Persuading Koreans of the Wisdom of the "Mojo Wire"

It's odd.. Korea is the land of the last minute, the just above spec, and the rush job.

Why then, will none of my Koroean academic friends accept the notion of the "Mojo Wire?"

is it that the "Mojo Wire" implies process rather than passed on product?

It was originally the fax, but in my head it is the ability to to transmit bits of information in real time.. let us just call it something like.. oh.. conversation?

But I seem to be in the minority about this opinion here, as everyone likes to finish their work (at the absolute deadline) and then send it to the translator or editor with 5 minutes to go to deadline.

"the mojo wire", Thompson used the new technology to extend the writing process precariously close to printing deadlines, often haphazardly sending in notes mere hours before the magazine went to press. Fellow writers and editors would have to assemble the finished product with Thompson over the phone.

Which resonates with me.. cause Gawd damn it... if you send me the "finished" work at the deadline? It won't get finished.. let us have, in this happy world, a little electronic conversation.. a bit of the old this and that.. we can hash out the things that need to be hashed, and re-assemble into pork the things that need to be porcine.

Or I can get something with 15 minutes to go, and the request that I make it "English."

Fark it dudes.. I'm from the US..

I don't do English (other than their beers)

But if you send me the bits, the pieces?

I can spend time on them.. I can suggest how they can be better linked to fit the Western version of Academic Writing.. I can..

I can finish the thing and go to sleep!

Ahem...

off to edit the last piece that came in (at least one of my corporate bosses seems to get my model!)

Kim Young-ha has an English Website (And a new short story)

Kim Young-ha ("I Have the Right to Destroy Myself," "The Photo Shop Murder," "Whatever Happened to that Guy in the Elevator") has not only moved to Brooklyn at some point, but also has a nice new website in English.

The site is here (you have to click on that random splash page to get to the menu)

The story, "Their Last Visitor" (PDF - 5 pages) is here.

There are also some interviews on the site.

A Priceless Online Resource - "Twentieth-Century Korean Literature"

This is a link directly to the PDF of "Twentieth Century Korean Literature." Less than 100 pages long, written by Yi Man-ho, U Ch'ange, Yi Kwangho and Kim Mihyeon (Edited by the irreplaceable Brother Anthony, the link is also to a document on his brilliant site) this work broadly covers Korean Literature from 1900 to the present.

The book divides the literature into 4 periods, all of which will be obvious to those who know Korean history; The Occupation, The War and Post War, Industrialisation, and Consumer Society.

I've read this work twice - once before I had read any Korean Literature and just this week. It made a lot more sense the latter time, but it is worth reading just for its outline of general themes and developments. If you have read even the limited amount of Korean literature that I have talked about on this blog, the book will be even more valuable as you will recognize the roles of particular works and authors in the development of modern Korean Literature.

I look forward to coming back and re-reading this book again, in another year, when I have even more readings under my belt.

Not being a particular fan of translated poetry, those sections were still a bit opaque to me, but this work is so short there is no point in skipping any of it.

Other exciting things are going on over here by Namsan, including a project to develop translation selection rubrics, but for now I have to run off to the bookstore, and leave a link to this free digital gem (and run!).

North Korean Literary Theory

In three recent posts the Translator and I discussed the political impetus behind Korean fiction and its serialization. Now, in an interesting article in the Korea Herald, Choi Yearn-hong talks about North Korean Literary Theory, which is not only intensely political, but explicitly so:

North Korean literature promotes socialist ideology, new technology and Puritan communist culture. Kim Jong-il has been criticizing North Korean literature as lacking philosophic depth, aesthetic sense, sensitivity and artistic craftsmanship, and thus as mundane, mechanical, repetitive and ``distant from life.'' His different theories, ``the seed theory,'' ``literature as a study of man,'' and ``Our Own Creative Works,'' attempted to correct weaknesses in North Korean literature. I doubt his theories have achieved what they were supposed to accomplish.

and

What is (or are) North Korea's literary theory (or theories) which guide North Korean literary works?

The North Korean government continued to indoctrinate its people with socialism until the early 1960s. It justified its initiation of the Korean War, 1950-1953, as a national liberation struggle, mobilizing all resources toward building a socialist country. Under the direction of the Communist party, literature and art were used to propagate revolutionary socialism. From the mid-1960s, writers and artists were expected to advocate the Juche thought of Kim Il-sung. History was rewritten from the perspective of Kim's Juche thought.

In the 1980s, North Korean literary critics started to discuss the ``seed'' theory, which originated from Kim Jong-il, the son of Kim Il-sung. In one of his speeches, Kim made the statement; ``All great writers should have good seed in their literary works.'' It is a commonsensical word, but it has stirred up North Korean poets and writers. They spent the first five years of the 1980s extensively discussing the meaning of the seed theory.

One critic said, ``Seed theory is searching for a balance between ideology and aesthetic sense or artistic craftsmanship.'' Another said, ``it is the philosophic depth of literary works.'' In order to settle the dispute, the North Korean Writers' Association attempted to find the seeds in their so-called classic literary works ``Blood Sea,'' ``Fate of a Militia Man,'' ``Flower-selling Maid,'' ``Traditional Worshipping Place,'' and ``Ahn Jung-geun shot Ito Hirobumi.'' The seeds, in their classic works are class struggle, national liberation, permanent revolution, Kim Il-sung's fight against the Japanese army and the U.S. army, and his victories.

In the mid-1980s, North Korean critics started to say that ``literature is a study of man,'' which originally appeared in Kim Jong-il's book, ``On Cinema,'' reported in the February 1992 issue of Chosun Munhak. Kim said, ``literature is a study of man. Literature should not come from an empty sky; it should come from real human life experiences.'' He emphasized that Kim Il-sung was the man who fought the Japanese Manchurian Army and defeated it, who fought the mighty U.S. army and defeated it, and who reconstructed the North Korean economy from the ashes of the Korean War. His speeches were made on the occasion of publishing a series of novels on the life of Kim Il-sung, his father, under the name of ``Never-perishing Literature'' series. ``Literature as a study of man'' includes stories about a lovely young woman who married a disabled veteran from the Korean War; the humble man who enjoyed equality under Kim Il-sung's leadership; a teacher who could not leave her countryside school for her fiance in a city; a worker who produced more than his assignments; a scientist who invented a new sophisticated technology in a steel mill; a prisoner of war; and an employee who produced his works ahead of schedule among many others. All these people are small Kim Il-sungs.

In 1991, the North Korean Writers' Association advocated ``Our Way of Making Creative works'' modeled after the party line, ``Let's Maintain our Own Socialism.'' They recognized the fact that the Cold War was gone, that the USSR was dismantled, and East European communist nations were converting to free market economies. Our own style of socialism never knows defeatism, it only knows victories.

It's worth checking out..

An Appointment with My Brother by Yi Mun-yol

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 13 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul

Yi Mun-yol’s An Appointment with My Brother is a full-fledged political lecture wrapped in the garb of a short novel. Yi makes no effort to hide the fact that the central discussion is, in many ways, a minor part of the formal plot, although it is also quite clearly the important part of the novel. It is to Yi’s credit that he personalizes his protagonists so well that, even as they (The two step-brothers as well as a businessman who appears in the novel) argue what is essentially predictive political theory, both the story and the argument seem lively and important.

The plot is fairly mechanical. The narrator meets with his stepbrother, a child from their father’s second marriage. The father’s second marriage occurred after he defected from South to North Korea. This plot is reminiscent of Yi’s own life, which was substantially complicated, both economically and politically, by the fact that his father defected to North Korea. The meeting takes place in China and the meeting is between stepbrothers because their father, whom the narrator had initially hoped to meet, has died.

The meeting between separated brothers is an old trope in Korean modern literature, “In Korean popular discourse, the division of the peninsula into two separate nations after the Korean War is often symbolized as two brothers who, in the shadow of their parents’ death, are tragically separated across an artificially imposed national line.” (Wood 129) Presaged by political discussions between the narrator and, successively a businessman and a professor, when the two brothers meet the conversation becomes a nationalistic one with each brother retreating to the platitudes of his homeland. This leads to some fairly crackling interactions, including one of my favorite passages:

I heard that the traitorous plutocrats have millions of square meters of land, and that all the scenic places are taken up by their deluxe villas where they cavort with young whores.

That’s some funny writing and also does a good job of relaying the overblown oratory-style the North Koreans sometimes use when discussing the South at the same time it limns the lack of sophistication of the North Korean brother. Other characters have similarly vivid personalities and Yi does an excellent job of weaving them in and out of the story.

The brothers struggle to find common ground and in a very “Korean” scene, their differences are bridged by drinking soju, and the brothers perform a joint memorial service for their father. Nationalist sentiments never quite quit intruding, there is an amusing scene in which the brothers argue over the meaning of their offerings to their father, but in the end familial unity is restored and a sort of judgment seems to be reached, when the Northern brother accepts a gift of cash from the Southern one. This action also echoes one of the ongoing political themes of the novel, that re-unification may end up being an economically costly process. That is only one of the political/economic options the book explores with respect to re-unification, and it is one of the minor miracles of the book that Yi makes all the options/predictions stand on their own two legs; in most cases he is quite good at leaving judgments out of his text.

This is a suprisingly light and entertaining read.

Novel Serialization; The Web; Korean Democratization - Part III

The Translator says ---

I think the recent re-serialization on the Internet by established authors is "merely the literary elite finally catching the tail of the internet beast and trying to ride it for advantage."

Some background information to support my opinion: Korea's serialized novels on newspapers began with the idea of educating the public. Or, rather, inspire them to awaken their senses and pride of being a Korean. Such was an essential campaign that naturally leads to liberalization from the unlawful Japanese regime.

When Korea became liberated, however, the original intention of educating the public slowly lost its purpose because the main enemy and their oppression was no more. True, the commies soon took the place, but North Koreans are, after all, our own people. Serialization started to lose its goal, and succumbed to popular novels that dealt with lowdown subjects that sold well.

Intermittently, the serialization came back to life (hence your claim of its role in democratization is dead right) when important events took place, such as military coup d'etat, student movements, city redevelopment plans (the Dwarf) and labor demontrations, etc... With the ebb and flow of these events and the subsequent rise and deterioration of serialized novels, the serialization became bi-polar in its character: sex and violence novels printed on sports newspapers and heavy and serious works on reputable newspapers. Among those who published some important work is Park Wan Seo, whose work you are reviewing.

Still, the primary intention of how it all started (instilling national pride for liberation) became no more, for at least a couple of reasons. First, the time has changed as we (some of us) have progressed from the supersonic era, to the age of information super-highway. Through time, serialized novels became ineffective method to instill national pride. People want things quick and an instant manner. Succinctness has become a merit. Bite sizes have become the norm. Drawn out serialization is now for housewives who watch Korean soap operas. Second, the role of inspiring national pride has turned its focus on shedding a critical light on contemporary issues, i.e. military dictatorship in the 80s and the financial crisis in the end of 1990s. This happened because, well, Korea is no longer under the Japanese occupation. You can't focus on a target when the target disappears. Losing the focus and staggering with the burden of punctual writing, serialized novels lost the appeal they once enjoyed. In its place came pictorials. The military dictatorship govenrment was stern on censorship when it came to serialized novels, but it was rather lax for some reason for pictorials. Taking advantage, pictorials shed critical light on numerous domestic issues for which the public yearned. This is well documented in the recent (still running?) exhibition of Korean comics and pictorials in Seoul. So, now, cartoonists took over the job once assigned to elite writers, and they have done so well in a 2 inch X 2 inch space. Wasn't a picture supposed to tell a thousand words, so to speak?

Meanwhile, what did the established authors do? Not much. Some kept on writing books and others taught writing in Universities. Some who had been critical on politics and corruption got into politics themselves and turned conservative. The spirit of serialization was nothing in the newly found economic status Korea enjoyed. This was in the 1990s.

Then, under their very noses, something strange started to happen: The Internet. Common people began using the internet to publish their own stories, however amatuerish they were. Mostly fantasy stuff (more sex and violence and less literary work), but they began taking advantage of their new medium. Slowly, a truly democratic serialization of novels began forming. No one paid them to do it. People just began writing.

Established writers who may have begun as critics of existing powers now occupied the power seats themselves, and they did not even turn their eyes to internet serialized novels. They considered the new genre as cheap, worthless, next to nothing doodling. No one really saw the possibilities or the democratization movement associated with it. If they saw it, they did not think it would be big one day.

Now it's quite big. Those who sold many books before are not doing so hot. Those who entered politics became the subject of public criticism themselves.

What do you do when you don't know what to do? Hop on the bandwagon!

Ahhhhh~ my son is tugging at my side because he wants to be tugged in..... Gotta go, but you get the gist...

Novel Serialization; The Web; Korean Democratization

In Part One of this series(?) I talked a little bit about the historical fact that Korean authors have often published their works serially, in newspapers and magazines. As I’ve thought about this a bit more, and done some reading, I’ve tentatively concluded:

This was a conscious social effort at modernization with a strong latter emphasis on democratization

I ended my last post by noting that the newspapers, at least, seem to be serializing less (BTW – this is why I need a nice Korean partner here – I have this sense, but not enough Korean or cultural skill to turn up actual numbers) .

Now, authors have moved on to the next best thing – the Internet. The Translator sums it up, “Big time authors are making moves on going back to serialization, not on newspapers, but on the internet” and the evidence is obvious:

• Park Bum-shin has published his novel “Cholatse” on Naver
• Hwang Suk-young has serialized `Gaebapbaragibyeol'' on Naver.
• Jung I-hyun, has posted her new novel,``You Don't Know'' on the Kyobo Website
• Novelist Gong Ji-young recently serialized her novel ``The Crucible'' on Daum,.

The Translator, being a bomb-thrower at heart, argues that this trend is merely the literary elite finally catching the tail of the internet beast and trying to ride it for advantage. He argues that this kind of self-publication has been occurring since the 1990s but that the literati ignored it because the subject matter tended to be “sci-fi fantasy, martial arts, sex and violence and more lowbrow stuff.”

It is certainly true that there seems to have been a 20-year lag between the opening of the internet and the appearance of Korean authors on it. And if Korean writers were solely interested in democratization (or any other political goal), you might have expected someone to begin serialization prior to now.

It is also true that no such lag existed between the publishing of newspapers and the printing of novel serializations: They began simultaneously. It is also clear that this alliance was expressly built to promulgate an educational goal:

The change from traditional to modern literature during the Enlightenment period was largely due to the effects of the New Education and the Korean Language and Literature movement. After the Kabo Reforms of 1894, a new brand of education was enforced, new Western-style schools were established, and new textbooks for teaching Western knowledge were published. The literature of the Enlightenment Period secured its social base through newly emerged media like newspapers. Most newspapers, including the Tongnip Shinmun (The Independent), Hwangsong Shinmun (The Imperial City Newspaper), Taehan maeil Shinbo (Korean Daily News), Cheguk Shinmun (Imperial Newspaper), Mansebo (The Forever Report), Taehan minbo (The Korean People's Report) all published serial novels, as well as shijo, and kasa.
http://www.asianinfo.org/asianinfo/korea/literature.htm

That this goal was an essentially nationalistic one is also self-evident. Yu Beongcheon notes that Yi Kwang-su’s alliance with the Tonga Ilbo was always perceived from Yu’s side as a way to promulgate novels that were a “cover for nationalism,” (Yu 156”) the hazards of Japanese censorship notwithstanding.

It isn’t unfair to conclude, then, that the first serializations were in fact conscious manifestations of the political will of publishers and the government, who backed that will up with their publication dollars. And some of these dollars, of course, went to the writers.

From an author’s perspective, however, the web lacks a direct link to profit, and thus it is most likely attractive from a purely political point of view, not from an economic one. It is worth noting that the elite, just as we average Joe’s and Hyeok’s, need to eat. And pay for big cars and houses. ;-)

So the Translator’s stance that this recent move to the web may be explained away as Philistinism in nature, is at least partly defensible.

Still, I am not completely willing to toss the literary elite out on their ears for the lag in online publishing, rather I see what has happened as a belated understanding that with traditional publication opportunities drying up writers are in some ways continuing with their writerly and pedagogic goals in ways that they know might not directly pay them off.

In a way you could call that noble, even if it has been partly forced upon them.

Consequently, the new trend towards web-serialization seems to be a laudatory continuation of the noble (admittedly self-serving, but nonetheless noble) Korean tendency to use literature as a living, breathing, political tool.

Which loops back to the question of the novels mentioned previously. Not all of them are available in English, but here is what a Google search reveals about their political content:

Park Bum-shin’s “Cholatse” is aimed at youths who ignore important goals and dreams in favor of rank materialism. The novel features, that most Korean of modern novelistic tricks, two brothers who must fight and then reunite for success. Essentially, in content and metaphor, it is an intensely political novel and fits nicely into the nation-building narrative I have attempted to establish above.

While I could not find an English review, Hwang Suk-young who wrote `Gaebapbaragibyeol,'' is an avowedly political writer who has said:

What is known as globalization is in fact Americanization: we need to stop following the American model and build a movement that wil close the gap between the rich and the poor and give more purchasing power to the developing world.

Jung I-hyun’s `”You Don't Know,'' does not seem to have an English summary or review online.

Novelist Gong Ji-young’s `The Crucible'' is completely in the democratizing/political line of serialized Korean literature. It takes place in Gwangju, which immediately tips a history-savvy reader that the work will deal with issues of oppression and punishment (Gwangju was the location of the famous 5.19 incident in which troops shot protestors down in the streets).

This is a small sample, of course, but what it does seem to indicate to me is that at least the general trend of the last century, that is the serialization of polemical novels that once took place in newspapers, has now transplanted to the web.

That fact can’t be anything but good for Korean literature and Korean politics.

"Inside Cloud Cuckoo Land: The Voice of Korea" Withdrawn..

UPDATE

"Inside Cloud Cuckoo Land: The Voice of Korea,” is NOT available for readers to purchase.

The author has informed me that due to publishing problems,the book has been withheld from distribution. The publisher, however, says that the book will be re-issued at a later date--a year from now!

When I contacted the publishers they agreed with this timetable:

At the moment we are waiting until the book can be reprinted before distributing it. I anticipate that the volume might appear in a corrected version in August or September of 2010.

Taebaek Mountain Range (needs to be translated)

Here's a review of a book that looks worth reading. This is stolen whole fromcuidadocomodalmat (I don't think I'm going to let that bother me as that seems to be stolen whole from here. ;-)) a site which seems to be primarily in Spanish, but has an English page. Looks like another book to put on my list, well if it ever gets translated into English! It is currently available in French, German, and Japanese.

Last interesting point? The author appears to work at the same University I do.

Taebaek Mountain Range portrays the tragedy of ‘liberation lost’; upon examining this tragedy closely, we see a common problem towards the end of feudalism — namely, the persecution of the peasantry at the hands of the land-owning class. Jo provides a compelling portrayal of life in South Korea immediately after liberation. Taebaek Mountain Range has had an enormous influence on its Korean readers. The work demonstrates the power of imaginative writing; Jo’s words have the power to move the hearts of his readers and have them look back on history to confront the realities of the hidden past. The narrative inspires with its anti-war message. The text overflows with humor and playfulness even when describing tragic situations. The central characters never give up their optimism, their belief that they will ultimately prevail, even while suffering through the misery of war. Jo provides a meticulous analysis of human behavior. He uses his honesty and awareness of reality as weapons, but he never tries to push forward his own judgment. He portrays mid-twentieth century Korean society using sensual and sometimes even extreme language. His work is rich with both satire and poetry. Professor Calvez says, “Some of the expressions are coarse and crude but there’s also much profoundness. The parts portraying Korea’s shamanist faith and traditional rites leave particularly lasting impressions on the Western reader.” Jo shows the shortcomings of the Korean people, as well as their joy and optimism, and their upright mentality. These are some of the reasons why this work is considered one of the greatest works of Korean literature.

The Ma Rok Biographies by Seo Giwon

It is not easy to make Korean history, which has so often been tragedy, into a farce, but Seo Giwon (ably edited by the redoubtable Kevin O’Rourke) pulls off this unlikely trick in his The Ma Rok Biographies. In three short stories (stories 2, 3, and 5 from the original work) , all featuring protagonists named “Ma,” Seo handily portrays the random, absurd, and farcical nature of Korean history in three different eras; the pre-Japanese feudal system; under Japanese rule, and; during the Korean war. In the course of this he also passes judgment on individual humans: He finds them powerless, feckless, and silly; flotsam and jetsam on seas of indeterminacy. Finally, he also passes judgment on human systems, our war-making and our political systems particularly, and finds them wanting.

FALLING UP – THE MA ROKSOM BIOGRAPHY
The first profile (the second in the original text) is perhaps the most random of the three stories. In it a hapless political-science student is battered about by events surrounding the North Korean advance down the Korean peninsula. In hopes of escaping the North Koreans, Ma Roksom swims the Han River and is immediately arrested as a North Korean spy. By a bit of luck, he is recognized by a friend and instead of becoming a prisoner of war, or being killed as a spy, begins a long and perambulating series of events in which, until the end, even his most ridiculous behavior is eventually rewarded. After his swim across the Han, Ma heads down to Busan, far away from the encroaching communists.

In, perhaps, an intentional parody of the odd position of power that English sometimes confers in South Korea, Ma Roksom’s limited ability to say random English words gains him a position as interpreter. This position causes him great psychic and physical strain, and he is almost happy to lose it and move to a position as an interrogator closer to the lines. There, Ma ‘attacks’ two prisoners, in fact he is more or less trying to reason with them, but he gains a reputation as a tough-guy that follows him even as he is transferred to a job even closer to the front. Again, he is a translator, and again he fails. This results in his move to the Military Patrol, by now all the way up near Pyeonyang where he is given command of a POW camp. A reader can’t help but notice that as soon as Ma Roksom starts “winning” through his inexplicable tussles with reality, he moves closer and closer to just that which he had endeavored to escape.

At the POW camp, Ma recognizes old friends who he knows are not communists. At this point Ma makes his second act of personal will (the first being his swim across the Han) and directs a fraudulent execution scene that allows his friends a clean escape.

In a universe of random absurdity, however, directed deeds – even good deeds – represent a tear in the fabric of life, and of course Ma is caught and punished for his attempt to instill some kind of sense into his life.

The punishment is also absurd. Ma is forced to strip down to his underpants (although the translation also says “naked”) and run across a bridge in the dead of winter. Ma thinks about the absurdity of crossing two rivers only in his underpants but his final thought is that “The scene when he reached the neck of the bridge was gratifying: he was like a sprinter breaking the tape.”

As a comment on the war itself, Seo is clearly arguing something that could only be argued in a farce: that decisions were being arrived at arbitrarily and that the situation outstripped the ability of any understanding; so reason was tossed out.

FALLING DOWN – THE MA JUN BIOGRAPHY
The second profile (third in the original book) features Ma Jun, a “conscientious official” who is actually officiates nothing. This story likely takes place in the late 1600s, as it is placed in the middle of the historical power struggle between the Noron and Soron political parties during a period in which the Noron control the country that is also an “end of the century culture.” (p 52)

In any case, the Ma family has been in decline for several generations, are associated with the out of power Soron, and if Ma does not receive an official position, his family will be stricken from the ranks of nobility. Certainly Geo presents the test for an official position as rigged, but Seo is never a writer to suggest only one “reason,” because ultimately he is arguing that reason has little to do with outcome. So, Seo adds another burden to Ma - unfortunately, generations of bad luck and malnutrition have taken a toll:

The presumption was that a hole had been bored in the Ma family brain. The tragedy of the father and son was their complete failure to realize this.

Seo’s breezy and clever style is evident in this passage from the absurd image of the family sharing one brain, to the notion that the damage done from boring into it is so great that the damaged themselves cannot assess it.

Before his death Ma Jun’s father counsels Ma Jun to assiduously court a local politician, Lord Kim. Unconvinced, Ma Jun seeks advice from his friend Choe Chiyol, who recommends steadfastness in the Soron cause and studied indifference to base political power. Ma Jun eventually rejects Choe’s advice and insinuates himself into the house of Lord Kim. As the story comes to its climax, Ma Jun is given a family-saving magistracy in Jeongeup at just the time that his feckless friend Choe leads a hopeless attack on Lord Kim’s court.

This is an act of suicidal rebellion and in the course of it Choe reprises Geo’s estimate of the Ma family as have a “hole ... bored … in the … brain” by braining himself with an axe. This senseless act by Choe causes Lord Kim to,whimsically give the magistracy of Jeongeup to Choe, who Kim rightly identifies as a useful idiot. In several strokes of a pen (“the bespectacled recorder’s writing brush moved diligently”) the Ma family line is destroyed by random, absurd and farcical events.

If the first biography revealed the farcical nature of the Korean war, this biography shows the farcical nature of the feudal political system and neo-Confucian social system that pre-dated Japanese colonialism.


FALLING FOR IT – THE MA YEONG BIOGRAPHY
The third profile (fifth in the original book) begins with an absurdist introduction: “I propose to detail one undocumented case, a man by the name of Ma Yeong.” From this technically impossible opening salvo to the (almost) happy ending of the short story Geo paints the picture of a rather charming collaborator named Ma Yeong. This profile takes place during, obviously, the Japanese occupation of Korea.

The story is of two father-son relationships gone bad. First is that of the collaborator, whose son hates school, because the other children tease him about his father’s job. Ma Yeong responds with the “everyone else is doing it” argument, and I found this the only slightly weak section in all three of the stories. The bigger problem is to be found in the household of Mr. Kim, a far larger collaborator who serves on a puppet governmental agency of the Japanese. Mr. Kim’s son loathes him and becomes an anti—colonialist.

Ma Yeong is being pressured by his handlers to produce something actionable, and the plot revolves around his efforts to both ensure that Mr. Kim’s son is not killed by the Japanese and that Ma himself can turn something useful over to the Japanese. It would ruin the story to reveal the clever stratagem the Yeong uses, but he does manage to navigate the Scylla of the Japanese and the Charybdis of Mr. Kim and get out of the situation with a bit of aplomb.

This is an amusing story, but it has to be noted that it breaks the mold of the other two in the sense that this Ma is able to use information, reason, and planning to arrive at a reasonably sensible, and to some extent remunerative solution. As a non-Korean reader I suspect that in this story Seo was not able to resist the urge to tell a B’rer Rabbit type story in which the humble Korean outwits the colonial Japanese. The absurdism in the third profile is not carried to its, if it is not misusing the word, logical conclusion.

A good story, entertainingly told, but not precisely of the same cloth as the previous two.

The translation is quite good, getting the randomness and stupidity of Seo’s universe across with appropriate verve. One example: In the third/fifth Biography the translator gets bureaucratese exactly right:

The background to his becoming that most hated of entities, a police informer, was not without its own extenuating circumstances. However, a prolix introduction of such trivialities at the beginning of this account is not to the purpose. Suffice it to say that the noble ambience emanating from his single character name indicated that he was the seed of a family line of some substance.

That’s just brilliant stuff by Seo and Kevin O’Rourke, with the language simultaneously amplifying and deflating the bureaucratic pretensions of the narrator.

The liner notes, on the other hand, seem a bit suspect to me. They claim:

Ma Rok, which stands for the various protagonists with the surname of Ma in this series of five short stories (of which only three are included here), actually means “the horse and the deer” in Chinese. This odd combination of the two animals refers to a classical Chinese anecdote in which the powerful can coerce others into seeing a horse as a deer.

I’m honestly not sure how this applies to the book I was reading as this particular anecdote is more about the coercive power of the state, and the stories in Ma Rok are much more focused on randomness. I'd be much more likely to attribute the title to another Chinese anecdote, the race of the horse and the deer, in which a horse and a deer who are friends are brought to death and slavery by their absurd envy, and the power of the fox. In addition, “marok” is the Japanese word for idiot, which also seems a bit closer to the mark. I have a suspicion that the liner notes are in some kind of error here, although only Seo could know for sure, and I'm not sure how to get in touch with him to find out.

And Now, a Word from a Sponsor!

A cute video of the Korean Literature Translation Institute booth at the recent International Book Fair at the Coex. The video is by Hyunwon Soo who says:

I went to International Seoul Book Expo 2009 and visited the booth of Korea Literature Translation Institute and received a warm welcome from the staff.

http://klti.or.kr/eng/

Check out their website if you want to learn more about Korean literature!

The Wounded, by Yi Chongjun

The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 4 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul

In The Wounded Yi Chongjun deals with issues of identity. As in An Assailant’s Face that identity is tightly connected to the question of a face, in fact in both stories the question of what and who the face is, and to what extent it is important to know one’s face. Obviously, face is used here in the symbolic sense of identity

The Wounded is a complicated story, featuring a story within a story – really layers of stories within stories, and then a revelation of a final fiction that sets the entire story on its ear. The key characters are two brothers, with two peripherally related female characters serving more or less to show the outlines of the personalities of the brothers. One brother is a doctor and the other an artist. The artist suffers a “wound” that makes him faceless, while the doctor suffers a wound that he feels defines his face. In an intriguing philosophical sub-plot, the faceless artist argues with himself (although considering his brother) about cowardice/omission and action/commission. The former is associated with facelessness and the latter with a ‘defined’ face. As the story works its way through, it becomes clear that Yi believes that without defining the ‘unknown’ face of evil, morality or even just functionality, cannot be achieved.

The doctor has just lost his first patient and the artist has lost a potential wife. The doctor’s response to his trauma is to begin a piece of fiction, based on an event in his life (and related to a childhood trauma), in which a soldier (the doctor), trapped behind enemy lines, kills one of his compatriots. The doctor, unfortunately, cannot bring himself to finish that story. In a doubly unfortunate event, the artist, who is struggling with a painting, reads his brother’s story and somehow finds its inability to conclude to affect his own ability to complete his painting. This painting is intended to be his first painting that includes a human face. That the painter is attempting this is implicitly tied to the fact that Hyein, one of his students, to whom he was attracted and with whom he had a brief physical relationship, is marrying another man.

The doctor’s fiction is of three men trapped behind enemy lines. The first character is the ‘narrator’ of the story within a story, and that is the doctor. The second character is a hapless, and perhaps masochistic, soldier named Private Kim. The final character is the sadistic Sergeant Gwanmo, who is also a homosexual rapist. With Private Kim wounded, and all three trapped behind enemy lines, the captain decides that there are not enough supplies for three characters and that Private Kim should be killed, “when the first snow falls.”

Upon writing the scene in which the first snowfall does fall, the doctor is seized by writer’s block and cannot write the critical scene of the murder, what he has written ends with the doctor, saying, “it was then I thought it was alright for him to die.” As the doctor has already admitted to the painter that he committed a murder, it is clear that the doctor killed Kim, although Gwanmo’s role in the murder is unclear at the outset.

The painter, exasperated beyond patience, takes it upon himself to conclude his brother’s story, hoping to bring them both closure. This is a clever plot development from a purely writerly point of view, as it creates a story within the story within the story. The painter has his brother pull Private Kim from the cave and shoot him in the snow.

This leads the Doctor to reveal the “real” story he intended to write - I will not spoil this, as it is the beginning of a brilliant run up to an event in the present that shatters every story previously told. Suffice it to say that the tightly wound plot releases in a most unexpected way.

As I mentioned at the outset, the face is the key symbol/metaphor of The Wounded. Towards the start of the The Wounded the doctor looks at his brother’s painting of the faceless person and muses:

“… depending how you look at it, it could be a finished piece even through the face has no features. It could be God’ most faithful son – with no eyes or ears, living by merely following God’s will. But once it gets eyes, a mouth, a nose, ears, it’ll be different, won’t it?”

Why the doctor associates an unfinished face with goodness becomes clear as his story-within-the story ends, the doctor saying, “I saw a smiling, blood-covered face. It was mine.”

The painter argues that this final revelation will be give the doctor the strength to continue, as he will have defined himself. The painter feels that he is crippled by NOT having a face and at the end of the story, after the doctor has destroyed the faceless painting, the artist reflects:

My work, my canvas lay in pieces like a broken mirror. I might have to lose even more before I could start over again. Perhaps I would never be able to find a face. Unlike the one behind my brother’s pain, there was no face in mine.

While Yi suggests, in this pairing of stories, the difficulty of putting a single “face” to victimizers or victims of the Korean War, he clearly also sees the necessity of confronting the ‘faces’ involved in it, if only to provide a platform from which to go forward. . frame

Yi echoes this theme in the sub-plot of the painter and his student Hyein. Hyein sends a letter (yet another framed device in this multiply scaffolded work ) to the painter analyzing him as having a “war wound” despite the fact that it is his brother who was actually in the war. Hyein writes:

You … have a wound with no origin. … Your symptoms are more serious, and your wound is more acute because you have no idea where it is located and even what kind of wound it is.

In other words, it is the undefined face with which the painter struggles. Again, this is thematically linked to An Assailant’s Face, making this pairing of stories both evocative and explicative.

Technically speaking, Yi Chongjun is a talented writer, as carrying off his ambitiously multi-framed novel suggests. He is also quick and skilled (and so, I should add, is his translator) at drawing a character. A reader learns all he needs to know about the Doctor’s wife in two quick passages in which the painter describes her as:

The kind of person who enjoys humiliating actors by applauding when they miss their lines.

And

My sister in law disliked complicated stories

Which is a doubly judgmental line when placed in a novel of such labyrinthine nature.

The combination of Yi’s skill as a writer and the powerful story he tells, makes The Wounded an excellent short novel for a beginning reader of Korean literature. It is modern in the telling, has existential themes that resonate without requiring particular knowledge of Korea or its most recent war, and it also evokes the psychological damage caused by the fratricidal (it is no coincidence that the characters here are brothers) war.


NEXT: The Ma Rok Chronicles: A much lighter look at the absurdities of war.

A book that ought to interest both fans of literature and translation

Via an article over at the Korea Times I find a collection of works by a man who must surely be one of the true pioneers of Korean modern literature, and also seems to have been quite interesting entirely on his own account.

The review begins:

The new book, ``Inside Cloud Cuckoo Land: The Voice of Korea,'' is a compilation of essays in English and translations of modern Korean poems and short stories by the late professor Lee In-soo.

Lee pioneered translating Korean literature into English in the 1940s and the works included in the book were made during his professorship at Korea University from 1946 to 1950.

A combination of prose essays and translations of both poems and fiction it should be interesting both for what it contains (and some of the essays sound fascinating) as well as what the translations look like.

The reviewer in the Times says:

The most noteworthy work is the translation of ``The Wing'' authored by Yi Sang. Although it was not completed and remains in fragmentary manuscript, it is regarded as a rare but important attempt for a Korean scholar to translate one of the most complicated and abstruse pieces of Korean literature into English targeting overseas readers when Korean writing was almost unknown to the world.

And that should prick translator/fan ears up, since "The Wings" has been translated (in the excellent Jimoondang collection) and so comparison will be possible. I also reviewed it here.

Unfortunately it isn't quite clear yet where you can order this book from - it has not appeared on any online bookstore that I can see. I have an email in to the reviewer from the Times, and with luck contact/purchasing info for this book will pop up here in a day or two.

OK.. maybe "LAND" would be better

than another collection of horror-stories?

From an article on the website of the University of Hawai‘i Press:

Modern Korean fiction is to a large extent a literature of witness to the historic upheavals of twentieth-century Korea. Often inspired by their own experiences, contemporary writers continue to show us how individual Koreans have been traumatized by wartime violence—whether the uprooting of whole families from the ancestral home, life on the road as war refugees, or the violent deaths of loved ones. The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea

Can a brother get something translated that won't scare people away from Korea?