[Korean Literature Now] Vol.37 Autumn 2017

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

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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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VOL. 37

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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

Literature Translation Institute of Korea 32, Yeongdong-daero 112-gil (Samseong-dong), Gangnam-gu, Seoul, 06083, Republic of Korea To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your mailing address, contact us at:

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.

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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.

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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,

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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.

Jeong: I think there are two kinds of novels. The first type is VOL. 37

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FEATURED WRITER

JEONG YOU JEONG

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

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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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FEATURED WRITER

JEONG YOU JEONG

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?

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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

she describes.

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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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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW

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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KOREAN LITERATURE NOW

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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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.

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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.

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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

why but a tremor ran through me, from the top of my head VOL. 37

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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,

82

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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AUTUMN 2017

85

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

VOL. 37

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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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