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Park Wan-suh's Weathered Blossom

After reading my way through the absolutely horrible Hong Gildong (again, not the Jimoondang fiction, but the folk-tale), I was a bit apprehensive about reading Park Wan-suh’s Weathered Blossom, even though I’ve liked everything I’ve read of hers. The fear was purely based on similarity – another small book with a lovely cover and.. maybe .. another crappy translation.

A closer look, however, reassured me that likely all would be well. I saw Yu Young-nan’s name as translator (Who Ate Up All the Shinga, Three Generations, etc) and I have yet to come across any of her work that was not seamless and completely out of the way of the reader.
Also, of course, Park Wan-suh has yet to disappoint me, and this work was no different.

Weathered Blossom is the austered story of a semi-love affair between two older people who meet on a bus to Seoul. The story is arranged in two sections of roughly equal length. In the first section the woman, disgruntled and out of sorts (and even slightly out of time in a hanbok) returns from a family wedding in which she feels she was mistreated. On the bus she meets an elegant-looking older man. This first section proceeds at a leisurely pace as the bus wanders through the Korean countryside.

Once home, the old woman finds occasion to look the old man up, and a kind of romance ensues. In the end, the old woman, bothered by her own marks of age and the lack of lust in an October relationship, breaks it off by flying to the United States to re-unite with her son.

That’s a plot summary that makes the book seem less than it is. In fact, it is a fairly bleak meditation on aging and what that means for emotional life, particularly in those places emotional life intersects with physical life. In essence, the old woman believes that without “lust,” love is unsupportable. Park hints at this conclusion throughout the book; the old ladies’ feeling of abandonment and betrayal at the wedding is a precursor of how she comes to feel about her body and emotions, at the end.

A rather remarkable preface (partly remarkable because it comes at the end of the book), chooses to conclude that Park’s conclusion is a ‘proper’ one, in a passage that is slightly contradictory to parse:

The lady believes that love is beautiful only with lust, as it is the only way to be blinded. Thus she realizes elders in love can not be anything by a charming façade, then humbly accepts reality. However to say her lustless love is not beautiful is incorrect, as she humbly accepts the limitation of age and reality.

This seems, to me, a bit of a surrender to Confucian notions of proper behavior for widowed women. The idea that this might be emotional/Confucian scarpering is buttressed by the fact that the old woman, while unhappy with her aged body, does not begin to chafe against the relationship until her family, and the family of her aged beaux, become aware of the relationship and, eventually, in favor of it. The relationship is fine as long as society is unaware. As soon as society is aware, the widow begins to consider where she will be buried, as though she is in some way betraying her eventual burial plot next to her deceased husband. All of which, I suppose, supports the argument that Park might agree with the preface.

Weathered Blossom also presents a rather bleak view of what one can expect in the emotional life of old age. I am also unclear on how an adequately performed charade cannot be blinding. Perhaps I am not yet old enough, although that seems unlikely from where I sit. ;-)

As usual, Park also charms me by what she leaves out. Discussing the bus ride on which she meets the old gent she says:

We didn’t talk about clichés, such as how old we had been when the Korean War broke out, what kinds of hardships we had gone through, where we had gone to take refuge. Instead we exchanged spontaneous remarks.

I don’t want to put too much pressure on this one passage, but to me it sums up why Park’s writing appealing to westerners. It is not that the things Park’s characters go on to talk about are not clichés – rather it is that they are not intra-Korean clichés; that is clichés that will mean nothing to a western reader.

The only thing that is a bit odd, is that rather than simply alternating pages of Korean and English text, this books lumps them semi-randomly in an effort to keep the rather longer English text somewhere near the Korean text. I would have preferred, perhaps, different text sizes to achieve the same end, but I really can’t complain too much about this.

Weathered Blossom is part of a Hollym series of translations that partly overlaps the Jimoondang series. But these are worth picking up because the original Korean is in them, the books are small but feel substantial, the covers and internal artwork are appropriate, and the books even have the little string bookmarks built into the cover.

A Rather Nice Overview of the History of Korean Literature

The AsianInfo site nicely divides Korean lit into three categories and then goes on to explain them:

1. The Character of Korean Literature
2. Korea's Classical Literature
3. The Modern Literature of Korea

It's necessarily a gloss, but a great place to begin if you want to learn the overall outlines of Korean literature.

At just less than 6,000 words, you might just want to cut and paste it into a Word (OR hwp!) document and print it out... ;-)

More on Horribility

I took Hong Gildong (the "Korean Classical Literature Institute" version) in to work to show it around the Translation Department, who all had a good hoot.

Over a delicious 갈바당 lunch the chair asked why I bought it, and I replied the cover was nice.

She took a look at the cover and said, "yeah, nice, but it really doesn't have anything to do the story, does it?"

I peered at it and joked, "Yeah, it's pretty generic, I bet they used that cover on all the books."

We returned to her office, because she wanted to photocopy the cover - she's going to buy a copy to use in an upcoming conference we will be attending; one about how translations miss their target.

She disappeared behind the screen covering her desk. In about three minutes an "aha!" came from behind the screen.

I asked why?

She said, "Like you said, they all have the same cover."

And, given a slightly different shade, they all do, as this picture depressingly reveals (that one on the lower right is from a different series):

Sometimes the Translation is Reaaaaally Bad!

As part of my ongoing project to review all of the KLTI/Jimoondang short novels, I have begun to read Hong Gildong by Seo Hajin. This is based on a Korean folk-tale of the same name. Thus I was ecstatic to find a translation of this work at the "Foreign Bookstore" (Right across from exit 1 of the Noksapyeong Subway Station on line 6). I had a lovely gift certificate from my fiancee, which I plopped down to purchase the thing.

It is published by someone called the "Korean Classical Literature Institute" and Baek Am Publishing Co.

The booksleeve of the thing is astonishingly lovely. I have included a scan of it there on the upper right, and that scan can't accurately convey how nice it looks, since it can't let you feel the 100 lb cover paper or see it's glossy shellac. The cover is also thick, and the paper is apparently acid-free and a semi-rough.

But talk about thick and rough? The translation, apparently done in 1999-2000 is disgraceful.

How bad? So bad it made me go rushing to Google, to see when Babel Fish was first publicly available, because I immediately suspected that this had been how it had been translated. Babel Fish did pop up just before 2000, but my quick search didn't determine if Korean was one of its first seven available languages.

It begins with the preface:

Also on the occasion of millenium period, with the view that our boastful Korean classical literature can be known all over the world, be even just a littl helpful to those who study English we had these series translated in English by professionals

Sure, professionals, but professional whats?

The inside is worse. On pages 3-4 of the English translation we find:

In the middle that Gildong reading a book, all of a sudden, he thrust desk, deploring.

I was pretty much deploring as well. It just goes on; it is a rare page that has fewer than ten errors:

Calming down his mind and watched it, a boy came up to him, riding on a donkey, after blowing the flute, rebuked.

Here is a brilliant paragraph:

And he gave an order of cancelling the seize of Gildong to 8 Provinces.

A websearch seems to indicate that the "Korean Classical Literature Institute" has only published the 10 books it lists (look down the page) on the inner sleeve of this book (although, threateningly, the Preface seems to warn us of the possibility of 19 other volumes). That is a very good thing, because this is bad work. Don't be fooled by the nice covers. ;-)

Finding Translated Korean Literature in Korean Bookstores

ADAPTED FROM MY UPCOMING ARTICLE IN 10 MAGAZINE ASIA

One drawback of living or traveling in Korea is difficulty finding English books. Good bookstores are rare, and if you only know one or two, you are unlikely to find the range of books you like. Many of us also enjoy browsing in used bookstores, which are even harder to find. Luckily, there ARE good “English” bookstores in Korea, you just have to know where, and how, to find them.

Bookstores come in three flavors. First are the chains; relatively easy to find through web searches. Second are mid-sized stores catering primarily to English readers; a bit harder to find, but many expats know where they are. More difficult to find, but fun when you do, are the small used-bookstores that dot traditional markets in Korean cities. These, you find at the expense of shoe-leather.

Let’s take a look at these by category

THE MAJORS In Seoul
Books from the bestsellers lists, books that have been or are about to be turned into major motion pictures, or classic literature, are available at any large chain including Kyobo, YoungPoong, or Bandi and Luni. Look for sections called English, Foreign, or even 외국인. In Seoul there is a cluster of chains in the Jongno-gu area. Kyobo Book Centre, Korea's largest bookstore, stocks about 2,300,000 books, and on weekends draws over 120,000 customers. For a truly surreal/jam-packed experience, visit Kyobo or YoungPoong the day before Christmas or any other gift-giving occasion. If you frequent chains, get a membership card, which offer various benefits.

Other Cities
Daejeon boasts a Kyobo downtown and a Gyeryeong Books in Eunhaneg-dong. Gwangju has pretty slim pickings; there is only a YounPoong and the ChungJang bookstore. ChungJang, described using a classic Korean direction-giving technique, as “right by the Starbucks,” has some classics, bestsellers from a couple months ago, and books about Korea and the Korean language. Busan has two YoungPoong and one Kyobo, Daegu has two YoungPoong and two Kyobo. Ulsan, Masan, Pohang and Gumi each have one YoungPoong. For more specific directions consult the YoungPoong and Kyobo websites.

Translated Fiction Conclusion: These are a great place to go to find recent and mainstream works of translatied Korean fiction. Most of the bigs have something from the Jimoondang/KLTI series of small novels, as well as recent publications.

THE MIDDLES
Mid-sized stores dedicated to the English reader are rarer. There are two excellent stores in Itaewon, What the Book and the Itaewon Foreign Bookstore. What the Book is in Itaewon, but is happy to ship books to your location in Korea. It has a solid selection of new books, a range of used books, and a stellar magazine section. You can browse What the Book online, using its excellent website and search function. The Itaewon Foreigners Bookstore is an old-fashioned used-book store. It features row upon row of books on shelves, which slide to reveal more shelves behind. In both stores, used-books are expensive. If you are going to buy something currently in publication, it makes more sense to purchase it new.

North of the chain bookstores, across from Gyeongbokgung Palace, is Seoul Selection, a smallish store focused on Korea and Korean culture. It sells new and used books, DVDs, and music CDs as well as hosting literary events. Seoul Selection has wireless Internet, seats and tables, a computer for customer use and publishes Seoul Magazine. As lagniappe, the clerks give away a packet of postcards with book sales. Seoul Selection has an excellent website with a great search function.

In Daegu, the newly opened, Buy the Book is a café that also sells used books. Buy the Book features international lunch, a clean spacious eating/reading space, and two walls covered in bookshelves of used books. Daegu Books is an online purveyor of used books, which has only been in business a short while, but has managed to build a stock of nearly 500 books.

Many smaller bookstores have selections of English books. If you walk in university neighborhoods you find these. Start with large, reputable universities, universities known for art or literature, and then work your way to smaller, less well -known ones. Hongdae University, in Seoul, for instance, is surrounded by a sprinkling of bookstores selling English books.

Translated Fiction Conclusion: The Foreigner's Bookstore by Naksapyeong Station is THE place to go to find older collections of translated Korean fiction. What the Book, also has a sprinkling of this kind of work, but they seem afraid to purchase "one-off" old collections of fiction.


THE LITTLE ONES
For bibliophiles, part of the fun of buying a book is finding it. For this, you need to be a bit intrepid. Many medium and larger sized public markets have a row of bookshops with books tied together in stacks, by colored ribbons. Most books are Korean, but English books can be found, and if you like the thrill of the chase, this is where to find it. In Seoul, to the right across the Cheonggyecheon from Dongdaemun Gate, is a row of little bookstores, a bit out of place amidst fashion outlets, but many of these bookstores have some books in English, and the Waegook Bookstore is completely dedicated to English books. In the Jung-Ang market in Daejeon, easy walking distance from Daejeon’s KTX station, there are street-side bookstores with vast rooms full of books, stored in the buildings behind them.

These semi-traditional markets are in every major city in Korea, and worth an afternoon’s walk, as they often reveal unexpected treasures. If you find a small store with English books? Make friends with the owner, because if you are a repeat visitor, they will start squirreling books away for you.

So get out there and get looking!

Translated Fiction Conclusion: Each store is different - get out there!


Top 10 Bookstores in Korea

#1) What The Book – New books, used books, a brilliant ordering system and a helpful staff that speaks good English. Its website is English and extremely easy to use.
http://www.whatthebook.com
(taewon Station Line 6, Exit 3; behind the Itaewon Fire House and up the hill, Seoul.


#2) The Foreign Bookstore –Small, cramped, but stuffed with books, this is the place to go to find an array of used titles spanning science fiction, humor, and psychology. It also carries used magazines and some tapes.
Noksapyeong Station Line 6, Exit 2; across the street, Seoul.

#3) Seoul Selection – If your focus is on Korean literature, or literature about Korea, this is your bookstore.
http://www.seoulselection.com
B1 Korean Publishers Association B/D 105-2, Sagan-dong, Chongro-gu Seoul

#4) Kyobo books (Chain) – So many stores and so many books!
http://wiki.galbijim.com/Kyobo_Books (the Kyobo website is 100% Korean, and can confusing – Galbijim is a better choice for locating stores)

#5) YoungPoong –YoungPoong has stores scattered through Korea and often a more relaxed vibe than Kyobo.
http://www.ypbooks.co.kr/kor_index.yp (store locator is at the bottom of the main page – Korean, but easy to navigate)

#6 and #7) Daegu Books and Buy the Book are new ideas in Korea. Daegu Books will ship anywhere in Korea for a small fee, and has rock-bottom prices on used books.
Buy the Book has space, food and an artsy attitude to share.
Daegu Books: http://www.daegubooks.com/
Buy the Book: Daegu joong koo samduck 1 ka dong 18-11 4th floor

#8) Waegook Bookstore in Dongdaemun Market. Lots of used books, and other bookstores on both sides.
Stall 27

#9) ChungJang bookstore in Gwangju. Not the biggest or best, but if you live in Cheolla, it isn’t a KTX ride away.
Chungjang Seolim 35 Geumnamno 2ga, Dong-gu (Near the Starbucks!)

#10) YeongChang Bookstore, Jung-Ang Marketplace, Daejeon. Difficult to find at the east side of the marketplace. But it stands for ALL the small bookstores waiting for you to find them!

Park Wan-suh's Who Ate Up All the Shinga?

Park Wan-suh’s Who Ate Up All the Shinga, originally published in Korean in 1992, is a brilliant book on at least three levels. First, it is the compelling narrative of a writer coming into being in the most trying of times. Second, it is a highly amusing and often bittersweet mother-daughter memoir. Finally, it is an unusually well-balanced novel – a remarkable cultural artifact, if one chooses to approach it that way - one that manages to utilize Korea’s extremely difficult history without making the novel itself about Korean history. This unusual combination has the beneficial effect of making Park’s novel enjoyable on multiple levels. Who Ate Up All the Shinga is one of the best translations, and choice of works to be translated, in recent memory.

Pak Wan-so was a relatively late-bloomer as a published author, writing her first novel just before she turned 40. In some ways this is not surprising, since it was only in the late 1960s that any substantial number of women entered the literary ranks in Korea. Since that time she has become the Grand Dame of Korean letters, in 1981 receiving the prestigious Yi Sang award for her novel, Mother's Stake. But as Who Ate Up All the Shinga an “autobiographical novel” reveals, the authorial seeds were planted young. Who Ate Up All the Shinga’s relation to fiction is not at all coincidental. Park tips her hand on this on the book-sleeve, where she calls her work an “autobiographical novel.” In fact, it is a compelling story of a young girl who seems, almost unknown to herself, to be destined to write and then finally reaches that conclusion herself.

There is a certain tension in that semi-oxymoronic phrase, “autobiographical novel”, and that tension reflects one of the books’ larger issues, identity. The larger sense of Park’s search for identity is mirrored elsewhere in plot. As I will discuss shortly, this issue of identity is also found in the Mother’s behavior. The Park family struggles with issues of identity, beginning with her Grandfather who adopted, often to comic effect, the airs of Yangban and continuing on to the families’ struggle over the assumption of Japanese names, through the Mother’s sometimes comical identity contortions, and even to political stances. The question is no different for Pak herself, who sometimes describes her youth in ways that point to a kind of otherness, an inbred and evolving narrative voice. This feeling first comes upon her when she is only four years old, she sees her village from an angle she does not usually see it and, “it looked completely different … I couldn’t bear it and burst into tears” (18). This is Pak’s first recognition that she is in some way an outsider, and observer. In a latter passage, Pak describes her first efforts to control her mise-en-scene as she observes swaying millet stalks that bring a similar sadness, “This time, though, I tried to find ways to accentuate my melancholy. What could I do to make that swaying sadder, drearier” (18)? These are the baby steps of an artist. A certain sense of being an outsider, “I always lagged on the periphery … From the fringe, it was easy to observe what was going on” (61), turns into a habit, “Walking to school alone for six long years had a significant effect on my character. For one thing, I learned to entertain myself” (135). These are the words of a narrator coming into being. Park’s awareness comes in fits and starts, and it is firmly placed in the context of the family, “Mother’s storytelling talent instilled in me a love of narrative (107)

This process culminates in a chapter entitled, “Epiphany” in which Park finally realizes who she is, and what she wants to be. “I felt as though I’d been chased into a dead end but then suddenly turned around. Surely there was meaning in my being sole witness to it all.” As Pak looks out upon a city she has made her own, she makes a final decision that it, and all she has endured, will be the fuel for both her physical life and her life as an author. From this epiphany “came a vision that I would write someday, and this premonition dispelled my fear … The clustered, vacant houses were now my prey. ... I already planned to steal from those houses.” (248)

Who Ate Up All the Shinga is also a touching tale of family loyalty - the story of a remarkable woman shepherding her family through difficult times. Park’s mother is the most remarkable character in the book and this is both because of and despite how she is portrayed. She is willful and humble; extravagant and penurious; affectionate and demanding. The narrating Park is often entirely confused by her mother. Readers will be alternately amused and aggravated by the mother’s actions, but she does what she needs to do to survive. Park’s mother is somewhere along that continuum of Korean fictional characters which includes Ch’ae Man-sik’s Master Yun, Chon Kwangyong’s Kapitan Ri, and Seo Giwon’s Ma Rok characters; navigators of uncertain systems. The mother is neatly caught between onrushing modernization – she is certain that she wants Park to grow up to be a “modern woman’ – and traditional cultural strictures based around gender and family ancestry roles. Some of the funniest scenes in the book feature Park’s mother as she uses the disparity between these two forces in her ongoing efforts to rise in society (whatever society might be nearby!). Park sums this up beautifully in a passage describing the families’ return to the countryside:

It was important to Mother not to look like we were returning because we
couldn’t make a go of it in Seoul Her attitude was perfectly understandable
given the difficulties she’d gone through to establish herself. She must have
wanted an appropriate excuse if we couldn’t manage a glorious, silk-clad
homecoming. (145)

In the end, as Park makes her declaration of authorial intent, a reader sees that the mother was, after all, successful despite the family enduring substantial trauma and heartbreak.

Who Ate Up All the Shinga is an excellent translation choice because it conforms to multiple levels of understanding of Korean history, literature, and culture. It can be read for already noted the mother-daughter story, or the evolving writer story, but it can also be read as an introduction, in a most elegant and subtle way, to pundhan munhak and all sorts of political, social and economic themes. Without the overt violence and in-your-face political themes of much of Korean modern literature (e.g. Land of the Banished), Park’s work allows the political story to infuse the narrative, or to serve as explanation. This allows the story, first and foremost, to shine through and the reader can appreciate the “Koreaness” of the story as his or her knowledge allows. Park’s indirect political strategy means that a reader who knows about the Korean War can feel it’s inevitable approach and understand its meaning in that context, while a newcomer to Korean history can feel the same ominous approach, but understand it within the narrower context of the family. Who Ate Up All the Shinga (as well as the recently translated Toy City) is a novel that can be read completely on its own merits. Certainly it includes incidents and broad historical realities of the era, but these really only occur when they are coincident with the plot. History is not, as it so often is in translated modern Korean literature, the plot itself, rather it is a backdrop against which a far more personal plot develops. To go back to Park’s personal development in this story – it is primarily internal, despite all the rigors of the time, and this gives the character of Park a type of human agency that is often missing from Korean modern literature. Discussing some of Park’s previous work, Stephen J. Epstein (the co-translator here) notes, “[Pak’s] texts, though centered within domestic spaces, reach out to comment on larger social issues, but in such a way as to make the most meaningful aspect of the public sphere its impact upon private lives.” This is in some contradistinction to more conventional modern Korean narratives (particularly when they are situated in this time), which more often give us characters who are nearly passive, or reactive to the events of the larger political sphere.

Park’s writing is literary and clever. Her narrator’s semi-displaced and confessional style allows her to describe the cruelest hardships in an off-hand way that, peculiarly, makes the hardships seem all the more real: They are not part of drama, rather they are part of life. Park also has a way of linking long themes throughout the book with clever anecdotes. There are extended meditations on image and honesty, sprinkled through the book, and an aware reader will see them come to conclusion in the final passages of the last chapter.

The translation, by Yu Young-nan and Stephen J. Epstein is fluid and vernacular. This is the second translation I’ve read this month in which the translation was, to my mind perfect, and that is heartening. One final point, although it may seem a trifle. Who Ate Up the Shinga also has one of the most attractive covers I have seen on recent translations and that suggests to me that more thought is being put into the marketing of translations, which can only be a good thing.

Who Ate Up All the Shinga is a great read, on multiple levels, and will fit well on the bookshelf of a dedicated fan of Korean fiction and just as well on the bookshelf of the casual reader of general fiction.

It's great, but it SUCKS!

Man.. Korea still won't come to terms with the internet. And for once I'm not talking about out of date Active-X crud....

the brilliant LIST MAGAZINE, which I suspect I've talked about here before, is a great way to push Korean literature to the world.

Until you look at the website in which everything is a graphic....

"Why," you non-ex-webmasters ask, "would this be a problem?"

Because graphics can't be searched by search engines and there are not ALT tags (the way you make graphic content searchable) on the site.

And a quick look into the code reveals no useful tags....

You have really nice site.. full of content.. that no one will ever find...

siiiiiiiigh.....

Maybe I'm wrong

Random LOLs from an editing job

Working some incredibly clean text from the folks at Ewha...

The text is about family structure in Korea and the family thing is clearly on the translators mind.. well.. kind of..

The first one indicates the translator may not have like all family members equally:

In the meanwhile, bother-in law is considered the most uncomfortable family member to male respondents, followed by bothers, mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and fathers.

Well, no one likes a bother!

Then there is the issue of how to describe what the study found out about chilluns:

The conclusion is evident in the following foundlings.

Well, that's a tear in the social fabric!

Finally, I think we all know what the .. well.. translator's .. job is:

The Korean family is departing from translational family values

It's nice to edit something so clean that these rare examples are the equivalent of translational spoonerisms, and not nonsense.

Korean Blogger's Community Meeting in Seoul

~ Greetings ~

2S2 (2nd Saturday at 2pm) meeting for expats in Korea to get together and be jolly.

January Meet up Details:

• Saturday, January 9th 2010.
  
• 12pm: Meeting with the SeoulEats crowd at a dumpling Restaurant in Insadong. Confused on meet up area contact 2S2 Blog.
• 2PM: Both groups will move to the Twosome Cafe near Anguk station (walking).
  
• Book Exchange: Bring books you are finished with and trade them in for ones you would like to read. I am guessing you may not get the original book back...but you could arrange this.
• GoStop: play the game

Any questions or comments let us know. Thanks!

Secret Agency-Less, Man!

Reading an introduction to a collection of Korean short stories, I was struck by the introduction in which the editor attempted to explain why Korean fiction was sometimes unsatisfying for Western readers. His argument, essentially, focused on style, which I thought was a bit shallow, but he did mention something that I had already noted about Korean fiction; something that makes it a bit dispiriting from a Western point-of-view. That recognition is that there is no “tragedy” in Korean literature in the Western sense of tragic heroes. Of course, much Korean fiction is tragic in the prosaic sense of horrible things happening to people who don’t deserve it. But there is no heroic arc, in the Aristotelian sense, and without this arc, much of the fiction seems flat and affectless to my eyes.

One way to briefly summarize the problem is to note that Korean fiction is notably short on agency. The Wikipedia does a pretty fair job of briefly describing agency: Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. Korean literature is quite short on this kind of approach. For reasons that I will detail in the next couple of posts (I hope), I think it is fair to divide Western and Eastern literature along these lines:

• Western concepts of "agency": the individual, action, will, intentionality, choice, freedom, Manicheanism.
• Eastern Concepts against which "agency" is commonly situated: structure, determinism, society, environment, inevitability, dialecticism.

Without agency, fiction must develop a different kind of plot. Certainly (and probably thankfully), agency-less fiction cannot go the Ayn Rand route, but neither can it go the Macbeth, or even the Great Gatsby route. As the tragic hero is the epitome of agency, it seems like an interesting character through which to approach modern Korean literature.

There are at least two reasons that Korean modern fiction necessarily developed without the tragic hero, one historical and one philosophical. Then, also, there is the result, the literature itself. Separating these ideas is a bit arbitrary, since each feeds the others, but I think it is defensible to achieve a greater understanding.

Because these are biggish ideas, I’m going to break this post up into three parts, with today serving as the introduction and historical record, a following post on philosophical influences, and then an exploration of what this makes Korean modern fiction look like.

History is, in many ways, the easy part. Korea has always been nation that sees itself as at the mercy of other nations. China, the Mongols (1231 - 1270), even Japan (1592–1598), have all at one time or another threatened Korea’s existence. China was such an important ‘influence’ on Korea, that when a Chinese King died, Koreans donned mourning clothes for three years, as though it were a Korean ruler who had died. As a nation, Korea has historically seen itself as at the mercy of the agency of others.

This construction has lived on into the modern Korean history of Japanese colonialization and then a nation split by Cold War forces, Korean fiction tends to focus on stories in which characters are tossed by the times. There is a classic Korean bit of folk-wisdom that sums up this history in a culturally precise way: “When whales fight, shrimp are crushed.”

I have recently been lucky enough to edit a Korean Studies textbook, and it is rife with examples of the authors describing the modern powerlessness of Koreans. The powerlessness comes with different historical reasons, but it remains constant.

Japanese colonialism is represented:

The liberation signified that Koreans were released from poverty, a result of Japan’s economic plunder, political oppression, and psychological incapacitation. Those who lived the moment when the liberation was announced stated what they witnessed:

The war is represented:

Obaltan is known as a work that represents realism and modernism in Korean movies. The movie is based on a fiction of the same title by Yi Beom Seon. The backdrop of Obaltan is Haebangchon, Seoul, bleak and impoverished in the post-War era. Typical of many houses built of dusty crates that once contained humanitarian supplies from America, the main character Cheol Ho’s house on top of the hill is too small for 7 family members to reside. Obaltan illustrates the tragic life of displaced North Koreans trying to settle in the South. Poverty and pain of the uprooted; cold reality that denies any comfort in life; instability, irony, life of frustration for the powerless; this was the depressing reality of Korean society.

Even when Korea ‘wins’, it is presented as an imposition:

Modernization:

For Koreans, modernization was not a national choice, but a shock that overtook them by surprise. …. As the colonizer, Japan held absolute power over Korea, and Japan’s plan to modernize Korea was to use it as a forward base to advance into the mainland. It is only natural that, as a result, Korea’s modernization has its deformations.

Industrialization:

Seopyonje is based on the Seopyonje, the Light of Sound in Namdo Saram, written by Yi Cheong Jun. Through the neglected lives of Korea’s forgotten artists of traditional pansori music, the disappearing sound of art in Korea is compared to the crumbling body of an artist under the modernization process.

By noting these things I don’t mean to belittle their impact on Korea, rather to explain that Korean history, and the Korean interpretation of that history, focuses rather directly on inability to have agency. This means its literature would innately have a much more difficult time using the idea of the tragic hero, which is essentially a fiction of agency.

And then there is the 300 pound historical gorilla – Confucianism. Korean history is even easier to analyze in an agency-less environment given Korea’s essentially Confucian nature. In Confucian thought the kind of agency that Westerners routinely assume to exist, does not in fact exist.

Which leads us to the next post – philosophical underpinnings of agency-less fiction.