Korean Quarterly

Giving Voice to the Korean American Community

Books

Korean War history told by survivors

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Ghost Flames: Life and Death in a Hidden War, Korea 1950-1953 ~ By Charles J. Hanley

(Hachette Book Group, Boulder, 2020, ISBN #978-1-5417-6817-8)

Review by Bill Drucker (Winter 2025)

The title comes from the Korean phrase hon bul meaning “ghost flames.” Country people speak of seeing this unusual fire, a ball of light, the spirit that leaves the body upon death.  Ghost flames of Korea have become associated with the restless dead from the war.

Author Charles J. Hanley, a familiar name in the writings about the Korean War, takes a fresh look at the 1950-1953 event from the narratives of 20 participants. Some of the storytellers include: U.S. Army General Matthew Ridgway; physician and Maryknoll nun Sister Mary Mercy; Song-chul Yu, a North Korean general; Clarence Adams, U.S. infantryman; Teh-huai Peng, general of the Chinese People’s Army; Gil Isham, U.S. infantryman; South Korean journalist Bill Shinn; British journalist Alan Winnington; and Won-moo Hur, a Seoul high school senior conscripted into the South Korean Army. In allowing eyewitnesses to speak, the author captures many moving moments of humanity. 

The books is divided into four main sections, by the years of the war – 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1953.  On June 25, 1950 the Russian and Chinese backed seven North Korean divisions which invaded South Korea.  The capital Seoul quickly fell.  President Harry Truman called on General MacArthur to defend South Korea against the forces of communism.  The fleeing South Korean troops and civilians, and then U.S. troops are driven to the defensible area around Busan.

It was 1953 when an armistice stopped the fighting, and 1954 when, after 16 meetings, the two sides gave up trying to work out a peace treaty. There is no peace treaty and no official end of the war even now.

In 1950, before the Korean War broke out, General Matt Ridgway was in the U.S., enjoying his new young, third wife, and their 20-month-old son.  Called away from home to Washington, DC, Ridgway would meet General MacArthur in Japan, and later replace him.  In the rugged terrain of Korea, Ridgway would negotiate failed campaigns, cope with the lack of supplies, demoralized troops, brutal winters and scorching summers, and the Chinese People’s Army.

The author emphasizes that this civil war was over ideological differences, which were often extremes.  The style of warfare was also extreme.  South Korean authorities sanctioned the execution of thousands of suspected leftists.  North Koreans executed southern rightists and anticommunists. Formal talks to stop the killing dragged on while troops died. 

Infantryman Clarence Adams, a 21-year-old African American with hopes of being a pro boxer, was a foot soldier in a segregated U.S. Army.  At that time, there was resistance to racial  integration all the way up to the generals.  Adams grew in the racist city of Memphis, which he fled, and enlisted in 1947, joined an all-black regiment in Japan, and in 1950, his troop was sent to Korea.

Korean journalist Bill Shinn (Associated Press) got his wife and children out of Seoul, witnessing chaos as people and troops rushed to the Han River bridge number 1, and then took the road south, ending up in Pusan.   

British journalist Alan Winnington reported the Korean war from Beijing.  He was first to report to the west that Seoul has fallen.  In China, he was the rare westerner to witness the emergence of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the People’s Liberation Army.

Major Donald Nichols, an American adviser, witnessed the massacre of 1800 people in Suwon.  The irrational wartime fears, long-held desire for revenge, and ideological difference unleashed bloody consequences. 

In 1951, MacArthur’s military miscalculations were a concern.  Staff questioned his leadership. His leadership abilities come to question by staff and Washington, DC. The U.S. and UN ponder a truce along the 38th parallel, but truce talks soured, and a prolonged war resulted. Journalist Bill Shinn witnessed the execution of accused 20 collaborators.  His earlier reports of mass killings are noted.  The U.S. Army responds and calls for an investigation, and the U.S. military leadership banned reporters from following the troops.

Ridgway’s new ground and air attacks slaughter thousands of civilians caught in the crosshairs.  In ’51, the U.S. troops recapture Seoul.

Sister Mary Mercy, a Maryknoll nun and physician, landed in Pusan, where thousands had taken refuge from the war further north.  In the city overcrowded by refugees, she sets up a clinic with the aid of two assistants.

In 1952, Hanley reports, the war was being fought on two fronts: On the physical battlegrounds where there were costly casualties of both allied troops and the Chinese volunteer army.  The war was also fought by a battle of words in tents in Panmunjom.  A truce along the 38th parallel was sought, and also the issues of thousands of Chinese and North Korean POWs.

Chinese General Peng Teh-huai goes to Moscow and gets an earful from Joseph Stalin on how to wage war.  In March 1953, just four months before the truce, Stalin dies.

Marine Pete McCloskey was wounded, which became his ticket home.  He earned the Navy Cross.  He finishes his enlistment at Fort Pendleton, and is put in charge of preparing young recruits for Korea.  He describes how he is haunted by the faces of the young men he would send to the fruitless battle.

One of the bloodiest fights of 1953 becomes known as Pork Chop Hill.  Survivors of that bitter encounter wondered was it worth the cost.  Infantryman Gil Isham faces possible court-martial for his insubordination.  That year, Clarence Adams is released from a Chinese prisoner camp, after a lecture praising a new life in China.  He is presented with a choice from his former captors; he can return to America or consider a new life in China.

On Monday, July 27, 1953, the Armistice was signed.  In April 1954, the warring parties met in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss peaceful reunification of the two Koreans, but the issue of a peace treaty was unresolved after 16 meetings. 

A persistent criticism by the author is the wanton slaughter by all parties in the war. Needlessly, B-29 bombers flattened Pyongyang, and other warplanes dropped bombs and napalm on civilians.  With suspected enemies hidden among fleeing civilians, orders were given to kill everyone.  South Korean president Syngman Rhee sanctioned the mass killings of suspected communists, including men, women and children. There will never be a full account, but it is estimated that some three million were lost, most of them civilians.

Author and journalist Hanley reported on events from 100 countries in his four decades with the Associated Press, including Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.  His reporting on the infamous No Gun Ri massacre of Korean civilians by U.S. forces, and the subsequent U.S. cover-up, won Hanley and his associates the Pulitzer Prize, the Polk Award, and other awards.  In 2001, Hanley’s publication of his account The Bridge at No Gun Ri led to new talks between the U.S. military and South Korea about this war crime.

The transformation of civil society

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Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism ~ By Seungsook Moon

(Columbia University Press, New York, 2024, ISBN #978-0-2312-1149-9)

Review by John Feffer (Winter 2025)

In the late 1990s, at the request of five South Korean organizations, I put together a conflict resolution training program in Seoul. The groups were interested in learning more about nonviolent ways of resolving disputes in the community, at a national level, and across borders. Another aim of the program was to explore ways for peace activists to learn professional skills and create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

It was a pivotal stage in South Korean democracy. The people power that had forced the Tae-Woo Roh government to usher in elections in 1987 had given way to a new set of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) devoted to expanding and deepening the fledgling democracy. People’s movements (minjung undong) continued to operate throughout the country, relying on volunteer organizers and often ad hoc actions. But increasingly, the political space was dominated by civic groups (simin tanche) that employed staff, engaged in fundraising, and tried to expand membership through sustained programming. The late 1990s, according to survey data, was the moment of peak influence for such citizens organizations.

Although movements played a critical role in the political life of South Korea, the movement life was a difficult one. It was fine for young people who didn’t need much money. But as activists got older, got married, and had children, a life of unpaid protest became increasingly unsustainable. To turn activism into a profession was one of the goals of our conflict resolution training program — as well as to think about how to turn negatively framed campaigns of protest into positively framed programs of action.

The tension between the more radical and spontaneous movements and the more bureaucratically organized and professional organizations has continued in South Korea. Today, the NGO space is rich, diverse, and well-connected, with organizations devoted to the environment, women’s issues, immigrants, government transparency, and so on. But social movements have continued to mobilize the energy of different constituencies, particularly young people, on critical issues, for instance around food safety during the 2008 beef protests or the more recent protests that led to the impeachment of Suk-yeol Yoon.

In her new book Civic Activism in South Korea, Seungsook Moon looks at this tension between movements and NGOs through an economic lens. She argues that South Korea, across different political administrations, adopted a neoliberal approach to the economy, and this has necessarily influenced the political life of the country. Neoliberal policies — promoting market solutions, putting the onus on individual rather than collective action, pushing NGOs to undertake services that the government might otherwise provide — have all established the rules of the game by which everyone must play.

Moon tells her story through the experiences of three groups: People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), Democratic Friends Society (DFS), and Friends of Asia (FOA). Devoted to promoting transparency and accountability in government and the business world, PSPD was one of the first prominent South Korean NGOs (and one of the five groups participating in our conflict resolution training program). DFS focused more on the empowerment of women. And FOA was a volunteer effort to help foreign migrants adjust to Korean society.

Through these three organizations, Moon shows how neoliberal values shaped, constrained, and changed the trajectory of civic politics. Even the conflict resolution program I helped create in South Korea was part of this neoliberal turn because of its goal of providing activists with professional skills.

“Not all advocacy organizations supported neoliberalism or functioned as its tool, but there is an elective affinity between the professionalization of activism and neoliberal governance,” she writes. In effect, neoliberal governance needed paid NGO staff to undertake tasks that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t perform. This was not just a cost-saving maneuver. It also potentially prevented under- or unserved communities from rising up in anger to unseat the government.

PSPD is emblematic of the challenges that NGOs faced in that first decade of democratization. To effect change in government behavior, PSPD had to engage with and lobby public officials. When progressives took over the national government, PSPD worked with them closely on social welfare issues, though it frequently took contrary positions on foreign policy. At the same time, PSPD also wanted to retain some aspects of a movement organization by encouraging grassroots participation. When that participation began to wane, PSPD had to address more seriously the criticism that it was a “citizens’ movement without citizens.”

The other two organizations faced similar challenges. DFS established coops that provided healthy food. These coops proved so popular that they overshadowed DFS’s original goals of feminist social change. Because it received funding from the government to provide social services, it also ended up supporting a key neoliberal principle of privatizing state functions. FOA, meanwhile, didn’t take government funds and thus relied on volunteers, for instance, to teach Korean to immigrants. But without consistent sources of funding, it was hard for FOA to maintain its activities and its volunteer staff.

Moon points out, quite correctly, that even progressive administrations in Korea pushed certain neoliberal policies, such as the deregulation of financial services, the flexibilization of labor, and the establishment of free trade agreements. Given this policy environment, it was very difficult for any NGO that hoped to influence government actions not to “play the game.” Or, as Moon puts it in the context of PSPD: It “appropriate[d] neoliberal governance by reinterpreting it as democratic governance; this appropriation is tolerated as long as its activism does not seriously threaten the core logic and practices of neoliberalism.”

It has thus been the responsibility of more radical movements, with little experience of engaging with this type of “democratic governance” and unseduced by funding provided by national and local government agencies, to challenge the neoliberal logic through, for instance, the protests against the free trade agreements that the Moo Hyun Rho administration supported.

Although she recognizes the limitations of such movement politics — inconsistency, disorganization — Moon tends to valorize such activism because of its refusal to obey neo-liberal dictates. But this kind of dichotomizing is possible largely because of the way Moon defines neoliberalism as an all-encompassing analytical category. To be sure, neoliberalism is a powerful ideology in the way that it has influenced policy across the political spectrum. But neoliberalism is only one form of capitalism, not capitalism itself. And many of the criticisms she levels against Korean NGOs could apply to NGOs functioning under different forms of political economy.

Take, for example, the professionalization of activism. This was a challenge in modern societies prior to the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, though of course the need to earn money takes on a slightly different meaning under current market conditions. Social work, as one field of professional activism, existed before the deregulation of the state (indeed, before the creation of the welfare state). PSPD was not just conjured into existence by the spread of “neoliberal globalization,” as Moon asserts. It drew inspiration from an earlier generation of activists like Ralph Nader, who pioneered the holding to account of corporations and government prior to the rise of the neoliberal state.

This is not just an analytical criticism. The challenges that Korean activists face derive not just from the specific nature of Korea’s current form of political economy. Activists must struggle with the issue of professionalization in social democracies as well. The relative balance of state versus non-state social services is going to be a question even in countries that eschew the market. And the accountability of institutions is an essential issue in modern societies, whatever their political economies.

As such, the imagining of alternatives outside the neoliberal frame must also take into account the dynamics of different varieties of capitalism, the imperative of economic growth associated with industrialization, and the evolving nature of modernization more generally. As political parties — and even institutions like the World Bank — begin to recognize the shortcomings of neoliberalism, activists, too, have an opportunity in South Korea and elsewhere to explore new ways of thinking about political economy. This is a potentially liberating moment, but activists will discover that many of the challenges of the neoliberal era will not wither away because they are, to a certain extent, independent of neoliberalism.

Despite these minor criticisms, Civic Activism in South Korea is a valuable text on the transformation of civil society in a modern, globally connected democracy. Korean civil society has proven remarkably vibrant across half a century. The tensions between the more ad hoc movements and the more professional NGOs have ultimately strengthened the country’s social fabric, even under the corrosive influence of neoliberal economic policies. Activists and analysts across the world can learn much from the Korean experience, which Moon’s book so trenchantly describes.

Long road to justice

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Togani By Ji-Young Gong

(Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, trans., University of Hawaii Press, Manoa (HI), 2023, ISBN #978-0-8248-9487-0)

Review by Bill Drucker (Fall 2024)

Togani (aka, The Crucible) is a thinly-veiled, novelized account of an actual event, describing how children were abused for years at a school for deaf- and hearing-impaired students. The incidents happened in Gwangju in the early 2000s.  This is clearly a novel of criticism about social inequities and injustice.

The story starts when Inho Kang, a special education teacher, takes a job in the remote city of Mujin, a fictional substitute for Gwangju.  He leaves his wife and daughter behind in Seoul; the story explains he is taking the job as an escape from a failed business venture, and out of financial necessity.  The small-town mindset, the wariness he feels from the locals of big city people, and the frequent fog all create a disturbingly distrustful mood at the beginning of the story.  

Driving on a country road, Kang nearly runs into a child.  He quickly stops to assist, but the child is swallowed up by the fog, and he cannot find anyone.  He reports the incident to the local policeman, Officer Chang.  The officer is agreeable and says he will look into it. He promises to call a nearby school to see if the child may have been one of its students.

Soon, Kang gets a visit from a familiar face.  It is Yujin So, a woman who at one time was Kang’s classmate. The two have not seen one another for 10 years, and both have moved around to coincidentally end up in the same town. So brings a grocery bag with a gift of detergent, a common housewarming gift, with her, perhaps her way of cutting the tension. After putting down the bags, So suggests they eat out.

Over grilled pork belly, So hands Kang her business card showing that she is the director of the Mujin Human Rights Advocacy Center. The position may have had more influence 10 years ago, when Mujin was known after the (Gwangju) uprisings as a city that was the cradle of Korean democracy.  In the present day of the story, it is just another remote city in South Korea. To Kang, So still seems youthful, but with a new edginess, sarcasm, and inner toughness.

At the school where Kang has been newly hired, the Home of Benevolence, he is not openly greeted.  The staff seems wary. The principal, Kangsok Yi and his administrator Kangbok Yi, are twins, and the sons of the school’s founder.

In the principal’s office, Kang sees police officer Chang, acting quite chummy. He feels that this is not a good sign.  In private, he learns that he is expected to pay a cash bribe to the school for getting hired quickly because of a connection between his wife and a Yi family member.  Kang is conflicted, but he needs the job and has made complicated arrangements to be there, so he reluctantly pays.

As the days and weeks go by, Kang keeps reporting to the principal, and talking with the other staffers on what he perceives as evidence of abuse of the children.  The children never smile, all wear the same sullen look.  He hears screams in the night.  Kang is coolly received by staff at first, and after he speaks out, staffers respond with an edge of hostility.  One employee bluntly tells Kang to shut up if he wants to keep his job.  Kang hears that one child died recently. In addition to rumors and pieces of stories he hears, the lack of sympathy by the school staff toward students and the apparent complicity of the police disturb him. 

The quest for justice becomes an uncharted battlefield for Kang, and he goes to So for help.  Her attitude is the opposite: she has been waiting for such an opportunity to find out what is really going on at the school.  On a fine autumn day, perhaps suggesting clarity of mind and purpose, child advocate So informs her staff they must prepare for a full investigation. 

The elements of light and dark are used effectively throughout the novel.  Fog is a metaphor for concealment, and obscurity.  It is the gray zone between reality and unreality, certainty and uncertainty, justice and injustice.  The fog brings foreboding and confusion.  It hides the truth.  It can bring death. 

The investigation leads to a trial, and the novel takes on the characteristics of a crime procedural, with some cultural and psychological variations. The trial begins on a clear day.  Merciless tactics are deployed by the defense to discredit witnesses, praise the guilty, and verbally assault the children, and a dark murkiness fills the courtroom.

The days in court prove frustrating.  The prosecution fights for a deaf interpreter.  The defense takes the line that the prosecution is simply maligning good citizens including the (twin) school principal and administrator, which they describe as pillars of the community.  The children who courageously come forward to be questioned in court are ruthlessly targeted.  Outside the court, a woman comes up behind So and makes foul remarks to her.  So is shook up, but not enough to walk away.  The local judge plays it carefully with the press in the room.

The family of one child is approached with a bribe.  Kang and So race to get there to catch the bribers, but it was unnecessary. An old woman, speaking for the family, tell them she told the bribers that there isn’t enough money in the world to keep them silent, and sent them packing.  Officer Chang suggests to Kang, especially after he was roughed up, that he should also just leave, asking him “what’s in it for you?”

The verdict does not go well for the defense.  The culprits are given only a light punishment.  Kang feels he is not the warrior he thought he was.  His demanding wife and child are still waiting in Seoul, and Kang has no strength left.  He admires So, who is a true warrior and a fearless crusader.

So is not done after the verdict.  Along with the parents and other supporters of the students, So heads toward the City Hall to demonstrate against the injustice of the light sentence levied against the perpetrators of the many serious crimes against children.  It is the 28th anniversary of the Mujin Uprising and the Prime Minister is giving a speech.  Police officer Chang, understanding the situation and even empathetic toward the marching crowd, still orders the water cannons turned on.  He instructs the police to keep the people from heading toward City Hall.  (the publication of Togani in 2009 was 28 years after the Gwangju Massacre.)

Emboldened, the deaf children dish out their own small bit of retribution, gathering at the school to protest that the key offenders have returned to work.  The kitchen staff report that cartons of eggs have disappeared.  As the principal and staff get back to business, the children storm the office and pelt them with eggs.  Police are in no rush to go after the children, and the hysterics of the staff are ignored.  The press and investigators are still in town looking for a story.

Author Ji-young Gong had clear intentions in this grim novel of corruption and abuse in a small town.  The title Togani refers to Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible.  Both stories depict the scenario of a trial that takes place in a small town, with small-minded people.  Events lead to hysteria, denial, and attempts to silence the truth.  There are lengthy courtroom chapters in Togani describing how the people in Mujin suppressed information of the crime, and denied it once the truth was out.  People caught in the crosshairs are fired, threatened, and attacked. 

In the 2011 film version, actor Gong-Yoo took the lead role of idealistic teacher (Kang in the novel), who uncovers the child abuse.  In the film, entitled The Silenced, the school denies everything, the administrators pretend to befriend the teacher, then get him removed.  He is slapped by one of the school adminstrators’ wives. 

The sensitive and controversial film received good reviews.  A special piece of legislation, nicknamed the “Togani bill,” was enacted to better protect children from would-be abusers in institutions.  The real teacher who uncovered the child abuse, and championed the students’ rights was fired and faded from the public eye. The novel reflects the fact that the Gwangju Inhwa school’s administrators received no jail time.  The courts dismissed the case for lack of evidence in 2011.  The victims’ rights to file for compensation had expired (2010).  The school principal died of cancer in 2011.  After a series of investigations and public outcries, the Gwangju Inhwa school was closed in 2011.

The author Ji-Young Gong, born in Seoul (1963), is popular in Korea and diaspora Korean communities abroad.  She graduated from Yonsei University with a degree in English literature.  Gong has published works of poetry, short stories, novels and essays, and has focused her writing on issues of injustice, gender and inequality.  Gong received good reviews for Togani, however, she was also investigated by the state’s ruling conservatives for “political activities.”

Translators Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are arguably as famous as the Korean authors with whom they collaborate.  In bringing Korean literature to English audiences over many decades, the Fultons have established themselves as accomplished collaborators who have helped to open up great Korean literature to English speaking readers.

Layers of white

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The White Book By Han Kang

(Hogarth Press London, 2018, ISBN #978-1-8462-7695-8)

Review by Yearn Hong Choi (Spring 2020 issue)

Han Kang became widely known when her beautiful and startling novel, entitled The Vegetarian, was published in 1994.  She received the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for that work, along with her translator Deborah Smith.

This collection of Han Kang’s poetic short essays, in fragmented notes on her life, with the unifying theme of the color white.  A significant figure in this series of poems and poetic essays is the narrator’s baby sister, who died two hours after her premature birth.  She was covered up by a white baby cloth that her mother had hurriedly made. The image of this baby and her brief life, covered by white cloth, is an enduring imagery throughout the narrative.  The young mother cries out to God, “For God’s sake don’t die.”  The narrator reflects on the mother’s youth, only 22, and herself as a mother, and the births of her own children.

Typing a word, a sentence, and then a paragraph on blank white paper is the beginning of verse or prose.  The writer fills the empty paper with words in black ink. Korean people were known for wearing plain white clothes for 5,000 years.  The White Book contains many metaphors and symbology related to the Korean people.

Translator Deborah Smith has demonstrated her craft in converting Korean into English.  The author and the translator are a great team judging from the fruit of their works.

The author’s statement specifically declares the work as one of fiction, not memoir.  It is certainly a collection of her poetic notes on the topic of white things —- swaddling bands, a newborn’s gown, salt, snow, ice, the moon, rice, waves, yulan (magnolias), white bird, the idea of “laughing whitely,” blank paper, a white dog, white hair, and a white shroud.

In this book, the reader can observe her way of approaching fiction with verse.  The Vegetarian was successful due to the author’s poetic approach, using the vocabulary and style of fiction.  It is a collection of three short stories.  Han Kang attempted The White Book as fiction, but many may not agree with her.  The fluidity in which this author works between fiction and memoir, poetry and fiction writing, is part of its mystery and appeal.

In the end of her essay, Boundary, Kang writes:

Now and then her mother would be struck by a sense of foreboding and give a corner of the quilt a tug, but the baby’s eyes opened only briefly, grew dim and then slid shut.  At some point, even that scant response was no longer forthcoming.  And yet, before dawn, when the first milk finally came from her mother’s breasts and she pressed her nipple between the tiny lips, she found that, despite everything, the baby was still breathing.  Though she had, by now, slipped from consciousness, the nipple in her mouth encouraged a soft swallowing, gradually growing stronger.  Still with her eyes closed the whole time. Not knowing what boundary, she was now passing over.

The author relates the baby’s death to the destruction of the city of Warsaw in Poland in a 1944 air raid.  She does not mention the name of the city, however, it is likely Warsaw, since the author lived in Warsaw as a writer in residence for awhile.  Of course, the city she describes could be Berlin or many other cities that were bombed in World War II. 

White Pebble is a short poetic essay which is representative of this book:

A long time ago, she found a white pebble on a beach.  She brushed off the sand and placed it in her pocket, then put it away in a drawer at home.  A pebble worn and round by the waves’ long caress.  To her, its whiteness seemed almost transparent, but when she tried to peer inside it she found she’d been mistaken.  In fact, it was a perfectly ordinary white pebble.  Now and then, she got it out and set it on her palm.  If silence could be condensed into the smallest, most solid object, this is how it would feel, she thought.

The premature baby was the narrator’s onni, or elder sister in Korean, the daughter who came before her.  The author uses another Korean word, nuna, the form of address of a younger brother to a sister.  It is interesting that the author uses two beautiful Korean words in place of English in this translation.  It is also logical, since there is no substitute in the English language. Alternatively, translator Deborah Smith may have chosen to retain the original Korean to maintain the correct meaning and context. 

Han Kang picks up another idiom in the Korean language — laughing whitely.  She says such an expression exists only in Korean language; an interesting discovery.  To “laugh whitely” means to laugh but not mean it.  The “white laugh” in Korean offers layers of meaning beyond insincerity, depending on the context.

As in The Vegetarian, Han Kang’s The White Book again offers a work of fluidity, with layers of meaning and depth, showing her flexibility and imagination as a poetic writer. 

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When eyewitnesses are silent

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Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film ~ By Christopher P. Hanscom

(Columbia University Press, New York, 2015, ISBN #978-0-2312-0849-9)

Review by Bill Drucker (Fall 2024)

How should art forms such as literature and film engage with social issues?  How significant is literary realism as a way to represent and criticize social injustice?

Author and Korean scholar Christopher P. Hanscom examines the politics of fiction and film in the context of a dilemma. Artists and writers can influence a large swath of society.  But is a vision described by someone from outside the group a true representation?  There are many groups whose voice is all but impossible to access. The author looks specifically at the examples of migrant labor and marginalized classes as well as the participants in or witnesses to state violence.

There are many caught in the dilemma of what the author terms “impossible speech.”  These are people who are generally not asked what they think, or whose voices are socially censored. They are suppressed or ignored even when they are trying to tell their side of the story, for example, the witnesses to the Kwangju Uprising in 1980, or the students who stormed the Blue House in 1960 to expel South Korean President Syngman Rhee, among many others.  

This book challenges the current assumption concerning politics and art, which is that works purporting to represent real moments of history are basically true accounts; that they created to be a true representation using eyewitness testimony and other reliable primary sources.

Hanscom takes an academic approach in addressing these issues.  His study of this reads as an intellectual discourse.  The author selects concise terms such as “verisimilar,” meaning appearing to be true or probable, in his polemical discussions.  Another term is “soteriological narrative” meaning a redemptive or salvation narrative.

Politics influences how an event is retold in literature or film.  Political art describes the limitations of what can be said, seen, or heard within a certain political and social milieu.  Facts can be retold through art, or they can be relegated to a gray area using sound bites. Facts can also be simply dismissed as lies.  Some facts are never spoken about.

This dilemma is not just an intellectual topic about history.  In the current polarized political moment in the U.S. the news media has been embroiled in a controversies that suppress or dismiss facts.

Hanscom explores this issue of politicized art with key literary and cinematic examples in which characters are marginalized and dispossessed. Hanscom argues that the truth of these characters must be examined, along with their words and the space they occupy, instead of looking at the art as true accounts of history.

The author looks at the period after the demise of South Korean military authoritarianism, when authors began to popularize stories about migrant laborers as the new oppressed class. Known as the minjung (which literally means “the people” a politically-charged term that arose to refer to the working class),  this terminology became a politicized term in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Non-Korean migrant laborers, migrants who came to Korea by marriage, and political refugees faced a cultural wall of silence in the country during that era; they had little or no representation.  Some writers, including Insuk Kim, Chaeyoung Kim and Yongsuk Kang described the plight of migrants.  They wrote of how Korea did not embrace foreigners who move to the country, and how the language barrier is a difficult one for non-Koreans. Even migrants who already speak Korean cannot automatically attain citizenship and belonging. There is a high social bar.

In general, Korean society views migrants as low class and uneducated, which compounds other difficulties before them.  In addition to prejudices, migrants are subject to economic and educational restrictions which limit their lateral and upward mobility in the workplace and in society.  Prejudices about ethnicity, nationality, race, color, religion, gender are other reasons for exclusion.

Newer fictional accounts about Korean society suggest how real and symbolic borders are being crossed; social boundaries are disintegrating and the previously-strict requirements of language, culture, race and gender are diminishing.  Modern Korean society must deal with accepting the foreign laborers that the country needs, recognizing the global migration and diaspora that is a global trend, and grappling with the shifting values of identity and citizenship that are emerging as a result of these sea changes.

The author also discusses social trauma, or in literary terminology, “traumatic realism.”  The author calls out the example of writer Han Kang in his novel A Boy is Coming.  The story centers around the Kwangju Massacre and the aftermath in which characters deal with survivors’ grief and guilt.  The novel retells the events of Kwangju through the narratives of a dead boy, Tongho.  In a haunting landscape of dead bodies and destruction, there are only corpses. Kang’s novel suggest the limits of testimony of an event which has no surviving witnesses.  In the soteriological context, there is no redemption or absolution.  The ghost of Tongho speaks but he cannot be heard. 

The author also examines accounts of North Korean escapees in the context of the literary genre of prison escape.  Before Korean accounts, there were tales in this genre from survivors of the Russian gulags, including the seminal autobiographical accounts by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The author brings up questions of how accurate the Korean accounts may be, and how editing to make the stories more palatable for publication or broadcast may have altered them.  Because North Korea is a closed-off country, escapees’ stories cannot be verified. He describes how some escapees’ testimonies seem scripted, and how similar many of the stories sound to one another.

There are also many questions of authenticity associated with North Korean escapee narratives.  Since many interested readers are westerners, the narratives are translated for a specific privileged audience whose members have no personal experience with imprisonment, torture or starvation.

When escapees speak before audiences, one speaker is chosen to sit in front of an audience with a translator.  The author argues that the process of choosing the speaker and readying the speaker may itself compromise the validity of the story. The escapee identity is gone; what appears is an image of a person with a particular restrained narrative and a story that has been scrubbed for consumption by a certain subgroup of the public.

The author also argues, using the films I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK and Castaway on the Moon, that these science fiction stories also reflect the themes of the voiceless outcast.  The protagonists suffer loneliness and isolation (as in Cyborg) and experience illness and death (as in Castaway) while articulating their desires, anger, intelligence and salvation through love. The couples in the two films must share the same space while in isolation from society. By working out their predicament together, the couples in both films find redemptive healing and social acceptance.

The writers and artists of this time endeavored to make visible social truths they observed that the state tried to keep hidden from the awareness of the greater society.  The state had the power to intervene to edit, suppress, dilute the facts that were too horrific, keep hidden any embarrassing state policies, protect allies, and create dissent and distrust among the citizens. 

Artists can similarly have license to either shade the actual corruption and deniability or enhance it to raise public shame or outrage, manipulating public awareness. At best, the truth of the events and the testimony of witnesses can commemorate a tragic past, and remind us how people suffered social injustices that went largely unreported. 

When the eyewitnesses are voiceless because they had no legal recourse or attention from society in that moment, it is difficult for the reader to know later the level of truth conveyed by the art that emerges from that time. The reader is a responsible party in this discernment of the past, and must consider how much or how little a writer’s fictional account reflects a past where speaking the truth was literally impossible.

Hanscom is a professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California – Los Angeles. He has written numerous publications on Asian politics and culture, especially concerning the modern issues of Korea and Japan.

Tranquility and practicality share one space

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Inside the Korean House: Architecture and Design in the Contemporary Hanok ~ By Nani Park and Robert J. Fouser

(Tuttle Press, North Clarendon (VT), 2023, ISBN #978-0804-85046-9)

Review by Bill Drucker (Fall 2024)

Although Korea’s urban landscape is constantly changing, traditional architecture persists among the tall glass-and-steel structures.  The aesthetics of harmony between man and nature still thrive.  The best examples of simplicity, functionality and beauty by design are reflected in the Korean hanoks,or traditional homes.

This architectural study examines the hanok’s uniquely Korean history, design, and structure. The first hanok or chosonjip (both literally mean “Korean house”) were built in 14th century Korea and Manchuria. 

Hanok designers apply the principles of fengshui (in Chinese) or pungsu (in Korean) in the design of each house and its location to ensure it is aligned with nature and the earth’s energy. The right location is scouted using geomancy; ideally, mountains are at the rear of the home, and a river or stream is to the front.  Hanoks are usually made from local natural materials such as wood and stone.  

The designs of these houses vary, but there are many common elements.  In the colder northern regions, the hanok is a created in a square design with a center courtyard to retain heat better in the winter.  In the southern regions, the hanok is generally made in an L-shaped design to be more open for optimum airflow and light.

The authors have made liberal use of interesting photos and a large format to allow the houses to speak for themselves. The reader/viewer is able to see how modern designers have kept the design principles and spirit of the Korean house, while adapting the design to modern living.

Because of the colonial Japanese occupation (1910-1945), Korean War (1951-1953), and the era of post-war poverty, the construction of hanoks stopped for a long period of time. Many of the  remaining homes fell to ruin.  After the nation began to recover economically, there was a trend to preserve traditional Korean arts, including performing arts, visual arts, design, and even traditional agricultural products and cooking. In the obsession to its national identity, hanoks were also revived and renovated, and new hanoks were built. 

These hanoks, most of which were new or newly-renovated in the post-war era, are frequently studied by scholars and historians.  The structures have been renovated and maintained by designers and architects.  Today, it is rare for new hanoks to be built, due to the high cost of and urban real estate and custom building. There is also the matter of practicality of hanoks compared with more cost-effective and efficient modern home designs.

As with the Buddhist temples, hanoks possess a spiritual quality.  They invite, they welcome, they offer the very best of shelter for the mind, body and soul.  This book offers a tour of 12 of the best Seoul hanoks.  

There are several grander hanoks in Seoul, and many more that are more humble. One fancier Seoul-area hanok, Oidong Pyulchang, was due to be destroyed in the 1950s during a movement to tear down big estates in order to replace them with smaller and more-efficient housing.  The house was saved by moving it to a remote site outside the city.  This hanok reflects the grandeur of pre-war upper-class estates.   The current owner is a Swedish woman, whose family has lived there since the 1960s. There are European accoutrements, however, this hanok has retained many harmonious Korean design elements.

Another Seoul residence with a grander history is in the Anguk Dong neighborhood. The Yun Posun Residence was the home of South Korea’s second president, and was later occupied by his son.  Its common rooms, used to entertain important guests, reflect an upper-class opulence. Other rooms reflect a more traditional simplicity and its outside gardens encourage rest and quietude.

Several hanoks are known for their thematic designs.  Known as “the house of emptiness,” the hanok known as Mumuheon is designed to reflect the austerity of the Zen Buddhist tradition. The principle of mu/wu or emptiness is everywhere, yet the design is also pleasing and inviting. The house has no chairs or beds. Instead, there are wood floors with cushions. The floors are heated using the traditional ondol method, with pipes running under the floor. In tradition, the smoke from a fire on one side of the house would be routed underneath the floor. This house is now heated by hot water running in the ondol piping system.

Another unusual hanok is Bansongjae, which has a living pine tree incorporated into its structure.  Situated on a hill in Samcheong-dong, the home has an upper and lower level.  Because of its elevation, this hanok has splendid views of the city and Inwangsan (Inwang Mountain).

There are several houses described that are a combination of traditional ideas and modern design elements. A hanok in the Gahoe-dong area, Janyeongseosil, is known for its wooden lattice work that captures the lights of the city at night and the sun’s warmth during the day.  The house is designed with a southern exposure intended to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  A long, open terrace of wood connects the house to the courtyard.

A more modern hanok, called Moto Hanok, is also located in Samcheong-dong. Modest and small, it is designed to be modern and comfortable for a family. Most rooms have views of Inwangsan and the city.  The design exploits every space for an innovative feel. Bicycles hang from the wooden beams.  Ceiling windows allow natural light to flow into the rooms.

Hwadongjae or the “house of becoming one with others” is in the village of Joanni, and the only hanok in a rural setting.  The hanok is notable for exercising contrasts; traditional versus modern, formal versus casual, and urban versus rustic.  Its design is minimalistic, with functional living space incorporated harmoniously with outdoor space.  

This is a beautifully-produced coffee table-style book.  The large format allows for some inspiring and detailed images that reflect the Korean ideals of harmony, tranquility, and resilience.  The authors follow the rules of hanok style by design by letting the houses speak for themselves.  Just a one-page description of each hanok is all that is required for the reader to learn about and appreciate the unique Korean structures that stand up to, and may possibly outlast, Seoul’s many cold, concrete towers.

A love-and-hate story of immigration

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In Search of My America ~ By Jid Lee

(Austin MaCauley Publishers, 2024, ISBN #979-8-8869-3561-5)

Review by Bill Drucker (Spring 2024)

In this memoir, the racism, gender warfare, academic politics, and cultural collisions are not just social and historical explorations.  For author Jid Lee, these issues are profound personal experiences, and a significant part of her chronicle of life in America.

Lee refers to the “banality of racism,” which encompasses the daily occurrences, the small but frequent acts and events that indicate to her that she is often seen by others as a racial stereotype. She observes racism as a pervasive, day-to-day experience, often unchecked and unchallenged.  It persists despite hard-won civil rights laws and social support of tolerance.  The excuse that racism is an irrational, non-human force doesn’t hold true.  Lee describes it as an ingrained human characteristic, and to dismiss or deny it is to deny our humanness.

Lee was born in 1955, and while she was still in her parents’ home, a fruit peddler came to the door and offered to sell the leftover produce for half price.  The peddler noted how pretty Lee was and made a psychic prediction. She has four knives in her head, the peddler said; not to kill anyone, but to be decisive, and to boldly cut down the barriers that lay in front of her.

Her home in Korea was very traditional.  Her family felt that education was a virtue.  That family value helped Lee get through college and graduate studies. In line with traditional values, Lee’s older brother received all the rights of the firstborn son.  It was expected that he should be the next head of the family.  The family arranged a good marriage. Their father had the prospective wife investigated to find out her academic achievement, family, health and character.  In fairness, the bride’s father, too, investigated the groom.  The new couple was expected to fulfill family duties, and be given every opportunity to succeed financially and academically.  Her brother went to Harvard and lived with other Koreans in an academic community. While there, he and his wife were tethered to his Korean family.

As a graduate student in the U.S., Lee’s behavior, inexperience, and gender and social gaffes caused trouble.  At one social occasion when she joined her brother and other Korean men at Harvard, she blundered into a conversation uninvited.  Her brother pulled her aside to remind her about the gender segregation.  While the men sat in one table discussing academics, politics, and world affairs, the women were supposed to congregate at another table, and talk about domestic matters and children.  In this scripted scenario, Lee crossed boundaries, broke social taboos, and ostracized herself.

Even in kinder moments of concern from members of the Korean American community, she heard condescending comments.  Well-intentioned people offered pointed advice.  “You’d better get married before you get too old.  I’d love to introduce you to a man, but I don’t know any.” Although the comment may be intended out of compassion and respect, the flood of cultural clichés felt to Lee like verbal assaults.   

As an educated woman with a strong, rebellious mind, Lee needed to hone her instincts; the knives that the fruit peddler mentioned.  She had problems in overstepping with her brother and his wife, and also in her relationships with American men.  Her encounters with men were often emotional, and filled with minefields of racism and sexism.

Before moving to Kansas for her Ph,D., Lee’s brother made pointed comments about her partner, Jonathan. He called him a total loser and a bum, and advised her to dump him.  He was right, but her rebellious nature got the better of her. 

Her Kansas academic career was also characterized by racism, gender inequality, and campus politics.  In the second year of her Ph.D. program, she hoped that her professors would recommend her for a teaching position.  Teaching English 101 to the freshmen class would provide experience in her field of English language, and provide a stable income. She was rejected with a scripted speech.  Was it racism when a less-accomplished white woman candidate  Ph.D. got the job? European student candidates were given priority for the same position.

Lee refused to swallow her pride.  Those knives came out.  She took the case to Affirmative Action (AA) and threatened to file a complaint. After that, her professors granted the teaching position. It was a small battle won. Lee realized that they did not see her as a Ph.D. candidate, but an Asian immigrant woman, a foreigner who spoke in accented English. 

Lee wanted equal opportunity.  At the very least, she wanted valid reasons for why she was denied.  She could not accept any arbitrary decisions or tolerate the campus status quo. Lee could not step down or accept rejection without a good reason. Failure was not an option.

As an academic, Lee worked hard.  Along the way, Lee had an awakening when she encountered other writers who wrote of similar immigrant experiences, gender, race and struggles with two cultures.  Maxine Hong Kingston was one of Lee’s influences.

While she focused all her energy on earning her Ph.D., Lee suffered physical and mental health issues.  The years of studies, racist battles, stress of being passed over by less-qualified candidates, living and eating badly, the damage of bad relationships, and the innate fears of failing caught up with her.  She went to the campus health facility for treatment and was prescribed heavy-duty drugs for depression.

Lee was honored in Kansas for her academic publications.  She produced two critical works on the topic of women of Korea and America, one of which was printed in a prestigious journal.  Thinking she was riding high, she submitted the other article to another journal and got rejected by them.  Lee tracked down the editors and heard the rationale of why her article was bypassed in favor of another Asian American woman author. The editors didn’t want to publish two articles written by two different Asian American women in the same issue. So obviously, they were being racist because they never hesitated to publish two different articles by two different white women in the same issue.

From Kansas, Lee moved to another university in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  The institution boasted idealism, free thinking, and tolerance of diversity, but in that region of the U.S., the Ku Klux Klan was still active. She acknowledges that college towns are not free of racism, but they are at least a place where critical analysis on the subject is tolerated. Racism occurring in the academic universe can at least be examined, questioned and corrected.

American idealism always preaches a good game, but Lee discovers that it still refuses to acknowledge the systemic racial prejudice permanently baked into the culture.

This starkly honest memoir is an insightful, and at times, painful journey of one very uncompromising woman. Leaving Korea and its traditional trappings, she tells a story of making her way in a new culture, with all its pitfalls and difficulties.  In the process, Lee finds her own identity as an educated woman, writer, and a free and independent person. 

Lee’s memoir resonates at many levels: She writes engagingly about academic pursuits and her drive to succeed, her decoding of American social dynamics, and her relationships with men and women.  Living her formative years in America, Lee comes to terms, and could even joke, “I’m a peasant from Korea.  I’m not a civilized American like you.”  She also came to terms with how she would always be perceived, even with all her credentials, as a Korean professor of English, not just an English professor. 

Lee is confident and articulate in her writing, laying down persuasive and insightful narratives, addressing hard issues with blunt candor. With a first-person voice, she speaks of the significance and consequences of the unequal social dynamics found in both a small university campus and in the larger American landscape.  Lee can be strident.  She confronts the micro-aggressions of racial profiling and gender stereotyping and cannot un-see them. However unwelcoming or conspiratorial, however, Lee continues to embrace her “husband country” as home.

Lee has now lived in the U.S. for over forty years, starting when she was an international student. She earned her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in English.  She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1989.  She is currently an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University.  In addition to In Search of My America (2024), Lee has also published To Kill A Tiger (2010), and From The Promised Land to Home (1998), all in English. 

Their voices live on

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Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories ~ By Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang, ed and trans.

(Routledge Publishers, London, 2023, ISBN #978-1-03-223057-3)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

(photo on right by Stephen Wunrow)

On August 14, 1991, 67-year-old Hak-sun Kim, a survivor of the Japanese military sexual slavery system (referred to as the comfort women) was the first to publicly share her story.  She told of being taken from her home and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.  In the decade that followed, hundreds of other former comfort women came forward to share their testimonies, and an international campaign launched and grew in strength and numbers to demand a formal apology from Japan and obtain monetary compensation for the victims.

In 2000, the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery was held in Tokyo, at which nine women bravely shared their testimonies (KQ attended and covered the tribunal in it’s Winter 2001 issue). These nine stories were translated and edited by Chungmoo Choi and Hyunah Yang in their powerful anthology, Voices of the Korean Comfort Women: History Rewritten from Memories.

The Japanese military systematically kidnapped or coerced tens of thousands of mostly teenage girls from countries it occupied before and during World War II; they came from China, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Okinawa, and other areas of the Pacific Rim. Because Korea was a longtime colony of Japan (from approximately 1910 to 1945), the largest number of these women were Korean. Many of them were either killed by the Japanese, or died by suicide during or after the war. Thousands have never come forward, due to the shame that it would bring upon themselves and their families. Thus, it is difficult to know the depths of the horror experienced by these women.

With the help of six translator who were all doctoral students in the East Asian Studies Department at the University of California-Irvine, the editors interviewed nine survivors, meticulously recording their stories over several months in 2000. Since then, all nine women have died, and the number of known former comfort women is dwindling, believed to be less than 10 today.

Editors Choi and Yang include an excellent introduction, providing key context about the history of the sexual slavery system. They include descriptions of the use of systemic rape as a weapon of war in recent history, for example, during the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995, the Sudanese Civil War in 2012, and in even more recent conflicts in Nigeria, Myanmar, and Ukraine.

Though awareness of the former comfort women and their story is becoming more widely known, reading what happened to these nine women, in their own words, is shocking. Kap-sun Ch’oe wrote how just as she would try to clean herself up after a Japanese soldier raped her, another one would come in, over and over. Many of the women were denied food and experienced severe malnutrition, and others became addicted to opium to escape the pain.

This destruction of individual lives, as well as the permanent harm to families and communities, is apparent throughout these nine testimonies. After Japan was defeated in World War II, many of the women attempted to return home, but were shunned by their families. Yun-hong An was pregnant when she returned home in 1945, but she was rejected not only by her family, but by her entire community, who spread rumors about her and called her a “tramp” and a “bad girl.” She was forced to give birth to her baby in a barn.  

Several of the women expressed guilt about what happened to them, as if they were to blame for the crimes committed against them. Ok-son Han said, “The story of my hardship, you cannot write in one book, you need several books. I need many more days and nights to talk about it all, and it’s still not enough, more so because of my sin of going as a comfort woman.”

All of the women were taken as teenagers, though one, Sun-man Na (pseudonym), was taken to Japan in 1941 at age 12, along with a paternal aunt. She worked at a comfort station near Hiroshima, where she was repeatedly raped by Japanese soldiers. Her story illustrates the many ways that the women tried to resist; she bit the men, tearing parts of their faces off with her teeth. One of these men twisted her arm and broke it, and she lived with a crooked arm for the rest of her life. The interviewer noted that her left arm was bent outward, and she could not raise it above her head.

Kap-sun Ch’oe was more than 80 years old during her interview. She shared that although she was lonely, she was happy that she could finally talk about her painful past. Even amidst the horror and pain of these memories, there is great strength and hope in the stories, and the reader develops appreciation for the women’s courage to share their stories publicly, and that it is a privilege to be able to read them.

When parallel lines intersect

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Lines ~ By Sung J. Woo

(Unsolicited Press, Portland (OR), 2024, ISBN # 978-1-956692-50-1

Review by Bill Drucker (Summer 2024)

On a foggy day, in New York City, Joshua Koslov and Abby Kim engage in two possible “what if” scenarios.  In one, the two literally collide by the Washington Square Arch.  They engage, they date, and they marry.  In the second scenario, they pass each other in close proximity in the fog, and do not meet.

With this rather brash premise for a fictional work, Sung J. Woo weaves a set of intricate narratives, one with the protagonists Josh Koslov, a frustrated writer and Abby Kim, a talented artist in a parallel existence; and the second in which they are in an intersecting existence.  The story, in two scenarios,  is set in contemporary New York City, a location familiar to the author, who earned his Master’s of Fine Arts from New York University.

The author explores the characters of Joshua and Abby – their human relationships, their inner lives, and certain chance moments that are seized or passed by.  The story is simple.  The complexities are in the decision-making and impulsive choices they engage in, and their consequences.

Woo has written an engaging, modern love story.  It is, however, a literary exercise in “what if” scenarios with variations of possible opportunities and vagaries of chance. The reader has to be accepting of the technique in order to get into the novel with understanding and enjoyment.

That said, Woo executes this literary exercise with creativity and a lot of emotional detail.  There are themes of fate, blind chance, the butterfly effect, and the popularized “sliding doors moment” all suggest that seemingly inconsequential moments do indeed alter the trajectory of future events.

This literary device has been written about, and played out in movies, such as the Polish art film, Blind Chance (1987), the American Sliding Doors (1998), and the German film Run Lola Run (1998).  All of these works play on a “What if I made this choice” premise. 

Blind Chance is laden with philosophical and ideological gravitas in which the protagonist is given three choices.  Sliding Doors is a slick, Hollywood romance with conditional premise; that the life of the character Helen (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) will go in two very different directions based on whether she does or does not catch a certain train.  As with the novel Lines, there are some significant consequences put in motion through the characters’ simple acts. There are certain bleak and fatalistic premises in these works, as exemplified by the character Josh’s perpetual disappointment with the results of his own actions.

In Lines, the two protagonists are young, educated New Yorkers who both aspire to be successful professionals; Josh as a writer and Abby as an artist. Abby and Josh are a couple in one scenario. In the other scenario, Josh is with Marlene, and Abby is with Ted. They navigate their marriages, their professions, support their spouses, tolerate their respective mate’s self-absorption, talk of children, and various successes and disappointments.

In his writing, Woo shows his knowledge of the young, educated and mobile class of New Yorkers rooted in literature and art.  They are familiar with Hemingway, Tolstoy and Dickens.  They have given their cadre of hi-tech professionals a combined acronym, FAANG or Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google.  This mobile crowd moves in highbrow circles and act like they belong, when they are actually not rich. They get around by riding a PATH (Port Authority-Trans-Hudson rapid transit)  or MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) train, and grab a lot of snacks from outdoor food vendors on their way to fancy events.

Disappointment seems to be a subtext in the life of frustrated writer Josh.  His manuscript has been turned down so many times, he does not even bother to count any more. However, he remembers everything about his debut novel, The Tragic Tolstoys.  He ruminates over how it took nine years to complete and how it was rejected by publishers 26 times.  By the 27th time, expecting another rejection, a little-known publisher offers to take it on with an advance of a paltry $100. It is hardly worth celebrating, but his wife Marlene insists they celebrate.

Josh stews over the success of a fellow writer.  His ego agrees with the New York Times review, which pans the writer’s ability as mediocre, describing her effort as “contrived, schematic, rootless, obvious.” Still, Josh decides to call and congratulate her for getting a review in a prestigious newspaper.

She welcomes the call and says she remembers Josh’s name on an NYU listserv, adding cleverly that he is a “fellow survivor of the creative writing program.” Josh makes a low-handed dig at the negative review.  She cheerfully shrugs it off.  They chat and then she excuses herself to pick up her child.  The reader wonders at this action, since Josh is described as jealous, spiteful, and self-flagellating. He is portrayed as conflicted about and envious of his colleague’s comparative success, while seeming to deny those feelings.

At his book opening, Josh is let down by the small size of his author photo which he perceives as another sign of his insignificance. Although he does not expect a cheering audience of fans, he is disappointed by the small showing.  The presence of Abby the artist, who is now pregnant, lifts his spirits.

In this scenario, Abby has had success on the internet selling her beautiful miniature artworks.  Her titles for her artful disks are fanciful, such as Cycling Guide to Lilliput.  Josh is taken with the marvelous little scenes, and begins to write creative vignettes to accompany the description of the artwork.  Abby’s fans love it, and she emails Josh, complimenting his creative writing.  On the street, Josh gets praise for the little stories but nobody ever mentions his novel.   

As the success of the miniatures rise, and Josh spends more time writing the vignettes, his life gets complicated.  His new pursuit becomes consuming.  When Marlene asks what he’s doing, Josh say nothing and closes his laptop.  Abby’s husband Ted also questions Josh’s literary contribution.  Josh begins dreaming about the tiny paintings.  He wakes up with his wife Marlene but he imagines her to be Abby.  Even when his son is born, he is still preoccupied by thoughts of Abby

In both scenarios, Josh is unhappy with his life, and his writing is stagnating as he turns 40. In both of his lives, as the Josh married with Abby, and the Josh married to Marlene, he falters as a husband and as a writer.  It’s his own doing.  His life with Abby is winding down after five years.  His life with Marlene also ends as Marlene succumbs to cancer.  

At the funeral, all Josh can think of is how his pants are too small.  The barn door could pop open anytime.  Josh looks at a roomful of sympathetic strangers.  Is this what it all comes to?  He suddenly realizes he has been a coward all his life.  Josh gets up to leave. As he hurries to open the doors, he cannot get to the outside light fast enough.

You can’t begrudge a writer who is popular and established from stepping over conventional literary boundaries into a more experimental form and format.  The literary device stretches the mind of the reader just as it does for the writer. This author’s literary shift doesn’t come out of the blue.  Woo’s writing history shows many forays into the unusual; one example is his earlier novel Skin Deep.  That novel deals with tennis and porn, identity and therapy. 

Woo plays with a subtext of geometry.  Each chapter is a parallel or intersecting narrative.  In math, parallel lines never intersect.  Among humans however, parallel lines/paths/lives can and do intersect.

Artist Dina Brodsky incorporates her beautiful miniature scenes into the storyline, which gives the novel another unique characteristic and fun factor.  By themselves, the disk-shaped illustrations are exquisitely detailed artworks.

Woo is a recognized short story writer, essayist, and novelist. His winning novel Everything Asian was published in 2009.  Other novels include Deep Roots, Love, Love and Skin Deep.  His writings have appeared in literary journals and magazines.

A look at modern Koreans’ lives

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The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories ~ edited by Bruce Fulton

(Penguin Books, London, 2023, ISBN# 978-0-241-44848-9)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2024)

It might seem intimidating to tackle such a large volume as The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories, but editor Bruce Fulton has put together a delightful collection of modern Korean short stories, ranging in length from 6 to 44 pages. Fulton, a professor of Korean literature and translation at the University of British Columbia, clearly holds these writers in great esteem. He and his wife Ju-Chan Fulton have translated many of these works over the years.

These 25 stories were written between 1934 and 2013; in the collection, they are arranged thematically rather than chronologically. Youngmin Kwon, a professor of Korean literature at Seoul National University, provides an excellent introduction to these themes, and also adds a brief chronology of Korean history from the late 19th century to the present, which places each story in its proper historical context.

The first section, Tradition, highlights the struggles and resilience Koreans demonstrated during the Japanese colonial period (1911-1945, when Korea was colonized and ruled by Japan).  Hyosok Yi’s When the Buckwheat Blooms introduces the character Saengwon Ho, a middle-aged peddler of goods in the countryside who reflects on the trajectory of his life with fellow stragglers. Ho relates the story of a lost love, the town beauty whose family fell on hard times. The two had one night of passion before she mysteriously disappeared with her family. Ho’s comrades are tired of hearing about his bad luck in love and life. But a new young companion he meets on the road seems to offer him a new perspective. Is there a glimmer of hope, in the midst of oppression and sadness?

A powerful theme in the collection is gender roles. In his introduction to this section, Kwon notes that until the modern period in Korea, writing was considered to mainly the domain writers who were upper-class men, and women writers were discouraged from publishing their work. Luckily this is changing, and today women fiction writers are growing in numbers and acclaim.

In Yujong Kim’s Spicebush Blossoms, a teenage boy and his family work as tenant farmers for the rich family of a girl around the same age as him. The girl continuously antagonizes him, sending her rooster to attack his smaller rooster. Hijinks ensue, including the boy feeding his rooster gochujang (Korean spicy pepper paste) in order to goad him into attack mode. Clearly, there are gender and class roles that must be followed here, but they are challenged in a humorous way.

In The Last of Hanak’o  by  Yun Ch’oe, a group of 30-something men have been a bit obsessed with one of their woman classmates from their university days. Among one another, they call her Hanak’o, meaning “the Nose,” because it was her most striking feature. In college, she was the cool girl, always up for a drink or a late-night meal with them, listening to their problems with their girlfriends with no judgement. Many years later, one of them tracks down Hanak’o, and happens to read a feature story about her in a prestigious magazine. He realizes how little they actually knew about her. Why had he and his friends never considered anything about her personal life, or asked her any questions at all, as they passively fantasized about her?

Any collection of 20th century Korean literature will include stories about the Korean War, and there are a few powerful stories on this topic in th section entitled Peace and War.  In Land of Exile, Chongnae Cho writes not about the horrific three-year period of fighting between the North and South, but about how that time  left deep scars on the Korean people – emotional, political, and economic.

Another powerful section is Hell Choson, which Kwon describes as:

the discontent of a generation of young people who have dutifully obtained a university education only to find a paucity of jobs commensurate with their education. More generally the term reflects disappointment with a lifestyle marked by economic inequality, crony capitalism, excessive work hours and inadequate salary, and the societal manifestations of this malaise, such as the highest suicide rate among the OECD nations, a negative birthrate and a divorce rate that hovers around 30 percent.

This theme is perhaps best illustrated by the renowned writer Kyung-sook Shin in her House on the Prairie. The title may conjure up warm and homey images of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novel Little House on the Prairie, and it indeed begins with a young, hopeful couple moving into an abandoned cottage on a prairie. During the next few years, they create a beautiful life, with the husband working at a construction site not far away, and the wife delivering home-cooked lunches to him every day. Soon they have a baby to complete their idyllic picture of domesticity, but clearly there is a crack in the frame. Shin, a master storyteller who has touched on themes of loss and grief in her many novels such as Please Look After Momand I’ll Be Right There, somehow captures the feeling of Hell Choson in her slim short story of only six pages.

It must have been a difficult task to choose only 25 short stories for The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories, but Fulton has done an excellent job of curating a wide range of works by acclaimed Korean authors – some light and funny, others dark and tragic, with most somewhere in between. For an introduction to modern Korean literature, this collection is not to be missed.

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