VOL. 37 | AUTUMN 2017 FEATURED WRITER Jeong You Jeong I Dream of Fire, Always Excerpt from 28
MUSINGS The Translation Delusion VOL. 37
Tim Parks
|
AUTUMN 2017
Feminism forAll
BOOKMARK
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
Early Beans Ha Seong-nan
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Rhapsody in Berlin Ku Hyoseo
by Choi Mikyung
Tall Blue Ladder Gong Ji-Young
FOREWORD
The LTI Korea Fellowship: An Editor’s View
L
ast June, editors from San Francisco’s Transit Books,
the highly regarded poet and poetry editor at Munhakdongne
Little, Brown in London, and I participated in the
(her poems have appeared in English in a recent anthology
amazing LTI Korea Fellowship, where editors from
published by Vagabond Press); the award-winning writer
publishing houses around the world have the opportunity
Cheon Myeong-kwan; and the wise and kind Jung Young
to attend the Seoul International Book Fair and meet a wide
Moon, whose fabulous novel Vaseline Buddha came out last
array of Korean publishers and writers.
year with Deep Vellum Press.
New Directions has long benefited from LTI Korea’s
The final day, I met Kim Hyesoon, the renowned poet
outstanding efforts promoting Korean literature abroad. Our
whose Autobiography of Death New Directions will publish
editors enjoy regular visits from the friendly, well-informed
next year. (Her works have appeared in English with Action
LTI Korea staff, and receive the illuminating Korean Literature
Books and Bloodaxe.) Her work is daring, playful, disturbing,
Now as well as other publications. This time, however, I was
and truly provocative; it was a thrill to meet her and hear
able to experience the Korean publishing industry firsthand.
about her writing career.
On just the first day we attended the Seoul International
These are just some of the writers and publishers we
Book Fair in the famous Gangnam district. In the
encountered during our unforgettable trip. The 2017
enormous conference hall, we met rights directors from
participants of the LTI Korea Fellowship returned home
Munhakdongne and Changbi, two of South Korea’s most
inspired, energized, and much better informed about all the
prominent publishers, and heard about exciting new titles
flourishing literary activity in South Korea. So many talented
in their publishing programs. The book fair was a bustling
and creative people are involved in all aspects of the literary
wonderful experience. That afternoon, our group visited the
scene in Seoul and the rest of the country, and I encourage
impressive LTI Korea offices and met Song Sokze, the prolific
publishers to investigate the many original offerings that are
Korean writer, whose collection of sharp, satiric stories, The
available there.
Amusing Life, was published in English by Dalkey Archive Press. We also met Helen Cho, a translator and interpreter, who provided us with an overview of Korean literature and described trends in Korean writing. A lavish reception that evening at the Eric Yang Agency offered yet another opportunity for editors and writers to meet and mingle and exchange contact information. Other Korean writers we met throughout our visit were Kim Kyung-uk, a young novelist whose works overlap with his interest in movies; the critic Baik Jieun; Kim Min Jeong,
Declan Spring Vice President, Senior Editor, and Director of Foreign Rights New Directions
VOL. 37
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01
VOL. 37
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AUTUMN 2017
PUBLISHER
Kim Seong-Kon
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Ko Young-il
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Park Chanwoo
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Shin Sookyung
EDITORS
Agnel Joseph
Kim Stoker
DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR Yoo Young-seon ADVISORY BOARD
Bang Min-Ho, Steven D. Capener
John M. Frankl, Kang Yu-jung
Kim Suyee, Krys Lee
EDITORIAL ADVISORS
Brother Anthony of Taizé
Chan E. Park, Kyeong-Hee Choi
Theodore Hughes, Jean-Noël Juttet
Anders Karlsson, Grace E. Koh
Nayoung Aimee Kwon, Peter H. Lee
Andreas Schirmer
Andrés Felipe Solano, Dafna Zur
COORDINATION BY
ch121
Art Direction by Kim Jungwon
Editorial Assistant Kim Yeonsoo
Design by Kim Soojung
Photographs by Hansyart
Illustrations by Amy Shin
PRINTED BY
KumKang Printing Co., Ltd.
DATE OF PUBLICATION September 28, 2017
FEATURED WRITER
Jeong You Jeong 06 Writer’s Note 07 Interview 12 Excerpt from 28
01 FOREWORD 18 SPECIAL INTERVIEW Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
by Choi Mikyung
26 MUSINGS
All correspondence should be addressed to:
The Translation Delusion
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koreanlitnow@klti.or.kr +82-2-6919-7714 koreanliteraturenow.com
by Tim Parks
Cover Photo by Chang Hwa Kyung Self-portrait series Hot Flash
SPECIAL SECTION
BOOKMARK
Feminism for All
Fiction
Curated and introduced by Kim Suyee
56 Early Beans by Ha Seong-nan
28 Overview
61 Rhapsody in Berlin by Ku Hyoseo 67 Tall Blue Ladder by Gong Ji-Young
Poetry 32 Moon Chung-hee
Poetry
36 Kim Hyesoon
74 Selected Poems by Chyung JinKyu
39 Lee Young Ju 42 Park YeonJoon 47 Kim Seung Il 52 Kim Hyun
80 REVIEWS 87 TRANSLATORS
FEATURED WRITER
JEONG YOU JEONG
Jeong You Jeong
I Dream of
Fire, Always
Jeong You Jeong’s Seven Years of Darkness sold more than 500,000 copies in South Korea alone, and its German edition ranked ninth on the Zeit and Nordwestradio “Best Crime Fiction of December 2015” list. Her most recent work, The Good Son, climbed to the top of the bestseller list even before it was published, through preorders on South Korea’s major online bookstores. It was also voted first by readers on Kyobo Book Centre’s “Best Fiction of 2016” list. The English edition of the book is set to be published in 2018 by Little, Brown in the UK and Penguin Random House in the US. The thriller is also being adapted into a movie and plans are underway to turn it into a webtoon. Jeong’s novel 28, featured in this issue, plays out over twenty-eight days in a city caught up in the turmoil of a zoonotic epidemic that causes people’s eyes to turn red. 04
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
©Hansyart Photos of this section were taken at Sulwhasoo Flagship Store, Gangnam, Seoul
ABOUT THE WRITER
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I
t is said that most authors spend their entire lives
expansions of the beasts inside all of us. These beasts are
writing variations of the same topic. Hemingway, for
familiar yet unknown beings, beings that make us feel
example, used a variety of structures and subject matter
anxiety and tension and wariness. The best way I can deal
to depict people facing death; for Dickens, it was boys
with these beasts is by writing thrillers.
searching for their fathers; Stephen King writes about
There are two types of novels in which form itself is
horror within the abyss of humankind. I don’t think of
not the goal. The first are novels that make us think, and
these variations as copies of the authors’ prior writing, but
the second are novels that give us experiences. The former
as a part of their “theme” as a writer. And my theme is the
usually appeals to the intellect, and the latter is based on
wild beasts within us all.
emotion. My novels belong to the latter group, and in
All of us humans hold two distinct spaces inside of
order to make readers feel and experience them, I must
us. One is an expansive plain, with golden light pouring
first pull these readers into the worlds that my stories
out of it; the other, a forest of darkness, an abyss. The
inhabit.
golden field fertilizes our lives and gives us dignity. It
Once readers have entered my unfamiliar worlds,
houses the metaphorical sheep that lead our world in the
they come face-to-face with unbridled beasts. They
right direction. Love, happiness, hope, honesty, morality,
follow the paths of these beasts, and through the conflicts
altruism—those sorts of things live in this field. The
and emotions and actions of these things that they had
darkened forest, on the other hand, is where the beasts
thought were so different from themselves, they discover
that cause all manner of problems in our lives lie sleeping.
a sort of shared human nature. This is the feeling we call
Beasts like jealousy, envy, rage, loathing, disgust, lust,
empathy. It’s a tool, the moment that the reader becomes
hedonism, terror, hopelessness, and violence . . .
connected to these beasts, and the sole reason that he or
I’m always wondering why this forest of darkness exists
she voluntarily becomes stuck in the world of the story.
within us. On what day, for what reason, will the beasts
Each time I write a novel, there are a few things for
confined in this forest open their eyes? What is it that will
which I am desperately eager. I hope for my readers to be
set fire in their blood? What force will stir up a blazing
fully and truly swept up into the fire for the duration of
flame from their dormancy? What will happen when this
the story. I hope that they will have vivid experiences with
force joins hands with the violence of fate? And will our
these strong feelings of rage, hopelessness, terror, sadness,
own free will be strong enough to overcome the result?
grief, sympathy, and sentimentality. I hope that after their
A novel begins at the moment when I find a story through which I can ask these questions. It’s at that
chests have burned black in the night, they’ll see the light of an exhausted dawn.
moment when my chest beats fast, and I grow feverish
And that’s why I wake up alone at night, while everyone
as if I’d just met my soulmate. My full attention is there,
else is asleep, and seek fire. To quote Ray Bradbury, I want to
on the story. The world revolves around it alone, and
let you, the reader, burn through me.
I am entirely stuck in that world. It’s a moment of magic in which a story that shoots in like a meteor creates my universe. In other words, my writing uses the enchantment of storytelling to wake the sleeping beasts in this forest of darkness. The characters in my stories aren’t special villains roaming around in some faraway world; they’re dramatic 06
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
by Jeong You Jeong
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
by Jung Yeoul Literary Critic and Writer
I Want to Write Novels With All the Intrigue of a Thriller Jung Yeoul: I’d like to start by asking what you’ve been up
Jeong: In 2011, South Korea was struck with an outbreak of
to since 28 and The Good Son were released.
foot-and-mouth disease. As a reactionary measure, countless cows and pigs were buried alive. Millions of cows and pigs,
Jeong You Jeong: From May last year, when The Good Son was
buried alive just like that. When I saw on the news what was
released, until October, I was on a publicity tour for the book
happening, it rubbed me the wrong way, but I didn’t think
and attending literary events. I met quite a few international
about it much. One day early in the morning, though, I saw
readers in places like Arles and Aix-en-Provence, in France,
a video by an animal rights activist who’d gone to a place
too. I gave a talk about Seven Years of Darkness at a huge
where pigs were being buried. The activist was almost wailing
library, and I was really pleased to see foreign readers actively
as she shot this video of pigs being indiscriminately buried
asking questions and buying a lot of copies of the book.
alive. On camera was this scene of holes being dug and pigs
Recently, I went to the United States for the first time. My
being pushed into them, squirming to stay alive and stepping
younger sister lives there. I was intending to plan out my next
on top of each other, and the activist absolutely bawled
novel under the warm California sun, but we spent so much
while watching. I cried a lot, too. God will spite us for this,
time swimming and enjoying the sunshine that the trip went
I thought. I wondered what would have happened if this
by faster than I realized. I’m now in the midst of research
hadn’t been foot-and-mouth disease but some truly deadly
for that novel. While I was writing The Good Son, which has
animal-spread illness—if it had been a deadly infectious
a psychopath as the protagonist, I started to worry that the
disease, something that could be spread by dogs and cats,
book was getting to me and I was becoming a psychopath
would we humans have killed all our cats and dogs, too?
myself. But after resting and allowing myself to recharge,
Those were the questions that came to mind. That evening,
it seems like I’m ready to start working on something new.
I finished a short synopsis of the book. I was originally a nurse, but I needed more specialized knowledge about
Jung: The premise of 28 is that a disease is transmitted to
contagious diseases, so I searched out veterinary professors
humans by man’s best friend—dogs. I’m curious to know
and studied up on viruses before writing 28.
what prompted you to come up with this idea. VOL. 37
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Jung: Unlike your other books, 28 has multiple narrators
Jung: How did your way of thinking change before and
and is told from several points of view. Did your decision
after you started to write books? I’m curious to know how
to structure the book like this have a connection to its
your thoughts about evil have changed.
subject matter? Jeong: Before I started writing novels, I thought that it was Jeong: With Seven Years of Darkness, I went deep into the
evil to disobey the norms that have been laid out by our
narrator’s inner thoughts, but in 28, I was trying to expand my
society, to commit acts like murder or theft. But after studying
narrative capabilities as much as possible. Just one perspective
evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, I realized that
isn’t sufficient to do that. The main character has blind spots,
social norms and morality are elements of cultures, and that
you see. If I’d told the story as an omniscient narrator, the
these norms are things that humans have created. If other
mentality of the novel’s protagonist or narrator wouldn’t have
animals fight and kill amongst themselves, we don’t say that
been as vivid, so I wrote neither in the first person nor as an
it’s wicked or pass moral judgment. I find it very interesting
omniscient narrator—I wrote in close-range third person,
to think about human evils for what they are and to study
with multiple narrators. Since it was the first time I’d written
where they come from without using morality as a restrictive
in third person from multiple perspectives, it was really
standard. I’ve developed an eye for looking at the “evil itself ”
challenging and strenuous, but after completing the novel,
without holding it to a moral standard or ethical criterion.
I had a new sort of confidence as a writer. Jung: I’m curious to talk about what you’ve been working Jung: Your work has dealt with the idea of the villain in
on recently as well. Your readers are probably wondering,
multiple ways, but you said that in The Good Son, you
too. What are you writing right now?
were able to pursue this idea most satisfactorily and with the most depth. What made you want to explore the inner
Jeong: It’s been ten years now since I became a writer, and
mind of a villain?
I’ve published five books. For my sixth book, it looks like I’m going to finally have a female protagonist at the forefront.
Jeong: I think that there are two coexisting sides to humans.
I’ve only written male protagonists until now. I’m planning
You can really see this if you compare us to apes, the typical
to bring a lot of fantastical elements into the next novel. The
examples being orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and
book will draw from the genre of fantasy while maintaining
bonobos. Bonobos are a pacifist species, and they try to solve
the elements of a thriller. As in 28, the premise will be
all conflicts with love. Because they use physical connection
widespread societal disaster.
as the solution to conflict, you sometimes hear that Bonobos are “promiscuous.” Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are
Jung: I know that you take copious amounts of notes when
masculine and aggressive. I see humans as having both these
you’re working on a novel. I’d like to hear about the writing
extremes, the bonobo-like pacifism and the chimpanzee-like
process, from your initial ideas for subject matter to the
aggression. In some regards, humans are unbelievably noble,
synopsis to the completion of the work.
and in other regards, unbelievably shameful and nasty and wicked. What I depict best is not humanity’s grandeur but its
Jeong: Once I have an idea and write down a synopsis, I start
wickedness. Since college, I’ve really enjoyed classes related to
to do a huge amount of research. First I read a ton of books,
psychiatry. This interest in humanity’s dark and wicked sides
next I do interviews, and then I handwrite a draft in a
developed into my curiosity as an author who writes thrillers.
notebook. Then I see what I need to supplement. After that,
08
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
INTERVIEW
©Meenyoung Jung
I go out to gather more information and add what’s needed.
Jung: You’re also a really diligent reader, as you read widely
This is when the real work begins, and as I start to work
in a variety of fields for your research. What have you been
on my laptop, I add flavor to the details, make the scenes
reading recently?
livelier, and give the characters more of a three-dimensional quality. Even though it’s just a rough draft, I go through
Jeong: A while ago, I developed an interest in astrophysics.
these three steps in the writing process. If more than 10
I’ve been learning about the Big Bang Theory, too. I looked
percent of the original draft is left, I consider the novel to
at some books on quantum physics as well, but they were so
be a failure. This is because what I think of first tends to
difficult that reading them would make my mind go blank,
be at the surface level of my consciousness, and I find that
and I’d slump over as if I’d just taken ten sleeping pills at
that’s not where my real creative inspiration lies. I’m not the
once. [laughs] Now I’m very interested in anthropology. Jared
type to trust myself. Only if I skim off that first superficial
Mason Diamond’s books are all good. Recently I’ve been
idea will the real stor y hiding at the bottom of my
reading research on apes and chimpanzees, anthropology
consciousness rise to the top, so I revise my drafts multiple
and social psychology readings, things like that. Yuval Noah
times, throw them away, and write them again. Lastly, I read
Harari’s Homo Deus is really interesting, too.
the manuscript backwards. If I have chapters one through twenty, I read from twenty to one. When I examine the
Jung: If you look at your previous works, they all have
story backwards like this, I can see the final holes in the
strong components of a thriller. Is there a reason you’re
manuscript. Filling those holes is my last job. The novel that
attracted to thrillers in particular?
was the most different from its original synopsis was The Good Son, and the most difficult to revise was 28.
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FEATURED WRITER
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books. I hope that reading my books has that same thrilling excitement, the feeling you get when you turn around thinking, “Is there something behind me?” or because it seems like someone just brushed by you. Jung: Shoot Me in the Heart has been turned into a movie, and Seven Years of Darkness and The Good Son are currently in the process of being made into films as well. How do you feel about this? Jeong: I think that movies are really in the realm of the director. I don’t care if the director caters to my own novelistic intentions; I just want the movie to show off the ©Hansyart
director’s creative vision. I actually hope that the director can present some completely new perspective that I’ve never thought of. The scriptwriters have all told me that out of the
a novel that makes you think and the second is a novel that
books they’ve worked with, my novels are the most difficult
gives you experiences. Novels that make the reader think
to make into movies. There’s no fluff that can be cut out. If
are philosophical and are difficult, profound stories. In
you remove even one plot element from the original novel,
novels that make readers have new experiences, the most
the entire narrative structure falls apart. When I last saw the
important thing is a feeling of solidarity with the reader. You
script for Seven Years of Darkness, it was in its thirtieth draft.
have to grab the reader’s hand and pull him or her into a
The thirtieth draft! They said that after that, they revised it
new, unfamiliar world. Then you have to lock the door so he
seventeen more times. That’s how difficult and frustrating it
or she can’t escape. I always wanted to write those kinds of
is to make novels into movies.
novels. I wanted to show this world that I created to readers and say, “This is how I see the world and humanity and life.
Jung: Thrillers are such a firmly established genre
How do you see them?” And that’s how I came to enjoy
abroad that it must have been a challenge to break into
thrillers, because they incite curiosity in readers. I like
the market. I’d like to hear if you think that there are
fear, too. When I was writing Shoot Me in the Heart,
certain characteristics common to your novels, traits that
I spent about a year going hiking alone at night in order to
distinguish “a Jeong You Jeong thriller.”
understand the psychology of a blind person. It was a little
10
scary, walking through cemeteries alone. I’d like for readers
Jeong: I don’t target foreign readers when I write novels.
to feel that same sort of chilly terror when they read my
I don’t even target domestic readers. Readers say that I’m
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
INTERVIEW
In novels that make readers have new experiences, the most important thing is a feeling of solidarity with the reader. You have to grab the reader’s hand and pull him or her into a new, unfamiliar world.
not a reader-friendly writer. It seems like I always do the
thriller at hand. I pay a lot of attention to shedding light on
exact opposite of what they want. They ask me, “Please,
characters’ inner psychology.
could you just stop writing about villains?” but I don’t. Other readers ask, “Can’t you make your dark stories a
Jung: I want to hear what you’re going to write next.
little more palatable and write something happy with nice
What do you plan for the future?
characters?” I’m the kind of writer who doesn’t bend to the will of my readers at all. Instead, I try as hard as I can to make
Jeong: I want to tell the most fundamental, basic life stories.
them enjoy my writing. If that means I need humor in the
Just like everyone else, there have been a lot of twists and
book, I write humor, and sometimes I even make the story
turns to my life, and we all have our own grief. I want to
lewd—whatever it takes to make readers interested enough
write about these simple twists and turns and sorrows. My
to turn to the next page. But with that in mind, the premise
hope has always been to put out novels regularly, and at a
and the subject matter are completely my own. I don’t work
certain level of quality. I hope that I can continue to write
around readers’ tastes but focus rather on the psychological
for the rest of my life.
▶
Visit koreanliteraturenow.com to watch highlights of this interview.
©Meenyoung Jung
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FEATURED WRITER
JEONG YOU JEONG
28
by Jeong You Jeong
Prologue The Bering Sea had vanished. A stark white filled its place. The wind whipped the snow around and the icy fog walled him in. It was that vicious witch of the North Pole—the whiteout. Jae-hyeong squeezed his eyes shut. This didn’t happen often, but then again, there was nothing extraordinary about it. Not the fact that he had fallen off the speeding sled while dozing on his feet. Or that he had hit his head on the ground and his eyes had flown open to find he was all alone in the wilderness. Or that he was left dazed at the thought of the dogs EunHaeng NaMu Publishing Co.,
galloping on without him. That was what it was like on the Iditarod. This was just
2013, 496 pp.
another thing that happened in the race as the sleds dashed through the snowy fields around the clock. The unfortunate part was that he couldn’t expect rescue during a whiteout. Just seconds before he opened his eyes, he had been mushing Shicha, his team of dogs, along the Bering Sea toward Nome’s Front Street—the finish line of this race of endurance. He was thinking of Maya who was probably ahead of him on the support truck with his mentor Nukon. Maya was the champion sled dog who had groomed him—the “Idiatrod Kid”—into a competitor. For many years, she had been the lead dog of his team as they roamed the snow-covered North American terrain. She was the mother and grandmother of the sixteen dogs that comprised Shicha, and his frail old partner who taught him how to communicate with a glance. When he made it into Nome, he was going to run to her, embrace her, look into her eyes, and whisper, “Maya, your children are back.” Now, awake and retracing his dreams, he knew he wasn’t by the Bering Sea. The compass on his watch indicated that he was somewhere north of the Yukon River. That is, if his departure from Eagle Island at dawn hadn’t been a dream. He had to choose—sit and wait for Shicha to return, or wander into the white darkness looking for them. Either way, the prospect of a reunion was nil. Shicha wouldn’t return to him. They wouldn’t stop and wait for him to stumble upon them, either. After all, they had been trained to do only one thing: run. Jae-hyeong brushed off his stiff, frozen legs and stood up. He noticed a rope tied
12
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
EXCERPT
He felt paralyzed by the growls of the wolves and tormented by the screams of his dogs. He lay back and shut his eyes, hoping the dogs would run far away, taking the wolves with them, sparing him his life.
to his belt. What was this? He must have startled awake
the sled because Hook had come to an abrupt halt, silencing
at one point, and, instinctively anxious that he would fall
the agitated dogs and feeling out the wolves.
off the sled, tied one end to his belt and the other to the
Jae-hyeong felt his heart drop. A sense of foreboding
handlebar. He tugged on the rope, pulling it taut. The sled
chilled him. He and his dogs faced skilled hunters ready to
was ahead of him somewhere in the white. The dogs had
drive their bared fangs into their victims’ necks. They were
stopped. Otherwise he would have jolted awake as he was
as fast as his team, if not faster, and more persistent. Most
scraped along. His relief in learning that he wasn’t lost in the
importantly, they would be starving. Having raced for ten
wilderness was so great that he should have danced over to
days straight, his team would be depleted. They’d never
the sled, but he didn’t move. His instinct stilled him. Why
come across a pack of wolves in the middle of nowhere.
did they stop running?
What was he to do?
He couldn’t see anything. He knew he shouldn’t move
An amorphous bloodlust was creeping toward them
hastily. He rummaged in the pocket of his parka and found
through the white. Jae-hyeong thought he could see red
a pocketknife and half a chocolate bar. He touched the high-
eyes flashing through the icy fog. He tightened his grip on
frequency whistle around his neck. Only dogs could detect
his pocketknife. His gut shrank and twisted. The team’s
its sound waves. Nukon, an Athabascan musher, had given
growling pitched higher then dipped lower, gradually getting
it to him as a token of his mentorship. It would summon
louder. They weren’t accepting battle; their voices betrayed
Hook, the current lead dog. If he was within range, they
terror, tension, and anxiety. They were lowering their tails in
could have a secret conversation. Jae-hyeong shoved the
the loudest way possible. The standoff was over; musher and
whistle between his frozen lips and blew once, then two
team alike had collectively waved the white flag. There was
short bursts. Hook, what’s going on?
only one thing left to do—to run away as hard as they could.
From somewhere in front of him came low, growling
Jae-hyeong grabbed the rope around his waist and began to
barks. A warning. Something unpleasant was ahead of them.
move toward the sled. Hook barked three times, loudly and
From much farther away, the thing introduced itself—
urgently.
wild howling vibrated the air, chilling Jae-hyeong’s blood.
“Hook! Wait!”
It wasn’t a dog. Eight distinct howls erupted from different
It was too late. At Hook’s order, the team sprang forward
locations in a wide half-circle around Jae-hyeong and his
into the snowstorm, barking. Jae-hyeong flew forward.
sled, indicating their presence. A pack of gray wolves. When
“Hook! Stop!”
the reverberation quieted, his dogs began to growl.
Nobody was listening. He couldn’t reach his whistle.
The assassins of the snowy fields had barred his team
He rolled and tumbled as he was pulled along. He tried to
from crossing, demanding a toll. Jae-hyeong had fallen off
sprint. It was futile. The team ran to the right, drawing an VOL. 37
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arc, going back to where they’d come from. The wolves ran
them, sparing him his life.
up from behind Jae-hyeong and charged the middle of the
He didn’t know if they really did move away or if it
arc. Their roars and panting, and the sound of their paws
seemed that way because he hoped so desperately for it to
kicking off the snow, sailed over his head. The dogs’ screams
happen. The shrieks grew fainter. Quiet returned. He stared
sliced the white air. Jae-hyeong was tugged along even more
at his own breath as it frosted over his face. Was he safe?
jerkily. They were no longer dogs; they were a fur-covered
A new enemy was opening its maw inside his broken body.
bullet with sixteen feet. They abruptly changed direction.
The unforgiving molars of pain ripped through his chest and
Long bumps jutted up in front of Jae-hyeong: two boulders
brutal fire licked his legs and shot up his spine. He bit down
embedded in the ice. For the team they were trivial objects
but couldn’t stop screaming. He couldn’t stay awake, either.
in the scenery, but for him, sliding along the outside of their
The white darkness covering the world leapt back and the
path, they were unavoidable obstacles. He wrapped his arms
deep, dense black of his subconscious swept over him.
around his head.
The first things he saw nineteen hours later were Maya’s brown eyes. Maya and Nukon had found him. She looked so happy, her eyes brimming over with trust and love. Her gaze
She looked so happy, her eyes brimming over with trust and love. Her gaze was cautiously
was cautiously asking, “What did you do with my children?”
They’re Coming
asking, “What did you do with
“101, over.” The walkie-talkie blared. Han Gi-jun looked
my children?”
down at his watch. 5:59 p.m., one minute before the end of his shift. “New rescue call. Can you respond?” For the past seven hours, the East Hwayang Fire Rescue
14
His side exploded in pain. He thought he heard his
Squad No. 3 hadn’t been able to return to the station. They’d
leg shatter. The rope linking him to the sled was wedged
gone around the entire east side, moving from one rescue
between the boulders, and his body was stuck under them
call to another, following the dispatcher’s commands—
like a bar across a door. From the other side of the rocks the
to Baegun Tunnel, the scene of an eleven-car pile-up; to
wolves roared and the dogs screamed. The dogs’ leaps and
Baegun Nature Village where heavy snow had caused a bald
shoves were transmitted to him through the rope, which
cypress to fall on a house; to Suan Agricultural Industrial
tightened around his midsection, squeezing his chest and
Complex to deal with collapsed greenhouses. This time they
crushing his ribs. He managed to remember his pocketknife.
were being asked to go to Hwayang Mansion, the apartment
It was still in his hand. Thankfully his arm wasn’t broken.
buildings behind Baegun Library. A sick man with limited
Jae-hyeong cut the rope. He fell backward. He rolled
mobility was home alone, and he wasn’t answering the
until his shoulder caught something. He hadn’t gone far.
phone or the door. His wife had called several times and the
He wanted to put more distance between himself and the
security guard had gone up to ring the bell.
wolves but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel one leg and
“Check it out and take action.”
the other dangled below the knee. His ribs jabbed his lungs.
The fire truck had passed Baegun Library five minutes
He felt paralyzed by the growls of the wolves and tormented
before. They were almost back at the fire station; it was only
by the screams of his dogs. He lay back and shut his eyes,
500 meters ahead. It was the worst time and place to turn
hoping the dogs would run far away, taking the wolves with
around, but Gi-jun couldn’t refuse. “Copy that.”
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
EXCERPT
Yun Mun-sik turned on the siren and swung the vehicle
the back seat. Gi-jun glanced at the rearview mirror. Park
around. The ambulance trailing them did a U-turn, too.
Dong-hae, the twenty-two-year-old public service worker
Gi-jun wrote down the wife’s cell phone number. He gave
and assistant, was almost completely horizontal in the back.
her a call. As soon as he said, “I’m calling from the rescue
He jiggled his leg and kept clicking his pistol-shaped lighter.
squad,” the woman’s words peppered him like a machine
It was a huge commercial torch lighter with a trigger and a
gun. Her husband had gone to the Hwayang Medical Center
laser pointer scope. When he pressed the turbo button near
for swine flu and returned home two days ago; this morning
the hammer, a strong flame and a light whooshed on at the
he was running a fever and not feeling well but refused to go
same time. Dong-hae considered it the prize of his lighter
back; since she had to go to work, at a textile factory in the
collection, amassed over a decade.
Northern Suan Industrial Complex about twenty minutes away by car, she’d already left; unfortunately she couldn’t
“Cut it out,” snapped Eun-ho, who was sitting next to Gi-jun.
head home because she had to work overtime. To Gi-jun’s
Dong-hae’s eyes bugged out as he pointed the lighter
ears, it sounded as if her priority was making money. She was
at Eun-ho. With a whoosh, the flame and light stretched
sending the firefighters who were paid by her taxes to make
toward Eun-ho’s face.
sure her husband was fine. “Do you have any family around here?” Gi-jun asked. “A daughter, but she’s married and lives in Seoul. I can’t ask her to come all the way here. Even if she did, she doesn’t have a key, and even if she had a key she isn’t getting along with her dad—” Gi-jun cut her off. “If he doesn’t open up, can we force the door?” “Force the door?” she asked begrudgingly. “Then we need to get a new one, right?”
“Hey!” Eun-ho’s neck and ears flushed red. Dong-hae looked down and buried his pale, delicate face into the collar of his jacket. With his small, red, parrot’s beak-like lips, he murmured, “Fuck.” Gi-jun shook his head at Eun-ho, signaling for him to calm down. Dong-hae was a major nuisance for the team. He didn’t have any respect for hierarchy; he had no skills to speak of; and he couldn’t even read a one-page official document in one sitting. If one of them told him to bring something
“That’s right.”
over, Dong-hae would lower those long, thick lashes and
“Isn’t there another way? What about through our
ask, “Where’s that damn thing?” If they reprimanded him,
veranda?” “If the windows aren’t locked, we might be able to come down from upstairs—”
they were paid back doubly, like on the first day Dong-hae reported for work. That day, Dong-hae had done the same thing : he’d
“It isn’t locked,” she interrupted.
pointed his lighter at Eun-ho, clicked it, and pretended to
Gi-jun hung up.
shoot. Ever impatient, Eun-ho slapped it away. The following
Although it was during the afternoon rush, they didn’t
morning, on an online bulletin board, someone posted:
encounter many cars or pedestrians. Only the blizzard careened through the silence with a haunting scream. Gi-jun put his nose to the cracked-open window and
911 Rescue Squad Team Member at East Hwayang Fire Station Assaults a Public Service Worker
cooled his impatience. By now, he should have been sitting in a cab heading toward the bus terminal to take the last
Eun-ho had to write an official apology. As the manager,
bus to Inje at 6:50 p.m.
Gi-jun had to go to headquarters and file a report. After that,
“Jesus. What the fuck,” came a drowsy murmur from
especially after the squad learned of the kid’s past, nobody VOL. 37
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FEATURED WRITER
JEONG YOU JEONG
He flinched and moved his foot but he’d already heard something crunch. An unpleasant hunch made his thigh tense up. He looked down and shone his light on it; he had put his foot through an apple crate. On a puppy.
bothered him. The men were rarely moved by anything, but
grudgingly opened the door to let them through, grumbling
even they were shocked and appalled by Dong-hae’s history.
that the man’s family should come and open the door
Dong-hae hadn’t been a public service worker from the
downstairs, asking if the fire department would pay for
beginning. After a mere twelve months of being enlisted in
any damage to the veranda railing and insisting that they
the army, he’d caused an uproar and was switched over to
hurry since he’d just turned on the heat and it would escape
public service. Apparently, he had killed all the company
through the open windows.
dogs. He hadn’t lost his temper and beaten them to death,
Gi-jun tied a rope to the railing and slung one end
or gone nuts and killed them in a single night. Instead, he’d
around his midsection. He hung a hatchet on his belt. Eun-
methodically cut out each dog’s tongue, branded a cross on
ho wrapped the other end of the rope around his waist and
their Adam’s apples, and hanged them in plain sight. The
sat down, his feet braced against the railing. When Gi-jun
military doctor diagnosed him with a personality disorder
went over the railing, strong winds slapped him against
requiring long-term treatment, which was code for the
the wall. The snow and ice-covered windows were slippery.
army’s inability to deal with that kind of creativity. Gi-jun’s
The snow was hurtling down at such a rate that he couldn’t
squad was living with a dog killer the military had kicked
see anything. He held the brake line in one hand and, with
out, and they all hoped they didn’t look like dogs to the kid.
the tips of his shoes, gripped onto the windows as he went
At 6:05 p.m., the fire engine and the ambulance pulled
down. When he balanced on the veranda railing of #204, his
in side by side at the entrance to Building 2 in the Hwayang Mansion complex, which consisted of thirty-eight-year-old
Unfortunately, the veranda windows were locked. All the
five-story buildings. The squad members grabbed their gear.
lights in the cave-like apartment were off. Gi-jun shoved the
Dong-hae and Mun-sik remained in the truck.
hatchet between the windows and twisted. The lock broke
The stairs were shrouded in darkness. Gi-jun switched
off. He slid the window open and hopped down into the
on his helmet light and ran up to the second floor with the
veranda onto something round and soft. He flinched and
others. The medical technicians followed with a gurney
moved his foot but he’d already heard something crunch.
and an emergency medical kit. The frail, broom-thin old
An unpleasant hunch made his thigh tense up. He looked
manager-cum-security-guard of the building came up the
down and shone his light on it; he had put his foot through
rear.
an apple crate. On a puppy. His foot had crushed the
The front door to #204 was locked. Nobody came out when they rang the bell. When they banged on the door,
16
underarms were damp with sweat.
puppy’s head. Smashed eyeballs were stuck to the bottom of his sneaker.
the next-door neighbor, in an undershirt and a cigarette
Gi-jun swallowed hard. It couldn’t—it couldn’t
in his mouth, poked his head out. Gi-jun led the security
possibly have been alive. He shook his foot frantically to
guard and Eun-ho up to #304. The security guard explained
get the eyeballs off, not noticing that the sliding glass doors
to the tenant that they had to use his veranda. The tenant
were open or that there was something lurking in the dark.
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
EXCERPT
He yanked his foot out of the box and looked up, belatedly
of the dead. A Husky named Ann was on her side inside a
seeing it. A gigantic gray animal was flying at him, into the
cage, teats engorged, having vomited blood. Her wide-open
light. Alert ears, golden eyes roiling with fire, glinting fangs,
eyes were bloody. Blood was sprayed around the cages.
long legs outstretched like a racehorse taking off. A wolf.
Gi-jun opened the front door to let the squad in.
The animal’s tank-like shoulder slammed into Gi-jun’s face
“What the hell is all this?” Eun-ho murmured as he
as he threw himself to the side. His hatchet clattered away. The beast vanished out the open window.
stepped into the living room. The master bedroom was empty with the door wide
Gi-jun got to his feet and looked outside. The flashing
open, a clothing rack on its side in the middle, and the
lights of the fire truck and ambulance were illuminating the
windows to the veranda shattered. Shards of glass glittered
garden below. He got Mun-sik over the walkie and asked if
on the bed.
he saw a wolf jumping from the second story. The answer
Gi-jun opened the bathroom door to find a blood-filled
crackled over—Mun-sik didn’t know if it was a wolf or a
toilet and a man in an undershirt collapsed next to it. He
dog, but a dark shadow had just gone over the back walls of
was gurgling, bruised hand trembling. Gi-jun grabbed the
the complex. The air caught in Gi-jun’s throat leaked out.
man under the arms but released him. He looked down at
His head began to throb; he had slammed it into the floor
his hands. Blood. His fingers were wet and slippery. His
in his attempt to get away from the animal. The afterimage
fingerprints remained under the man’s armpits like bloody
of the gray animal hurtling toward him like a bomber
welts—small drops of blood had formed close to each other
glimmered in his sight. A wolf ? It didn’t make any sense.
on the surface of the skin, approximating bruises.
Gi-jun wasn’t pleased with himself either, panicking and
pp. 7-22
falling over like that. This would remain a scar on his pride, as he was a man who lived and died by the cool demeanor he assumed in any situation.
Translated by Chi-Young Kim Reprinted with permission from Dalkey Archive Press
“What should we do?” Mun-sik asked over the radio. “If it’s really a wolf, people are going to go nuts.” “We can’t go after it right now. Tell the dispatcher and call the police.” Gi-jun went into the living room and turned on the lights. Now it made sense. That animal was a dog. Along the walls were cages marked with nametags: Ching, Seola, Kkami. Big, small, yellow, shaggy dogs; a dog lying down with its head splayed to the side; another on the floor with stiff legs; yet another curled into a ball. The dozen or so dogs shared the same characteristic—the typical blank stare VOL. 37
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SPECIAL INTERVIEW
Special Interview
A Writer Is Mr. or Mrs. Everyone Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
The theme of the 2017 Seoul International Forum for Literature, cohosted by the Daesan Foundation and Arts Council Korea in May, was “Literature and Its Readership in the Changing World.” Fourteen foreign literary luminaries, including Nobel laureates Svetlana Alexievich and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, and thirty-six Korean dignitaries, including Hwang Sok-yong, Hwang Sun-mi, Jeong You Jeong, Kim Hyesoon, Kim Seong-Kon, Ko Un, and Lee Seung-U, attended the event. J.M.G. Le Clézio spoke to KLN about literature, its globalization, and South Korea’s past and present during his visit to Seoul.
18
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
©Hansyart
Choi Mikyung: They call you the “nomadic writer”
travelogues, adventure stories, and dictionaries, especially
because of your love of nature—of Mauritius, Africa, and
illustrated dictionaries from the end of the nineteenth
Mexico. Your books are often set in the desert, on the sea,
century. I remember, as a child, seeing illustrations of China
or on islands. But you also enjoy visiting Seoul. What is
and Korea. Korea was under Japanese rule. It had been
it that draws you to this metropolis?
predicted that when the two dragons of Seoul woke up, Korea would be free. I’m in South Korea now, and it’s a free
J.M.G. Le Clézio: I come from a nomadic family. They left
country. I think the two dragons of Seoul have woken up.
France at the time of the revolution to move to a distant
I’ve been to China, a country that’s too big to claim to
land and grow sugar. My father spent his entire life outside
know well. With Korea, I’ve found a country roughly the
France. I was brought up with the idea that leaving is a
size of my own, France, and with a very similar history to
natural thing to do. Leaving has always been my life, the
that of France. These days France has the same problem with
purpose of my existence. It is something I always had to do.
the US as South Korea has with China: a large, overbearing
When it came to literature, I particularly enjoyed reading
neighbor constantly asserting its presence. I grew up in VOL. 37
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SPECIAL INTERVIEW
France feeling that my origins lay in the colonial
have your “own” room there. Is that a way of
era, but at the same time that I was a citizen
staying closer to young people? Or expressing
of a country living under the threat of cultural
your anti-consumer culture side?
domination. Le Clézio: I suppose it’s both. And also because Choi: You have chosen to write in French
Ewha is a very beautiful place. You mentioned
when you could have written in English. Why
nature, and it’s very important to me that Ewha
choose French rather than English, a globally
is still surrounded by pine forests and some
dominant language that would have brought
very beautiful vegetation, even if there used to
you an even larger readership?
be more of it. In August, when it rains, you can see water running on the slopes. You’re really
Le Clézio: You don’t choose your language.
surrounded by nature.
I was born in France and grew up in the French
education system. My father may have been an
Choi: Do you use your time at Ewha to write?
English speaker, but I learned to express myself
in French. My mother was a great lover of French
Le Clézio: Yes, of course. My room at Ewha
literature. I was educated in this language. It’s not
is like a monk’s cell. There are no decorations.
something you choose. On the contrary, I’d say it’s
When I look out of the window, I see the wall
an inability to choose. This was the language that
opposite. There’s no scenery for me to look at.
was given to me. I’m very fond of this language,
That kind of austerity, which I actually find
and I’m very fond of the literature that represents
rather comfortable, is perfect for writing.
it. Language is not just a tool for communication.
It’s a tool for representing the world. I’ve sought
Choi: It’s a sort of retreat . . .
to convey the world using the French language,
not the English language. But I’m very fond of
Le Clézio: . . . a sort of retreat with, especially
the English language. I can read in English as well
on a rainy day, the sound of the rain on the roof,
as I can in French, even if my spoken English isn’t
the smell of plants, and everything that nature
as good. I’ve tried writing in English. But to me
represents. And at the top of the hill there’s a
English is more the language of detective stories.
small Buddhist temple that I visit. It’s very pretty.
I even tried writing one in English. I sent it to a
publisher in London but it didn’t work out. So
Choi: You’re the author of a rich and varied
I write in French because of the impossibility of
oeuvre, expressing criticism of urban
me writing in any other language.
civilization and the materialist West. Compared to your earlier work, which was more dissenting
Choi: You’ve been a professor at Ewha Womans
and rebellious, your recent work seems calmer,
University (you’re also a fellow of the Ewha
more serene. How do you explain this change?
Academy), and whenever you return to South
20
Korea you choose to stay at the International
Le Clézio: I think I lived a sequestered life for a
House, a student residence. They say you even
long time. I was locked inside my own obsessions,
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
©Hansyart
VOL. 37
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21
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
22
but also literally shut away, barely leaving the
while others aren’t—that’s the biggest danger. We
room where I wrote in my parents’ apartment
need to view culture as something in motion, like
in Nice. I was locked inside ideas too. I thought
a wave. In South Korea, things are changing, and
literature was like a weapon. There was this
I think the changes are largely positive. In Europe,
need to fight . . . but against what? After a while,
it’s much harder for the wave to keep moving,
I realized I wasn’t fighting against anything.
because this notion of national identity has in a
Because the purpose of literature is not to wage
sense crystallized. I hope South Korea isn’t going
war. The purpose is to find the most truthful
to develop a similar malaise of national identity. In
expression. I began writing in a more classical
fact, writers are part of what keeps culture moving.
style, because it’s more appropriate for what I want
Their role is not to regurgitate things that have
to express.
already been repeated ad nauseam, but to invent
new forms, to be inspired by others, to read what
Choi: Korean society has certain problems—
others have written. We need to read lots—the
employment issues, generational divisions,
French need to read Korean literature, Koreans
gender divisions, and so on. These are
need to read Italian literature, and so on.
difficulties found in other countries too. In
France, there’s unemployment, the terrorist
Choi: In an interview with a French magazine,
threat, the sluggish economy, and so on. What
you’re quoted as saying: “I feel like a little
role can we expect literature and writers to
speck on this planet, and literature allows
play in the face of such issues?
me to express that. If you want to get
philosophical, you might say I’m a poor old
Le Clézio: First, I think we need to reconsider
Rousseauist without a clue.” Literature as the
that view of the modern world. The economic
mouthpiece of little things and quiet voices—
crisis affecting developed countries like South
that seems to mirror the statement from the
Korea or France should be considered in relation
Nobel committee, who awarded their 2008
to what many other countries are going through.
prize to “the author of poetic adventure and
Cambodia, Vietnam, African countries, even
sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond
some European countries have been dealing
and below the reigning civilization.”
with underemployment for much longer. On
Mauritius it’s not 10 percent but 60 percent of
Le Clézio: Those Nobel people are very kind,
the population that is unemployed. And those
dishing out adjectives like that. I think the
who do have work are only in casual jobs. Even
purpose of literature is not to express grand ideas
more serious is the question of identity. In France,
but to share sensations and experiences. Writers
identity is unfortunately constructed in opposition
are just like everyone else. They are a kind of Mr.
to immigrants and those identified as “non-
or Mrs. Everyone. There’s nothing else to them,
indigenous.” And that invariably leads to populism
except that they toil away with their pen or
and nationalism, which represent a great threat to
computer in an attempt to put their sensations
literature and culture. Believing that a culture is
into order. It’s a philosophy which gave rise to
something fixed, that some cultures are authentic
phenomenology in Europe, and I believe it can
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
be found in the East too. In other words, it’s the ability to be
is not a place for immediacy. It’s not just a medium, and its
attentive to sensations, to the feeling of existing. It’s here in
purpose is not just to communicate information. I’d even
Buddhism. These small-scale experiences of life are crucial.
say it’s quite reassuring if a book has trouble getting known.
They constitute our being.
There’s something suspicious about a book that is immediately successful. Either it’s not very original, or there’s been too
Choi: Korean literature has to go through the process of
much hype or advertising, which is a kind of deception.
translation to reach a foreign readership, which brings
Literature is like wine—it needs to age a little in the bottle.
us to the issue of literature in a globalized world. In 1977 you published a translation of the Prophéties du
Choi: You have often discussed Korean literature
Chilam Balam (Prophecies of Chilam Balam), a Mayan
(for example, Hwang Sok-yong in your Nobel prize
mythological work. From your experience of translation,
acceptance speech). What is it that draws you to Korean
what is your advice for translators?
literature?
Le Clézio: Before publishing that text, I traveled around
Le Clézio: It’s not exoticism that I’m interested in. Perhaps
Yucatán with that book, by truck, by bus, sometimes on foot.
it’s the sensibility. I believe Korean culture is a culture of
I would read passages out to people to see if this ancient text
emotion and feeling. Feelings are very important in Korea.
was still alive, and I found that it was. When I wrote the
Some of them can’t even be translated into French. The
translation, I tried to correct my own ideas and inaccuracies
feeling of han is so strong in Korea that you can’t simply
by gauging them against the people I spoke to. For literary
talk about a desire for “revenge” or a sense of “remorse.”
texts, it’s a little different. When you translate Saint-Exupéry,
The meaning is much stronger than that. It’s the same with
for example, you don’t need to fly a plane to understand
jeong, the feeling of “existing together.” It’s not just love, it’s
what he’s talking about, and you don’t need to travel by
something else—an awareness that you share the same destiny.
boat to translate Conrad. The main thing is to come into
When I read Korean literature, I always feel there is this
contact with the languages you’re translating, master them
underlying cohesion. You can read texts as different as those
fully, which is always going on a journey, moving from one
of Kim Ae-ran and Lee Seung-U and still pick up on this
country to another. A journey that takes place via books or
common sentiment, which I think has its basis in the subtle
research.
expression of feelings. I like that a lot. It’s not inherited from Confucianism, it comes from further back, perhaps drawing
Choi: These days it seems that no matter how good a
on animism. Sharing with nature. You feel that when you read it.
book is, it will be doomed to obscurity unless it appears on broadcast media, preferably television. But literary
Choi: South Korean literature has carved itself a small
programs are rare, and the fact that Korean authors
niche in the French publishing world. Authors like
need to be accompanied by an interpreter seems a major
Hwang Sok-yong and Lee Seung-U can be found in mass-
hurdle. What can be done?
market paperback editions. Han Kang, Kim Young-
ha, Oh Junghee, Eun Heekyung, Kim Ae-ran, and Kim
Le Clézio: We shouldn’t be alarmed if a book doesn’t find its
Yeonsu have all been published. But there is still a huge
readership straight away. Books are not instant objects. Books
imbalance compared to the number of French texts
can wait. Success might not even come during the author’s
translated and distributed in South Korea. What can we
lifetime. Of course it’s better if it comes earlier, but literature
do to improve the balance? VOL. 37
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SPECIAL INTERVIEW
Le Clézio: First of all, clearly, we have to keep
there’s no local color.” I said to them: “When
going. Literature is a constant struggle. We need
you publish books in France for French people,
to ensure that Korean literature becomes known
do you look for local color above all else? Do
outside a small circle of enthusiasts. Publishers
you want characters with a baguette under their
have an important role to play—translations
arm and the Eiffel tower in the background?” It’s
shouldn’t be relegated to a linguistic ghetto.
ridiculous. I think the Koreanness you’re talking
I also think magazines like Korean Literature
about is modern Koreanness. And it no longer has
Now play a very important role in increasing
anything to do with exoticism. What is still there,
awareness of Korean literature outside the
and what we should be drawn to, is this subtlety
country. But you’re right to highlight that
in the expression of feelings, which goes back to
imbalance, because it’s real. It’s an imbalance that
classical poetry, especially female poetry, which
arises because of how languages are valued in the
created a literature of analysis. I think that’s the
world. South Korea is not a colonialist country.
identity of this literature. It doesn’t lie in exoticism,
It has no empire, it’s a country that lives within
in the “morning calm” or the sound of a gong at
its own limits. And if they’re engaged in any
night, but in this analytical quality, and that’s why
kind of conquest, it’s a peaceful one, by means of
I believe Korean literature will make a name for
trade. We need to be patient. Literature will play
itself as an avant-garde literature. That’s been the
an important role in correcting this linguistic
case with Han Kang, who has been very successful
imbalance. People are going to become more
in the United States, a lot more than in France,
and more familiar with the Korean language,
because she speaks a language that Americans can
especially since it’s a beautiful and very logical
understand—a sensual language, expressing some
language and therefore appealing to learn.
very strong feelings.
24
Choi: Young Korean authors have a more and
Choi: At the press conference you recently
more open take on the world—they’re not just
gave to the Korean press, you talked about
talking about things rooted in Korean culture
your plan to publish a novel set in Seoul.
any more. That’s a positive development,
I think that when French readers discover this
unl ike the nationa l ism you were just
book, even if it leaves a lot to the imagination,
describing. But in striving for a more universal
it will be a wonderful promotion not just for
representation of the world, their literature
the country but also for its literature. Could
loses some of its specifically Korean quality, its
you tell us more about it?
“Koreanness.” I get the impression that French
publishers are more reluctant to publish it.
Le Clézio: I’m not what people call a “travel
writer.” I would never be able to write about South
Le Clézio: You’re completely right. I’ve worked
Korea or Seoul in response to some requirement
myself as a reader at a publisher—Gallimard, as it
or request. But for a long time I’ve wanted to
happens. I remember suggesting some translations
convey something of my experiences of life
from Korean or Chinese, I don’t remember, it
here. I’ve stayed in Seoul a while—not a very
was a long time ago. They told me: “Sure, but
long time, but still quite a while. And I’ve met
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
lots of people, I’ve spoken to lots of very different people,
written a very Japanese text.” I found that very amusing.
I’ve traveled around Seoul by bus, metro, and on foot. It’s given me a feeling for Seoul, which I’ve found inspiring in
Choi: Writers often describe, with good reason, the
terms of putting together a novel. But I don’t want to write
agony of writing, the anxiety of the white page. I imagine
a realist novel. The novel I’m currently writing is definitely
there must also be pleasure in writing.
not a travel guide. And the reader may even wonder whether
it’s set in Seoul. I’ve gone as far as inventing the names of
Le Clézio: Agony for me is when the outside world and real
Korean streets and districts to prevent them from being
life prevent me from writing. When something disrupts my
identified. My idea is to convey these everyday experiences
work, like paperwork that needs to be done or a leak in the
of Seoul and the ability of its inhabitants to invent their
roof that I need to have repaired . . . All that is such a bother.
city. Seoul is a challenging place, and getting around is a
That’s why I like the idea of a monk’s cell. It’s a completely
complex task. It’s not a dangerous city, but you’re constantly
unrealistic wish, because I have a family and I’m not going to
assailed by modernity here. I’ve discovered a capacity for
force them to live between four white walls. Agony for me
resistance among its inhabitants—a specifically Korean kind
is anything that eats into my writing. The white page doesn’t
of resistance, which takes place in the imagination. So I used
cause me any agony. On the contrary, it calls out to me, it
my own imagination and invented stories.
invites me to write. But I always choose to use paper. It’s not
very environmentally friendly. I need paper made mainly
Choi: I had imagined that if you were going to write
from cotton, not straw paper or recycled paper. That’s
something about Korea, it would be about the island
because I write on both sides with ink. The ink must not
of Jeju. That’s because it’s an island rich in myths and
go through the paper. And I have to choose my ink carefully.
legends, where you discovered the haenyeo. You’re also an
I don’t write with a ballpoint. And I’m afraid I definitely
honorary citizen of the island and visit it often. Weren’t
don’t use a word processor.
you there again yesterday?
Choi: But it also requires a great deal of energy and
Le Clézio: Yes, but there is also a literary heritage on Jeju.
passion . . .
People write a lot on Jeju. A lot of poetry is written there.
Mr. Kang [ Jung-hoon] writes poetry that corresponds to
Le Clézio: Yes. I think it’s in my genes. I’m an energetic
the feeling of han. The people on the island suffered a great
person. Actually, writing is a way for me to use up energy.
deal during the political purges. A lot of them disappeared.
I don’t get excited about anything else, like horse racing or
It’s tragic. And I also love the beauty of the island. It’s a
sporting feats. But writing excites me. It’s a way of using up
wonderful place, with its camellias, its rocks, its landscapes
energy—and it does a good job of it too. It wears me out
reminiscent of Ireland. Despite the tragedies of the past,
physically. So I’m happy when I’m worn out. It’s a kind of
people have maintained a real joie de vivre. I find all that
addiction.
fascinating. But I haven’t really felt a desire to write about it, except maybe that novella about the haenyeo. In that
by Choi Mikyung Associate Professor
novella, “Tempête (Storm),” I gave so few clues about the
Ewha Graduate School of Translation & Interpretation
setting that Japanese people have said to me: “You have
Translator and Interpreter
▶
Visit koreanliteraturenow.com to watch highlights of this interview.
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MUSINGS
The Translation Delusion
A
text cannot exist without a reader. This reflection is
certain sense of superiority perhaps, or awe, or envy, or pity.
worth bearing in mind when we think about literature
From time to time we have to check a word in a dictionary,
and particularly the internationalization of literature. If a
and then we realize how different it is to know and feel a
novel were found, from the past, in a language no one knows,
word, because it is part of our lives, and to learn its dictionary
it would not exist as a novel. We would recognize that the
definition. Each person brings a different competence to a
signs on the page were probably writing, but unable to
work.
complete the act of communication that began with whoever
Is there an ideal reader who will fully grasp the author’s
set down those signs, we would have no idea whether this were
intended meaning? Does the author really know what he or
a technical manual, or a history chronicle or a surreal account
she meant? Is literature really about meaning? Perhaps the one
of space travel.
thing we can say is that the closer the reader is to the world
The novel comes into existence when someone who shares
in which the writer writes, the more context they share about
its language reads it. And that someone is an individual,
daily life, about other books, about cultural behavior and
holding particular opinions and attitudes that intersect with
beliefs, the more aware the reader will be of possible nuance,
the novel in different ways. However stable and absolute a
more likely to assent, but also perhaps to disagree. In short,
work of literature may seem sitting on its shelf in a bookshop,
the more our own experience and knowledge overlaps with
as soon as it meets a reader and begins to exist as a novel, or
that of the writer, the more intense our reading of the novel
poem or play, its identity is extremely unstable. When we read
is likely to be. If I read about Dickens’s London, or Flaubert’s
a book from the past, some of the language may seem odd to
Paris, I accept their descriptions on trust. I presume their
us; some of the characters’ actions may seem improbable. We
observations are generally accurate. I don’t argue with the
become aware how much times have changed. We are aware
book. If I read Martin Amis writing about London, I have a
that this period is now admired for its enterprising spirit but
right to say, yes, that is exactly what London is like, or no, I’m
condemned for its treatment of the poor. We read with a
sorry, London is not like that at all.
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
When a novel from Korea—or China or Kenya—is
These ideas are reinforced by the information in the
published in the West, two reactions dominate. The first,
author biography that tells me Han has spent time in the US,
and by far the more frequent, at least in the literary world, is
and again by a translation that constantly feels old-fashioned,
enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that may seem quite independent
as if we were reading an early translation of Chekhov.
from any assessment of the quality of the work. Daniel Hahn
Everything seems outdated and a little quaint, as if Koreans
expressed this attitude very eloquently in the pages of this
spoke and thought in quaint ways. As a result, the reader
magazine. Reading works by Korean writers, he says, he has
might legitimately suppose that we in the West are somehow
“imaginatively inhabited dozens of varied Korean lives.” Such
ahead of the Koreans, a reassuring thought, and at the same
empathy with people in distant places, he reflects, is good
time feel a great solidarity toward the author who is urging
for the soul, it “makes racism more difficult, it makes mean-
her country to become more like the West, where a wife is
spirited negligence more difficult, it makes selfishness more
free to be a vegetarian or even a vegan without her family
difficult.” In this view, to read a work from a foreign country is
bothering her too much. Alternatively, we might suspect some
actually better than to read a work written locally, in that one is
opportunism on the part of the publishers, or even the author,
contributing to global understanding. All this while knowing,
who understand that a narrative like this is bound to be read
as Hahn admits, next to nothing about Korean culture.
sympathetically in the West, regardless of the real cultural
But another reader might wonder: If this work is really
situation in Korea, whatever that is.
addressed by a Korean writer primarily to Korean readers,
You will have understood my point. It may be encouraging
how can I, without any of the necessary context, really
for those involved in writing, translating, and publishing
experience the book, except in so far as it addresses those
literature to imagine that they are involved in a morally
existential questions common to all human beings? But what
positive project, promoting world peace perhaps, but in truth
exactly are those common questions? Isn’t our reaction to, say,
any notion that reading one novel from here and another
aging culturally determined? Isn’t our lovemaking, at least to
from there will give us a profound awareness of what life is like
an extent, culturally specific? I can no doubt savor a foreign
in those countries is naïve. Indeed, it might be more salutary
book’s strangeness, which may be exciting and intriguing, but
if such books left us with a profound sense that we haven’t
can I really suppose I am “inhabiting” dozens of Korean lives?
understood. It’s also worth recalling that in 1930’s Europe the
My only experience of a Korean novel is Han Kang’s The
two countries that translated most works of foreign fiction
Vegetarian. It involves, as you know, a ferocious denunciation
were Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. At the time Britain and
of a carnivorous male chauvinism and oppressively
America translated very little, and indeed continue to translate
conservative social mores at the expense of a sensitive, largely
very little. This is not to suggest that reading translated fiction
passive young woman. Of course I have no way of knowing
is not a wonderful and enriching experience, but it would
if Korea is really as Han describes it. In fact the only
be a mistake to think of it as a panacea in times of rapid
context I can bring to the novel is our own liberal struggle,
globalization and potential conflict.
in the West, to be free of the chauvinism and reactionary customs Han describes as dominant in Korea. Hence I read the novel inside a larger narrative of social progress where Korea is like our own European or American past and the
Tim Parks
novel’s author someone who, like us, has gone beyond narrow,
Novelist, Translator, Essayist
antiquated social views and is more “modern” than the society
Professor of English, IULM University, Milan
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Photos by Chang Hwa Kyung The photographs are a part of a self-portrait series titled Hot Flash . www.hwakyungchang.com
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
OVERVIEW
Feminism for All Feminism started from the singular and then evolved into the plural; no feminist theory or method dominates. In a sense, the history of feminism is the history of this realization, for each country in the world has its own history and culture, and women’s issues are spread over various dimensions even within the same society. To imagine feminism as a homogenous unity is to repeat the mistake of conformity and exclusion made by that which feminism resists (patriarchy or androcentric thinking).
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Feminism is not a new ideology of domination towards
Not only are unjust patriarch-
the destruction of the patriarchy. Feminism is a universal
centered power relations violent
project towards the peaceful coexistence of all genders and is inclusive of both women and men. Feminism, in other
in of themselves, they are
words, is for all. The actors in feminism are not just women
perpetuated through violent
but all of humanity. The ideal world according to feminism
means. The authoritative violence
is a democratic society in which everyone respects each
of patriarchy is deeply rooted in
other regardless of gender and lives together in harmony.
society, even in the lives of the
Feminism is critical of historically constituted false gender ideologies and the power relations based on such.
individual and their interiority.
Not only are unjust patriarch-centered power relations
Power as expressed through
violent in of themselves, they are perpetuated through violent means. The authoritative violence of patriarchy is
violence destroys human lives and
deeply rooted in society, even in the lives of the individual
devastates our ability to love.
and their interiority. Power as expressed through violence destroys human lives and devastates our ability to love. In her book Feminism Is for Everybody, bell hooks says, “love can never take root in a relationship based on domination and coercion” and that the subjects of love could only
movement. Of the six poets in this edition, Kim Hyun and
stand “counter to everything patriarchy upholds about
Kim Seung Il are cisgender men. Kim Hyun styles himself as
1
the structure of relationships.” In this light, feminism is an opportunity to restore love, and a feminist is simply someone who loves in the most “love-like” way possible.
a femi-writer. The reasons for this shift are varied. First is the criticism against systemic patriarchy, which still holds on to male-
The contemporary feminist movement in Korea can be
centric Confucian values despite our having entered
roughly divided in two waves: first came the late twentieth-
the twenty-first century. Second is a new focus on other
century “singular” feminism in opposition to patriarchy.
minorities such as queer-identifying people, and the
Feminism began to be examined in earnest by Korean
subsequent rediscovery of feminism as a voice for such
poetry in the 1980s and 1990s. The work of Choi Seung-
minorities. Third is the recent reckoning with the sexual
ja, Kim Hyesoon, Moon Chung-hee, Kim Seung-hee,
violence prevalent in Korean literary circles. While it had
and Kim Un-hee disclosed the oppression and inequality
been long understood that male literary figures perpetuate
experienced by women, arguing for the fundamental
their power in the process of creating and distributing
reform of societal structures and awareness. This movement
literature, the specific methods that came to light were more
was followed by “plural” feminism in the early twenty-
nefarious than what was feared. A new, reflective stance is
first century, a comprehensive ideology embracing all of
replacing the previous attitude of compromise and silence,
society. Particularly notable in the latter is how male poets
leading to moral discourse on the meaning of literature and
have joined women poets in identifying with the feminist
aesthetics.
1. bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody , (New York and London: Taylor & Francis, 2014), Kindle edition.
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
OVERVIEW
Related to this shift, renowned poet Moon Chung-
misogyny is a hatred for the weak. Women have long been
hee published a “Lament for Tansil Kim Myung-soon,”
considered weak, and Kim finds solidarity between women
exposing the sordid underside of the Korean literary scene.
and queers, understanding feminism as a narrative for a
It is shocking to read Moon testifying that certain male
better world for all minorities. Kim, through the energy of
writers had expressed their misogynistic hatred in violence,
his youth and his borrowed pop culture references, is also
the experience of which is also reflected in their writings.
known for his unique, experimental aesthetic.
With her witty declaration of “I Wish I Had a Wife,” Moon
Kim Seung Il, another rising star in Korean poetry,
proclaims that patriarchy is an enemy of Korean literature
problematizes the twisted relationship between love and
as well. Feminism is no longer a special ideology or a choice
violence. Love cannot function properly in a violently
but a comprehensive morality that we all must endeavor to
patriarchal world, and in a world without love, we are all
realize. Writers and literature are no less exempt.
victims. Kim decries love that is subservient to power and
Kim Hyesoon reconstitutes female identity on the one
violence, and proposes a new movement for the recovery
hand and considers how femininity should be manifested in
of true love and life. In the end, we all exist as potentials for
these perilous modern times. Kim creates images of the life-
love “next to” one another. As he says, being beside is the
force of women with a warm and bright touch that defies
very place where love is made possible, and the direction
oppression, and records the language of women that cannot
towards which love moves in its most love-like way.
be co-opted by the language of men. She has written a collection of poetry decrying humanity’s crime of massacring livestock animals in the name of preventing the spread of disease. In “Dear Pig, From Pig,” she points out the irony of humans using pigs as symbols of greed and vulgarity when it is really humans themselves who fit such descriptions. The work of young women poets Lee Young Ju and Park YeonJoon are interesting and brutal. Lee more than any other Korean poet calls upon the figure of eonni, or older sister, who is otherwise more commonly a background figure in a national poetic tradition that tends to privilege the hyeong (honorific for older brother from a younger man) or oppa (older brother from a younger woman). Lee shows through the eonni’s perspective, voice, and story how “eonni’s world” was overshadowed by the patriarchy, while further exploring how eonni can be redeemed. Park’s poetry features the dynamic of a broken father and the pitying daughter. Through the gaze of love upon her powerless father, the speaker-daughter relaxes the animosity between women and men, and attempts to find a new path of feminism for all
Kim Suyee
through the family.
Literary Critic
Femi-writer Kim Hyun examines the misogyny deeply sunk into his own thoughts and senses. To him, the core of
Professor of Korean Literature Kyung Hee University
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Two Poems
by Moon Chung-hee
Breasts Blouse and bra taken off, I embrace the cold machine. The strong anxious smell of ethylene penetrates my crushed breasts. Both arms raised like a defeated soldier, I surrender to the mammogram looking for a moon dark spot. These breasts wrapped tight in lace since my teens. Though everyone has them only women’s are a problem; like a sheaf of shameful confessions breasts are kept a deep secret. Our mothers fed us wisdom and love through them fertile hills of mammalian nature. Fortunately I’ve owned two but for a long time they were not mine; they belonged to my lover or to my babies. Stripped now naked flesh embracing a machine I own them to the depth of my bones. These sad, drooping breasts, clear moons being probed for dark spots.
Reprinted with permission from White Pine Press, New York, US.
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POETRY
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Lament for Tansil Kim Myung-soon Easy to kill a woman. Studying abroad in Tokyo she met a somewhat older man from her homeland who turned suddenly feral on a date and raped her. That night her life as a woman ended. Born with filthy blood! A slut who never knew virginity! She was cast out with cruel epithets. Nineteen years old she’d come to this foreign land with big dreams, this land of imperialists. Now everyone took a crack at ridiculing, at scorning her. As if that was not enough Kim Dong-in, that era’s literary star, a drunk, a womanizer, serialized the novel Story of Yeonsil 1 in a literary journal. Modeled after her, it was a rape in fiction a deft cowardly second killing. With no sense of guilt, eyes closed to reason the modern literary men of colonized Korea rode their masculine superiority to slay a woman and toss her on the garbage heap. Changjo, Gaebyeok, Maeil-sinbo, Munjang, Byeolgeongon, Samcheolli, Sinyeoseong, Sintaeyang, Pyeheo, Jogwang,2 the magazines filled with savagery. Yom Sang-seop and Nakanishi Inosuke chimed in. As liberation came they occupied each avant garde seat and wrote all the books and textbooks. Palbong Kim Kijin became a critic without altering his stubborn bias Neulbom Jeon Young-taek became a textbook editor and Christian writer Sopa Bang Jeong-hwan became Saekdonghoe’s point man on children’s rights
1. K im Myung-soon (1896-1951) debuted as a fiction writer in 1917 with the pen name Tansil. During her study abroad in Tokyo, she was date-raped by her hometown friend at age nineteen and was ostracized. Again, Kim Dong-in, a writer from her hometown, fictionalized her account in the Story of Yeonsil , effectively shutting her out of the literary world. 2. Magazines that carried the ridicule and scorn poured on Kim Myung-soon.
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
POETRY
Kim Dong-in sat at the exalted center of literary history. And Yi Eung-jun, lieutenant in the Japanese army, the man who date-raped her who married a patriot’s daughter and papered over his pro-Japanese past became first chief of staff for the ROK’s national defense force and now rests bemedaled in the national cemetery. But Tansil Kim Myung-soon wasted away, bloody, without shelter. Korea’s first female novelist, first published female poet, a critic, journalist, translator from five languages got beaten up in a Japanese back alley while scraping by selling peanuts and toothpaste. She died in a mental hospital, alone, far away from her liberated country. Twenty-five works of fiction, twenty essays, 111 poems, plays, criticism, some 170 works in all, plus translations of Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe that introduced them to her country men. Her body, full of hope and talent, was gnawed away, given a wretched, naked burial. Her works destroyed by prejudice and humiliation. Colonization was lifted from this land seventy years ago yet the shrieks and bloody tears of the colony of women continue. Korea, mean tyrant, try abusing someone like me and my throes will splash and bellow across the daily news. Tansil Kim Myung-soon! So long, long gone. This land! Petty land of raw violence, primitive custom and bias this cruel, shameful land! Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg
Moon Chung-hee is a poet and endowed chair professor at Dongguk University. She has won prestigious awards such as the Sowol Poetry Award, the Chong Chi-Yong Literature Prize, the Mogwol Literature Prize, and Sweden’s Cikada Prize. She has also participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. English editions of her books include Windflower , Woman on the Terrace , and I Must Be the Wind .
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Two Poems
by Kim Hyesoon
Dear Pig, From Pig Some day in the future, we are shooting a documentary. We are in the middle of filming an organ farm project that will provide organs for an ego that will live forever. I’m the most beautiful actress in the cast. This thought helps me a great deal with my acting. I’m raised to be your heart. I’m raised to be your lungs. I’m raised to be your skin. I’m raised to be your gall bladder. Furthermore, I’m raised to be your brain. That is to say, I keep an eye on you then quickly swap your eyes with mine. As I smile, I quickly switch your liver with my fresh liver. You never die since you replace your organs endlessly. In other words, it helps tremendously, in this line of work, that I’m a beautiful actress. I’m raised to be your sorrow, your tears, your anxiety, your fear, your defect. At times I’ve asked you Do you want to be the most bored person in the world without me? But you raise me to have me become you. Yes, yes, Master. I imagine that day when my heart goes to greet you, the day when I become you completely. But as lumpy flesh, would I be able to recognize my face? You come wearing a green fluorescent vest and tie my limbs to drag me. You are my liver, you are my kidneys, you are my heart, you are my eyes, you are my skin, no matter how much I wail, you drag me away not knowing that I am you. You occasionally shove a wooden club into me as you drag me. You need to be jailed for pig surveillance blasphemy embezzlement torture threat. You say You cancer-ridden lump of meat as you shove me into a tiny sty.
Poems by Kim Hyesoon reprinted with permission from Action Books, Indiana, US.
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
POETRY
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Red Scissors Woman That woman who walks out of the gynecology clinic Next to her is an old woman holding a newborn That woman’s legs are like scissors She walks swiftswift cutting the snow path But the swollen scissor blades are like fat dark clouds What did she cut screaming with her raised blades Blood scented dusk flooding out from between her legs The sky keeps tearing the morning after the snowstorm A blinding flash of light follows the waddlewaddling woman Heaven’s lid glimmers and opens then closes How scared God must have been when the woman who ate all the fruit of the tree he’d planted was cutting out each red body from between her legs The sky, the wound that opens every morning when a red head is cut out between the fat red legs of the cloud (Does that blood live inside me?) (Do I live inside that blood?) That woman who walks ahead That woman who walks and rips with her scorching body her cold shadow New-born infants swim inside that woman’s mirror inside her as white as a snow room the stickysticky slow breaking waves of blood like the morning sea filled with fish
Kim Hyesoon is a poet and professor of creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. She has written twelve poetry collections, out of which Poor Love Machine ;
Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream ; All the Garbage of the World, Unite! ; Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers ; and I’m Ok, I’m Pig! have been published in English. Her poetry has been featured and reviewed in The Independent,
Guernica, Mānoa, The Margins,
Translated by Don Mee Choi
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
World Literature Today , and Po&sie .
POETRY
Two Poems
by Lee Young Ju
Sister, On a winter night I want to enter the inside from the outside. Into the inside from the outside. When I try to enter the inside where there is nobody, the door handle, cold as a knife, breaks off. If there were still a handle, at least I could try turning it; pushing the belly button; turning my gaze geometrically. There are damp smells that Mother has strewn about on the floor. There are all these mushrooms I want to call Sister, but when I awake from sleep, Mother is cutting their heads off with a fruit knife. Where should I attach this handle? You are standing underground. As the inside of my body darkens, a strange vibration inside weeps. I want to call the rotting wet inside Sister. You place the handle on your heart, which grows like a mushroom. You open it and look inside. The mushrooms, growing upside down, awaken and they cut off Mother’s head. When you try to enter the inside from the outside; when you can’t find the handle that you left outside, because it is too dark; when the inside where there is nobody starts turning inside out in the shape of mushroom; you start calling apartment 202’s frosted window Sister.
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POETRY
The Evening We Eat Sugar When we walked along the riverbank, we were neither woman nor man. By evening, our pockets became full of sugar. By the time we were born, the storms near our navels had disappeared, but we didn’t forget them. Lightly blowing air into each other’s ears, as though we were some white and sweet species, we giggled. Winds gathered at the top of the tall children’s heads. Their faces eroded away as their heads tilted in the direction of the sedimentary level where the grown-ups passed by. There was no visibility by the riverbank because of the evening clouds falling upon us. We wielded our sticks to sketch out our screams, and the screams survived the harsh winds to become this cold season. All day long, we chewed on our lips outside the school gate. With the tips of our tongues, we slowly dissolved each other’s lips made of sugar, eventually devouring them. As we pressed down upon each other’s suddenly elongated throats, while the sugar granules were sprinkling, the permutations of this extinct DNA continued to recombine inside our bodies. If there is any sugar left, we still are neither woman nor man. By evening, we plaster letters of apology all over the windows. Heading home after school, our mouths, filled with slithering red tongues, get wider and wider. Scraping at each other’s continuously elongating throats, we become the species that is yearning to become sweet. Floating foam on the river: the storm is coming. Translated by Ji yoon Lee
Lee Young Ju has published the poetry collections The 108th Man, Cold Candy , and Sister . Her poetry weaves freely between reality and fantasy, past and present, and the inside and outside.
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Two Poems
by Park YeonJoon
Father Who Became a Snake I hung my father on the hospital and walked out My face itches Father, red blood droplets smeared on his lips, Was sleeping on the floor as if seeping into it When he was transferred, dragged away like a dog, Without disobeying He looked at me momentarily And called out, Hey, cheoje 1 Like a girl getting married with rouged cheeks, he looked lovely Innocent, even Aimlessly wandering above my father’s face the color of red bean porridge, I put on something like a smile, with a little grimace And lifted my head to watch the snake passing across the ceiling A damp, listless, and yawning snake Slow—that is just how I am, Anything that is long, beautiful and damp like me Is bound to be slow So child, until I am done passing Until darkness is done moving over the hill Do this for me—close your eyes Just for a moment, Close your eyes, and pray
1. Cheoje is the title for the younger sister of one’s wife.
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POETRY
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Venus Pudica* Long, long, long ago (It feels like—anything called three times arrives in front of me) Darkness split in half: The shape of my seven-year-old genitals Precise and beautiful half moons leaning on both sides And nobody tried to enter it Because it was a beautiful crevice Holding a pencil in my mouth and imitating smoking I was slapped in the back with a loud smack And almost died with a pencil stuck in the throat— many times Dead worms sprang out of surviving pencil tips Streamed like smoke, then became embedded That’s how I learned letters Dream, love, and hope are the phonetic characters I memorized Humidity, guilt, narrowly reclaimed voice, and thin poetry are the character of time I learned
One summer on the rooftop, I came to realize a certain emotion: I saw the long and damp nightclothes left behind by that someone Fluttering in the wind When one stretches love to the extremes, Then cannot bear it anymore One is pushed out of the earth Blood surges up then all at once Evaporates Later, I thought that a wet dream at the desk is poetry Then believed that being pushed into the shadows while holding his face Is love But nothing was ever sadder Than the fluttering nightclothes that I saw on the roof at seven And from then on, I became poor— Decidedly, and in every aspect Translated by Emily Jungmin Yoon
From time to time, I would be wrapped in a big piece of bojagi 1 and abandoned I was easily found out And was rather spunky (Since I ultimately failed to be abandoned)
*V enus Pudica is an artistic term that refers to the sculpture type of a modest Venus, who poses while covering her breasts and genitals with her hands. 1. B ojagi is a traditional Korean wrapping cloth.
Park YeonJoon won the JoongAng New Writer’s Award in 2004 with the poem “Give Me Ice.” She has published the poetry collections The Scream of
Eyelashes , Father Called Me Sister-in-Law , and Venus Pudica , and the essay collection Disturbance .
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Let’s Say, We’re Sorry
by Kim Seung Il
I said I wished the boy wouldn’t come back but did you hear me laying a curse on him? I said I wished the boy bouncing that ball as he passed would just die and I wish today the rapist boy would fucking die just fucking die . . . I closely observed where the boy went There are kids who seem normal then do weird things Look closely This one’s not like that but that one always takes a girl to a dark place That one takes weaker ones to a dark place Look at that boy If you see a dead locust you’re disgusted Well, I am, aren’t you But there’s always some boy among us who thinks that’s fun One in four, always, has seen the rhythm We all got together and we all played together but we never knew the boy would pierce a girl’s eye with a pin Scary to think we were with the boy since before the girl’s eye was pierced and she lost her eyesight If I hate him, you’d have hated him too? How could a boy be so torn up Did our hate shred him so? Did we believe talking about who we hate to ourselves would lead to something happening? Who first discovered that if you knock a boy over, there would come an evening where everyone’s ears screamed? I think it would hurt but why do I think it’ll be savory The thought of that taste keeps recurring so our hands that keep going in that direction seem to be sure of something Look at our yearbook It’s revealed in our expressions So nobody remembers whom the boy arrived at first? All we testified to was that our ears opened at the same time No matter how we closed our mouths and have teeth behind our lips, there comes a day when our mouths open at the same time and the boy decided to accept the fun At the time, my dad called me so I couldn’t go there but why didn’t you go? My ear was itching so I went right up to the entrance of the evening but I turned back The fact that the boy could be so easily made up to look pretty was a pro and a con If only a teacher at least would’ve come and put something dirty into the boy’s ear then something less sorry would’ve happened
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Oddly the boy didn’t last the year Once, I saw the face of a boy who was putting a bug into a girl’s ear completely open and was watching the horizon coming out of it until the bottle cap shut You’ve seen it too, right? Oddly the boy didn’t last that year How could a person die from being ripped up like that Isn’t it odd You and I are very compassionate but why is that so sweet The fact that people like that keep disappearing is so sweet and refreshing The eye that lost its eyesight has begun to see again I know what’s behind this miracle, do you want to know what it is? I wanted to whisper in the ear of the boy who couldn’t come to the funeral with his shoes They say remorse is a human invention It’s all an invention by rich people, even the very numbers etched on that calculator that calculates whether one can really be forgiven You ever seen a girl who shoved some value in the eye and right away jumped off the third floor? The girl lived and the boy died but even if it takes borrowed time I want only the girl to live Even if I go into debt I only want to keep killing one boy as long as I can borrow time Should’ve died then and not later God, time is so cruel Ending it with the words, You fucking asshole (the boy once spat a huge wad in my ear but he’s dead now) The boy would’ve wanted to waste all the life given to him Oh no He would’ve wanted to take pictures of his delicious food from a more delicious angle and mainstream more delicious things Oh no The boy has no body Only a sentiment like a strong follow-up measure is in the air The reality where a boy was torn to death is mixing bodies with a certain past that’s all engraved But because the boy disappeared there’s another wrinkle in the brain There’s one more miniscule controlling device that we have to remember Make the screen brighter The name of the criminal we all know makes us nod in unison Don’t the criminals closer to us begin to clash between our facial expressions? You borrowed a book from him once Yes, you had him do your homework once Yes, you’ve had noodles with him Yes, with the boy He once muttered that fear makes gods
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There were four who smiled with their black lips but why did it have to be one of four The boy was special and there was something special about him, he talked about how to murder someone before feeling sorry He said his father taught him It was the teacher who taught him It’s uncanny No adult wanted to be on the scene I’ll tell you once more about the murder method where a whole day can go by without letting a single leaf tremble I saw something Oddly I kept seeing the boy It’s chilling Because it’s creepy to say your face is odd and I keep thinking oddly enough that I’m sorry to say that I’ve seen you before The boy said, Let’s go to a dark place That he was sorry Darker than a funeral parlor The boy is still prettily made up and look at all the things his fingertips touching fingertips have done Kept always saying sorry like when a flower is done blooming there’s always a stamen in the middle The funeral was over ages ago but he’s still saying he’s sorry You can take off everything there is to take off You can peel back the boy but even the boy knows that’s not all there is to take off Keeps saying sorry Before the end of all the funerals connected to this, keeps saying sorry Why did the word sorry come to be Was it because some sorry incident happened Was it because of an empty space that had sorry’s meaning There was an empty seat next to the girl It all began when he sat next to the girl Between us there are countless unspeakable sorrys but The boy is still prettily made up and the boy’s family prettily makes up and makes up the boy and There shouldn’t be a need to prettily make up Shouldn’t sell ourselves like idiots When yesterday’s head, which realized that the selling was going on, was decapitated When such seasons come Today’s head would be decapitated and so at the thought of everything ending Sorry I’m sorry is I am sorry Not a single thing has ended so I am sorry I am sorry I’m sorry I am sorry The ringing that starts pointlessly circles the ears and observes how the ear of forgiveness is made Takes time to observe Turning off the power makes it stink and sticking out your head outside the truth generates plates of boiled beef They’ve begun to do it underneath the bridge Things that one thinks only happens to girls can happen to boys and horrible events that one thinks only boys can endure can end in the hands of girls
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Can’t believe sorry was said Have you ever been sorried by someone? You, too? Is that what it feels like to be torn up? The time and place is different and the person who touched you may be different but in the end the ones who insulted you seem to have all died together Why were the kids crying their eyes out and why were there bruises We enter an era of screaming in unison as if simultaneously hit on the head with hammers But do you know the name of that creepy boy? You can’t immediately forget the boy who whispered how sweet the reality was that one put together for fun and couldn’t lick with the end of the tongue Like someone who keeps researching Hitler when Hitler is dead History fondles one person until they cry Are we the hope that springs from being tied together by such a curse? I remember the boy’s name He did those things but look here, his eyes are open wide I keep looking for him Whenever I get the feeling for something I remember the boy’s name The way he dangled from being hanged in common You and I keep imagining him staring at the sky with his scary eyes We imagine it and pass it to the next person and the next To keep knowing it To keep airing it to clean the air Translated by Anton Hur
Kim Seung Il’s poetry first appeared in the journal Lyric Poetry and Poetics in 2007. He published his first poetry collection, Prometheus , in 2016.
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Two Poems
by Kim Hyun
©Amy Shin
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Galaxy Express 999* A groggy Sam Bill hugged a narrow Eve, who had fallen into an anemic sleep.1 He looked out the window. The train that had left at eight was entering a ghostly star system lush with the dreams of dead birds. Sam Bill tilted his head, trying to remember the time that he had spent alone. The cold steam of the train slipped past the twinkletwinklelittlestarhowIwonderwhatyouare tree leaves, leaving droplets of dreams in its wake. Iridescent dreams shook loose and bumped into love and parted and burst and became transparent. Sam Bill watched the disappeared dreams instead of the disappeared memories and fell on his seat. Eve trembled slightly. Sam Bill kissed Eve’s forehead. The space between Eve’s brows wrinkled sweetly. Who are the surviving Sam Bills greeting now, thought Sam Bill. Annoyingly, Eve opened her eyes. She raised her arms in a stretch, then listlessly dropped them. Sam Bill looked in Eve’s eyes. The two small, tiny black holes where the whites had disappeared looked like the origins of extinction. A klaxon sounded. Gu gu gu, or 999, the klaxon mourned. Eve placed her hand on the windowpane. The tail of the train loudly hit the forest as it slid out of it. Flocks of six-colored stonewall birds flew up in unison like protesters. Blind Eve sensed the rainbow feathers that had drifted and stuck on the window. She tapped along the glass. Sam Bill brought Eve’s hand with its dried, cracked skin towards him and placed it on his chest. He lowered his head and breathed into Eve’s hair. There was a long silence. It won’t be long now, cold snow! Eve whispered with her last ounce of strength. Sam Bill raised his head. The white grains of the molecules of the cold stars scattered past. A graveyard on a winter beach. Sam Bill recalled how neither he nor Eve had ever seen real snow. Sam Bill put his lips close to Eve’s ear and whispered a sutra. The sandstorm that had been observed through short and long intervals grew worse. The train gently neared the core of the cemetery. The pattern of death created by the countless floating glass coffins was more beautiful than expected. Sam Bill looked down at Eve’s heavy face, sunk in sleep. We know the beginning and the end. That was a relief. Sam Bill pulled Eve deep into his embrace and automatically closed his eyes. The last songs of the androids peacefully filled the train. Once the train ripped through the dark and crossed the galaxy, all the androids would stop functioning. The space funeral simulation switched off. The moonlit night became even more of a moonlit night. Sam Bill, who had been waiting for the funeral to end, pressed the G button and opened the door to Earth.2 The Pigeon carried the past sell-by-date androids and sped towards a burning Earth. Sam Bill greeted, alone, all the Sam Bills and Eves.
* First-generation funeral train developed by the Maetel Corporation for human space burials. More commonly referred to as the Pigeon for its design and klaxon taken after the pigeon’s body and cry respectively. 1. Not long ago on an out-of-joint time, I met David Bowie who was coming from visiting Earth’s time. He won’t talk for a long time about his son’s movie that he saw on his time on Earth where he lives as a singer. The names of the following characters have been cast from the movie I briefly heard him talk about. 2. A large crematorium built to dump androids in. They are called by various names depending on the planets the androids were born on, resided in, or immigrated to.
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Big Animal In the beginning, this animal made a hole in its tongue and is still hunting for that boring Dick Du at Melancholy Crossing . . . Last night, Agyness Deyn attended a James Salter1 reading club at the Plaza Hotel. She was drunk. She lashed her critical whip at the three ordinary readers. She smoked marijuana. She pierced her tongue. On the empty way back home, a comet fell. Agyness Deyn stopped in her tracks. She wanted to pick some star’s eyes to give to McDormand. Agyness Deyn bent over. Seizing this chance, Agyness Deyn’s anus opened with a wheeew. Once her gassy tummy had thus relaxed a bit, Agyness Deyn plopped down her large butt on the pavement. She felt a happiness unmatched by anything else in the world. There was a chilly wind that had begun at Arlington National Cemetery. The star’s eyes began their voyage into the night sky. Agyness Deyn looked up and watched the star’s eyes soar and float in the air. They were light days, the best of times. Look, fat pussy. If you’re not renting out Melancholy Crossing, get those fat hams out of my face. Dick Du’s caramel-colored spit landed precisely on Agyness Deyn’s formidable thighs. The clanging length of Dick Du’s laughter took a long lick behind Agyness Deyn’s ear as it slinked past. Her wits completely about her, Agyness Deyn wiped off the spit with the sleeve of her silk blouse, the one where the cuff button had fallen off, and stood up. Agyness Deyn stretched her long squiggly legs and took off after Dick Du. Half the moon was covered in clouds. In an eerily quiet alley, a reborn shadow leisurely stretched its shoulders. Finally, a broad Agyness Deyn caught up to Dick Du. Agyness Deyn bit down hard on Dick Du’s ear and shook it. The star’s eyes began falling like snow. The air filled with Dick Du’s screams and insults. Agyness Deyn fell into a sustainable and peculiar sense of joy. Agyness Deyn, claws protracted like some Bangkok alley cat, ripped off Dick Du’s ear. Dick Du tried to stop the blood that sprang like a shout with his hands, his two legs spreading in the air. Agyness Deyn thoroughly chewed the V-shaped cut of flesh and swallowed. That felt like swallowing six beef patties at once. Agyness Deyn’s heart thumped. Agyness Deyn spat out Dick Du’s golden earring. The comets rained down. The star’s eyes bloomed. The iris of the sky opened wide. In a flash, fur grew from Agyness Deyn’s neck. Agyness Deyn lowered her body as low as possible and slunk towards the apoplectic Dick Du. Boing, Agyness Deyn’s substantial body soared weightlessly.2 Translated by Anton Hur
1. An American novelist and screenwriter. His works include The Hunters, Still Such , and Light Years . His short story “Last Night” was made into a short film starring Frances McDormand in 2004. 2. O n the birth of the film: Last night, the participants (which include me and McDormand and all of you) of the nighttime James Salter reading group at the Plaza put together the titles of all the works Salter wrote within a six to seven year period and read them. Me, McDormand, and all of you had never met before, and Big Animal began with a story from McDormand who shared it with us. Of course, McDormand’s story is a rearrangement of an anecdote related in the New Yorker about McDormand’s lover jumping in.
Kim Hyun is a poet and women’s rights activist. He won the Kim Jun-sung Literature Award for his first collection Glory Hole . The judging committee said that he had “created an irreplaceable sphere of his own by portraying the emotions of the minority rather then aiming for universality.”
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Early Beans by Ha Seong-nan _56 Rhapsody in Berlin by Ku Hyoseo _61 Illustration © Amy Shin
Tall Blue Ladder by Gong Ji-Young _67 Selected Poems by Chyung JinKyu _74
BOOKMARK
Early Beans by Ha Seong-nan
Outside, monotonous scenery went by and ringtones continued to sound throughout the train. They passed motels with unlit neon signs that faced the tracks. The signs were shabby and dusty. “Mommy, why does that house have so many windows?” A young woman and her little girl were sitting diagonally across from him. The little girl had been looking out the window the entire time. It seemed she was just learning to talk; she asked her mother question after question. The motels obviously looked different even to the eyes of the child. “Oh, that? It’s called a motel,” the mother whispered. From the short story collection
The Woman Next Door Changbi Publishers, 1999, 286 pp. Forthcoming from Open Letter Books
“What? I can’t hear you,” the girl persisted, rubbing her cheek against her mother’s. The mother raised her head and cast a furtive glance at the other passengers. Perhaps she, like him, was picturing that secret act. “You don’t need to know.” The child moved away from her mother, and once again, glued her face to the window. The train rattled along, beating out a regular rhythm. His head that was resting against the window also rattled in time. He tried to think up some funny jokes. His date knew all kinds of jokes. There wasn’t one she hadn’t heard before. When they first met, he’d thought she was collecting jokes the way some collect folktales. To come up with funny ones, he looked through the five most popular dailies every morning and frequented online humor chat rooms. He even flipped through women’s magazines at the bank. But before he could finish telling the joke, she’d beat him to the punch line. Make me laugh. If you make me laugh, I’ll give myself to you. Whenever she propped up her chin with her hand and watched his moving lips, a feeling of frustration would come over him. Out of habit, he felt for his phone in his back pocket every time a cell phone rang on the train. Whenever the train went around a bend, the connecting doors slid open and he got a clear view of the other cars. Three high school girls in uniform were walking in single file through the cars, heading toward him. They each flicked the handgrips as they walked, making them swing in semicircles behind them. They chattered ceaselessly. The passengers stared after them. The girls were about five foot six and
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even though they were dressed in the same school uniform,
contact with the last girl. She had dark round eyes like black
each girl looked a bit different. There was nothing tidy about
beans and smooth, milky skin. What dangled from her bag
their sweaty, wrinkled appearance. The skirts looked as
caught his attention. It was a keychain with a clear plastic
though they had been shortened, stopping well above their
cube containing three dice, each of a different color. The
knees and clinging to their hips and thighs to end in pleats
dice bounced against one another with her every step.
like fish fins. Each step exposed their thighs through the side slits. All three carried large identical shopping bags.
He couldn’t think of anything funny. It was 4:35. At the bank where his date worked, the automatic gates near
They passed him, joking and poking one another in
the entrance would be coming down now. She was three
the side. They smelled of sweat and perfume, and wore
years older than him and it was her twenty-ninth birthday
foreign brand-name backpacks that were popular among
that day. Until he’d met her, he’d always been surrounded
students, with mascot figures dangling from the backpack
by women with large mouths. Once in kindergarten, he
zippers. First, a stuffed Donald Duck went by, and then
had drawn a picture titled “My Mom.” Whenever he gazed
a Hoppangman doll, a moon-faced Japanese cartoon
up at his tall mother who constantly nagged him, all he
1
superhero made of hoppang. He was trying to think of a
could see was her large mouth that moved ceaselessly. In the
funny story when he looked up and happened to make eye
picture, his mother’s mouth took up two-thirds of her face.
1. H oppang is a round steamed bun filled with red bean paste. In Japan, Hoppangman is called Anpanman after the Japanese sweet roll
anpan .
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He was trying to think of a funny story when he looked up and happened to make eye contact with the last girl. She had dark round eyes like black beans and smooth, milky skin.
“My Mom” had even received an honorable mention in a
Hoppangman laughed for no particular reason. Donald
nationwide children’s art competition. Before he had first seen
Duck couldn’t close her knees because of her chubby
her through the bank window, he hadn’t known anyone could
thighs. He saw between her knees the pudgy inner thighs
have such a small mouth. Her lips had been pursed so tightly
that were glued together. As for Dice, even though her
while she counted money that her face barely had a hint of
knees were clamped together, her thin thighs formed a
a mouth, like that of a Japanese geisha. He loved her small
triangular gap at the top of her skirt. His gaze kept being
mouth.
drawn to that spot. It was quiet inside the train, and he
The cloying smell of perspiration and perfume wafted by again. The girls who had gone on to the next car were
lucky and pick up a funny joke.
coming back. Though the entire car was nearly empty,
Below their dusky knees were scratches, scabs, bruises,
the girls chose to sit directly across from him. The three
and even insect bites. He learned that they were juniors at
shopping bags went onto the overhead shelf. The thin
an arts high school. Seventeen. It was an age when scrapes
one sat squeezed between the two larger girls. He didn’t
and falls were still common. They laughed hysterically at
know where to look. He was uncomfortable making eye
things that weren’t funny. They were things that he already
contact with any of them, so he lowered his head, keeping
knew. Maybe she, too, had laughed just as easily when she
his gaze fixed on the ground. One reason he didn’t take the
was seventeen.
subway was because he didn’t know where to look. Once
“Seriously. I think I only got half of them right.”
he’d found himself in a bit of a dilemma because he’d kept
At Dice’s words, the other girls’ faces stiffened. They
making eye contact with a stranger who was sitting across
didn’t say anything for a second. Then the girl whose face
from him.
was as round as Hoppangman’s nudged Dice with her
As soon as he lowered his gaze to the floor, he saw
shoulder. “Yeah, right.”
the girls’ legs. Now that they were sitting down, their
Donald Duck ate a chocolate-covered pretzel stick,
short plaid skirts rode up their thighs and became even
breaking off the end little by little with her front teeth.
shorter. Their legs exposed below their skirts were as
Sticking out her thick lips, she said, “That’s what you said
fresh as turnips just pulled up from the field. Their calves
last time and you ended up getting the highest score.”
were round and firm. The girls hugged their backpacks and started to whisper back and forth. The keychains
58
could hear every word they were saying. Maybe he’d get
Dice let out a big sigh. “I’m serious this time. I guessed on half.”
that dangled from their bags each resembled its owner.
They took out their exams from their backpacks and
Like ordinary teenage girls, Donald Duck, Dice, and
started going over the answers. They groaned each time
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
FICTION
elastic bands of her stockings were buried deep in her flesh. Pulling her butt forward, she switched her legs and crossed them again. He caught a flash of her white panties. She now spread her thighs in his direction. It seemed she had suddenly put on weight; white stretch marks crawled all the way down to her calves. “At this rate, I won’t get into a university in Seoul.” Dice stretched her arms above her head, and her knees relaxed even more. Just then sunlight shone into the gap. Deep inside the crevice was a dark mole as large as a coat button. He was a young, healthy man of twenty-six. His thoughts immediately rushed to that secret spot where the two legs intersected. His white shirt, which he’d worn without an undershirt, grew damp with sweat and clung to his back. Sweat dripped from his forehead. He wiped repeatedly at his forehead with his sleeve. Her thighs made him picture her round, firm butt cheeks and the dimples they discovered a wrong answer. He kept glancing at their
above.
legs the entire time. Suddenly, Dice’s knees that had been
The girls’ reckless behavior continued. So engrossed were
clamped shut relaxed and spread open a little. He didn’t
they in their conversation about university entrance exams
miss the tip of the triangular gap widen. He coughed and
and how they’d bombed their final exams that they didn’t
turned toward the side, but then Donald Duck’s fleshy
seem to notice anything else. It was their fault for wearing
thighs came into view. Unless he moved to another seat or
such short skirts with slits on the side. If an older woman
closed his eyes, he would not be able to escape their legs.
had been present, she most certainly would have scolded
The girls didn’t notice his growing discomfort. In
them, but the entire car was now empty. The girls continued
fact, they didn’t seem the least bit concerned about him.
to twist and fidget in their seats. They crossed their legs
Donald Duck twisted her body to the left and crossed
and even spread them apart a few times. Then it would be
her right leg over her left. Her skirt hung down the seat,
he who would close his legs in alarm. His curly hair, which
exposing her thigh that was like a boiled potato. The
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grew damp with perspiration and began to curl again. He
His face was flushed with all the fantasies that were
seemed to be invisible to the girls. Bupyeong Station was
still swirling in his head. He wiped his face with his sleeve.
announced. The girls lazily got to their feet and retrieved
Dark smudges appeared on his white shirt. Just as the
their shopping bags from the overhead compartment. They
train was starting to move again, someone tapped the
stood with their backs to him. As they bent to put on their
window. When he turned around, the three girls were
backpacks, their short skirts flipped up and they flashed
peering at him, their faces right up against the glass. They
their rear ends at him, as though they were doing the can-
laughed maliciously. Dice brought her hand up to his face
can. Then they went and stood by the doors beside him.
and then slowly raised her middle finger. Her lips moved
The smell of sour sweat wafted over to him.
deliberately. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but he
The train slowly approached the platform. The girls suddenly burst into laughter.
read her lips. Fuck you. pp. 229-236
“I won, didn’t I?” Dice said. Donald Duck and Hoppangman each took out a 5,000-won bill and placed them in Dice’s palm. Dice rolled
Translated by Janet Hong Printed by permission of Open Letter Books, New York, US.
up the bills and stuck them in her front shirt pocket. “Men,” Donald Duck said, still eating her pretzel sticks. Hoppangman kicked the train doors. “They’re worse than Pavlov’s dogs. They start drooling as soon as the bell rings. Not a decent one left.” She slammed her fist into the doors. “Jesus died a long time ago.” Dice snatched away Donald Duck’s snack and popped it into her own mouth. “You don’t think Jesus was a man?” The girls spoke loudly on purpose so that he would hear. They were no longer the same girls who had been comparing test answers and worrying about university admissions. The doors slid open and they stepped off, laughing.
©Lee Young-kyoun
Ha Seong-nan has published five short story collections, four novels, and two essay collections. Her
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
short story collection The Woman Next Door is forthcoming from Open Letter Books. She has won the Dongin Literary Award, the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Isu Literary Award, the Hyundae Literary Award, and the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award. ▶
Visit koreanliteraturenow.com to read the rest of the story and watch a trailer of this book.
FICTION
Rhapsody in Berlin by Ku Hyoseo
“You know, Johann Sebastian Bach . . .” she said. I nodded. I was about to pop a potato dumpling in my mouth. “Would you believe it if I said he was from . . . Joseon?” I raised my head and looked at her. Dry spit went down my empty throat. ✽ G.Z.S.B. Restaurant next to Weimar City Hall. Tuesday, 1 p.m. I wasn’t there for the potato dumplings or for the house beer. I wouldn’t have taken the train from Frankfurt to Weimar for something like that. I was there as an Woongjin Think Big Co., Ltd. 2010, 484 pp. For publication inquiries, contact us at
koreanlitnow@klti.or.kr
interpreter. “The pay’s quite good,” P from the travel agency had told me on the phone the day before. “Just take the job, and don’t ask questions.” I was a wanderer in Germany. VOL. 37
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✽
No way?! Bach was from Joseon? I’d sooner believe in the end-of-the-world prophecies of Nostradamus. But I couldn’t treat the client like a friend. We had just met. I said in a small voice: “No way . . .?” “Is that too farfetched?” she said.
old lady. I approached her. I wasn’t what you might call a professional interpreter. P had always been strangely inattentive to me, and I had a habit of never asking for even the most basic information about the client. And this was the result.
“Yes, that’s a bit much.” I swallowed the dumpling.
“Hello. My name is Ninigawa Hanako.”
“Then what about Johann Hintermeyer?”
Jeez. What a low, husky voice. Only after I got over my
“Johann Hintermeyer . . .?” “So, not even someone who’s lived in Germany for six years knows who Hintermeyer is?” P. He must have blabbed about me. It was natural for a client to be curious about their interpreter. But even so, when she said six years, I somehow felt like my secret had been exposed.
initial shock did I realize that she was speaking in Japanese. I often spent my vacations in Japan. P knew that. It must have been why he’d given me the job. “I’m . . . Lee Geunho.” Why had this old lady requested an interpreter from P’s travel agency instead of looking for a Japanese interpreter? “What’s this about?” I called and asked P.
“Johann, Hintermeyer . . . They’re both common first and last names,” I said.
“I just accepted the client’s request. I don’t know the rest.”
“I suppose. Like Ichiro, or Tanaka,” she said.
“Why did you do this to me . . .?”
“Exactly.”
“Just do the job well. You don’t need to know more, do
“But doesn’t everyone know the Major League Baseball player Ichiro?”
you? Client’s privacy. I’m hanging up.” He hung up. ✽
“This Johann Hintermeyer . . . is he also that famous?” “No.” What was this? If my girlfriend back in Frankfurt had
“He was a musician in Weimar in the 1770s. Left about 160
said something like that, I’d have yelled, What the hell,
works of music. He was the secretary to the Weimar palace
Annika!
organist Andreas Aiblinger, and also a communal servant at
“I told you, my name is Hanako,” she said. “Eh?”
A flower market had opened in the square in front of
“You can just call me by my name. Hanako. A common name, isn’t it?”
The square in front of City Hall was brimming with the lights of June. When I walked into the restaurant, it took me some time to get used to the darkness. An Asian woman sitting by the window held up a hand. The sleeves of her white jacket swayed like a metronome. Slender arms, white hair, small frame. That was when I learned that my new client was an KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
City Hall. “This is about Johann Hintermeyer, right?” I said.
✽
62
Himmelburg, the palace church . . .” She stopped speaking.
“Yes.” “So he was a communal servant at Himmelburg . . . And?” “Mmm, I heard he was just an organ pumper at first, pumping air into organs. It’s astonishing that he then went on to play in the court orchestra and make a name for himself as a composer.” “And . . .?” “Well, that’s about all I know.”
FICTION
“Should I know about him?” A little rainbow hung over every flower sprayed with water.
corridor were all extinguished. Blue moonlight illuminated the floor. Tell them there’s
“I was just asking if you knew him.”
no need to stoke the fire. Johann Hintermeyer remembered
“I don’t.”
what Andreas Aiblinger had said. He also remembered the
“I already heard that, but I was just wondering . . .”
look in Leah’s eyes, as she followed him into the room. Johann Hintermeyer stood still in the blue corridor. The
“Wondering?” “If Koreans knew him.”
door of the fireplace facing the corridor was firmly shut. Tell
So Joseon had changed to Korea now.
them there’s no need to stoke the fire. Johann Hintermeyer
“Well, everyone in Korea knows . . . Johann Sebastian
was mesmerized by those words. Andreas and Leah were born to the same parents. He meant that no one was to come
Bach,” I said. “Johann Sebastian Bach is not from Joseon.”
near the room; and he said this to Johann Hintermeyer, not
“So that discussion isn’t over yet, then?”
to a servant.
“He’s not 100 percent Korean, that Johann Hintermeyer, but I’m sure his ancestors were from Joseon.” “That can’t be right. In the 1770s, Korea would have
Johann Hintermeyer thought Andreas Aiblinger must have known that he would be held helpless by the blue moonlight.
been under the reign of Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo, and
It had all been planned, Johann Hintermeyer guessed,
what Korean descendant could possibly have become a
but he was trapped nonetheless. The way Leah looked at him
musician here in Weimar at that time? A court orchestra, no
sometimes. Andreas Aiblinger must have seen that, too.
less. The Baroque period hadn’t even ended yet, right? A Korean musician at the time when German music was just beginning? Impossible.”
The sentences annoyed me with the unnecessary repetition of first and last names.
“Oh, good, good,” Hanako said. “Kings Yeongjo and Jeongjo . . . You’d never hear things like this from a Japanese interpreter. Iguno, I’m glad we met.”
“Is this a sort of . . . biography? Of this Johann Hintermeyer?” I said, not taking my eyes off the papers. “Maybe . . .” Her voice was definitely too low and husky.
“It’s Lee Geunho, ma’am.”
“Do I have to read this?”
“Yes. Iguno.”
“Well, I speak almost no German.” ✽
Last summer began like this. With Hanako placing a thick stack of copy paper in front of me. I looked at her. She pointed at the stack of paper with her chin.
“I was asking why I have to read it.” “It’s from the Pyongyang Library. The only edition.” “North Korea?” I asked because it sounded like Yangpyeong, which was in South Korea. “Mm-hm. North Joseon.”
∠
I meant to open the stack to the middle, but I opened
He tried to turn away but his feet would not budge. There
it near the end. Neat handwriting, written in quill. The
was a chafing sound from the floorboards beneath him. Johann
chapters weren’t long. A new chapter always began with the
Hintermeyer froze, startled; he was caught up in a terrible
symbol ∠.
∠
Andreas Aiblinger went into his bedroom. His sister, Leah, followed him in. The candles in the
premonition. He thought soon the sound would be coming from the room, too. His body seemed to have turned to stone. It was as though he was caught in a trap. The kind that would saw off his ankle the moment he lifted his foot. He VOL. 37
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like water, groaning, Leah, Leah . . . And he muttered, Dear God, I am in doubt. I truly doubt you. ✽ “Alright, now, tell me who you are.” I put down the stack of paper and looked at her. “I told you. Ninigawa Hanako.” “And these papers?” “I photocopied them at the Berlin Music College Library.” “I thought you said it was the only edition from the Pyongyang Library?” City Hall’s shadow was crossing the center of the square. “So it’s a copy. A copy of a copy.” “Who exactly is Johann Hintermeyer?” “I don’t know much, except for what I told you earlier.” “And this . . . why do you need it?” “Someone made a trip to Pyongyang because of that. When he got back, he was imprisoned by the South Korean government, and was released only after seventeen years.” A waiter brought her a Weissbier. It was a big glass. “That someone must be Korean, then.” wanted to run anyway, even if it really did cut his foot off.
“I suppose . . . technically.”
He didn’t want to hear anything coming out of the room. He
“Technically?”
thought that his soul would blacken and die the moment he
“He had Korean nationality, anyway.”
heard anything.
“A Korean . . . living in Japan? A Korean-Japanese?”
Johann Hintermeyer could not move. He would rather
“You’re quick.”
toward death. The most wretched death, he thought, might
✽
also bring some unknown, extreme pleasure. Frozen like
She started on her second big-size glass of Weissbier. I wasn’t
stone, holding his breath, he listened to the sound of death
drinking.
have his foot cut off than die, but he was turning his face
that leaked out from inside the room. Andreas Aiblinger’s three-story wooden house was like
64
“So, let me get this straight . . .” “Mm-hm.”
a ship. A sailboat, sailing on water that was at times raging
“A second-generation Korean-Japanese came to Germany
with waves, at times serene. Wind and moonlight took turns
to study music. Discovered a musician he had never heard
swaying the sails. The tired sound of rowing, mingled into a
of, named Johann Hintermeyer, and his work. Found out
sigh, made creaking noises. All of this was leaking out from
that his biography was being kept in the Pyongyang Library.
the crack of the door. Johann Hintermeyer died and died
Went to Pyongyang to get the documents, and asked around
again with those noises. He fell, spilled out on the cold floor
for any information on Johann Hintermeyer. Came back,
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
FICTION
was questioned and imprisoned for espionage by the South
“He was my first love.” ✽
Korean government. Was released after seventeen years and went back to Germany in 1989. And you heard all of this from a librarian at the Berlin Music College Library.
“You should have told me earlier.”
Also that Johann Hintermeyer, who just disappeared from
Hanako and I walked into the hotel lobby.
Weimer one day, ended up in Korea. That he left records
“This isn’t early enough?”
of his life there, in his last years, and that his ancestors were
She was staying at the Elephant Hotel near the
Korean . . . is that right?”
restaurant. Bach, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Tolstoy,
“Right.”
Thomas Mann, she muttered. I thought she meant they had
“So this Johann Hintermeyer—not even a music major
all stayed here.
like that Korean-Japanese had heard of him. How could
“But I kept asking needless questions.”
I have known?”
I didn’t care if Hitler had stayed here. I wasn’t a tour
“Koreans remember their ancestry well, don’t they? So
guide.
I thought you must know something. Seventeen years in
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you.”
prison was all he’d spent in South Korea. He couldn’t have
She ordered another beer at the hotel bar. I was just an
had a chance to find out whether Johann Hintermeyer was
interpreter. How much of the client’s privacy could I invade?
well-known in Korea. That’s why I asked you, Iguno. For
“But can I ask you something else?”
him.”
“Whatever you want.”
“Anyway, it’s all ancient stuff. Johann Hintermeyer, obviously, but also the story of the Korean-Japanese . . .” “Yes, it’s an old story.” “Looking at the year . . . it’s not part of the East Berlin Affair, when a group of Korean people living in Germany were prosecuted for espionage.” “That’s good! A Japanese person wouldn’t have known about the East Berlin Affair.” “So after the East Berlin Affair, there was a similar incident?” “Five years later. It was buried, being an isolated incident and all. I actually only learned about it recently, too.” “That Korean-Japanese—isn’t he alive somewhere? Now
“You don’t look too broken up . . . for someone who’s just lost her first love.” Drops of water trickled down the surface of her beer glass. “Apparently, his music was pretty well-appreciated. Johann Hintermeyer, I mean. Here, in the eighteenth century. Aren’t you astonished, Iguno, to learn that he was from Joseon?” “Am I supposed to be astonished?” “I don’t know . . .” Hanako gulped down her beer. “I know too little to be astonished.” “And I know too little to be sad.” She collapsed. ✽
he must be a Korean-German. Shouldn’t you look for him first, if you’re curious about the documents?” Draining the rest of her beer in one gulp, she said, “He’s dead.” “Oh, I . . . see.” City Hall’s shadow grew a little longer. “Not too long ago. Suicide.” “Oh, okay.”
She was in room 803. There was another room reserved in her name, room 804, where I would be staying. I carried her on my back up to 803. She didn’t weigh much. I laid her on the bed. The silence in the room was deafening. She was small like a child. Fine wrinkles covered VOL. 37
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her face, like silk cloth that had been rumpled up and then
first place, that the documents were there. This was some
smoothed out again. Her white hair was lusterless.
serious interest. She had begun an exhausting journey all on
Her face looked as if she were wavering between sleep
her own. From that fact alone, I could guess that she hadn’t
and death. Asleep, she looked smaller, like an alien that had
known anything about her first love’s recent life. She had
lost its way back home, or a newborn who’d lost her mother.
only recently learned about the espionage charge, as well.
In isolation far away from where she should have been, or maybe there never was a destination.
I was curious. What’s gone is gone. Love is no exception. What was it like to suddenly start searching, one day, for
I pulled the sheet over her chest, and turned off all the lights save for a single stand lamp. I looked at her. She didn’t
an old forgotten love? What was it that had drawn an old woman all the way to Germany?
even fill one tenth of the bed. I don’t know this woman,
I was curious. What was my job? The beer felt cool as
I muttered. I came out of the room and went to the lobby.
it ran down my throat, almost painful. This was different
I ordered a beer at the bar.
from the exposition, business, or book fair interpreting jobs ✽
I’d had so far. An old Japanese lady as a client, mysterious
The first love of some old Japanese lady had recently
Andreas Aiblinger, a first love’s suicide, Korea, Pyongyang,
committed suicide. A Korean-Japanese. Released after
and me—a Japanese-speaking Korean living in Germany.
eighteenth-century documents, Johann Hintermeyer and
seventeen years and came back to Germany in 1989, she’d
I tried to connect the dots, but I couldn’t complete the
said. So he must have died in Germany. Death had not been
picture. It did feel like it might be a special picture, though.
too long ago, but the imprisonment and the release had been
Only a day had passed, after all. The beer tasted good.
thirty-seven and twenty years ago, respectively. An old story,
pp. 9-21
like she’d admitted. She didn’t seem to know why her first love had killed
Translated by Kim Ji Yeun
himself. I know too little to be sad, she said. It was reasonable to assume, from that remark, that they hadn’t kept in touch for a long time, before she heard the news of his suicide. Her curiosity about her first love and his death didn’t seem to be casual. Case in point, she’d even gone all the way to the Berlin Music College Library. It must have taken quite a lot of time and effort even to learn, in the
Ku Hyoseo has written nine short story collections, in addition to several novels and essay collections. His best known works include Rhapsody in Berlin , A House with a Beautiful Sunset View , and Nagasaki
Papa . He has won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, Hwang Sun-won Literary Award, HMS (Hahn Moo-Sook) Literary Prize, and Daesan Literary Award. His works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and German. ▶
66
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
Visit koreanliteraturenow.com to watch a trailer of this book.
FICTION
Tall Blue Ladder by Gong Ji-Young
1. Everyone has memories they can’t erase. Because they are painful. Because they are beautiful. Because they leave behind vivid scars that continue to ache. Like cold, white mushrooms that sprout behind your racing heart whenever you think back on those days. 2. I lost three people that year. Of course I went on to face other difficulties, and other Hankyoreh Publishing Company 2013, 376 pp.
deaths, and even at times other separations that seemed unbearable, but none left as deep of a mark on me as those losses. Of course, my youth was probably mostly to
For publication inquiries,
blame for that. Back then, I was a young Benedictine monk preparing to be ordained
contact KL Management at
as a priest.
josephlee705@gmail.com VOL. 37
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3. The monastic life is difficult to explain, even to other
a sound, there were still countless tiny whispers that were
Catholics, regardless of whether you’re a Benedictine,
concealed by even that small noise: snowflakes slipping
Franciscan, or Carmelite. I guess you could put it in secular
from the arms of a pine tree, leafless branches trembling
terms and say the monks live in a commune where everyone
in the wind, squirming insects twisting and turning deep
abandons worldly possessions, takes a vow of chastity, and
underground, tree roots slowly stretching their thin toes
never marries. Someone once referred to monks as “people
deeper into the earth. Was that slight breeze brushing past
who leave the world in order to listen to a deeper voice
my ears the friction generated by the earth as it rotated on
hidden within themselves.” A young Spanish monk in the
its axis? Those moments I experienced back then felt like sly
early twentieth century said we were “people who give up
glimpses of the universe, or God, or human life, revealing
everything in order to gain the most precious thing in the
themselves ever so slightly. Whenever that happened, the
world.”
sky opened up and something like an indescribable peace
But can any of these one-line definitions come anywhere
cascaded over me.
near to explaining the life of a human being? I prefer to use a quote from Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, who referred
5.
without any hesitation to the visionary poets Baudelaire and
Up until that year, the monastic life more or less suited me.
Rimbaud as “Christians turned inside out.” He also alluded
I grew quite fond of the five daily calls to prayer, and the
to Heidegger, Camus, and Sartre as ascetics, because they
courses in theology, which I’d continued studying after
“have looked into the face of death, have plumbed the abyss
transferring to the seminary, were difficult but refreshing.
of man’s nothingness, have probed man’s inauthenticity,
I’d also earned the trust of the priors and the monks senior
and have cried out for his liberation.” I like his analogies
to me. I wanted to plumb the depths of the universe and
best. Explaining one life by comparing it to another seems
wrap my mind around the world. I loved the tall bookcases
the most appropriate. Or to put it another way, how could
that reached all the way to the high ceiling of the abbey
you compare anything to a flowing river unless it’s also
library. There, books containing over two thousand years
something that flows? Like years, hours, life, or wind and
of the compressed wisdom of Christ’s followers awaited my
clouds.
hands and eyes. I sat in that library every day, determined to read every book in there. In the afternoons, when I tired of
68
4.
reading, I walked the grounds of the abbey. Large trees over
The first thing you have to address when you talk about the
fifty years old stood quietly in rows as if to cheer me on.
monastic life is, of course, silence. What I have learned from
Some days brought letters from friends who were still
living here is that silence is not simply quiet, not simply the
living on college campuses, getting drunk, attending cram
absence of sound. Nor is it the gaps in between sound but
schools, and studying for standardized exams. I felt like a
rather a state of very active listening. Silence is necessary for
mountaineer who’d left them all behind in the playground
perceiving the sounds beyond sound, the senses beyond our
of a national park and set off alone for the highest summit.
senses.
It was the luxury of one who has been chosen and I, of
During my early days at the abbey, whenever I was out
course, had all the arrogance of one who has chosen himself.
walking, I would pause to take in the sounds I couldn’t
Every season, nature showered its sumptuous gifts on me as
hear over my footfalls. Despite the fact that the bottoms of
someone who’d already learned in his early twenties the art
the sandals I wore back then were rubber and barely made
of silence. Well, up until that year, that is.
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
FICTION
6. Of course, having grown up in the noisy world outside,
another step down the long hallway where a gentle darkness
the silence of the monastery did not come easily at first.
had settled. In that gap between the curtains of sound,
Silence is probably why I remember my first day there
I caught my first glimpse of my naked soul.
so clearly. The abbey was located right behind the train station in Waegwan, less than a five-minute walk away.
8.
When I showed up at the entrance to the main building
“Why did you become a monk?” “Why this monastery?”
and told them why I was there, the gatekeeper said the
Those questions were harder than being asked, “What have
abbot had been waiting for me and led me inside. I assumed
you done with your life so far, and what will you do in the
my grandmother had called them. I’d been visiting the
future?” Other than the fact that my grandmother was
monastery with my grandmother ever since I was young.
connected to the abbey, it was hard for me to explain why I’d
But it felt very different to actually live there. Settlers always
felt that this particular place was where I would live. Maybe
notice things that tourists overlook.
that’s why people call it a vocation. From the Latin vocare, to
The inside of the abbey was much simpler than the
be called or summoned. Someone asks, “Why are you here?”
outside. It was very dark and quiet with many long corridors.
And all you can say is, “Because I was called.” Yes, Lord, I am
Posted above the entrance was a placard that read Ora et
here.
Labora, a famous Benedictine motto that meant pray and work. Another read, If you love truth, be a lover of silence.
9.
“Please turn off your cellphone,” the gatekeeper added, his
A man was making his way toward us from the other end
voice sounding rehearsed. I took my phone out of my pocket
of the long hallway that led to the abbot’s quarters. (I didn’t
and powered it off—the effect was like standing in the
find out until later, but it was Brother Thomas. He was in his
middle of downtown right as someone flips off the switch
seventies at the time. He’d left his hometown in Germany
to your auditory nerve. The atmospheric pressure inside my
and settled in Korea many years ago, back when our abbey
heart changed in an instant, and inexplicable sobs rose up
was located in Deokwon, South Hamgyeong Province—in
to my weightless vocal cords. Once the curtain of noise had
what is now North Korea. Since he was elderly and retired
been drawn aside, silence entered.
from his duties, no one would have said a word if he’d chosen to rest and do nothing, but instead he passed the
7.
time reading and keeping those long hallways mopped clean.
Silence was a dark mirror that saw all the way through
Pray and work—if that was the duty of the Benedictine
to the marrow of my bones, no matter how many layers
Order, then he was a faithful member up until his dying
of clothing I wore. I was frightened at first glimpse. I’d
day.) The image of him pushing a long mop down the
yearned for that silence while preparing for the monastic
hallway that day left a lasting impression on me. The light
life, but I did not foresee its enormous power. I don’t
of the setting sun filtered in through the windows just then,
remember if I actually did hesitate and turn to look back,
tempering the darkness that pooled in the corridor, and he
but it felt like I did. The whistle of the train leaving, the
was like a sacred fish slowly swimming his way through it.
same train that had brought me here, sounded like an
I met his eyes as I walked quickly past. Short for a
auditory hallucination. I’d left my brief youth behind on
German, he raised his wrinkled face, which sat on top of
that train when I got off at the station. Noise and hope, joy
his stooped body, and flashed me a smile. I still don’t know
and nausea, nerves and tears, envy and jealousy . . . I took
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down to the tips of my toes. For a long time I thought what
the majority vote by then is elected. But if the majority vote
drew me was the lucidness, or transparency, or perhaps even
is only won during the seventh round, then the successor
indifference contained in his gaze, and the simple blessing,
is called a steward rather than an abbot, and the matter is
or perhaps even a yearning, directed toward a young person
voted on again after three years. This method for selecting a
that radiated from his smile. During my interview shortly
leader for life may be unusual, but it has its logical side.
after, when the abbot asked why I wanted to become a
Anyway, my point is that Father Samuel was the
monk, I said, “Because I want to live and die like that elderly
successor to our previous abbot. I’d known him quite well
monk who’s mopping the hallway outside.”
ever since he was a young priest, and he had confided in me
The abbot sipped his tea and regarded me for a moment. The crucifix dangling over his paunch shook. He looked like
over the years. So there was nothing unusual about being summoned by him last night.
he was trying to figure out what I meant by that, and then he smiled and said, “Is that so? Well, let’s not be in too much of
11.
a hurry to die, shall we?”
When I opened the door to the abbot’s quarters, I sensed there was a special significance to his summoning me this
10.
time. He stood with his back to me even though he had to
I write this from my office at the abbey. The thing about
know I was there. Outside the window, the evening fog was
life is that you never really see more than an inch ahead of
settling in.
where you are. I’ve always felt, but even right up until last
Judging from the set of his shoulders, it seemed he’d
night I would never have guessed, that I would find myself
come to some grave and serious decision. You could say
thinking back on things that happened ten years ago.
he had the body language of someone who isn’t quite sure
After the evening prayer, I was summoned by our abbot,
of whether he’s about to do the right thing. His natural
Father Samuel. The abbot who first admitted me into the
tendency to proceed carefully in all matters often came
monastery had retired and went on to serve as the head of
across as stalling or indecision, and he sometimes used that
a convent near the coast in Masan, and Father Samuel had
as a kind of trial by fire to test the patience of the more
been elected to take his place.
impetuous monks who resided at the monastery. But
The Benedictines have a unique way of selecting a new abbot for a monastery. Instead of candidates running for
70
something about the way he held himself that day made me pause before jumping to any such conclusions.
office, names are submitted randomly and whoever among
“You called for me?” I asked.
them gets two-thirds of the vote becomes abbot and is
He slowly turned around. His eyes—how can I describe
responsible for the entire monastery. Some say that the
them? They were the eyes of a man who’d returned from
papal conclave originated from this Benedictine tradition.
wandering in a far distant place.
Conclave comes from the Latin cum clāve, which means
“Ah, yes, Father. Please come in and sit down.”
“with key.” When the cardinals tasked with selecting the
He looked a little surprised, even caught off guard, as if
next pope are all assembled inside the voting room, the door
he’d forgotten having summoned me. He offered me a seat
is locked from the outside. There are no candidates and no
and sat down across from me. He lowered his eyes, his hands
campaigning, and even debates are forbidden during the
clasped as if in prayer. I had no clue what it could be about.
election period. It’s the same with the Benedictines. If no
He and I had lived together like father and son for the last
one gets two-thirds of the vote by the fourth round, then
twenty years. Known for being warm and gentle, albeit
it continues on to a fifth and sixth round. Whoever holds
impassive, he’d never once displayed this kind of emotional
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
FICTION
Silence is necessary for perceiving the sounds beyond sound, the senses beyond our senses.
agitation before another person. For all that I knew about
the room. Newton, New Jersey, and a certain autumn day,
him, it wasn’t much.
flashed through my mind. As if they’d become the backdrop
“Let’s start with the easy task. Well, I don’t know that
to that chapter of my life.
I can call it easy. There are two tasks: one business and one personal. That’s why I called you here. First . . .” He paused. Maybe the second, personal item was
“Good,” the abbot said with a smile. He cast his eyes down again. His lips parted slowly. There was only one item left now. My shoulders stiffened for no reason.
hindered by the businesslike simplicity of the first. “I received a call from the abbey in Newton, New Jersey. The United States government is putting together a history
“I’ve thought and prayed on this over and over. But it seems the best thing to do is to just tell you . . . It’s about Sohee. She . . .”
of the Korean War, and they want to include testimonials from the Heungnam Evacuation. Brother Marinus’ story will
12.
be included, of course, and since our abbey took over those
What words could I possibly use to describe how I felt
records, they’re asking us to send them any documentation
at that moment? It was like that gently talking face of his
we have. Since you were my assistant at the time, I figure
had spat out a metal club that bashed me across the cheek.
you must have more material and more memories of it than
Or like the earth itself had opened up and swallowed the
anyone else so I’d like to pass the request onto you.”
building whole. I knew the abbot was studying my reaction
“Of course. That won’t be any trouble. The files are still on my computer. And in my head.” I kept my tone light to try to offset the heavy mood in
carefully, but I’d lost the strength to try to force my face into a more composed expression. It was an ambush. I was melting in my seat like beeswax, but what had me even more VOL. 37
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agitated was the fact that simply hearing her name even after
just pictured her telling me she had cancer washed over me
all these years could elicit such a reaction from me.
along with the shock of hearing that. I wanted to take it
“She’ll be here next week,” he said. “She’s asked
back, but it was too late.
permission to see you. As you know, her entire family emigrated to the United States over twenty years ago. I’m
“That’s why I was so hesitant, but now I’ve told you . . . All I wish is for you to be free.”
the last connection she has in Korea. But she’s not coming all this way to see me—she wants to see you.” He picked up his tea, which had grown cold, but he didn’t look like he intended to drink it. “I could tell how hard it was for her to ask me that,” he
I glanced back at him for a moment. It sounded like he was holding back tears. His tone seemed to be implying, You’re not the only one who gets sad. I swallowed the words before I could ask, So? What’s the difference between seeing her and going to New Jersey?
continued. “After all, she’s a respectable wife and mother now . . . But you’re both adults so you can decide for
13.
yourself. If you don’t want to see her, I can arrange for you to
Unable to bear the idea of returning to my quarters,
be somewhere else next week.”
I stepped outside and walked slowly around the grounds.
“All right,” I said and stood up from my chair. I wasn’t
The fog softened the edges of the buildings and filled the
actually sure if the words all right made it out of my mouth,
entire abbey with a sacred energy. I passed the red brick
nor was I sure what was right about it, but I left it at that
building that housed the novice monks and headed toward
and turned to go. Shame washed over me and turned my
an inconspicuous corner where a sixty-year-old ginkgo
ears red. How long had the abbot known about us? For the
tree stood. Back when I was a novice myself, whenever
past ten years I hadn’t breathed a word of what happened
I missed home or simply felt sad for no reason, I would
between her and me to anyone. I’d thought that was the only
lean against that tree, or wrap my arms around it, or fall
way I could bear it. That I could endure as long as I bound
asleep underneath it. Sometimes I even climbed up into its
my crazed soul and buried my young flesh beneath this black
branches.
monk’s habit. But now—now, when those feelings were
Off in the distance was Nakdong River, and closer to
supposed to be long gone and even my memories had grown
us were the train tracks. I thought about books I’d read as
fuzzy—as I realized the abbot—her uncle and my prior—
a child, like The Giving Tree or Hope for the Flowers. Back
might have known about it from the start, I was transported
then I would devour anything printed on a page. On the
back to ten years in the past, to my twenty-nine-year-old self
backs of those books was an address: #369, Waegwan, North
who’d squirmed with mortification at the feeling of being
Gyeongsang Province. The name of the city was completely
mocked by God and man alike.
unfamiliar to me, having been born and raised in Seoul. Did
In truth, it didn’t matter whether I saw her or not. I forced myself to imagine her telling me she had cancer. Not
72
the young me have any premonition that it would one day become my address?
even so much as a weak laugh came out of me. Who was it
Back in those days as a novice, the first thing to rouse
that said that if you want to find your weakness, all you have
me from sleep was not the 5:00 a.m. monastery bell but
to do is find the one thing you can’t laugh at?
the sound of the 4:40 a.m. train pulling into the station.
“Father Jung.”
That fuzzy twenty-minute gap between the two, when
I was about to open the door when he stopped me.
I would sometimes drift back to sleep and sometimes sit up
“I think she’s dying,” he said.
from sleep, were hard both physically and mentally. It was
A wave of guilt and mortification at myself for having
probably also when I most seriously debated whether I could
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
FICTION
truly spend the rest of my life there—that is, when that 5:00 a.m. bell would wake me again from my restless half-sleep.
There was also a time when I thought I wanted to see her again to ask questions. I prayed to God to allow me to see
Everything at the abbey began and ended with the
her. But even those questions have long since vanished. The
ringing of the bell. Provided we hadn’t been excused for
young monk who’d grown dizzy at the sight of the train door
some special reason, we gathered five times a day to pray. As
opening and the fluttering hem of her soft skirt brushing
a matter of fact, some prospects ended up leaving the abbey
the tops of her shoes was now a gray-haired middle-aged
because it was too challenging to rise at dawn every day and
priest. When I said my goodbyes to her, became ordained
busy oneself with prayer. As for me, I didn’t hate the sound
as planned, packed my bags, and left for the airport to study
of that bell because the schedule was too rigorous. In fact,
abroad in Rome, I boarded that train. When I got my degree
you might even say I loved it. The pealing of the bell echoed
in Rome and returned, I alighted from that train. And then,
out of the tower that stood tall against the blue-gray sky at
as well, the bell rang.
dawn. Whenever I pulled my black hood over my head to
pp. 9-23
ward off the morning cold and looked up at the tower, I felt like the ladder that Jacob had witnessed, the one and only
Translated by Sora Kim-Russell
passage to eternity, was sliding down to Earth in time with that bell. A ladder that could not be felt or held onto and that could not stay but was nevertheless definitely there. 14. There were times when I grew sick of that bell and wanted to leave. Once, I ran to the station but the train had already left. As I was leaving the empty platform and returning to the abbey, a five-minute walk that on that day felt like an eternity, the bell rang out. The sound was like a heavy iron bar scraping across my heart, which felt as parched as the bottom of a dried-out well. Instead of tears, a groan escaped from between my clenched teeth. I cursed the sound of that bell. That day, and for a long time after.
©Lee Kwa-yong
Gong Ji-Young has won the 21st Century Literary Award, Oh Young-soo Literature Award, Special Media Award from Amnesty International, Catholic Literature Award, and Yi Sang Literary Award. Her best known works include Our Happy Time , My Sister Bongsoon , and The Arena . Our Happy
Time was published by Atria Books/Marble Arch Press in the US and Philippe Picquier in France, as well as in eight other countries. Philippe Picquier also published Tall Blue Ladder . ▶
Visit koreanliteraturenow.com to watch a trailer of this book.
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BOOKMARK
Selected Poems
by Chyung JinKyu A Joseon Moss Rose I see the inner flesh of sounds I see not only the arrows flying off but also the flock of arrows making its way back They seem as one body There are no separate turns in the movements of myself and you There’s no schedule set aside in the operation of love So it is all there Yet it’s never too crowded it surprises us The ultra-high speeds that plow the space between you and me left no trace of the lines that they drew Light is the sharpest in the whole world “Diamond hewed with an iron hatchet sharpened and sharpened then quenched ice-quenched,”* ye flock of light-thieves flying away flying over all on thine own Thou sunlight, how mistful it is this morning of sunrise I hear whistling arrows I hear the sound of flesh melding Is there a need for the small Joseon moss rose now in bloom to tell that all it takes is a split second When have they all bloomed on their own and are now heaped up in the world so densely as they are
* In response to Venerable Ohyeon’s Simudo.
74
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
POETRY
Feeding Darkness all night fed the morning and dews are feeding the lawn of daybreak Who is it that day after day feeds the poppy garden with flower-meals seasoned so perfectly I’ve come back to my birthplace where feeding the grandfather clock was the morning routine of my childhood And again I’ve come to start each day by prepping breakfast and such for my family I fed the puppy as well and filled up the pot with water for the water lilies in the garden I also fed the lettuce the peppers in the backyard and the gaps of serenity that’s sprung up rather noticeably All through the springtime
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BOOKMARK
The Big Sister of Objects Amongst all direct underlings there by rule is a number one underling, a confidante The big sister of all objects naturally exists The little sisters too loyally smile along The Buddha’s direct underlings, the gangs, are diligently asking for alms on the side of the road chanting ‘Form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ The big Zelkova’s direct underlings, the leaves that have been burst by only the first sunlight of each morning by only the first water heaped up, solemnly create a majestic shade with their emerald diamonds The air’s direct underlings, the breaths of inhalation and exhalation which burrow into even the tiniest of holes, are creating deep furrows The evening sunset’s direct underling spreads its colors of speed drawing up a gust of the migrating finches’ direction The China pink’s direct underling, solely with a single layer of petals until the early snowy winter, quietly carries the love’s bylane guarding the street corner of the one who wouldn’t arrive My own direct underlings, the winds, repeatedly tumble forward at the plain where dry grass becomes hollow with its entire being I’m filled with a sense of imminence at such a time as this D’you know what’s getting near Hey big sister, little sisters of objects, you flowering true nature you
76
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
POETRY
Water Lilies The flower blooming by the virtue of closing serenity, I saw the hand that invisibly sewed up each flower that burst When the high noon passes water lilies without fail clamp their lips together Thou closing flower, thou flower blooming by the virtue of thy closure Thou bursting serenity,
From the poetry collection The Big Sister of Objects, CHAEK MAN DEU NEUN JIP, 2011, 100 pp.
thou dagger of serenity
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BOOKMARK
Two Groves of Newly-Planted Crape Myrtle I said sure come live with me yet I’m hastily pulling the horsetails plantains golden saxifrages springing up all over It’s for I’m still guarded with many latches, and for knowing how hard it is to pull them once the soil dries up My defense is trained to such a degree I suffocate the space and skies of the trees by planting new groves every year That too is for I’m bound by the bliss of desire while I say what I want is the bliss of freedom When will I ever let the emptiness be, leave it as it is For the past couple of days something’s been up with the two groves of crape myrtle that I planted last spring Amazing, abloom they enchant me Have they finally unlatched the gate Have they burst the suffocating sky Is it a revolution Are they teaching me the bliss of freedom Is it the bliss of desire that’s been locked within me I see I’m receiving a clue for yet another layer of wisdom I feel hot inside my body
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
POETRY
On a Snowy Evening Fresh cessation has been laid out white in layers for three days Now that it’s erased afar to the corners, an evening that becomes poetry without a wait shall soon arrive Thou snowfall shoring even the grave of death white, thou fresh cessation After a truly long time I’m caressing the inner flesh of
For publication inquiries, contact us at koreanlitnow@klti.or.kr
loneliness in gratitude Loneliness is being infinitely multiplied Translated by Won Ahrim
Chyung JinKyu In a career spanning five decades, Chyung JinKyu has published more than twenty volumes of poetry, for which he has received a number of awards including the Yi Sang Literary Award and the Manhae Literature Prize. Chyung has also served as a professor of creative writing at Hanyang Women’s University and chairman of the Society of Korean Poets in the past, and has been heading Contemporary Poetics as the editor-in-chief for thirty years. A translated collection of his poems entitled Tanz der Worte was published in Germany by Abera in 2006.
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REVIEWS | ENGLISH |
Metamorphosing Identity
Beauty Looks Down on Me Eun Heekyung Translated by Yoonjin Park, Craig Bott, Sora Kim-Russell, and Jae Won Chung
cafés—some of the stories tread into
but the identity of the narrators and the
m ild dream-l ike atmospheres . In
lack of identities of the majority of the
“Discovery of Solitude,” the unnamed
characters around them is prominent.
narrator is a loner. He even spends his
Even place names are replaced with single
birthday alone musing to himself that
letters instead of proper names. It is less
he “felt the distinct comfort of knowing
about the mundane surroundings.
there was nobody in the world who
“Praising Doubt,” a later story in
was thinking of [him] at that moment.”
the collection, is the most explicit when
While in thought, he also reminisces
conveying Eun’s propensity toward
of an unnamed fairy tale—no doubt,
identity. The main character, who
Pinocchio—with a wooden boy whose
is actually named Yoojin, organizes
nose grows when he lies. The narrator
strangers together so that she may receive
proffers a rewrite: What if, instead of
discount group train tickets. While on
having his nose grow, he floated into the
one journey, she sees a pair of twins. It is
air? He would be able to see more of the
then that Yoojin meets up with the twin
world and live a literal lighter existence.
brother of a man that might possibly
Through literary happenstance, the
share her full name or the name of his
loner narrator meets a woman who tells
brother, or possibly the translator of the
him of her divided selves:
book that she is reading when she meets him. Their names are the same, they live
Dalkey Archive Press, 2017, 160 pp.
“There are several me’s spread out all
in twin apartment buildings which are
over the world, living in different places
one letter different to demarcate them,
and at different times. They’re all very
they are both left-handed, and a package
different. . . . They all exist separately, but
arrives on Yoojin’s apartment instead of
A melang e of nameless narrators,
if at one point they all think the same
the apartment of the first twin. Yoojin
changing bodies, a floating woman,
thought, we suddenly become apparent
and the man’s identity overlap to such
and Dostoevsky-style doubles charge
to other people.”
an extent that if it weren’t for the gender
through Eun Heekyung’s short story
distinction, it could be intimated that
collection Beauty Looks Down on Me.
As the woman continues to describe
These six stories weave through the
her split self, she and the narrator begin
characters’ everyday lives, which often
to float above, he holding on to the hem
The writing is strong and direct in
feel as if they are teetering between the
of her dress. The story could be read
all six stories. Eun is confident in her
common and elements plucked from
literally, but the theme of identity (is
storytelling, and the reader never feels
fairy tales. Characters are obsessed with
the narrator the woman or vice versa or
lost even when the characters themselves
both their bodies and their identities,
both?) is surely Eun’s foremost thought
are lost in their own imaginations, their
the main fascinations of each of the
to the reader.
daydreams of what could come, and the
stories.
It could be trivial to say that Eun’s
Although the settings are rooted
stories all deal with identity. It is a broad
in the prosaic—train carriages, offices,
stroke to strike against the collection,
80
they are the same person, much like the characters in “Discovery of Solitude.”
machinations that derive from these schemes. However, at points, the stories
REVIEWS
feel like ephemera. Finishing the final pages leaves a clipped sense that their intentions haven’t stuck the way they were suppose to and there is nothing further for the reader to consider. The
| ENGLISH |
Magic, Martyrs, and Motorcycles
“hoarse-throated religious fanatics,” “a cult leader,” “the fake monk who begged while tapping at a wooden gong”—Jae is saved from sure death by Mama Pig, only to be deserted by
characters’ transformations and journeys
her in adolescence, shipped off to an
weren’t enough to knock the impression
orphanage where punishments include
of incompleteness. The collection is
solitary confinement, and then funneled
technically favorable, but the overall
into the communities of youth living in
wanting was hard to shake.
Seoul’s underworld, impoverished and
Still the stories of Beauty Looks Down
ignored, where the violence and cruelty
on Me find strength, no doubt, in their
they are fleeing often gets reenacted.
ability to hold something unique for
Though Jae’s journey is dominated
each reader. Eun’s writing has confidence
by alienation and abandonment, he
and draw, which will intrigue readers,
has a miraculous gift for empathy.
beguiling them into the strange worlds of her characters. by Ariell Cacciola
When, at age three, Donggyu becomes I Hear Your Voice Kim Young-ha Translated by Krys Lee Mariner Books, 2017, 272 pp.
Writer and Translator
mute, it is only Jae who understands “the words slowed up inside me that wouldn’t rush past my lips, that stayed petrified like stalactites.” The intensity and complexity of the boys’ friendship is conveyed in Jae’s role as interpreter: Is he the translator of his friend’s desires or their architect? Is he Donggyu’s shadow
Kim Young-ha’s I Hear Your Voice is a
or vice versa?
haunting, visceral portrait of friendship,
In adolescence, Jae develops the
belief, and betrayal. The book opens
ability to intuit and absorb the pain of
with the tale of a magician able to
all those around him:
restore life to a boy whose body has been violently rent apart. Are we
“It feels like someone is squeezing my
witnessing magic or a con man’s sleight
heart. . . . It doesn’t make a difference
of hand? This question is at the heart of
whether it’s an object, machine, animal,
the novel, which traces the rise and fall
or human. If a being experiences extreme
of the mythical and charismatic figure of
suffering, I feel it too.”
Jae, as told by his close friend and fellow outcast, Donggyu.
Young runaways and rebels who
Born in the bathroom of a bus
“sensed that Jae identified with their
terminal filled with both believers
suffering” become his followers, and
and those who manipulate belief—
he finds his ultimate role as the head of
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an underground motorcycle gang. His
I Hear Your Voice ma sterf ully
calling, he feels, is to lead these youth
explores the brutality of inequality,
and to, like an artist “taking a brush to
the long tail of violence, and the
the streets,” create a vast painting drawn
contradictory nature of friendship.
by the movements of their motorcycles
Above all, it is a book about the power
that will make the world recognize them.
and limitations of compassion. In one of
Kim Young-ha’s gorgeous, propulsive
his earliest memories, Donggyu recalls
descriptions, beautifully translated by
Jae “teetering on a dining chair with his
Krys Lee, capture the controlled chaos
arms outstretched.” Inevitably, Jae falls,
of the gangs’ rides, echoing Jae’s vision
pinning Dongg yu “down inside fear
of the artistry of their choreography.
and pain.” Throughout the novel, this
As Jae’s influence grows, so does
happens again and again—Jae is always
Dong g yu’s mistrust of him. Early
leaping and Donggyu is always trying
in the novel, Jae sets up two mirrors
to catch him, compassion outweighing
facing each other, with the purpose, he
his desire for self-preservation. And Jae
explains, of capturing the devil. In taking
himself embodies the furthest reaches
his friend’s place between the mirrors,
of this compassion. Magician or no,
Dongg yu realizes, “The only object
he takes on the pain of people who the
reflected in a mirror is the self; and a
world has actively made invisible.
person who persists in continuously
None of the central characters in the
gazing at himself is actually looking at
novel are clean-cut heroes or villains—
the devil.” Is Jae a prophet or a power-
they betray each other, they hurt
monger high on his own reflection?
themselves and others, they perpetrate
| ENGLISH |
Psychic Wounds and the Body’s Rebellion
The Hole Pyun Hye Young Translated by Sora Kim-Russell Arcade Publishing, 2017, 208 pp.
The meaning encoded in the book’s
the violence they have suffered—but,
structure emerges late in the narrative
like Jae, Kim Young-ha approaches
Pyun Hye Young’s novel The Hole is a
when, following Jae’s a scent, the
their stories with a compassion that
claustrophobic, riveting story calculated
perspective shifts from Donggyu to a
is palpable, granting them their full
to get under your skin. Its opening
local police officer who, in his control of
humanity and never shying away from
chapter unfurls with disarming and
“violence under the guise of legalized
the depth and complexity of their
cinematic swiftness. A man named Oghi
violence,” becomes both a foil for and
pain. And in doing so, he refuses to
wakes from a coma and experiences the
potential reflection of Jae. Like Jae’s
participate in what Jae contends to be
disorientation giving way to horror that
followers, the officer becomes obsessed
the greatest evil: “ignoring pain . . . not
one would expect to feel upon realizing
with the myth surrounding the teen
doing anything about someone’s cries.
the body has become a prison—and
and begins to participate in its creation.
The world of sin begins there.”
has been all along. Locked in near-total
However, it is only in the novel’s final
paralysis, in which blinking is now an act
brilliant narrative turn that the true
by Jessie Chaffee
worthy of praise, Oghi becomes acutely
scribe of this “Book of Jae” is revealed
Author, Florence in Ecstasy
aware of the smells, sounds, and functions
and, with it, the reason behind the
of the bodies that occupy his newly
story’s telling.
constricted world. Of a nurse, he notices,
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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
REVIEWS
“It wasn’t a nice smell. Sharp. Like she’d
Russell, describes it as a “gripping
communicate. The body’s sudden
just finished eating.” Later, the familiar
psychological thriller.” Yet the book
rebellion is a universally understood
smell of Oghi’s wife closes in on him,
goes less for the shocking violence of
terror that Jean-Dominique Bauby
despite the fact that she’s been killed
Stephen King’s Misery, to which it will
explores in his 1997 memoir The
in the same car crash that put him in
draw comparisons, and resides more
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which
the hospital. It is one of the arresting,
in a mode of suspense held taut by the
he dictated through roughly 200,000
never-quite-explained moments in a
threat of abuse.
blinks of one eye, all he could move
The Hole veers into the territory
after waking from a stroke-induced
o f f em in i st re veng e p l o t , wi th a
coma. Bauby wistfully describes the
The story alternates between Oghi’s
curious mix of sensationalism and
deluxe trappings of his life as editor-
flashbacks that dwell on the pressure
banality and a spare style that feels
in-chief of French Elle, whereas Oghi
points of his forty-seven years and
both commanding and restrained.
yearns for his hard-earned tokens of
his present struggles to navigate lying
Pyun takes aim at entitled, carelessly
upward mobility: premium whiskeys,
vulnerable to the whims of able-bodied
destructive men and the social
his Ethan Allen rosewood bed, suits
people he disdains but relies on for
structures that ser ve them at the
purchased in Italy.
survival. These include Oghi’s mother-
expense of women. Yet by inhabiting
All the while, Pyun lays clues to
in-law, now his closest thing to kin. An
the central male character’s perspective
Oghi’s casual misogyny and mercenary
attractive, demure widow, her poise
in a close third-person narration, the
morals, which turn against him in
cracks under the weight of her grief
writer adeptly renders him as both
the novel’s accelerating final third.
at losing her only child and attending
sympathetic victim and insufferable
He judges women harshly on their
to the man who crashed the car, and
narcissist. The latter is underscored by
a p p e a r a n c e a n d r e a d s h i s w i f e ’s
who she bitterly admits is also the only
the fact that only Oghi gets a name,
idolization of iconic female writers
family she has left.
while others are identified through
as a shallow desire for glamor. He
novel that gradually walls in the reader with haunting ambiguities.
A bestseller in South Korea, where
their relation to him: Oghi’s wife,
regards her failures to achieve her
it was published last year, The Hole
Oghi’s mother-in-law, the doctor, the
goals with a mix of bemused affection
occupies multiple in-between spaces,
live-in caregiver, the physical therapist.
and condescension. It is only after
like a disturbing itch that can’t be
Og h i’s c o l lea g ues from g raduate
Oghi’s mother-in-law discovers his
scratched. Information about the fatal
school and the university where he is
wife’s manuscripts and slips into her
car crash and what drove Oghi’s wife to
a professor appear interchangeable at
daughter’s persona while digging ever
become fixated on her garden emerges
first, as just M, K, J, and S.
larger holes in the garden that a fuller
in tantalizing bits, pointing toward the
Methodical as a spider weaving its
portrait of his wife and their fraught
ultimate resolution of these puzzles.
web, Pyun initially invites the reader
Yet as the narrative expands in several
into Oghi’s tale of woe. His mother
Pyun is among a group of Korean
directions, it threatens to leave readers
commits suicide during his childhood,
women writers whose psychologically
with the lingering, hollow feeling of
while his working class father derides
intense fiction has increasingly been
an unsolved mystery, a gaping hole if
his career as a cartography scholar and
translated into English in recent years.
you will. The jacket copy for Pyun’s
dies early from cancer. A bit of a loner,
This includes Bae Suah and Han
second novel to be translated into
Oghi finds his alienation reinforced
Kang , whose novel The Vegetarian
English, in the sure hands of Sora Kim-
by h is p ost- accident inabil it y to
shot to prominence after winning
marriage emerges.
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the 2016 Man Booker International Prize in Deborah Smith’s translation. The Vegetarian is another thriller of sorts that portrays a “difficult”
| French |
Realism and Reverie
The realism of Kim Dong-in, the most notable pioneer of this style in twentieth-century Korean literature, lies in the fact that his short stories
woman throug h the eyes of an
conceal nothing from us—whether
uncomprehending husband and other
this means the harshness of life and
relatives. Han’s heroine imag ines
a certain level of poverty, the various
becoming a tree as a way to refuse
pleasures that a city offers all levels of
violence, while The Hole, which grew
society, the political situation ( Japanese
out of Pyun’s short story “Caring for
o ccupation, for example), or the
Plants,” draws a more elusive connection
enchanting mountainous landscapes
between the plant world and rejection
around Pyongyang or Seoul.
of masculine dominance.
But what makes these stories truly
The Hole finds momentum in visceral
realist is that each conveys a particular
imaginings of physical trauma, yet its
m e d i tati on on e x i sten c e . W h ere
underlying current rests on questions surrounding true knowledge in romantic relationships and family ties, sacrifice
poverty reigns, death lays down its law. Les Recherches du professeur K (The Research of Professor K)
Living means learning to fight a losing
Kim Dong-in
battle. Morality, then, is merely a set
and selfishness, and the limits of care as
Translated by Kim Simon
of arrangements that enable us to live
paid service and as duty. Pyun confronts
Atelier des Cahiers, 2017, 253 pp.
another day. Obeying moral or social
us with the ways we lose ourselves
rules is no guarantee of happiness or
in everyday motion—in its absence,
unhappiness.
psychic wounds pounce harder.
“The Law” is a prime example of this. The story relates the transgressions of a Catholic convert who is unable
by Katrina Dodson Translator, The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
84
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
Reading this collection of short stories
to make a distinction between the
by Kim Dong -in, which includes
correctness of intentions and that of
“Potatoes” and other famous works, it
actions. “Where does it say that we may
is impossible not to sense immediately
kill someone with only a year to live?”
that one is in the presence of a great
K im D ong -in’s work owe s i ts
writer. As well as vividly evoking 1930’s
vitality to the way each story relates
Pyongyang, the author brings to life the
e vents and actions committed by
harsh reality—and pleasures—of life in
individuals who are motivated by a
that era. But there is an additional, more
dream. For each of these characters, the
complex process at work here: the subtle
dream has its origins in that infinite
mixing of realism and reverie, each story
source of vital energ y, where words
taking us on a journey through both
rub ag ainst the facts of existence
Korean history and the various layers of
and become the drivers of decisions,
the human psyche.
journeys and actions that, just a few
REVIEWS
moments earlier, had been unthinkable
woman appears beside a hideously
to those who carry them out. This
ugly painter. Her sudden appearance
dream, whether it takes the form of an
amid the mountain scenery signals
obsession, an irrepressible desire or an
the merging of dreams with an elusive
almost hallucinatory vision, is at once
reality. It is only when the painter
the force behind these words and the
f ina l l y ki l l s th e woma n that th e
surface on which they are inscribed,
evocative power of her gaze, itself
as they single-handedly enable each
a miracle of absolute purity, leaves
individual to live another day.
its mark on the painting that was
This is the case with Professor K,
supposedly the sole embodiment of
an extreme obsessive who intends to
perfection and beauty, like some divine
save humanity by feeding it its own
sign rising up beyond his control.
excrement. It is the case with Mr. Choe
Were he with us today, Kim Dong-
who, tr y as he might, is unable to
in might still call out and ask: “Excuse
escape the desire sparked by the sweet
me—have you too left home in search
fragrance of his former pupil’s wife.
of the rainbow?”
And, even more tragically, it is the case with Kim Jangeui in “The Poplar,” who
by Jean-Louis Poitevin
becomes a monster when the harmony
Author, Séoul playstation mélancolique
between a phrase, a gesture, and a tree is disturbed, revealing and triggering an
Editor-in-Chief, TK-21 La Revue
| French |
Five Tips to Escape Romantic Love
Tu m’aimes donc, Sonyong? (So You Love Me, Sonyong?) Kim Yeonsu Translated by Choi Mikyung and Jean-Noël Juttet Serge Safran éditeur, 2017, 207 pp.
expression of his violent desire. For Kim Dong-in, every situation we experience comes to us via this process of dreaming, which constitutes the beating heart of each of these stories
The American writer Ambrose Bierce
and lends them their narrative force.
once jokingly referred to love as “a
His characters find themselves cast into
temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
the maelstrom of life by an eruption
That’s a view that Gwangsu, the central
that sends them far beyond themselves,
character of Kim Yeonsu’s novel, would
beyond the realm of the possible and
be unlikely to share. On the contrary—
into the world of dreams—a world that
for him, it is precisely the day of his
seems, simultaneously, more real than
marriage that it all starts to go awry, and
the real world and so ephemeral that
the symptoms of the disease appear.
it must inevitably burst, sending those
Until now, this young man has
caught up in it into an irreversible
been happily in love with the beautiful
decline.
S onyong , whom he met th ir te en
In the last story in the collection,
years ago at the time of his university
“Tale of a Mad Painter,” a blind young
entrance examination. But now, on the
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cusp of marital bliss, a wound opens
or the inevitable “sweeping arc” of any
up. It doesn’t seem too serious, but
love affair—from its beginnings and
4. Love is undoubtedly “the most
as his bride tosses the bouquet in the
early blossoming to its apogee and
profound relationship that two
direction of the bridesmaid, Gwangsu
ending. More originally, he forces us
people can establish,” but “even if
can’t shake the feeling that something
to examine the connection between
we put our all into it” we should
about this marriage is not quite right.
romantic love and monogamy. “What
understand (and admit) that it will
Not to mention that one of the orchids
is romantic love,” Jinu asks, if not a
“never be entirely gratifying,” nor
in the bouquet has a broken stem. Just a
fantasy whereby we “delude ourselves
entirely transparent.
minor detail, of course—nothing more
that we love of our own free will,” that
5. Love is an expansion of the self (the
significant than “a bleeding gum when
we are “unfettered by any constraints,”
lover is capable of anything). When
brushing your teeth”—but it sends a
whether social, cultural, or economic?
it’s over, “a contraction takes place.
shiver down Gwangsu’s spine. “Humans
Biology does not play a major role in the
Having puffed itself up to cosmic
have a highly developed intuition when
writing of Kim Yeonsu, but Jinu evokes
dimensions, the self shrinks back
it comes to foreseeing danger,” notes the
it all the same: “We are wild animals by
to its former smallness. The grief of
author. Gwangsu immediately sees an
nature,” he claims, “designed neither for
love, therefore, is nothing but the
omen in the drooping flower.
monogamy nor for eternal love.” Kim
sensation of losing one’s self: the
Kim Yeonsu does not use this
stops short of implying that it would be
shrinking of an ego that had become
foundational scene, which plants
more natural and less hypocritical for
excessively swollen.”
the seeds of doubt and sets the novel
the human animal to evolve in an openly
in motion, as the starting point for
polygamous environment. But over the
With its seriousness, subtlety, and
an exploration of premonitions or
course of the novel, he does impart a
humor Tu m’aimes donc, Sonyong? is no
instincts. Rather, he invites us to
series of observations:
mere practical guide to avoiding the
share his thoughts on modern love.
employment-based society.”
pitfalls of “one true love.” But readers in
The reader soon learns that there is a
1. Romantic love is the invention of
a similar situation to the characters, i.e.
troublesome third party closing in on
philosophers. Plato is the main
those of “marrying age,” will doubtless
this married couple: Jinu is a second-
culprit, having gotten it into our
find plenty of food for thought here.
rate but self-satisfied novelist, an
heads since antiquity that “love
Not least the following sociological
inveterate womanizer who was formerly
means desiring one’s other half.”
conundrum: Why do we still feel such a
in love with Sonyong. When Gwangsu
2. As La Rochefoucauld, a seventeenth-
need for this illusion when, whether in
compares two photos from the wedding
century French writer, put it: “there
Seoul, New York, or Paris, one in every
in which Sonyong and Jinu stand close
are those who would never have
two marriages ends in divorce?
together, he feels his concern growing.
fallen in love had they not first heard
Were Jinu and Sonyong once lovers?
such a thing being talked about.”
What if they still are?
3. Monogamy is another illusion—
Against a backdrop of songs and
one bolstered by capitalism, which
karaoke, Kim skilfully inter weaves
“persuades us that romantic love
narrative passages with meditations
means eternal love, and efficiently
on the origins of the feelings of love,
ensures that monogamous families
suspicion, jealousy, the pain of memory,
are the most adapted to an
86
KOREAN LITERATURE NOW
by Florence Noiville Foreign Fiction Editor, Le Monde Author, A Cage in Search of a Bird
Translators Lizzie Buehler is a freelance Korean
Chi-Young Kim is an award-winning literary
Richard Silberg is associate editor of Poetry
translator and editor based in New York
translator based in Los Angeles. She has
Flash . He co-translated, with Clare You, The
City. She grew up in Texas and studied
translated the New York Times bestselling
Three Way Tavern (UC Press, 2006), which
comparative literature at Princeton
novel Please Look After Mom (Vintage
won the 2007 Northern California Book
University. She has also lived in South Korea
Books, 2012) by Shin Kyung-sook, which
Award in Translation, as well as several other
and the Netherlands. pp. 6-11
received the Man Asian Literary Prize, and
titles of Korean poetry. He is the author of
The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly
The Horses: New and Selected Poems (Red
Don Mee Choi is the author of Hardly
(Oneworld Publications, 2014) by Hwang
Hen Press, 2012) and Deconstruction of the
War (Wave Books, 2016), The Morning
Sun-mi. Her latest publication is Haemin
Blues (Red Hen Press, 2006), for which he
News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010),
Sunim’s The Things You Can See Only
received the PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles
and a translator of contemporary Korean
When You Slow Down (Penguin Books,
Literary Award. pp. 32-35
women poets. She is the recipient of the
2017). pp. 12-17 Ahrim Won is a journalist and literary
2016 Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry, the 2011 Whiting Writers Award in Poetry,
Ji Yeun Kim was born in Seoul. She
translator based in Seoul. Her translation
and the 2012 Lucien Stryk Translation
studied at Wroclaw International School
i n te r e s t s i n c l u d e p o e t r y , r e l i g i o n ,
Prize. Her most recent translation is Poor
and majored in English literature at Seoul
photography, and critical theory. pp. 74-79
Love Machine (Action Books, 2016) by Kim
National University. pp. 61-66 Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of
Hyesoon. pp. 36-38 Sora Kim-Russell is a literary translator
Ordinary Misfortunes (Tupelo Press, 2017)
Janet Hong’s fiction and translations have
based in Seoul. Her publications include
and A Cruelty Special to Our Species
appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit
Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari (Periscope,
(Ecco Books, 2018). She currently serves as
Hub, Words Without Borders , Asia Literary
2015) and Familiar Things (Scribe, 2017),
the poetry editor for the Asian American
Review , and others. She received a PEN
Bae Suah’s Nowhere to Be Found (Amazon
Writers’ Workshop and is a PhD student
American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation
Crossings, 2015), and Pyun Hye Young’s The
in Korean literature at the University of
Fund for her translation of Han Yujoo’s novel
Hole (Arcade, 2017). pp. 67-73
Chicago. pp. 42-46
2017). Her translation of Ancco’s graphic
Jesse Kirkwood studied modern languages
Clare You taught and coordinated the
novel Bad Friends is forthcoming from
at Oxford before spending a year in Japan
Korean program at UC Berkeley, and
Drawn & Quarterly in 2018. pp. 56-60
on a Tsuzuki Scholarship. He currently
served as chair of the Center for Korean
works full time as a literary and commercial
Studies. She translates modern Korean
Anton Hur was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
translator, and is a member of the Unitrad
poetry and fiction into English. Her co-
He is the winner of a PEN Translates award
network of independent translators.
translations include The Three Way Tavern
and multiple LTI Korea translation grants.
pp. 19-25, 84-86
(UC Press, 2006) and I Must Be the Wind
The Impossible Fairy Tale (Graywolf Press,
His work has been published in Words
(White Pine Press, 2014). She is a recipient
Without Borders , Asymptote Journal , Slice
Ji yoon Lee is a poet and translator whose
of the Order of Cultural Merit from the
Magazine , and others. His translation of the
most recent publication is Kim Yideum’s
South Korean government (2003) and the
collected short stories of Kang Kyeong-ae is
Cheer Up, Femme Fatale (Action Books,
Manhae Award (2017). pp. 32-35
forthcoming from Honford Star, UK in 2018.
2015). She is also the author of Foreigner’s
pp. 29-31, 47-54
Folly (Coconut Books, 2014), Funsize/Bitesize (Birds of Lace, 2013), and IMMA (Radioactive Moat, 2012). She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. pp. 39-41
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Each time I write a novel, there are a few things for which I am desperately eager. I hope for my readers to be fully and truly swept up into the fire for the duration of the story. . . . I hope that after their chests have burned black in the night, they’ll see the light of an exhausted dawn. Jeong You Jeong
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