, Bae Hyunju’s documentary-like style, and Yi Hye-ran’s style as well. Kwon Yoon-duck’s approach is also inspiring. When I look at the works of contemporaries or the generation below me, I have no doubt we will see picture books with an even more wonderful sense of imagination in the future. Eom: What kind of picture books would you like to make? Kim: I have a few things I’m working on at my desk right now, but I’m not at liberty to discuss them in detail. One thing I can tell you is that I would like to work on documentary picture books, which isn’t a big field but quite vital in my view. Seoul, Geumgang Mountain, or Han River, for example, can be the topic of these books. “King Jeongjo Goes to Hwaseong” could also be made into a picture book. Another direction I’m considering is picture books that reinterpret the beloved classics of Hans Christian Andersen or Oscar Wilde. There’s a few that I have in mind right now. Yet another project I’d like to work on is a picture book that depicts a child’s life and the way he or she thinks. Maurice Sendak’s Pierre, for instance, is about a boy who says “I don’t care” to everything until he is eaten by a lion. After that, he says, “I care.” I want to make picture books that play with such a psychology, are fun, and have twists at the end. By Eom Hye-suk
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1. The Wildflower Kid Lim Gil-taek; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Gilbut Children Publishing 2008, 45p, ISBN 9788955820829
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2. Nightingale Kim Su-jung; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Woongjin ThinkBig Co., Ltd. 2005, 42p, ISBN 3. Echo Lee Ju-hong; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Gilbut Children Publishing Co., Ltd 2001, 36p, ISBN 9788986621938 4. Waiting for Mom Lee Tae-joon; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd 2004, 38p, ISBN 9788935657124
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5. Flower Shoes Kim Soyon, Illustator: Kim Dong-sung Bluebird Publishing Co. 2008, 155p, ISBN 9788961551045
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6. The House Where Books Dewell Lee Young-seo; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2009, 192p, ISBN 9788954607346 7. Dal from Binari Kwon Jeong-saeng; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung Little Mountain Publishing Co. 2001, 60p, ISBN 9788989646006 8. Bike Trip with Uncle Chae In-sun; Illustrator: Kim Dong-sung, Jaimimage Publishing Co. 1998, 46p, ISBN 9788986565515
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Interview
Catching Children When They Fall
Children’s Book Writer Kim Ryeo-ryeong Kim Ryeo-ryeong began her career as a fiction writer, but it was in fact a course on children's literature that she took in college that led her to become a children's book writer. It was this, the last kind of literature she was exposed to, that propelled her career. She wrote children's books without knowing that they were books for children. It was only when she had written her book that people asked her if it was a children's book. She wondered if children's literary theory even existed. Or if a book could be defined as a children's book only by virtue of the fact that it has a child character in it. But theory is theory, and stories are spun according to their own logic. They have to reach for the child inside the reader and draw that child out into the open.
Within a year of her debut, Kim won three major literary awards. She won the 2007 Ma Haesong award for Child with Memories; the Young Reader Munhakdongne award for There’s a Sea Horse Living in My Heart; and with the novel Wandeuk in 2008, she became a force to be reckoned with. Kim Ji-eun: It is so nice to meet you. It's amazing to think about the scope of our work—you write for children and young adults, and also for an adult audience. What would you say is the difference between the two audiences?
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Interview
of a student with food poisoning. I am certain that this new teacher found it to be a nerve-wracking moment. This is what I mean when I say that at times, the most uncomical moments have the power to stimulate our imagination. That is the essence of storytelling. KJE: Do you mean to imply that the characters that appear in your fiction are all embodiments of your own moments of “stimulation,” as you call it?
children’s book writer Kim Ryeo-ryeong and critic Kim Ji-eun
Kim Ryeo-ryeong: I always begin with the question, "Why?" when I am faced with opposing forces, like good and evil, or victim and perpetrator. “Why the tears?” “Why the use of force?” “Why was this person beaten?” Whether writing for children or adults, it is this “why” question that is the most challenging to ask. Particularly in the case of literature for children, it is imperative to approach this question from the child's eye level. In fact, I often get asked whether children's books are dumbed down for children, but that is entirely wrong. On the contrary, books for children cannot compromise on their sophistication. There is nothing more difficult than writing at a child's eye-level. I have made a constant effort to approach the child's question of "Why?" Eventually the moment came when the child's view of the world was open before me. That is when I begin my first draft. A writer's job is to observe, question, and record. Neither children's literature nor fiction is a simplistic manifestation of good versus evil. The question “Why?” exists for us all. KJE: That explains why you tell stories about situations in which there is not a clear object of criticism. There’s Sea Horse Living in My Heart exposes the way in which adoptive parents and their child see each other. And The Child Who Brought Memory examines the reappearance of forgotten memories. You seem to treat everyone fairly. Did you experience anything in our own life that influenced your view of people? KRR: I exist in every single one of my works. Even more so, I must say that the "I" that exists in these works is an intensified essential version of myself. I believe that only stories that invoke my essence have the potential to do so for others. I even set aside my best ideas until they move and stimulate me first. It is precisely my experiences that get reflected in my fiction. I remember one experience from high school. For example, we were a particularly whiny class that was constantly trying to get class to end early. Our homeroom teacher was young and was a pushover. One day he stood up with conviction and proclaimed that he was never going to let the class out early again. But that day I stuffed myself with snacks that someone had brought to school and got food poisoning. I went begging, my face red with hives, to my teacher, the same one who had sworn that even our parents' funeral would not serve an excuse. "I think I need to go home early," I said. And I'll never forget the hopeless look the teacher had on his face. It moved something inside me. I was honestly concerned for him, faced as he was with the possibility of the collapse of his principles all because 60
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KRR: People often wonder which of my characters is me. If my readers want to believe that the characters represent real people, I tell them to do so. My characters are both me and those with whom I have come into contact. I always use people who have brought me down. But when I feature these characters I do so not to accuse them but to capture their essence, to confess to them. “I didn't really know you” is what I want to say. "You were right." It is my way of thanking them. It is also a way of keeping their destiny a secret. As a writer, I deal with things not only on the surface but under it. My job is to dig up those places that have barely been discovered. I look not only to look into the eyes of my characters but to look beyond them into the unseen. KJE: Your works can often be read as confessionals; and the voices that are heard are alternatively those of male characters and surprising female voices as well. You seem like one of those writers who can comfortably navigate both viewpoints. KRR: I try hard to avoid being identified by my readers as a female writer. I heard that it's hard to tell if my work was written by a man or a woman. I was relieved when my readers did not know after reading my novel Wandeuk that it was written by a woman. When I met another famous writer in Korea, he said he was shocked because he had been certain that the book had been written by a man. When was I high school I took kung fu lessons with some friends. I think that's what helped me. I came into close physical contact with both boys and girls. I learned how relieve my heart without constraints. Even through the experience of being knocked out. KJE: Your books always seem to feature an adult which offers the young and vulnerable child characters a source of profound trust. KRR: In my life I have always had friends who came to my side and helped me whenever I was in crisis. I grew up seeing a great deal of my maternal grandmother and great-grandmother who was over 100 years old. She had an amazing presence. Because of her age she was above trivialities. The local women also trusted and believed in me. They were always present, standing firmly in a position in which I was always protected and there to catch me when I fell. I grew up safely because there was always someone in my life that, even when I hit rock bottom, was able to say, "It's ok, I'm here." That is what adults can do for children. The main character in Have You Seen That Man? features precisely that kind of man. KJE: Your characters speak less about their stories of success and more about sharing experiences that enable them to laugh and move on in their lives. By sharing sincere thoughts, your text elicits great sympathy from the reader. At the same time, you seem to be telling children to never give up. It is almost as if your work teaches a kind of emotional self-defense technique. KRR: When I learned kung fu, I also learned self-defense. The character that speaks out in Wandeuk and says, "fighting is cowardly" is inspired by something I heard at the time. The world
we live in is a rough one, one in which it is easy to get beaten and defeated. I feel that it is important to expose children to this reality sometimes. I want children to have real hope, but I do not wish to simply point them to a utopian vision. When I was growing up, there was a certain degree of integrity and communal laws that were respected. Today, though, it seems that even those that are doing well in the world have only their own personal interest in mind. In today's competitive world individuals are worried about "my law" rather than communal ones. But it is because of this that I want to show the “us,� the community, and not the individual.
I also have a warm association with religion. My mother went to church, my grandmother to the Buddhist Temple, and I married into a Catholic family. When I was young I was often taken to the temple, and the monk usually had to wake me because I would fall asleep. I remember following our church minister and pestering him with childish questions. I thought that there may be lots of gods, but the rules of what is permissible and not seemed to be the same. It occurred to me that all these Gods may be one and the same. Perhaps that is what inspired my writing of The Child Who Brought Memory, a book that takes a spiritual look inside the heart of a child.
KJE: Your characters seem to have a real aversion for verbal ceremony. Wandeuk looks upon adult hypocrisy with disdain, and a character in Sublime Lies searches for the truth and pays for it with his life.
KJE: If children's literature is like the stepping stones of the heart that connect this generation with the next, it seems that you have reached a deep understanding of these generations and have already achieved a kind of transcendent vision of wisdom.
KRR: I cannot tell you how many times I have witnessed people slandering others behind their backs, yet doing so through the hypocritical use of empty flattery and in submission to their interlocutor's social status and position. Those on the receiving end of flattery are usually in positions of power.
K R R : W hen I w r ite I fe e l t h at I e x ude s ome of my grandmother's characteristics. Such figures as herself are remarkable in that they transcend the division between things. I think that somewhere inside I expect that I'll live until 103. And once I have passed 100 I want to leave it all after I write a fantastic book that will be impossible to define as either a work of adult fiction or a children's book. Because I think that they say that at 100 years of age, literature finally becomes visible.
KJE: Your children's books tend to expose the artificial quality of these power structures and isolate those exercising hypocritical power. Your works make power an object of ridicule.
By Kim Ji-eun
KRR: I went through some unbearable experiences when I was young, and the repetition of my mantra, "Just laugh it off" is what saved me. True laughter is the kind that brings tears streaming down our cheeks. The kind of laughter that doesn't stop, when the tears just keep coming. That kind of laughter and those kinds of tears are the essence of honesty, and they are the embodiment of strength and resilience. KJE: Do you think it was your grandmothers' influence that informed you of the strength of honesty and truth? You mentioned the grannies that granted you unconditional protection and care. And in your books it is not only blood relatives but neighbors who are a source of comfort.
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KRR: My great-grandmother died at the age of 108. My grandma told me back then that she surely turned into a Taoist spirit and flew to the heavens. So I thought it meant that we were now sharing our quarters with a spirit. I was five or six at the time, and I imagined myself grabbing on to her over 100-years-olderthan-me great-grandmother's feet and peeling acorns together. In my mind's eye we refused to part. Grandma sang a song that went: "Go away shell! Let only the fruit remain!" and when I lost these magnificent women I felt as through the spirits had departed and nothing was left but the physical shell. To this day they are the most mature women to ever have lived. I felt as though I was now left to record the world in the place of their language.
1. There's Sea Horse Living in My Heart Kim Ryeo-ryeong; Illustrator: Noh Seok-mee, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2007, 158p, ISBN 9788954604048
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2. Wandeuk Kim Ryeo-ryeong, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2008, 237p, ISBN 9788936433635 3. Have You Seen That Man? Kim Ryeo-ryeong; Illustrator: Chang Kyeong-hue, Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. 2011, 175p, ISBN 9788954614542 4. Sublimes Lies Kim Ryeo-ryeong, Changbi Publishers, Inc. 2009, 228p, ISBN 9788936456221
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Translator’s Words
Translating the Beauty of Premodern Literature It is a bit odd to write this essay as a translator of Korean literature. I have never thought of myself as a translator and do not even view translation as a field in which I work on a regular basis. My view is perhaps influenced by the misguided views in academia that see translation as a scholarly craft that is inferior to research. Yet, notwithstanding my perception of myself as a scholar, the fact remains that I have published a number of translations (always working as a team with my wife, Kil Cha), and am the director of the Translation, Research and Instruction Program at Binghamton University. Thus, my goal in this short essay is to ponder this conundrum of translation and why it is a necessary skill for scholars in Korean Studies. My field of study is premodern Korea. In North America we are down to a mere handful of scholars who actually work on pre19th century Korea and such a diminished presence is certainly echoed elsewhere outside of Korea. What are the reasons for this? Well, one convincing argument begins with the various language requirements for the student who pursues this area of study. Not only would he or she need to have excellent Korean language skills, but also a mastery of literary Chinese (hanmun), premodern Korean, and probably some skills in Japanese as well. This is a daunting obstacle for many students and the investment in terms of time (several years) is probably more than most are willing to commit. We can also add the sheer volume of resources that a student would need to be intimately familiar with in order to be able to conduct meaningful research. Scholars in premodern Korean Studies are blessed with— or depending on one’s viewpoint, burdened by—over a thousand years worth of written records that range from dynastic records, to poem-songs, literary collections, and beyond. The majority of these works has not even been put into modern Korean, let alone systematized in a manner that makes culling through the resources an easy task. Thus those who wish to study premodern Korea must have a true love of what they do and be willing to commit their professional lives to a field that is inherently difficult and uncharted in many areas. Here is where translation comes into play. While I do not consider myself to be a translator, I do need to translate. I translate simply to render materials into my scholarly work. How, for example, can one discuss the merits of the poetry of Kosan Yun Seondo (1587-1671) without translating the poetry for the readers of the paper? Simply, it is not possible. Thus translation of various literary and non-literary works is requisite for those of us who work on premodern Korea. The importance of a passage from the dynastic record, a description of a scene at a
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marketplace, or a funerary epitaph can only be appreciated by our readers if we translate the passage. If this is true for short pieces, it is all the more true for lengthy works such as novels that require a full and artful translation in order to be appreciated by readers. Translation is the means by which we make our source materials come alive in order to share them with others. Tra nslat ion of premodern sou rc e materia ls is not a straightforward exercise, however. With literary works we need to bring to our 21st century readers the emotions and depth of the work we are discussing. This is no easy matter. If we want today’s reader to have the same experience as the reader of four or five centuries earlier, we have to find a means to put that content into our translations. For example, in our translation of the early 17th century novel Unyong-jon we had to convey metaphors and literary allusions to events and personages far removed from the present day. Without these important signposts, contemporary readers could not understand the novel in the same manner as readers did in the 17th century, and thus the beauty and depth of the work would be lost. Rather than being a compelling work— indeed a jewel of the premodern world—it would be flat and barely worthy of reading. Hence, we are translators of not only texts, but also culture and history. A f i n a l a spe c t of t r a n sl at ion t h at i s i mpor t a nt for premodernists is that it helps to grow our field. We cannot expect students to gravitate to premodern Korean studies without some bait. Excellent quality annotated translations will help introduce a new generation of students to a fascinating field that far too many young scholars never had the opportunity to know. Without a solid foundation of premodern materials in English, the next generation of Koreanists will not pursue such studies due to a simple dearth of available materials. This not only affects those students who desire careers in academia, as the lack of specialists in premodern Korea influences teaching at the undergraduate level and in multi-regional courses. We will never have the chance to teach students about the depth of Korean culture if high-quality translations of premodern works are not available. Students might be momentarily smitten by modern dramas or K-pop, but the depth and beauty of premodern Korean literary works is timeless and the only true means to appreciate the beauty of Korean culture. Thus we translate. By Michael J. Pettid
Publishing My First Translation Thirty years ago, Arts Council Korea was the first institution to promote the translation and dissemination of Korean literature abroad. These efforts led to the foundation of the Korea Literature Tr a n s l a t i o n F u n d , w h i c h was expanded into the Korea Literature Translation Institute in 2001. It is hard to believe that LTI Korea is already celebrating its 10th anniversary. It only seems like yesterday since I was serving on the board during its early days. I would have to say that it was Juanita who got me interested in translating Korean literature. Juanita was my landlady in Bogotá, where I had gone to study Latin American literature in 1977. She was a cultured woman who had gone to college, although she did not graduate. One day she asked me, “Do Koreans have literature, too?” That night I could not sleep, kept up by the thought that I needed to translate Korean literature as soon as possible if I wanted to promote my country and its literature abroad. That was in the late 1970s, but it was only in the mid-80s that my plans materialized. My dear friend Min Yong-tae, now professor emeritus at Korea University, told me that the Arts Council was funding translators to translate Korean literature and suggested that I try my hand at short stories and novellas. I immediately thought of Juanita of Bogotá, where the weather is always like autumn, and began translating some stories from the early 20th century to the advent of industrialization in Korea. Thanks to my background in Spanish literature and the editing skills of my husband, Francisco Carranza Romero, a linguist, I found the translation itself easy. The problem was finding a publisher. A publisher in Spain? In Latin America? It was then-Mexican Ambassador to Korea, Cassio Luiselli, who came to my rescue. His friendship played an invaluable part in the events that followed. One of the bestknown publishing houses in the Spanish-speaking world is Mexico’s Fondo de Cultura y Económica (FCE). The ambassador was friends with the head of the company at the time, former president Miguel de la Madrid. But what was the use? True to the leisurely style typical of Latin America, we exchanged letters through the embassy but nothing came of it for over a year. Finally I found an excuse to fly to Mexico myself, ostensibly on my way to attend a conference in Cuba. I called FCE the moment I landed in Mexico but only got a secretary telling me that the president was out but she would call back if I left a message. She never did, however, so I decided to go in person. I showed up at the publisher’s at eight in the morning, but the secretary told me through the intercom to come back the next day because the president had a meeting. I had to leave the country the next
day! The hefty guard who had been listening silently to my conversation told me that the president would be arriving soon, so I should wait at the gate. I had nothing to lose, so I stood in front of the building in the middle of downtown, and after I had been breathing the famous Mexico City smog for two hours, the former president’s car arrived flanked by a police car. When I told the pleasantly surprised president about the Mexican ambassador and the publishing deal he immediately had his personal assistant take me inside, where I signed a publishing contract then and there. That was how FCE came to publish its very first collection of Korean stories and novellas in 1991. Over 20 years of translating has transformed the lives of me and my husband. When I am translating something I always have questions, which I am sometimes fortunate enough to be able to ask the writer in person. This means that I actually get to know literary greats like Oh Jung-hee. How else would I have been able to rub shoulders with literary giants and travel to Latin America with them, if not for my work? My husband, my editor, has also been able to learn more about Korea and Koreans through his work and friendships with some of Korea’s best-known authors, intellectuals, and cultural figures. Truly, I have translation to thank for bringing such giddying elegance into our lives. By Ko Hyesun
* Ko Hyesun is a Spanish translator and professor of Spanish Studies at Dankook University. Her works of translation include El Paraíso cercado, El canto de la espada and others. In 2000, she was awarded the Condecoración de Gabriela Mistral from Chile and the Grand Prize for the Korean Literature Translation Awards in 2007.
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Translator’s Words
On the 10th Anniversary of LTI Korea
I was told by an editor that when the novel La Chienne de Moknomi by Hwang Sun-won was translated and published by Zulma Publishing Company in 1995, a number of readers bought it thinking that it was an erotic book. Because of the gender and singular/plural agreement required in French, the title of the book was translated as “The (female) dog of Moknomi.” If this book were to be published today, then it certainly would have garnered more appropriate attention. Korean film and literature, which were freed from censorship with the advent of democratization and economic prosperity in Korea since around the turn of the century, have continuously raised issues concerning inchoate justice in society, existentialism, women and society, and history, thereby engaging in a cultural excha nge w it h French literat u re t hat lea ned towa rd t he commonplace, solipsistic, and autobiographical. Korean writers such as Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Seung-U, Kim Young-ha, and Oh Jung-hee were well-received in France around 2000. Hwang Sok-yong, who after making an illegal visit to North Korea and had a brief sojourn as an exile in Europe, was serving his Korean prison term at that time, and I embarked on translating his book after my advisory professor received permission to translate Hwang’s work. With the editor, who had worked as a diplomat in different East Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, I was able to collaborate on the project thorough fax and e-mail. When I was working on the translation of “The Road to Sampo” I once visited a sex shop in Paris—as there was no one around me who could help—and sought out aid from the proprietor for the exact terminology of a sexual tool that is mentioned in the short story, “The Camel Eye;” I found out it was referred to as “Oeil de biche” in French. In the novel, L' invité (The Guest, in English), there was a reference to an incident that took place at the Massacre Memorial Museum in Sincheon, Hwanghae province, North Korea; fortunately, the editor had visited North Korea several times as a cultural emissary, and had even gone on a thorough tour of the site, and was thereby an indispensable contributor to the translation. Further, at the press meeting held after the publication I was very moved by the reporters, who I discovered had read the book not only in great earnestness but with distinctive viewpoints, which
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made me see that there were different ways of reading a book. Then in the course of meeting with other readers, and from our dialogue on literature, as well as in discussing the meaning of literature and writing in our lives, I saw the importance of literature, and not necessarily Korean literature. I felt quite rewarded for my efforts in searching for the right word and getting the most accurate meaning across when I was engaged in a deep conversation with readers on religion, salvation, and love based on the works of Lee Seung-U, a writer whom even Korean readers find difficult. At a meeting with readers after The Guest was published, there was a question from a reader on the role of writing as therapy for his father, who has taken to silence after surviving Auschwitz; the author’s response was that he is on the side of all who are deceased. Such a question and a response provided a stirring experience for a translator. At a time when the relationship between North and South Korea are still at a standstill, and the religious fundamentalism has lost its essential purpose, a novel like The Guest is ever more relevant to us. W hat has made it possible for Korean literature to be widely known in France is a diverse array of works, which show experimentation with daring formalist approaches by Korean authors, coupled with public institutions such as the Korea Literature Translation Institute, as well as talented translators. Those of us who are involved in fostering the growth of translators at the KLTI translation academy are very happy to see how these trainees have gone on to receive grants after the completion of the program and are on their way to becoming professional translators. It is also good to see young people devote their passion and effort to literary translation, and it can be said that by far, this is one of the most important functions of KLTI. If highly-qualified translators continue to produce a wide range of works, then these books can provide inter-textuality for Korean literature abroad, and also gain wider readership. Thus, beginning with the works by Hwang Sok-yong and Lee Seung-U, which have been included in the pocket editions of world literature by Gallimard and Seuil, Korean literature can take its place side by side with other works of world literature. The year 2011 shows continuous experimentation by young Korean writers. Le Clezio, the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 2008, praised Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Seung-U, Kim Ae-ran, Han Kang, and Park Chan-sun as those who will revitalize the cynical French literary scene. It is my hope that the list of recommended works of LTI Korea will also serve this goal. By Choi Mikyung/Jean-Noël Juttet
* Choi Mikyung is a French translator and professor at the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Ewha Womans University. She was awarded the Daesan Grand Prize for translation (1999), and Grand Prize for the 10th Korean Literature Translation Awards in 2011. * Jean-Noël Juttet is a former diplomat who has worked in Japan and Korea. He won the Daesan Grand Prize for translation (1999), Korea France Cultural Award (2006), and the Grand Prize for the 10th Korean Literature Translation Awards in 2011.
Conveying the Essence of a Classic Text interpretation in Korea. The reason for this lies in the novel’s end: the main character wakes from a sleep and must realize that his full and successful life was only a dream. This would then seem to point to a nihilistic thread behind the novel. One would be hardpressed to say, however, that such a viewpoint could explain the immense success that the novel has obtained. Instead, the explanation would be that a life-affirming attitude radiates from the novel. Hopefully German audiences will be enchanted by this work as well. The Korea Literature Translation Institute is hereby thanked for both material and emotional support over the course of this novel’s translation, right up to the end. By Albrecht Huwe
Recently the world finally saw the publication of a German translation of the classic Nine Cloud Dreams. The goal of this novel’s translation was not to belabor the specificities of the language spoken in the 17th century (when the book was first written), but rather to transfer its communicative role into the German language to the greatest extent possible. So what is it exactly that rests behind this terminology of translation? In fact, the ideas can be traced back all the way to the author’s personal circumstances of the time from which the novel was written. Because of the tragic reality of war that had developed at the time, author Kim Manjung and his mother had developed an unusually deep relationship. Kim was appointed later on to high posts in the government, but on more than one occasion became a casualty of the struggle for power and was sent into exile. It must have been an incredible inner burden for Kim not to be able to care for his mother, who had been left alone in her old age, and which his moral duty would have demanded of him. In order to comfort her, the only thing left for him to do from his far-off place of exile was to write this novel. Thus, within this tale, lies the main purpose to the novel. Throughout the process of translating this novel, the intended audience was not one person of one culture of the same period but rather it was as many people as possible of a completely different culture living in a different time period. Readers who speak German as their native language require a good deal of additional information in order to more easily understand the communicative goal of the novel. Pieces of such information could, in theory, be given in countless footnotes; however, using such a method would be for a novel of such communicative purpose a counterproductive step that would continually break the reader’s flow. The way around this problem was for additional information to be woven into the piece as background knowledge. This information does not come forth directly in the text, but rather indirectly. In order to be seen, they must be explicitly pointed out to target-language readers. (The translator is referring here to presuppositions.) T he novel Nin e C l ou d D r eam s h a s enjoye d i m men se appreciation throughout the centuries. This success, however, stands in complete contradiction to the historical method of literary
* Albrecht Huwe is a German translator and holds the chair of the Korean Translation Studies at Bonn University. He won The Mi-rok Li Cultural Prize in 2001, and the Cultural Medal from Korean President in 2003.
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Translator’s Words
Translators Play the Role of Diplomats Fr o m a n c i e nt t i m e s , p o e m s were used for national rituals. No wonder, as literature played a r ole i n v a r iou s s e c t or s on the Korean peninsula. A n example in diplomatic relations where literature wa s used w a s w h e n P r i n c e s s Ji n d e o k sent a gif t embroidered w it h “ Ta e p y e o n g s o n g ,” t o Ta n g D y n a s t y ’s K i n g K o j o n g . A nd reg a rd ing govern ment a d m i n i s t r a t i o n , C hu n g d a m composed “Anminga” to promote peace for the people. Kim Bu-sik, author of Samguk Sagi (History of Three Kingdoms), argued that text has a direct relation with the prosperity of the nation. Likewise, many of today’s writers produce work as part of an effort to promote the country’s welfare. This type of literature for national interest is usually aimed at foreign readers. Ancient literature in this line of work includes travelogues for geographic information: “Simcheongjeon” and “Chunhyangjeon” for Joseon’s ethical standards. Poems have to do with ideas and aesthetics; popular fiction is linked with lifestyles and culture. Even historical incidents, social history, political developments, and economic upheavals are recorded, documented, and analyzed in literature. In Russia, a number of people came to know about Korea through the Hyundai Motor factory near St. Petersburg, Korean branding efforts, and the summer Olympics in 1988. Korea is also a country that has maintained formal relations with Russia for a century since the treaty of amity between the two nations was ratified in 1885 and completed in 1890. In the late 20th century, many of Korea’s classical literature was translated into Russian. Korean literature was also an important part of education in Russia since 1897 when St. Petersburg State University began to offer Korean language classes. In other words, in the early days, Korean language learners in Russia primarily studied literary texts. From the 1950s onwards, Korean literature researchers such as M.I. Nikitina, A.F. Trotsevich, D.D. Eliseyev and L.V. Zhdanova studied Korean literary works while translating major texts into Russian. After World War II ended, a host of researchers and academic figures helped translate Korean literature into Russian. For instance, A.A. Kholodovich, and his students G.Ye. Rachkov and A.G. Vasiliev, restored Korean Studies at Saint Petersburg State University. Lim Su scholars and Moscow scholar L.R. Kontsevich and other researchers specializing in Korean played a key role in the translation of Korean literature into Russian. As far as poems are concerned, scholars worked with professional poets. As a result, many representative works have been translated: “Chunhyangjeon,” Kim Manjung’s Nine Cloud Dreams, Lim Je’s “Hwasa,” Lee Kyu-bo and Jeong Cheol’s hyangga
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poems, the Goryeo Kingdom’s lyrics, and sijo poems, to name a few. Against this backdrop, the Golden Fund of Korean Literature project was timely and pertinent. In this project, Professor A.F. Trotsevich edited and put together the literary works published during the Soviet Union era. The project, sponsored by the Korea Literature Translation Institute, is providing an essential reservoir of Korean literature and Korean culture to Russian readers. Professional translators are the key to helping literature play the role of a diplomat who interconnects people from different cultures. The KLTI, established 10 years ago, is helping a number of translators in many ways. Examples include translator training programs and translation study residence projects, which allow translators to meet contemporary writers. Academic forums aimed at promoting exchanges with foreign scholars are also organized by KLTI, and literature nights are held so that students can form networks with Korean writers. Based on the translated works, an essay contest is held. Korean studies experts also work closely with KLTI. For instance, women’s literature translated by Professor Lee Sang-yoon was recently introduced to Russian readers. Yi Chong-jun’s “Sopyeonje,” translated by Professor I.L. Kasatkina and Chung In-sun, was published recently. A Russian version of the first work written in Hangeul, “Yongbieocheonga” (“Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven”), translated by Professor E.N. Kondtratyeva, was also published this year. Various projects spearheaded by LTI Korea will help expand the base of translators specializing in Korean literature for foreign readers. Close reading is necessary for getting a deeper understanding of literature; likewise, investing a lot of time is important for a better translation. More than anything else, translators are required to capture the content, the atmosphere in the lines, and the author’s writing style as accurately as possible. Readers who are drawn to Korea through literature will play an important role in promoting the exchange of culture and improving bilateral ties between Korea and Russia. By Guryeva Anastasia
* Guryeva Anastasia is a Russian translator. Currently, she teaches Korean Language and Literature in the East Asian Studies Department of St. Petersburg National University. She has been the Russian representative for the Korean Studies Graduate Students Convention(KSGSC).
Suggesting Better Ways to Promote Translation It has been 10 years since what i s no w k no w n a s t he K or e a Literature Translation Institute was officially launched in 2001. Ten years ago, I received a letter from KLTI that was addressed to the Yanbian Writers Association; it announced the establishment of the institute and requested a contributing article. The letter contained a proposal for a grant, as well as the freedom to choose the work by the translator. For someone like myself, who had always done work assigned by an institute or by an individual, such a prospect was a dream come true. Three or four of us who had read the letter got together and discussed what books we should translate. But as it was our first time receiving such a request, our excitement got the better of us and instead of figuring out exactly what the requirements were, we just wrote out the author’s name, the title of the book, and our commentary on the work—without two of the most crucial documents: namely a sample translation and the author’s consent. Despite our inadequate application, KLTI notified us of our rejection kindly. We then rationalized that perhaps a project at such a level was not something we were qualified to participate in. In 2003 I had an opportunity to make an official trip to Seoul—and was curious to find out what kind of an institute KLTI was, so I paid a visit. Park Hyeju, who received me, then showed me all the relevant papers, explained with a smile how many applicants from China are rejected on the grounds of insufficient documents. Thus began my liaison with KLTI. Since then, I have been chosen as the winner of a number of translation grants, and in 2010 was bestowed the privilege of being designated as a premier class translator of LTI Korea. In 10 years, a time period which is said to change the appearance of mountains and rivers, and in an explosive information era, KLTI has made phenomenal progress. In the case of the translation grant division, it went from the haphazard choices of works by the translators themselves to a more rationalized system of having a committee choose the works to be translated, as well as expanding the genre from solely literature to Korean classics, humanities, social sciences, and children’s books. In the span of 10 years, there have been 716 books that have been translated into 30 different languages (from KLTI homepage). I discovered that 119 of them were books translated into Chinese. T he re a son why I bring up t h is nu mber is t hat notwithstanding the quantity and quality of the translated books, it is difficult to actually see its evidence in the literary market of China. According to the statistics, a total of 41 books were published in the last 10 years. 119 to 41; what does it signify? Even if one is not terribly bright with numbers, one can intuit
that the publication of Korean books in translation could be more successful. So then, how should this problem be addressed? The following are suggestions I’ve come up with after giving the aforementioned dilemma much thought: 1. Establish relationships with reputable publishing houses, and develop a long-term collaboration with so-called cultural agencies whose livelihood depends on the number of books sold. They therefore will make a greater effort in promoting books that result in an increased readership. Thus a clause requiring a contract with a renowned publisher must be a prerequisite. 2. Differential rates of pay for the publication of a particular book. For example, more grant money should be offered for books that do not necessarily appeal to the general reader but have literary merit. 3. With the author’s consent, a book with parallel texts in translation and the original language should be an option; especially for works that are of short length, the original text would add volume to the book and would be helpful in better understanding the book. 4. But, no matter how useful the original text is, it is a bit ludicrous to publish every book with parallel languages because such a version gives the book the feel of a study guide instead of a work of literature. Therefore, another option would be to request books for donation or at a reduced rate from the relevant publishing houses or institutes. Selling both the book and the translated version as a set, or offering free copies per number of books sold to a university’s Korean Studies department could be another solution. 5. How about fostering a program in which there are correspondents or affiliated professors who can promote the sales of book at the universities that offer Korean Studies? Insofar as they are Korean Studies professors, no other incentive might be needed other than perhaps providing them with copies of the books they sell or other means, such as giving them study materials; the department can recruit candidates. 6. The critique of the translated works should be a more active endeavor. Scholarly criticism that goes beyond the mere promotion of works will not only augment the sale of the books but also improve the quality of the translations. Moreover, the critics themselves will mutually benefit from doing this kind of work, as it will enhance their academic achievements. I make these recommendations, as it is my ardent wish that the global project of promoting Korean literature that is done as a result of significant funding and great efforts can be more effective and fruitful. By Jin Lianlan
* Jin Lianlan is a Chinese translator. Currently, she is a professor of Korean Studies at Binhae University in Cheungdo, China. Her works of translation include 洪鱼, 无论你是谁，有多么孤独 and 人性的力量, and others. In 2001, she was recognized with the highest honors from the Chinese Translators Association.
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Translator’s Words
Balancing Readability and Responsibility W hen literar y work s are transferred from one language to another, every translator faces the difficult question of how to transfer “the different” into the target language. When this occurs, we must make decisions regarding how to deal with cultural and structural differences between the original work and the translation. Also lingering between the two countries (i.e., the two texts), and between the piece itself and the world of those who will eventually read it, are various conflicts that arise regarding separate historical backgrounds. Back in 1993 I read a collection of short stories from Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories, which had been translated into Japanese. Tutuola is known for writing in a so-called naturalized English. At the time in Japan, the majority of Tutuola’s works had been translated from a “curious” English into an “awkward” Japanese. Feeling a discord with this trend, Gonos, the translator of this piece, opted for a language used in the storytelling of the Japanese animation Japanese Folktales in Comics. Gonos himself problematized the methodology as follows: “Must we translate into an awkward Japanese simply because we say the English sounds strange? If the language is natural to the writer, or to a certain segment of the readership, can we declare that this is ‘incorrect English?’ Whose language is English, anyway?” Gonos created a new metamorphosis of the existing Japanese translation, already a metamorphosis of Tutuola’s original work. Thanks to this new metamorphosis, the bouncing rhythm within the sentences of Tutuola’s “strange English” was easily digested within Gonos’ mind—without any sense that the work was childish. Gonos’ translation was a success both in terms of the respect he had for the different style of the original work and in the way readers received his faithful form of expression. For whom are translations being produced? Well, certainly for readers. For this reason there can exist no translations without readers. Currently we are seeing a strong tendency for audiences in the target cultures of translations to prefer seamless, elegant translations that spawn no feelings of resistance in readers. At the same time, this creates a situation in which translators are torn between a desire for readability—that is, sentences that read fluently—and a sense of responsibility to maintain a beauty that is particular to the original work. The same goes for translations between Korea and Japan. When I translate literary works from Korean into Japanese I run into these conflicts, specifically in contemporary literature. Within various aspects of works that describe images of Korea’s
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past, I work to match the styles in Japanese writing to create a work that reads easily. Of course there are times when I question my decisions, navigating through the work as I try to create sentences that come off seamless, but it goes without saying that a translation that readers turn their backs on is a meaningless one. In situations like these, what is important to the translator becomes a faithfulness to the original work or, to go even further, perhaps a faithfulness to a reader who is willing to accept “difference.” In 2007 I had my first opportunity to study translation at LTI Korea. Through this opportunity I was able to dabble in a world of literary translation that had once seemed so far away, studying masterful works and discovering how delightful the challenge of literary translation is. Now, my very struggle with the questions of how to translate Korean literature into Japanese and my existence in that space of conflict is exactly what brings me such boundless joy. Although I am but one small agent I intend to foment the inflow of a “Korean Literary Wave,” just as many Japanese novels are being introduced to Korea. This line of thinking stays with me as strive to translate each given piece, faithfully working to respect the original works as well as keep the reader in mind. Indeed, it is a challenge that I have now made my one and only goal. By Oh Younga
* Oh Younga is a Japanese translator. Currently, she is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Ewha Womans University. She won the 6th KLTI Translation Contest for New Translators.
My Journey Translating Korean Literature From the very beginning, I was drawn to Korean literature, not just works in translation. My first encounter with Korean literature came when my Korean teacher introduced Kim Tongin’s Potatoes to us as part of a Korean reading course in college. Since then, I have found myself plunging into the literary world of leading writers from the premodern and modern eras including Kim Sow ol, C hon g C h i-y on g , K i m Yeong-nang, Kim Chunsu, Hyeon Jin-geon, Lee Hyo-seok, and Park Tae-won. Korean literature was a big surprise for me, largely because its origins shared many common features with the birth of Vietnam's modern literature. Korea and Vietnam have many things in common in terms of geography, culture, and history. Both nations have gone through a brutal colonial period, resulting in a similar formation of modern literature as well as a similar literary sensibility. Later, I dabbled in literary translation from Vietnamese to Korean, and from Korean to Vietnamese, just in order to deepen my academic understanding. Back then, I had no concrete notion of what literary translation meant; my primary motivation was to compare and contrast Korean and Vietnamese literature. I went on to major in Korean literature in graduate school. During the two-year period, I focused my time and energy on the study of Korea's premodern and modern literature. My perspective began to change when I came to know the Korea Literature Translation Institute during my doctorate coursework. One of the professors in my department introduced LTI Korea’s translation support programs to me. I also remembered there are a fair number of Korean literary works whose themes involve the Vietnam War. I started translating short stories into Vietnamese, and my work translating gained decisive momentum once I got support from KLTI. I wanted Vietnamese readers to get a deeper understanding of how Koreans viewed the Vietnam War, of Korea itself, and the emotions of Koreans. Given that many Western literary works concerned with the history of Vietnam have been successfully translated and published in Vietnam, I believed that Vietnamese readers would equally appreciate Korean literary works on that subject. Unfortunately, the draft of my translation is still in the drawers of my desk due to foreign rights problems even though a publisher in Vietnam earlier agreed to put it out on the market. So for a while, my interest in literature translation waned. Instead, I shifted my attention toward contemporary writers and began to absorb their work. My classmates on the same research team helped me enjoy many superb Korean novels and short stories.
When I was a child, I loved to tell stories to my friends. I did the same with my reading of Korean literature. Taking a cue from the storytelling method of One Thousand and One Nights, I would tell just one part of a story to my friend each time we met. Getting impatient, my friend said, "Hey, why don't you tell the whole story already? If you’re not going to, then please just translate it and give it to me." The story in question was Kim Youngha's Quiz Show. The comment reignited my interest in literary translation. One of the most attractive characteristics of Korean literature is its aesthetically profound humor. The tradition of humor runs deep from the oral tradition, the classics, to modern and contemporary literature. Once read, it's a lighthearted humor. Twice read, it almost becomes a mysterious style. Kim Young-ha and Park Min-gyu—both are my favorite Korean writers—showcase that fascinating tradition of Korean literature. Moreover, their novels and short stories draw strength from having an excellent imaginative power and creative writing style, attracting the attention of readers from different cultures. While their creativity is certainly a joy for readers, it is one of the most overwhelming challenges for translators. What Happened to the Guy Stuck in the Elevator? and Castella leave a lasting impression. For translators, however, it's a sheer challenge to translate the richly nuanced style of these works into another language. Now I love translating Korean literature. After all, I have fallen in love with the enchanting ‘style’ of Korean literature. By Nguyen Thi Hien
* Nguyen Thi Hien is a translator and PhD candidate in the Korean Language and Literature Department at Seoul National University. She is also a lecturer of Vietnamese at the Korean National Police University. Her translation of Kim Young-ha’s Quiz Show was published last year in Vietnam.
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LTI Korea and I
What If KLTI Never Existed?
A Watershed Decade
People tend to take the most valuable things in life for granted especially when these things happen to be close by. It is easy to know what is meaningful and important to us by asking ourselves this simple question: “What if I did not have that?” What if I did not have a mother? What if I did not have a home? What if I did not have friends? And if I apply this tool to the essay I am writing right now—what if the Korea Literature Translation Institute had never existed? I would not have been able to attend the International Writing Program in Iowa, or be present at the literature forums in New York, France, or Berlin. I would not have been able to visit the international book festivals held in Frankfurt, Guadalajara, as well as in other cities in the world. I would not have been able to establish new friendships with writers and editors from other countries or visit numerous cities in Europe. These things would not have been possible on my own. Furthermore, I would not have been able to write the novels that I wrote about these experiences. And most of all, I would never have known the joy of having my novels translated and published abroad. I was able to meet, think, and walk through these experiences and times, as well as simultaneously explore new directions in my writing. None of these things would have been possible without KLTI. And this has been going on for as long as 10 years. If I didn’t have this time with KLTI—even if I had continued to write—would I be the writer I am today? A new beginning requires preparation long before the actual starting line. The creation of KLTI has contributed greatly to the recognition of Korean literature in the world today. I feel extremely lucky and proud that I was able to be with KLTI from the very beginning. By Jo Kyung-ran * Jo Kyung-ran is a Korean novelist. Her works include the anthologies The French Opticianry, Story of Gukja and full-length novels, Time For Baking Bread and Tongue. She has won the Hyundae Munhak Award, Munhakdongne Literary Prize for Contemporary Writers, and the Today’s Young Artist Award.
I went to Europe for the first time in 2000. In a major bookstore in Paris, I encountered the reality of the status of Korean literature abroad. A handful of novels were placed in the corner of a bookshelf. These novels were grouped together with novels from other Asian countries. The only two exceptions were China and Japan. They had their own separate literature sections with several shelves devoted to each country. This reality left me feeling unsettled and disappointed. Last year, I returned to Paris. In the same bookstore, I found bookcases stacked with Korean novels. Some of these novels were displayed separately. I still hoped for more, but compared to 10 years ago, I left the bookstore in peace. Ten years is not enough time to adequately introduce to the rest of the world the literature of a single country. Books rely on the translation of the text and compared to music or art, much more time and energy must be devoted to conveying its contents to those who do not speak its original language. In that sense, this past decade has been a watershed for the introduction of Korean literature to the international community. During the past 10 years, I have been lucky enough to have my novels translated and published in France and other countries. Often my books gained positive reviews by critics and the public. However, I do not see this as a personal achievement but rather as an indication that Korean literature is being welcomed abroad. I am deeply thankful to the remarkable Korean writers who have gone ahead of me, the translators who—despite dif f icu lt circumsta nces —have pioneered the way for publications in translation, and the devotion of various institutions that have pulled these efforts together. I am especially grateful for LTI Korea for selecting my works. My novels have not attracted the most popularity in the Korean market, which made voluntary translation of the works almost impossible. But through the support and encouragement of LTI Korea I have been able to forge relationships with readers overseas. I commend LTI Korea in bolstering the appreciation of Korean literature abroad and I look forward to their support in other areas of Korean literature. The seeds have been sown. If we do not give up or despair, no matter how slowly, the seeds will grow to bear fruit. By Lee Seung-U * Lee Seung-U is a Korean novelist. His works include the anthology of short stories, The Private Lives of Plants and Into the World as well as novels, Portrait of Erysichton, Shadow of an Oak Tree and The Reverse Side of Life. He was awarded the Daesan Literary Prize.
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The 15-minute French Delay Not long ago, thanks to LTI Korea, the people of Aix-en-Provence (the birthplace of Cézanne and the city in which Émile Zola was raised) had the opportunity to meet Korean authors directly. Notwithstanding the rapid increase in the number of students participating in Korean studies courses and the number of people coming to related events, whenever a cultural event is to be successfully put on, there is a burden on those preparing it. This is the story of an LTI Korea forum that took place in France last May. May 5th, 2011. The Cité du Livre Amphithéâtre at the Aix-en-Provence municipal library: 6:10 pm, 20 minutes before the event was to begin. Writers Yi In-seong, Jo Kyungran, critics Jeong Myeong-kyo, Jean Bellemin-Noël, Claude Mouchard, and myself all took our places. The lighting in the forum venue dimmed. There were four or five people sitting in the audience. At 6:20 pm there were still only four or five people, at 6:25 pm there were 10. I tried to kick the thought that the event was going to be a failure out of my head by ignoring the situation and shoving my nose into the script I was memorizing line-by-line and reading it over and over again. 6:30 pm. Time to begin. There were still relatively few audience members. Very few faces to meet the writers. Wishing for absolutely no reason for me to lift my head again, I buried my face into the script once more. The writers and critics were sitting with their arms crossed, saying nothing. Most of all I couldn’t bring myself to look at the LTI Korea staff member. I could feel my body growing smaller and smaller. And then, suddenly, I realized that my opening comments weren’t appropriate for such a small audience. I completely rewrote them by scribbling in the margins of my notes. With my head down all the way I couldn’t see the audience at all. On the floor of the amphitheatre I could hear the sound of footsteps growing louder. I continued to write new opening remarks for a smaller audience. I prayed—to the God of Literature, if there is one—that the silence would break, and I lifted my head. Just at that moment, the lights came on. The amphitheatre was almost entirely full. There were nearly 200 people in the audience. From darkness to light the theater had filled in just a few minutes. Of course, this was the 15-minute delay culture common in southern France. Here and there I could see the faces of acquaintances of mine that had come to meet the Korean authors and critics. Now, before I began the two-hour event, I had to look for my original opening remarks. It took me about three minutes. By Jean-Claude de Crescenzo * Jean-Claude de Crescenzo teaches Korean culture at Provence University in France. He has operated a literary webzine (www.keulmadang.com) since 2008 and will establish a publishing house specializing in Korean literature in France in the second half of 2011.
Where the Students Want to Go When I received a request to write about my relationship with the Korea Literature Translation Institute, I felt overwhelmed because I had so much to say. How could I say all that I wanted to say on just a single sheet of A4-sized paper? Not long after I began to teach at Ewha Womans University GSIT, I was asked if a KLTI-based translation class could be held at Ewha Womans University. It seemed that I was asked to teach the class and provide the classroom as well because at the time, there were no classrooms at the LTI Korea building in Gwanghwamun. That’s how I came to witness the development of LTI Korea’s educational programs as an instructor. The f irst class was open to anyone who wanted to participate, regardless of the target language. This method, however, placed limitations on the cultivation of translation skills. KLTI later developed various educational programs for different languages and levels of training, and arranged for a separate classroom when it moved into a building in Gangnam. As LTI Korea’s educational programs became more established, a great number of foreign students studying at prominent Korean universities applied for the programs, and the programs developed into the Translation Academy, with a special course, summer intensive course, advanced course, and intensive course. The attendance rate was raised by charging a registration fee instead of continuing to offer free classes, and the students, in turn, benefitted from additional programs such as meetings with authors, and accompanying them on field trips to the settings of their creative work. I made a point of informing the students at GSIT about the programs, and many of them applied for the programs, later thanking me for letting them know about the helpful classes. While participating in the educational programs at LTI Korea over a period of time, I’ve seen how the institution, with government support, has developed into an educational institution that continues to make an effort to come up with better educational programs, gaining the trust of students and growing into an institution that talented students want to attend. This fall, I’m going to once again enjoy a close association with students at LTI Korea, and the sense of achievement it brings me. By Son Ji-bong * Son Ji-bong is a Chinese translator and professor at the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Ewha Womans University. Her works of translation include 韓國文化向導, 深林之屋 and many classical novels of the Joseon era.
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LTI Korea and I
Translation’s Pivotal Role
The Pioneering Work of KLTI
I st a r ted work ing in t he publish ing industry some 30 years ago. For the first couple of years, my goal was to put out a book without paying much attention to other things. In 2001, I finally jumped into the picture book market, and at the same time began to notice the potential in overseas markets. South Korea relies heavily on exports in almost every sector, but the publishing industry is a rare exception as Korean publishers import a heavy volume of books while exporting only a few. I felt ashamed about this gap as a member of the country’s publishing community. I was determined to open up the export market. I trolled international book fairs and made efforts to strike export deals, and as a result, my company is now exporting picture books to some 30 countries. This is not only my personal achievement but also a breakthrough for the country’s publishing industry at large. To get Korea’s publishing industry on the global map, what’s needed is to develop high-quality content on the one hand, and to nurture talented writers, editors, and designers on the other. And it is translation that plays a pivotal role in promoting the country’s high-quality content. Readers want to feel and understand the author and main characters, down to each tiny detail. The subtlety of linguistic expressions, therefore, is very important in delivering the original work’s creativity and artistry in full—more so when it comes to translation from one culture to another. Publishers should be given systematic support so that they can produce reliable translations for foreign markets. In the long term, the most important task is to train translators. Particularly at a time when Korea is turning into a multicultural society, LTI Korea’s role has added importance. What’s important in helping Korean culture and business gain a solid foothold in the world and get the Korean pop culture boom to spread further is none other than a strong publishing industry. Without such a foundation, the Korean Wave could just end up as a temporary fad catering to consumerism. On my trips to book fairs across the globe, I often come across local readers who want to read Korean titles translated into their own languages, particularly where Korean culture is being introduced and the Korean Wave is in its early growth stage. As such, Korea should advance its global publishing edge in a bid to boost the national brand and help more people around the world get exposed to Korean culture on a regular basis. My expectation is that KLTI will play a leading role in this endeavor, drawing on its experiences of the past decade to map out a long-term vision for the Korean publishing industry. And for this, I express my sincere congratulations to LTI Korea on its 10th anniversary. By Kim Dong-hwi * Kim Dong-hwi is the director of Yeowon Media specializing in children’s picture books. He is active in the Korean children’s books foreign rights market.
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I drive a bulky sports utility vehicle. About seven years has passed since I bought the car. Shortly after I got this SUV, however, it got a scratch that looks like an abstract painting. The scratch got engraved into my car when I was pulling out of the underground parking lot of the former headquarters of the Korea Literature Translation Institute. Back then, LTI Korea was located in Pyeong-dong, the organization was small in scale, and its parking lot was even smaller. I was then visiting KLTI to discuss preparations for the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair as an executive member for the events to be held in connection with South Korea’s appointment as a host nation for the renowned book fair. LTI Korea didn’t have enough staff members, its budget was definitely insufficient, and few people outside of the publishing industry knew about what the institute was up to. Now, LTI Korea has transformed into an entirely new organization. The budget is bigger, the number of staff members has gone up, and public recognition has also improved. Last but not least, it has its own parking lot in the headquarter’s compound, an impressive change. Seven and a half years have passed. I visit KLTI to attend a director’s meeting once or twice quarterly. And the car I drive is the same SUV. The Institute has changed somewhat. In its early years, its focus was centered upon literature. Now, the scope has been expanded into history, art, children’s books, and other topics in the broader humanities. As a publisher in a non-literature sector, I feel more in sync with KLTI. My perception, as in the past, is that literature is at the heart of art and humanities. Back in 2005 when Korea was the host country for the Frankfurt Book Fair, I strongly supported the “Litera Tour” program led by KLTI and the Daesan Foundation. At the time, a number of publishers in Korea envisioned that they would play a central role in conducting the events at the book fair. There was some opposition and suspicion, but my conviction was firm and strong. I supported the Litera Tour program, a literary session that was held throughout Germany between March and October in 2005. The literary storm created by the events, I’m sure, had an impact on European readers. Such pioneering work might have paved the way for the huge success of Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom in the U.S. book market. Perhaps, it has to do with what is called the butterfly effect. My hope is that such literary tour programs will be held across the world on a regular basis. I plan to drive my car for many years to come; my relations with KLTI will continue, as well. By Song Young-man * Song Young-man is the director of Hyohyung Publishing Co. specializing in humanities and art books. Its publications were among the books featured at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair special display “100 Books from Korea.”
Meeting the Challenge of Translation
The Need for State Support
Suppose a cha irma n of a le ad ing global company happens to visit Korea and delivers a speech on the world’s economic trends to an audience of Korean business magnets. And suppose the chairman, in an effort to make his address more attractive, talks in detail of what he believes is a funny episode for f ive long minutes. A nd, again, suppose the episode, unfortunately, is culturally and linguistically difficult, if not totally impossible, to understand on the part of the Korean audience. Now, if you were in the interpreter’s shoes, how would you handle that funny yet hard-to-translate episode? Years ago, I was told of a story that involved such a challenging moment to the interpreter. The interpreter, faced with a daunting task, was quoted as saying: “This gentleman just told a really funny story, but it’s hard to express the point in our language. So, let’s just show our appreciation by laughing out loud.” The interpreter’s bewilderment was visible on his face as he suggested this outrageous solution. People did indeed laugh, I was told. After the address was over, the chairman said, “You must be an incredibly talented interpreter because you delivered my five-minute-long episode in less than 10 seconds, and I’m just speechless.” We should give credit to the quick-witted interpreter, but his impromptu performance cannot and should not be a desirable course of action for aspiring interpreters and translators. My view is that the Korea Literature Translation Institute should focus on ser ving diligent and faithful professionals who are likely to be wrongly outsmarted by quick-witted competitors. Hard-working translators do not seek a quick fix; instead, they tackle the translation of the five-minute episode head-on, sparing no effort in delivering the story in as lively and authentically a way as possible while limiting the time to the original five minutes. KLTI should serve this particular group of dedicated professionals, boosting their morale and extending financial support. I have had the chance to review what KLTI has achieved in the past ten years, and my primary impression was a surprise. The institute has achieved so much at a steady pace that has been neither too slow nor too fast—without resorting to quick fixes or shortcuts. KLTI, I hope, will continue to prosper by helping and supporting talented translators who, confronted with a five-minute episode, are willing to spend fifty minutes, five hours, or even as many as fifty hours.
It was in 2008 when I joined the Paju Book City Forum as a host of a publishing content globalization se s sion at t he i nv it at ion of t he organizing committee. Park Hye-ju, then-director of the Korea Literature Translation Institute, presented a speech arguing that governments should make concerted efforts to help export Asian books in consideration of their languages’ minority status in the global market. In contrast, a participant from China countered the logic by claiming that he would break open a new overseas market by pursuing market principles. It was an ironic situation; I made a joke by saying that South Korea looks like a socialist country while China looks like a capitalist one. One year later, I took part in an international book fair held in Bali, Indonesia, at the request of LTI Korea. The topic there was also concerned about the expansion of Asian books and publishing content. Without exception, publishers from Southeast Asia including Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia raised their voices in favor of strong state support and the utilization of new platforms such as e-books. The two events communicated a strong message to me: Korea’s publishing culture is advanced, but its language and culture are far removed from Western countries, even compared to Southeast Asian counterparts. This relative isolation of Korean books and language could be a reflection of Korean culture’s uniqueness. Despite the merit, however, it is also a fact that promoting Korean culture in Western-oriented modern societies outside of Korea is all the more difficult. I was reminded of the impressive speech by former director Park from LTI Korea. Whether Korea is capitalist or socialist, a dedicated state agency like LTI Korea is essential to spreading Korean literature across the world. Expecting that Western publishers, who make decisions based largely on market principles, would someday embrace books from a small, sidelined market in Asia is a recipe for self-isolation on the part of Korean publishers. It is also highly undesirable in terms of civilization that Korea’s literary masterpieces remain inaccessible to so many readers around the world. I cross my fingers for KLTI’s unwavering efforts to introduce Korean literature overseas.
By Jang Gyung-ryul
By Kang Eungcheon
* Jang Gyung-ryul is a literary critic and professor of English at Seoul National University. He published collections of critical essays, In Search of a Way in the Labyrinth and Gaze and Introspection, and other translated works.
* Kang Eungcheon is a director of Munsacheol Publishing. He published Read the Classics and Study the World, and Korean History Through a Wide Perspective. He won the Korea Baeksang Publishing Award for Editing in 2004.
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LTI Korea and I
Sharing Another 10 Years T he K ore a L iter at u re Tr a n sl at ion Institute has a bigger profile outside of Korea. At major book fairs around the world, KLTI is always a frontrunner in introducing Korean culture and l iter at u re. It w a s i n 2 0 05 w hen I personally came to grasp the role and importance of KLTI. I was reporting on the Frankfurt International Book Fair, in which South Korea was the host country amid heightened attention from the foreign media. The central display at the book fair was none other than “100 Books from Korea” which was organized by KLTI. I was surprised at the stunning feat achieved by KLTI, even though the institute was established only four years before. In March, 2011, I attended the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates, a visit that deepened my understanding of KLTI and its role. It turned out that few organizations can match KLTI when it comes to the promotion of Korean culture. In fact, Korea’s publishing industry was participating in a major book fair in the Arab community for the first time. Since it was a Korean delegation’s first appearance at the fair, KLTI’s presence gained even more attention. KLTI held a cultural event titled “Middle East Meets Far East.” Novelists Yi Mun-yol, Kim Joo-young, and poet Kim Min-jeong joined the event, establishing meaningful ties with UAE readers. Korean titles, translated into Arabic with the support of KLTI, were on display at the book fair. The institute also donated Korean books translated into English, French, and Arabic to the National Library and Zayed University. Korea is now drawing more attention from people around the world. The K-pop boom that is sweeping Paris, London, New York, and other places, is just a single aspect of a broader trend. Korean language, Korean food, Korean songs, and even a Korean boilermaker called a “bomb drink” are spreading at a rapid pace, thanks to the Korean wave. Shin Kyung-sook’s hit novel Please Look After Mom is also a notable success story that proves the potential of Korean literature, as it is now being translated into various languages in Europe and Asia following its huge success in the U.S. market. Although many factors have contributed to the rising popularity of Korean culture in recent years, there is no doubt that KLTI’s efforts in the past decade have come to bear fruit. I expect KLTI to play a greater role in helping bolster the Korean Wave for the next 10 years. By Bae Young-dae * Bae Young-dae is a reporter who writes on recently published books for Joongang Daily.
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The Slow and Steady Training of Translators It is nothing, if not a great burden, for me to attend a weekly class at the Korea Literature Translation Institute. I usually begin to read translated files uploaded on an online community board one day before class. I read the drafts from beginning to end, trying not to miss anything. And then I re-read them, checking errors and assessing the artistic level of each text. Identif y ing a nd a na ly zing common problems arising from the translated texts is also important. Good examples are sorted out to prepare for the class. This is actually a step that requires the highest level of concentration. There are a number of factors to consider: proper choice of words, syntactic features, sentence rhythm, and a tonal change in sentences. But in class, I try to focus on a couple of topics that I think are relevant and essential. After class is over, students revise their copies and upload them on the community board. The tedious and demanding training lasts for an entire semester; eventually, students complete a full translation of a short story. This might come off as a small achievement, but I believe this represents all the intellectual and artistic energy of the students. Only when this process gets repeated with vigor and enthusiasm for many years can students transform into competent translators. And the very venue where those who have chosen to go through this grueling path is the Korea Literature Translation Institute. The pressure for me is strong, but I get energy from the passionate students in the class and am able to share the joy of translation with them. By Kim Hyun-taek * Kim Hyun-taek is the dean of the Graduate School of Interpretation Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He published Ice Rink at the Red Square, and translated into Korean published Story of Chunhyang into Russian. He was awarded the Medal of Pushkin by the Russian Government in 2011.
A Farsighted Homage to KLTI If I were not shortsighted, I would probably not have become affiliated with LTI Korea. Shortsighted as I was, I was handicapped in those childhood games that consisted of playing Indian tribes waging war against each other. Blindly I ran into the traps set up by the enemy and got bound to the stake. On the other hand, my shortsightedness favored my passion for reading. Even today I prefer to read without glasses. What has my shortsightedness to do with KLTI? Well, in the first place my shortsightedness made me enjoy reading. And this, in the long run, paved my way into KLTI. “Everywhere I have searched for peace and nowhere have I found it, except in a corner with a book.” This from a German mystic who lived around 600 years ago, quoted in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, also applied to me, the myopic who found himself vis-à-vis the dangers of the outside world much more helplessly exposed than his peers. For this myopic who lacked glasses and did not know he was shortsighted because he grew into it while the clueless adults did not recognize the fact (they attributed everything to some timidity or awkwardness or just the passion for reading), for this myopic the uncertain outside world was much more interesting when experienced via books. Thanks to books the narrow world became a wide world. Anyone who reads a lot dreams of becoming an author themselves one day. For many, this dream never comes true. The reason for this is often, of course, that one is too disheartened at the outset. That goes for me too. I was not bold enough. Perhaps I, having grown up without glasses while being hopelessly shortsighted, was too hare-hearted and lilylivered to claim my own place and to expect others to welcome my voice. Well, be this as it may be, it is anyway honorable enough to be a mere reader, isn’t it? Now, interestingly, I still became, be it very marginally, an active participant of the literary world, because I, after all, went a little bit beyond my role as a reader and stumbled into the world of translation (or at least to an edge of this world). This was, to a great extent, made possible by KLTI. May I say, without sounding too conceited: “Thanks to the LTI Korea’s farsightedness?” By Andreas Schirmer * Andreas Schirmer holds a PhD in German Literature. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department for East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna. His translation of poems by Lee Si-young will be published later this year.
Towards a Borderless World "Border" is probably the key word for Korea and Korean people all over the world. Borders that divide, protect, help you stay who you are, and borders that set limitations. World history is mostly about defending and destroying borders. However in the current world situation when it is more important than ever that we communicate with each other, we should understand that neither destroying borders nor shutting them down helps communication. What we really need is to open borders and face the world through sharing, which the Korea Literature Translation Institute has succeeded in doing for 10 years. I had the luck to be among the first Russian Intensive Course students at the KLTI Translation Academy, but my first encounter with LTI Korea was much earlier, in 2006, at the Korean Literature Essay Contest in St. Petersburg. That was also my first acquaintance with modern Korean literature. The piece offered for the contest was The Square by Choi In-hoon that had just been translated into Russian. Back then I didn't know any Korean so it was thanks to the good translation that I could appreciate literature that felt so new and familiar to me. At the award ceremony of the 2nd Essay Contest I had the chance to meet Choi In-Suk, Jang Jung-il, and poet Kim Sunwoo. What impressed me the most was that among the special prize and honorable mention winners there were quite a few people not involved in Korean studies who had never heard of Korean literature before, but it was clear that they sincerely enjoyed the literary pieces shared by KLTI. Examples like this truly justify its motto: "Sharing Korean Literature with the World." I remember the words of the Ukrainian writer Andey Kurkov when he wrote in the guest book of the Seoul International Writer's Festival (where I happened to work as an assistant in 2010) on his leaving Korea: "...what I felt in Korea all the time was the presence of a certain nation-spirit in everything and everywhere. The organizers and staff members of the SIWF made common cause with the Korean writers and poets and everything that they were doing was done in a committed effort to show the guests of the festival the best of modern Korean literature-and they succeeded... Through all these new encounters I enriched my inner world greatly. It would have been impossible if it hadn't been for KLTI." Indeed LTI Korea has been making a tremendous effort to surmount all kinds of borders and share generously with the world, and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to take a humble part in it. By Pak Kamilla Moran * Pak Kamilla Moran is a recipient of the KLTI New Translators Award in 2011. She is currently a student at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.
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LTI Korea and I
An Intensely Full Translation Experience
Struck by the Power of the Word
Last June a f ter I had completed the program at KLTI’s Translation Academy, I realized that it had been over a year since I’d been in Korea as a translation student. Talking to other students and lecturers at the graduation ceremony, it crossed my mind that I now have hundreds of stories to tell. Last year I was working in Argentina on something that had nothing to do with Korea when someone at the Korean Cultural Center in Latin America told me about KLTI. I learned about the Intensive Course at the Translation Academy and it seemed like such a good opportunity that I applied right away. Happily enough, I was accepted. I felt excited and nervous at the same time about being part of the first class in Spanish. Now that a year has passed, I can say that I have learned much more at the Translation Academy than I thought possible. I have always been interested in literature but from last year on I was able to study Korean literature more closely. It also depends on what writer you are reading, but the words that we foreign students learned while reading Korean modern literature were ‘violence,’ ‘pain,’ and ‘suicide’. I was also surprised that so many more people in Korea were interested in Spanish than I had thought before I came here. Also in the first semester the Intensive Course students went on a literary field trip. We visited Jinhae and Jinju with Kim Yeon-su for two days. It was a chance not just to talk about the novel we were translating, set during the Seven Years’ War, but also to learn about Korean history. And in the second semester there was a field trip for students in the Special Course, so the Spanish class got to go along with the Russian class. We visited Lee Soonwon’s hometown of Gangneung with him, and learned about the Joseon era. During the winter break, I wanted to continue practicing translation, and decided-along with other students from the academy-to partake in the 10th year contest for new translators. I was very happy that I won an award, as I’d put in so much effort to become a good translator. Personally I am satisfied with everything we did in the program. I would like to thank our teachers for everything. Who cares about having lots of homework, taking the subway early in the morning during rush hour, being haunted by deadlines... Finally, I hope that other foreign translators like myself help Korean literature become more well known and beloved by people all around the world.
When I was a child, I read quite a bit. I’m not sure if I had any deep thoughts about what books were at the time, but story books were doorways into exciting worlds and new friends. Luckily, my parents strove to cultivate my love for reading by taking me to the library and buying me books. However, as I entered college, the books I prioritized were textbooks. I’m not sure if I can say wholeheartedly that I really enjoyed my psychology and general education textbooks, but it was through these books that I was able to expand my understanding of the world. Studying international relations at graduate school meant learning through assigned readings and news articles. These activities helped deepen my understanding of my world. Reflecting back on my life, I am struck by the power of the written word. This revelation was further supported by my experience with the Korea Literature Translation Institute this summer. I came across LTI Korea’s 10th Annual Competition for New Translators by chance through an email from my alma mater, UCLA. I decided on a whim to submit a translation of Park Min-gyu’s short story “Into the Morning.” A few months later, I was informed that I had won the new translator award for English. This was a complete surprise to me because I really had no prior exposure to Korean literature despite living in a Koreatown in the U.S. It was through LTI Korea that I first encountered Korean literature. What began as an attempt at self-evaluation didn’t end as simply as that: “Into the Morning” was a beautifully written and moving literary work. Park’s work was refreshing and creative in its storytelling of society’s marginalized, and gave a voice to those hardest hit even amongst the forgotten. Though “Into the Morning” was on the surface a story about Korean society, the ray of hope that emerges in the midst of despair and sorrow of its characters is universally understood, surpassing national borders and citizenship. Regardless of which language something is written in, the word is a powerful thing. In my life, the written word has given me access to new worlds and new knowledge that has widened and deepened my understanding about the world that I live in and the people I live with. It is my hope that written works of quality will not be limited by language barriers, but fully exert their potential and influence. To this end, I hope organizations like LTI Korea will continue to seek out and nurture bilingual and multilingual people.
By Parodi Sebastián * Parodi Sebastián completed the KLTI Translation Academy Intensive Course. His Spanish translation of Park Min-gyu’s “Morning Door” (“La Puerta de la Mañana”) won the 2011 KLTI New Translators Award.
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By Jane Kim * Jane Kim is a recipient of the KLTI New Translators Award in 2011. She is currently working as a North Korea Portfolio intern at InterMedia Survey.
KLTI Overseas Publication Grants
KLTI Overseas Marketing Grants
Applicant Qualifications
Applicant Qualifications
- Any publisher who has signed contracts for the publication rights of a Korean book and can publish the book by December 2011. (The book should be published by then.) - Or any publisher who has already published a translated Korean book in 2011 based on a contract for the publication rights of a Korean book.
- Publishers who have published Korean books in translation and are planning to hold promotional events which require the author's presence. - Other events not directly involving the author's presence can be supported only in exceptional cases confirmed by LTI Korea.
Grant
Grant
How to Apply
- Roundtrip airfare and accommodation expenses for the author. - Other expenses for marketing events and advertisements can be supported only in exceptional cases confirmed by LTI Korea. - The amount will be decided by LTI Korea after due consideration of the marketing plan and scale. *The grant will be provided directly for the author or the overseas publisher in two payments, before and after an event.
- Register as a member on the website (http://eng.klti.or.kr) and complete the online application form.
How to Apply
Application Documents to be Submitted
- Register as a member on the website (http://eng.klti.or.kr) and complete the online application form.
- Part of the total publication expenses. - The amount varies depending on the publication cost and genre of the book. - The grant will be awarded after publication.
1. Publisher's profile, including its history and major achievements (e.g., previous publications related to Korea (if any), the total number of books it has published so far, etc.). 2. Publication plan including the dates and budget for translation and publication in detail. 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translator. 4. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the foreign rights holder. 5. The translator's resume.
Application Documents to be Submitted 1. Publisher’s profile including its detailed history and major achievements (e.g., previous publications related to Korea (if any), the total number of books it has published to date, etc.). 2. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the translator. 3. A copy of the contract between the publisher and the foreign rights holder. 4. Marketing event plan and detailed statement of expenses.
Application Schedule and Announcement of Results
Application Schedule and Announcement of Results
- Submission period: 2011. 1. 1 ~ 2011. 9. 30 - Grant notification: April, July, and October
- Application schedule: every month - Announcement: selection to be announced early each month
Contact
Contact
- Name: Mina Park, Youngju Cha - Email: grants@klti.or.kr
- Name: Mina Park, Youngju Cha - Email: grants@klti.or.kr
INDEX Title Original Title Publishers Copyright Agent E-mail Phone Homepage
5p
18p
The Heroic Age (Yeongungsidae) Minumsa Publishing Group Michelle Nam michellenam@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 206) www.minumsa.com
Ashes and Red (Jaewa Ppalgang) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.changbi.com/english
8p
23p
Mongolian Spot (Monggobanjeom) Munhaksasang Co., Ltd. Yoon Hye-jun munsa@munsa.co.kr 82-2-3401-8543 www.munsa.co.kr
Nagasaki Papa Edition PPUL Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjthinkbig.com
11, 49p I’m a Ghostwriter (Naneun Yuryeongjakgaimnida) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.changbi.com/english
11p Legends of the World’s Heroes (Jiguyeongungjeonseol) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com
13, 52p Run, Pop, Run! (Dallyeora Abi) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.changbi.com/english
14p Romantic Love and Society (Nangmanjeok Saranggwa Sahoe) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Phil-gyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com
18p Style Wisdomhouse Publishing Co., Ltd. Kwon Minkyung ohappyday@wisdomhouse.co.kr 82-31-936-4199 www.wisdomhouse.co.kr Risky Reading (Wiheomhan Dokseo) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Kim Mijeong mijeong@munhak.com 82-31-955-2662 www.munhak.com
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25p You Are a Korean Wheel Lily (Neodo Haneulmallariya) Prooni Books, Inc. Hwang Hyejin editor@prooni.com 82-2-581-0334 (Ext. 122) www.prooni.com 13-Year-Old Worrywart (Geokjeongjaengi Yeolse Sal) Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600 www.sakyejul.co.kr Miru from Mars (Hwaseongeseo On Miru) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Lee Na-young lny@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7123) www.moonji.com
25, 58p Waiting for Mom (Eomma Majung) Hangilsa Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Mihee island@hangilsa.co.kr 82-31-955-2088 www.hangilsa.co.kr
26p Separate but Together, Three Musketeers (Ttaro Tto Samchongsa) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english Dear Mrs. Astrid Lindgren (Naui Rindeugeuren Seonsaengnim) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
26p
30p
35p
Invited Friends (Chodaebadeun Aideul) Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjthinkbig.com
My Sister, Mongsil (Mongsireonni) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
Grandma, Where Are You Going? I’m Going to Pick Mugwort! (Halmeoni Eodigayo? Ssuk Tteudeureo Ganda!) Bori Publishing Co., Ltd. Jo Sungwoo jobori@boribook.com 82-31-950-9551 www.boribook.com
I Died One Day (Eoneunal Naega Jugeotseumnida) Baram Books Choi Yoonjung windchild04@hanmail.net 82-2-3142-0495 cafe.daum.net/barampub
Flower Granny (Kkothalmeoni) Sakyejul Publishing Ltd. Kang Hyunjoo kanghjoo@sakyejul.co.kr 82-31-955-8600 www.sakyejul.co.kr
29p
33p
Leafie, a Hen into the Wild (Madangeul Naon Amtak) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.sakyejul.co.kr
The Child Who Brought Memory (Gieogeul Gajyeoon Ai) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Lee Na-young lny@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7123) www.moonji.com
39p
My Daltanyang (Naui Daltanyang) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
A Busy Family (Bappagajok) Baram Books Nam Kyung-mee windchild04@hanmail.net 82-2-3142-0495 cafe.daum.net/barampub
Festival of Fire (Burui Jejeon) Kang Publishing Kim Jeong-hyun gangpub@hanmail.net 82-2-325-9566
The Barnyard Duck that Flew Away to the Sky (Haneullo Naragan Jibori) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
Aro and the Perfect World (Arowa Wanjeonhan Segye) Baram Books Choi Yoon-jung windchild04@hanmail.net 82-2-3142-0495 cafe.daum.net/barampub
Pride (Jajonsim) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
The Moon Sorbet (Dalsyabeteu) StoryBowl Baek Heena storybowl@yahoo.com 82-70-7788-5664 www.storybowl.com
30, 55p
35p
My Grandpa's Clock (Harabeojiui Sigye) NURIMBO Park Misuk nurimbo_pub@naver.com 82-31-955-7391 www.nurimbo.co.kr
Wave (Padoya Nolja) BIR Publishing Co., Ltd. Song Jung-ha ha@minumsa.com 82-2-515-2000 (Ext. 207) www.minumsa.com
30, 58p
Peek-a-Boo! with Twelve Animals (Yeoldu Tti Dongmul Kkakkung Nori) Borim Press Park Jihye jhpark@borimpress.com 82-31-955-3456 (Ext. 147) www.borimpress.com
The House Where Books Dwell (Chaekgwa Nonineun Jip) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Choi Youn-mi youn@munhak.com 82-2-3144-3239 www.munhak.com
There Dangles a Spider (Siridongdong Geomidongdong) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
Red Sky (Noeul) Kim Phil-gyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com
The Way of Love (Sarangui Gil) Kang Publishing Kim Jeong-hyun gangpub@hanmail.net 82-2-325-9566
42p Seasons of Exile (Natseon Sigan Sogeuro) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Phil-gyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com Endlessly Whispered Breath (Haneopsi Najeun Sumgyeol) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Phil-gyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com Waiting to Go Insane, Yet Unable (Michyeobeorigo Sipeun, Michyeojiji Anneun) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Phil-gyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com
46p The Snow Falling on Chagall’s Village (Syagarui Maeure Naerineun Nun) SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. Heo Yunjung 314yj@naver.com 82-31-955-8061 www.segyesa.co.kr
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46p
55p
61p
Hotel California SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. Heo Yunjung 314yj@naver.com 82-31-955-8061 www.segyesa.co.kr
Where Is Daddy? (Appaneun Eodie?) Jaimimage Publishing Co. Kim Oh-hyun jaim@jaimimage.com 82-31-955-0880 www.jaimimage.com
There's Sea Horse Living in My Heart (Nae Gaseume Haemaga Sanda) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Choi Youn-mi youn@munhak.com 82-2-3144-3239 www.munhak.com
The Folks in Fox-Lurking-Village (Yeounangoljok) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
Wandeuk (Wandeugi) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
The End of the World, Girlfriend (Segyeui Kkeut Yeojachingu) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.munhak.com
My Grandpa's Clock (Harabeojiui Segye) NURIMBO Park Misuk Nurimbo_pub@naver.com 82-31-955-7391 www.nurimbo.co.kr
Sublime Lies (Uahan Geojinmal) Changbi Publishers, Inc. Lee Soonhwa copyright@changbi.com 82-31-955-3369 www.changbi.com/english
Whoever You Are, No Matter How Lonely (Nega Nugudeun Eolmana Oeropdeun) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.munhak.com
58p
Have You Seen That Man? (Geu Sarameul Bon Jeogi Innayo) Munhakdongne Publishing Corp. Choi Youn-mi youn@munhak.com 82-2-3144-3239 www.munhak.com
Doksan-dong Angel’s Poem (Doksandong Cheonsaui Si) SEGYESA Publishing Co., Ltd. Heo Yunjung 314yj@naver.com 82-31-955-8061 www.segyesa.co.kr
49p
52p Mouthwatering (Chimi Goinda) Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Philgyun feel@moonji.com 82-2-338-7224 (Ext. 7122) www.moonji.com
Echo (Meari) Gilbut Children Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Youjung youjung@dreamwiz.com 82-31-955-3262 www.gilbutkid.co.kr
My Palpitating Life (Dugeundugeun Nae Insaeng) KL Management Joseph Lee josephlee705@gmail.com 82-10-6239-9154 www.changbi.com/english
Dal from Binari (Binari Darinejip) Little Mountain Publishing Co. Shin Soojin littlemt@dreamwiz.com 82-2-335-7362
55p Building a House (Jipjitgi) Borim Press Park Jihye jhpark@borimpress.com 82-31-955-3456 (Ext. 147) www.borimpress.com Traveling with Hong Seongchan in Search of Folklore and Landscape Paintings (Hongseongchan Harabeojiwa Hamkke Tteonaneun Minsokpungmulhwagihaeng) Jaimimage Publishing Co. Kim Oh-hyun jaim@jaimimage.com 82-31-955-0880 www.jaimimage.com
80
Bike Trip with Uncle (Samchongwa Hamkke Jajeongeo Yeohaeng) Jaimimage Publishing Co. Kim Oh-hyun jaim@jaimimage.com 82-31-955-0880 www.jaimimage.com
list_ Books from Korea, special edition 2011
Nightingale Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. Claire Yang shy07@wjbooks.co.kr 82-2-3670-1168 www.wjthinkbig.com Flower Shoes (Kkotsin) Bluebird Publishing Co. Rosa Han rosa.han@yolimwon.co.kr 82-2-3144-3704 www.bbchild.co.kr The Wildflower Kid (Deulkkot Ai) Gilbut Children Publishing Co., Ltd. Kim Youjung youjung@dreamwiz.com 82-31-955-3262 www.gilbutkid.co.kr
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